2009-02-18 15:46 | And North Dakota is in the lead!

Via a couple of places: ND House Passes Abortion Ban

The House voted 51-41 this afternoon to declare that a fertilized egg has all the rights of any person.

That means a fetus could not be legally aborted without the procedure being considered murder.

Commentary can be found at these places, so far as I've found:

* IBTP
* Bitch Pd.D.
* Feministe (once their database stops sucking)
* Suite 101

2008-10-30 10:23 | More on Prop. 8, and some on Florida's Amendment 2 and Arizona's Prop. 108.

John Scalzi has two terrific posts up about California's Proposition 8:

1) What? Prop 8 Threatens Existing Marriages? You Don't Say:

This is why every single potential supporter of Proposition 8 should be looked square in the eye and asked if they are truly and seriously ready to say that that they personally are prepared to destroy already existing, already legal marriages — if they are truly and seriously ready to say that they know better than the people in a marriage whether that marriage should be allowed to exist — if they are truly and seriously ready to say to two married people, "you two don't deserve to be married, and I intend to kill your marriage now."

2) Something Worth Noting, Re: People Who Vote For Prop 8:

I think there are good, decent, kind and loving people who will vote for a proposition that is fundamentally bigoted and wrong and hurtful, and that they will do it out of the best of intentions, motivated by a belief in a particular religion, or fear of a changing world, or a perceived conflict in moral system, or because they want to plant a flag about the encroaching power of governments, some combination of any or all of the above, or for some other reason entirely.

---

Florida and Arizona have similar items.

* Florida's Amendment 2 will amend the Florida Constitution to add: "Inasmuch as a marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized."

* Arizona's Proposition 102 "will amend the Arizona Constitution by adding the following article related to marriage: "Marriage – Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state.""

The Florida one may be getting less press because they aren't actively ending marriages, and the Arizona one might be because the proposition will only strengthen what's already there, so I hear.

Still.  If you are in one of those states, vote no.

2008-10-27 11:39 | Event: Write to Marry Day

Here is the Wikipedia article on California's Proposition 8. The proposition is seeking to add this to the California Constitution: "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

Being liberal-minded myself, it is no surprise that I am firmly against this bigoted proposition. I am against restricting marriage to a man and a woman, I am against nullifying existing marriages, and I am way against giving even a millimeter of ground to people who are in fact that insecure about their marriages.

Two wonderful things:

• Google's position is vote no on Prop. 8.
• Apple not only says no to Prop. 8, they have donated $100,000 to the No On 8 campaign.

Donate to No On Prop 8 here.

2008-02-03 14:57 | Sometimes, I think our laws need a reboot.

Rape charges dropped against pharmacist who posed as gynecologist:

"Prosecutors say they cannot press rape charges against a pharmacist who allegedly posed as a gynecologist and examined two women because of a half-century old state law that says an assault can't be considered rape if consent is obtained through fraud or deceit."

Thankfully, state representative Peter Koutoujian is working on changing that:

"In fact, we know now through decades of work with victims that rape is not necessarily only a physical act. You don't need to use force in order to rape someone. It's really the act of consent that is more pivotal to the charge of rape."

One of these years, I'm going to post my thoughts on (adult) rape, as influenced by reading many, many blogs on the topic.  In the meantime, I'm going to continue wondering how I'm supposed to not mistrust men on sight.

(W-ell, I'm actually going to continue trying to wake up.  You know.)

2008-02-02 13:52 | Maybe I could learn to like New York…

An appeals court has ruled that a gay couple's marriage in Canada should be recognized in New York.

"The state Legislature "may decide to prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages solemnized abroad," the ruling said. "Until it does so, however, such marriages are entitled to recognition in New York."

And here's the ACLU press release on the topic.  This is fantastic!

Oh, hey, and, lookit this:

A[n Oregon] state law allowing gay couples to register as domestic partners belatedly took effect Friday after a federal judge ruled the state's process of disqualifying petition signatures was consistent enough to be valid.

I love waking up to good news.

2007-04-23 13:24 | "Let's not teach them, then hold them accountable for their mistakes! That's S-M-R-T!"

I haven't posted much of anything on the recent partial-birth abortion ban because it's hard to get my thoughts straight, and it's hard to get my thoughts straight because I'm torn between wanting to understand the other side and wanting to throttle them all.  So again, I collect links that appear to be useful.

* Kenyan hospitals overwhelmed by women injured by illegal abortion. Thank a "pro-lifer."

* "Pro-Life" Mississippi Has Highest Infant Mortality Rate in the Nation

* [LJ] "I wish more pro-life people saw the irony in the fact that I am working to preserve their freedom and their daughters' freedom, even as they try to take mine from me. I wish they could understand how much good birth control and legal abortion have done in the short time we have had both available to us. I wish they could see how much harm withholding them again would do."

* The fact that abortion is even a debate in this country demonstrates that we do not trust women.

