I'd like to once again reiterate that abortion is not about LIFE, or cute little gerber babies. It is about control: control of women's bodies, control of women's lives. And it is a key component of the conservative plan, because if women cannot for themselves decide when, where and with whom to have children, they are effectively no longer free and equal citizens. It's that simple, and that's why I'm not sympathetic to, nor will I ever be, liberals who adopt the conservative framing on this topic. Liberalism and feminism are almost certainly incompatible (read Locke closely) but, since we seem stuck in it, let's review: property is the cornerstone of liberal democracy. Our first piece of property is our bodies. All rights and all presumptions of equality flow from this first assumption.
That being said, check this out, via the indomitable Kos:
Attorney General Phill Kline, a Republican who has made fighting abortion a staple of his two years in the post, is demanding the complete medical files of scores of women and girls who had late-term abortions, saying on Thursday that he needs the information to prosecute criminal cases. Advocates on both sides of the abortion issue said the broad investigation, backed by a judge's subpoena [NYT, how about providing a name here? Who is this scandalous judge?], is the first of its kind in pursuit of criminal charges, although the federal Justice Department has unsuccessfully sought similar records in its defense of a ban on a procedure sometimes used to end pregnancies after the first trimester that doctors call intact dilation and extraction and that critics call partial-birth abortion.
Kansas is one of 31 states that have passed laws to ban or restrict the procedure. But Kansas does not ban it outright, allowing such abortions if women's health is endangered. Mr. Kline's efforts to obtain records from abortion clinics follows his failed attempt last year to require the state's health workers to report any sexual activity of girls younger than 16, the age of legal consent in Kansas.
Health-care providers sued, and a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order. Mr. Kline's new investigation could yield similar records. His effort became public this week when two clinics whose records are being subpoenaed filed a brief in State Supreme Court to block what they called a "secret inquisition" and "fishing expedition" that threatened the doctor-patient privilege and women's constitutional rights.
Noting that personal details like marital status, race, employment history and emergency contacts are in the records, lawyers for the clinics asked, "How can a woman's method of birth control or prior history of abortions or use of drugs and medications be relevant?"
Oh, they're RELEVANT, believe me, because they indicate which women are Godless Heathens who have forsaken their Immortal Soul and should be put into camps or sent to clean toxic waste sites, for the purification of our society so that Jesus isn't angry when he comes back.
Friday, February 25, 2005
Monday, February 21, 2005
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
a kvetch and a link
I didn't drop my course on time, and now I have to pay for the class I'm not taking--426.35, actually. So that makes sense. They also want me to pay more in fees, even though I paid for the 6 units I was taking at the beginning of the semester. So now I have to pay _as if I were taking more units_ than I was taking at the beginning of the semester. Feh, feh, feh. Of course it is my fault; it all got lost in the shuffle and the fact that I couldn't drop it online (why?) and then when I emailed the grad assistant it got bounced back to me--three times--because my address book has her @email.unc.edu rather than @unc.edu, and our incompetent IT staff can't set their server so that it will go through anyway.
Okay, kvetch over. Check out this article by Judith Warner in Newsweek, which will undoubtedly not change a thing, but it's interesting to see in the MSM anyway.
Okay, kvetch over. Check out this article by Judith Warner in Newsweek, which will undoubtedly not change a thing, but it's interesting to see in the MSM anyway.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
I heart bill moyers
I've liked him ever since watching his amazing series of interviews with Joseph Campbell on the power of myth (and if you haven't seen them, you must). Here is a piece he recently wrote that is absolutely worth reading, and then re-reading, and then posting on your blog or foisting on friends.
Sunday, February 06, 2005
now is the time to open your heart
"That which God said to the rose,
and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty,
he said to my heart,
and made it a hundred times more beautiful."
-Rumi, translated by Kabir Helminski
and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty,
he said to my heart,
and made it a hundred times more beautiful."
-Rumi, translated by Kabir Helminski
Friday, February 04, 2005
just one more thing: I'd like to once again announce the death of satire
Via Kos:
Loyalty, Rewarded
by Hunter
Fri Feb 4th, 2005 at 15:40:07 PST
President Bush wants America to stop hurting our kind, job-creating, market-driving entrepeneurs.
To make our economy stronger and more competitive, America must reward, not punish, the efforts and dreams of entrepreneurs. [...] Justice is distorted, and our economy is held back, by irresponsible class actions and frivolous asbestos claims - and I urge Congress to pass legal reforms this year.
-- President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address
Feb. 2nd, 2005
More than 100 families win $30 million settlement in asbestos case
Associated Press
Feb. 3rd, 2005
SEATTLE - More than 100 Northwest families have won a $30 million settlement in an asbestos lawsuit involving a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton Co.
