family

One of the main conservative leaders who fought successfully to scare politicians away from the Equal Rights Amendment has now revealed some of her underlying thinking, including -- incredibly -- the notion that husbands have carte blanche when it comes to raping their wives.

"By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape," she said.

That's right, honey. Say "I do" and open your legs 'till death do you part.

She also seems to be oblivious to the changing world around her.

One came when Schlafly asserted women should not be permitted to do jobs traditionally held by men, such as firefighter, soldier or construction worker, because of their "inherent physical inferiority."

"Women in combat are a hazard to other people around them," she said. "They aren't tall enough to see out of the trucks, they're not strong enough to carry their buddy off the battlefield if he's wounded, and they can't bark out orders loudly enough for everyone to hear."

Never mind that women are taller and stronger today than before, thanks to less socially imposed norms of yore, such as the undernourishment of girls and the frowning on women participating in sports.

Besides, making grandiose generalizations based on sex when it comes to who's permitted to do what is a ridiculous claim, and politically is more in line with fascism than the old-line Goldwater conservatism that espouses small government and leaving people alone.

In summary, it seems that the woman who tried to claim that feminism was a victim mindset has completely swallowed whole a pathologically victim-oriented view of the world, where women are soooooo inferior that we should all just shut up, cook dinner and get on our backs for men.

Bucking pressure from the radical wingnut contingent that runs so strong in down there, Texas Governor Rick Perry decided to get sensible about cervical cancer prevention:

By issuing an executive order, Perry apparently sidesteps opposition in the Legislature from conservatives and parents' rights groups who fear such a requirement would condone premarital sex and interfere with the way parents raise their children.

Beginning in September 2008, girls entering the sixth grade — meaning, generally, girls ages 11 and 12 — will have to get Gardasil, Merck & Co.'s new vaccine against strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV.

Perry, a conservative Christian who opposes abortion and stem-cell research using embryonic cells, counts on the religious right for his political base. But he has said the cervical cancer vaccine is no different from the one that protects children against polio.

This of course goes against the fundamentalist orthodox thinking that claims girls need the spectre of cervical cancer in order to keep their legs closed and wait until marriage before having sex. Of course, they don't consider flaws in their logic, such as child molestation, rape and other ways that even "good little girls" could get cervical cancer.

The federal government approved Gardasil in June, and a government advisory panel has recommended that all girls get the shots at 11 and 12, before they are likely to be sexually active.

The New Jersey-based drug company could generate billions in sales if Gardasil — at $360 for the three-shot regimen — were made mandatory across the country. Most insurance companies now cover the vaccine, which has been shown to have no serious side effects.

--that is, except for agitated wingnut phobias of anything to do with women's health, especially when it comes to those sexual organs that supposedly got Man kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

And that makes Governor Perry's act so un-radical it's almost shocking.

Then again, it's almost difficult to be a "radical" conservative when conservatives are even claiming that condoms cause cancer.

The FDA has shocked me. After stonewalling their own doctors and scientists, the politicians in the agency have decided to act rationally, perhaps as a ploy to help the Republicans you've seen frothing at the mouth over the past two years whenever they talk about sex to seem more reasonable.

It's a partial victory:

Girls 17 and younger still will need a doctor's note to buy the pills, called Plan B, the
Food and Drug Administration told manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc.

The compromise decision is a partial victory for women's advocacy and medical groups that say eliminating sales restrictions could cut in half the nation's 3 million annual unplanned pregnancies.

The pills are a concentrated dose of the same drug found in many regular birth-control pills. When a woman takes the pills within 72 hours of unprotected sex, they can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent. If she already is pregnant, the pills have no effect.

I hope the nutters out there will note that last sentence. The fact is that Plan B prevents conception. With this "morning after" pill, there is no abortion at all. It's not even an issue.

What's at issue for Plan B opponents is whether the man's sperm can claim dibs on a woman's body, even if they're just wiggling around in there without fertilizing an egg (conception), without even an egg's being there to be fertilized. It's one of the most absurd arguments for patriarchal privilege out there.

Of course, we can expect the nutters to continue to distort and lie about Plan B. Anything that gives women power over their own bodies is bad, according to them. Just wait. You'll see them all over cable news today (if you can stomach watching that crap).

The fear and unreason is already out there:

Bravo folks! let's give our kids one more reason to have sex like rabbits!