I get so enraged by the anti- arguments.  Where by "arguments", I usually mean "casually tossed-off phrases".  This enragement is primarily why I don't get into arguments about this kind of thing.  I don't always feel like pushing potential listeners away by getting too out of control.  (Not like "I am angry at all", though I do have problems with that, but rather "I am rending garments and turning green".)

* "I just don't like the idea of slutty-slut-sluts using abortion as birth control."

Several responses to this:

1) As someone else astutely pointed out, technically, abortion is birth control.
2) If the idea-misliking is a personal opinion, then no worries.  I dislike all sorts of things.  Once you start trying to pass it into law, that's when I get pissed.
3) Do I want to get into the entire issue of women are sluts and men are virile, or do I want to throw my hands in the air and stomp away?  Hmm, decisions.
4) You know what would help more than banning abortion?  Proper sex education.  That makes this all worse – that many pro-lifers are pushing abstinence education, then go and push anti-abortion laws.  What even the hell?
5) And, you've seen the rampant hypocrisy of anti-abortion crusaders getting abortions, right?  Right?

* "Well, if everyone just used [the most perfect birth control], then where would be the problem?"

The problem is in focusing not on reality, but on what it should be.  In an ideal universe, all people would precisely know how to use all forms of birth control (in the event that one form doesn't work for a person).  Condoms would never break.  The Pill would never decrease in efficacy due to other medication (like antibiotics).  Men would have their own Pill to take.  We would all have perfect memories, all the time in the world to do research, free internet access at all times, and perfect knowledge of how to find all this information.  Rape would never ever occur.  And all of this birth control would TOTALLY grow on trees.

Pause whilst I contemplate a condom tree.

Tossing off "Just look it up on the internet, it's easy to find! Tcha!" comes off as blaming the hell out of the victim, not to mention not paying even a bit of attention.  Dear yall: where the hell do you think this knowledge comes from, the sky?  You're not allowing for things like people getting discouraged by how hard it is to find doctors to dispense birth control that doesn't infinitely suck, or not having the time or energy to do a bunch of research on this stuff, or not being able to take a lot of forms of birth control, or not speaking English well, or not using the internet well, or being Catholic, or living in a country that even allows birth control at all (see the first link), or being able to afford leaving the city/county/state to find an affordable Planned Parenthood (what, you think they are all exactly the same?), or running afoul of physicians/pharmacists/&c who won't do their goddamn job, or or or…

Basically, it comes down to everybody should have perfect knowledge, both abstract and concrete, and if they don't, then it's THEIR FAULT for having sex.  They should have accepted the consequences, or they should have been 100% perfect!  Reality, culture, education – no excuses!

* "But that means you're not holding them to any standards!"

We're not even on the same planet at this point.  EDUCATION HELPS, you know.  Teaching people about sex – about good relationships, about birth control, about their own bodies – is a good thing.  It helps people make more informed decisions.  What I see the majority of pro-lifers doing is the equivalent of never teaching kids about finances, throwing them at the NYSE, then castigating them for ever making a financial transaction.  (The analogy fails because so far as I know, making financial transactions is not nearly as strong a biological urge as having sex is.)

How does this even make sense to anybody?

In conclusion, hey lookee, a bunch more links, just for yall.

2006-11-17 23:52 | Interesting links, says I.

Found via various friends and neighbours.

* [Flash] Mapping Our Rights: An interactive map that ranks US states according to their reproductive healthcare, marriage, and abortion policies.

* [Shockwave movie, has sound] Dove: Evolution: The Dove Self Esteem Fund has a one-minute video on the process to make a woman into a model.  An artful combination of makeup and Photoshop, where by "artful" I think I also mean "scary".

2006-11-07 03:34 | When I'm cheerful, I'm still just as ranty.

I don't get it.  I Don't Get It.

I try my very best to understand where people come from.  Sometimes this is misinterpreted as seeing the other side as having the right of things, which is both incorrect and a whole different rant.  I do anyways.  But I don't get this.

A decision by a Maryland appellate court (that once given and within a sexual context, women can't withdraw consent (link = .pdf)) is fucking revolting.  I could keep piling on adjectives, but my first reaction is both accurate and succint.  If I am in the middle of having sex and I say "Wait, stop", I expect the other person to fucking stop, and that's that.

There are some people men out there (I've not yet seen even one woman arguing this) who have a problem with this.  What if she sends mixed signals?  What if she says "no" but actually and non-ironically means "yes"?  This is just women using their sexual power, like we are!

Answers: You fucking communicate, you fucking communicate, and you fucking die in a fire.  I will cheerfully assist with the last one.

The main part I don't understand is, why are these men, and men like them, so incredibly insulting to their own gender?  "We can't stop in time, and it's unfair to expect us to!"  As my boyfriend says, "Could you stop if your mom walked in while you were having sex?  All right, then!"

I try my best not to be all the paranoid about assigning things to the patriarchy, largely due to me being new to the feminism thing, but fuck if I can't see anything here other than, "We want the power to do what we want, and it threatens us when women want to be treated as human."