The deal was part of a $4.3 billion global settlement encompassing Halliburton's past, present and future asbestos liabilities, Matthew Bergman, a lawyer who represented the families, said Thursday. [...]
Dresser Industries, a subsidiary of Halliburton acquired when Vice President Dick Cheney was chairman of the company, distributed asbestos products to shipyards, power plants and industrial facilities.
Plaintiffs alleged Dresser officials knew their products were harmful to workers in the 1930s but continued to distribute them through the mid-1970s.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS? It's a good thing Twain and Heller are dead; this is going to finish off Kurt Vonnegut. And I will blame this Administration for his death.
Loyalty, Rewarded
by Hunter
Fri Feb 4th, 2005 at 15:40:07 PST
President Bush wants America to stop hurting our kind, job-creating, market-driving entrepeneurs.
To make our economy stronger and more competitive, America must reward, not punish, the efforts and dreams of entrepreneurs. [...] Justice is distorted, and our economy is held back, by irresponsible class actions and frivolous asbestos claims - and I urge Congress to pass legal reforms this year.
-- President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address
Feb. 2nd, 2005
More than 100 families win $30 million settlement in asbestos case
Associated Press
Feb. 3rd, 2005
SEATTLE - More than 100 Northwest families have won a $30 million settlement in an asbestos lawsuit involving a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton Co.
The deal was part of a $4.3 billion global settlement encompassing Halliburton's past, present and future asbestos liabilities, Matthew Bergman, a lawyer who represented the families, said Thursday. [...]
Dresser Industries, a subsidiary of Halliburton acquired when Vice President Dick Cheney was chairman of the company, distributed asbestos products to shipyards, power plants and industrial facilities.
Plaintiffs alleged Dresser officials knew their products were harmful to workers in the 1930s but continued to distribute them through the mid-1970s.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS? It's a good thing Twain and Heller are dead; this is going to finish off Kurt Vonnegut. And I will blame this Administration for his death.
mini-fact (because I hate the word "factoid")
Arnold Schwarzenegger had a total of 17 lines in the first Terminator movie.
Also, if you haven't read the Times today, don't. Couldn't they have saved all this shit for Monday?
Under Benefit Plan, Early 50's Age Group Caught in the Middle
(Feed my parents, or have children of my own? The choice of a generation...)
Rice Says U.S. Won't Offer Iran Incentives to Halt Nuclear Work
(Because the elections in Iraq just encouraged them, people.)
Gonzales is Confirmed As Atty General
(Lieberman votes yes--that's what happens when the President kisses you.)
Marine General Admonished
(For saying, publicly, "Actually, it's a hell of a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people....You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil...you know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." Hey, what part of that statement bothers you most?)
Arabs Bristle at Bush's Agenda for Region
("'These blunt American statements exert a kind of political and psychological pressure that backfires within segements of the Egyptian population becaue it makes the sincere demands of Egyptian activists and politicians seem like mere echoes of the American stand.'")
Bush Officials Spell Out Cuts in Money for Housing
E.P.A. Accused of a Predetermined Finding on Mercury
(Though on this page--A13, there's a classic photo of Laura Bush with a small black child in a class called "Passport to Manhood." She's smiling her tranq-ed out smile and him and he's looking at her like "Who the hell is this white bitch?")
Editorial: Keeping Out of Otero Mesa
("Last week, the BLM signed a decition to allow new oil and gas leasing on some of the most important and fragile grassland in America. At risk is an expance of wild Chihuahuan Desert grassland--the largest still in existence--in the Otero mesa area long New Mexico's south-central border.")
I was reading one of Pema Chodron book's last night, all about leaning into the sharp points and embracing groundlessness and so forth. Buddhism has been extremely helpful to me, but it's difficult for me to let go of politics, I have to be honest. In some deep sense, all we have is this moment. Truly. But a lot of what's going down in my eternal moment is really crappy, in my ego-bound opinion.
Also, if you haven't read the Times today, don't. Couldn't they have saved all this shit for Monday?
Under Benefit Plan, Early 50's Age Group Caught in the Middle
(Feed my parents, or have children of my own? The choice of a generation...)
Rice Says U.S. Won't Offer Iran Incentives to Halt Nuclear Work
(Because the elections in Iraq just encouraged them, people.)
Gonzales is Confirmed As Atty General
(Lieberman votes yes--that's what happens when the President kisses you.)
Marine General Admonished
(For saying, publicly, "Actually, it's a hell of a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people....You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil...you know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." Hey, what part of that statement bothers you most?)
Arabs Bristle at Bush's Agenda for Region
("'These blunt American statements exert a kind of political and psychological pressure that backfires within segements of the Egyptian population becaue it makes the sincere demands of Egyptian activists and politicians seem like mere echoes of the American stand.'")