"Yeah, it's much better to have pregnancy as punishment! And kids will have sex because the girl will then get to take a pill!"

Don't worry, though. It seems that most people see the positive side. This could reduce the number of aborted pregnancies significantly. That should be good news for everybody.

They called it the Reagan Revolution. I meet intelligent and articulate people who cannot remember America before Reagan.

Steven Colbert interviewed a young conservative woman who wants to go back to the "old days" and she looks longingly back to a by-gone era. But that era that she describes was an era of Democratic Presidents and liberal reform.

The conservative nostalgia is based on an era with mainly Democrats in the White House and Congresses largely control by the Democrats. From 1932 until Ronald Reagan, the only two elected Republicans Presidents were Eisenhower and Nixon - Nixon who resigned in disgrace and had Ford fill out the remainder of the term. The rest were all Democrats in the Presidency with a largely Democrat Congress.

So the nostalgia that conservatives wax poetic about has nothing to do with the "Reagan Revolution," except in the sense of the nostalgia.

Reagan was old enough to by my grandfather, or great-grandfather to people in their 20s. People in the era of Reagans own youth had memories of growing up in the Great Depression. These were hard times and the Democrats came to power because economic times were bad. Rightly or wrongly the bad economic times were blamed on the Republicans and they were voted out.

America became powerful and great during an unprecedented era of government involvement and regulation.

The Reagan vision of America before Nixon/Ford/Carter does not square with the fact that for almost 50 years, the Democrats' vision of America is the one that made America what it was. The conservatives think that by reversing all the Democrat/liberal policies and programs that this will make America what it once was.

The halcyon days were not achieved by Republican policies.

GWB, our President, is not in a Great Depression scenario, but clearly the economy is not what it once was.

We got a glimpse of what Democrats can do - and Clinton (a rather conservative Democrat) was able to bring fiscal responsibility and move the government into the black.

from Talk to Action

We all have heard South Dakota State Senator Bill Napoli's description of a woman who might qualify for an abortion under the rigid strictures of South Dakota's draconian abortion law – an exemption now immortalized as the Sodomized Virgin Exception.

Bob Nelson, a contributor to the Rapid City Journal's Mount Blogmore, considers the plight of those young women less fortunate.

It was an easy rape, she said
(Though not the way she hoped to wed)
The stones were sharp against her head,
(Not her dream of a bridal bed)
And the dress he tore as he thrust her down
was not her idea of a wedding gown.

But really, it was not complex.
Just some simple brutal sex.
And though her young life had other plans
She would bear the child of the gentleman.
And try to love each smile and dimple,
And be thankful that the rape was simple.
And thank the men who made her free.
Simple men like Napoli.

No thanks are necessary, little lady. It was their simple pleasure. As Napoli himself says, "If I, as a legislator, can make life better, really help somebody, that's a wonderful feeling."

from Talk to Action

While the Bible that many South Dakotans are substituting for the Constitution these days maintains that "her price is far above rubies," those same people have decreed that the worth of any woman, no matter how virtuous, plummets at "that point in time when a male human sperm penetrates the zona pellucida of a female human ovum." From that moment forward, not only her body, her hopes and her dreams, but sometimes -- despite the hollow promise of a tacked-on provision allowing "a medical procedure designed or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant mother" – even her very life can be forfeit.

Equality under the law surely is an American value. Who, if they had the facts, would support a law that results in subjugation? Perhaps the oppressor might vote for such a law, but not those who are disadvantaged by the law. Yet, in the United States, women have not yet had the political will to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Its language is simple.

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

It outlaws sexism.

And yet, the amendment is still not part of the United States Constitution.

Women are governed by a set of laws that have evolved over time, which stem from issues around human reproduction. The sexual organ difference between men and women has led to two sets of laws and rights.

The megablogs, such as Daily Kos, Boomantribune, and mydd, are advancing an argument that the issue of women's reproductive rights is not important, and that if a Democrat wants to restrict a woman's rights, that is okay since women's reproductive rights are not as important as electing a certain slate of candidates.

If I chose to support another candidate, who supports women's reproductive rights, but who is not of the "correct" slate of candidates, I risk being accused of being a traitor and deserter of the cause. But what cause, pray tell?

Why would I care about a candidate who doesn't care about me? It's as simple as that and the machinations of megablogs like Daily Kos, Boomantribune, and mydd, come off as flummery - I am urged to vote against my own interests because it is in my interests. Huh?

The Democrats, of late, have abandoned women's rights as an issue as the Democrats swing ever rightward. I ask myself, why should I join this made race to nowhere, whose only promise is oblivion? Either way, the Democrats will lose. The megblogs tell us there will be few Democrats in power; fewer Democratic bodies in Congress. But that's one price I am not going to pay, no matter how many elections it might win, for in the end, the Democrats will have struck a bargain to win an election, only to find out that they have sold their souls.

Today is the day. Time for you to celebrate the love of your life. Time to indulge in romance. Time to be with your honey and do all sorts of silly and wonderful and embarrassing and lusty and heartfelt things with each other.

Or not.

Time to buy that chocolate. Time to get that perfect card. Time to pick up that three-dozen roses. (Diamonds are forever, boys!) Time to lavish your sweetheart with stuff.

Or not.

Today is the day to blog about it. Valentine's Day and you.

(The Blog Awards particulars are here.)

Cross-posted from Our Word

Betty Friedan has passed away at age 85. A founding mother of modern feminism, she was many things. Warrior, author, philosopher, journalist, homophobe, mother, founding member of NOW and NARAL, conservative, moderate, revolutionary...

I'll no doubt be writing more about Betty Friedan's legacy in the next couple of days. But for now I just want to sit with my feelings of loss. She may not have been able to lead us all the way home, or perhaps even envision our ultimate destination, but she was an amazing force in getting this wave of the march started. May she rest in peace.

It seems the Pentagon is getting to the romance business:

WASHINGTON - They are the Pentagon's new "rules of engagement" — the diamond ring kind. U.S. Army chaplains are trying to teach troops how to pick the right spouse, through a program called "How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk."

The matchmaking advice comes as military family life is being stressed by two tough wars. Defense Department records show more than 56,000 in the Army — active, National Guard and Reserve — have divorced since the campaign in Afghanistan started in 2001.

--Not that prolonged separations, extremely stressful jobs and financial struggles don't tend to be quite effective at breaking up marriages. Nooooo!!!! Blame the spouse. Blame the family. It's not the Pentagon's fault! Really!

"Being in the military certainly raises the stakes when you choose a mate," said Lt. Col. Peter Frederich, head of family issues in the Pentagon's chaplain office.

The "no jerks" program is also called "P.I.C.K. a Partner," for Premarital Interpersonal Choices and Knowledge.

It advises the marriage-bound to study a partner's F.A.C.E.S. — family background, attitudes, compatibility, experiences in previous relationships and skills they'd bring to the union.

It teaches the lovestruck to pace themselves with a R.A.M. chart — the Relationship Attachment Model — which basically says don't let your sexual involvement exceed your level of commitment or level of knowledge about the other person.

Wow. They got three -- count 'em! 3!!! -- acronyms into the program! Those are marks of military efficiency, folks!

The Bush administration proposes to spend $5.6 billion in the next budget year for quality-of-life services for troops and their families.

That includes help with child care, education, spouse job hunting, legal assistance, commissaries, relocation counseling — programs on every family issue imaginable — to promote stability, and thus troop readiness.

If it weren't for the pork, one would marvel at Republicans showing such interest in actually nurturing families. After all, when it comes to the working poor and unemployed, child care, education, job assistance, legal aid and food stamps are all targets of GOP spending cuts (to pay for their tax cuts for CEOs and massive pork-barrel spending they passed in 2005).

And, of course, paying our soldiers and Marines what they're worth is completely off the table. (Their lobbyists are out-spent by those working for Halliburton, obviously.)

No, it's better to blame the spouses. After all, any self-respecting wife should be delighted to spend her days and nights alone with the babies, eating macaroni and cheese dinners and avoiding all the dunning phone calls from the credit card companies demanding their pound of flesh, while hubby is off in some faraway land on some mission that even today is largely undefined.

But maybe, just maybe, instead of passing the buck to spouses who struggle under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, the Pentagon might look upstairs at who's pushing a foreign policy that strains our armed forces by participating in Iraq's civil war. After all, I hear that there's a War on Terror going on. Maybe instead of being caught in the crossfire in Iraq, our armed forces should be focusing on that.