Bush Officials Spell Out Cuts in Money for Housing
E.P.A. Accused of a Predetermined Finding on Mercury
(Though on this page--A13, there's a classic photo of Laura Bush with a small black child in a class called "Passport to Manhood." She's smiling her tranq-ed out smile and him and he's looking at her like "Who the hell is this white bitch?")
Editorial: Keeping Out of Otero Mesa
("Last week, the BLM signed a decition to allow new oil and gas leasing on some of the most important and fragile grassland in America. At risk is an expance of wild Chihuahuan Desert grassland--the largest still in existence--in the Otero mesa area long New Mexico's south-central border.")
I was reading one of Pema Chodron book's last night, all about leaning into the sharp points and embracing groundlessness and so forth. Buddhism has been extremely helpful to me, but it's difficult for me to let go of politics, I have to be honest. In some deep sense, all we have is this moment. Truly. But a lot of what's going down in my eternal moment is really crappy, in my ego-bound opinion.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
birdbrains
Science Times is awesome. I look forward to getting it every week, and this week they had a great piece on the brains of birds, long assumed to be inferior to mammalian brains because of the way their brain cells clustered. Now, they're finding that birds are highly intelligent and that the formation of their brains enables adaptation and complex reasoning. Here's my favorite story from the article:
"At a university campus in Japan, carrion crows line up patiently at the curb waiting for a traffic light to turn red. When cars stop, they hop into the crosswalk, place walnuts from nearby trees onto the road and hop back to the curb. After the light changes and cars run over the nuts, the crows wait until it is safe and hop back out for the food."
A couple of things occur to me. First, I can't believe how long it has taken scientists to understand that human intelligence is not necessarily the only peak of evolution. The fact that men have spent literally hundreds of years testing animals on human intelligence scales would be funny if it weren't so stupid. After all, how many of us can do what squirrels, dogs, or birds do? If they ran the world, wouldn't we all look pretty dumb to them as well? Furthermore, men make the persistent error of determining that different from them is always lesser. Consider again the ongoing "biological differences" argument regarding differences between the sexes. This is the same error in assumption, repeated across disciplines and across time and applied to widely varying cases, from birds to women.
On that note, today there is also an article by Cornelia Dean, the first woman science editor of the New York Times. Here are some of her stories:
"At a dinner for scientific eminences, a colleague introduced me to one of the nations leading neuroscientists. 'Oh yes,' the scientist murmured as he scanned the room clearly ignoring me. 'Who is the new science editor of the New York Times, that twerpy girl in short skirts?' Dumbfounded, I replied, 'That would be me.'"
"Not long aftter I answered the office telephone, and the caller, a (male) scientist, asked me to speak to several of my colleagues, all male and all out. 'May I help you?' I inquired. 'No, no, no,' he replied. 'I don't want to talk to you, I want to talk to someone important."
"Another friend, graduating as a math major, was advised not to bother applying for a graduate research assistantship because they were not given to women. She eventually earned a doctorate in math, but one of her early forays into the job market ended abruptly when she was told she should stay home with her husband rather than seek employment out of town."
I've been having great conversations with friends about this subject lately, and here's what the conversations have come to: most of the high-achieving women we know tend to personalize their own failure or lack of advance in the field. They assume that they are not achieving at the level of men in their field or department because they simply aren't trying hard enough, or aren't dedicated enough. What most of us do not see is that we are all facing the same kind of attitudes and barriers repeatedly, across fields and almost without exception. Consider, for example, my good friend who was told by a man in her husband's department that if she got a Ph.D. in the same discipline as her husband, it would be "really cool," because then she could be his [her husband's] full time research assistant.
We must reconsider the way we relate to other women, in the world and in our fields of study. We are rewarded for disliking women. In fact, I have for my whole life prided myself on being someone who was 'not girly,' not interested in fitting in to all female groups, and so on; being someone who was good at science, good at math, and friends almost exclusively with guys. I have received a lot of positive male attention for not being like other women and for openly disparaging women's perspective, attitude and approach to the world. I thought it was a compliment. Now, I don't. As friend A. put it, when we meet a woman we don't like, we think "I don't like women"; when we meet a man we don't like, we think, "I don't like him."
We personalize failure. Men personalize success. We as women will not be able to change the underlying gender relations in society until we realize that we women are all in one lifeboat, and rather than beating each other with paddles (in order to get the attention of the men on the yacht above us) we should start rowing together.
"At a university campus in Japan, carrion crows line up patiently at the curb waiting for a traffic light to turn red. When cars stop, they hop into the crosswalk, place walnuts from nearby trees onto the road and hop back to the curb. After the light changes and cars run over the nuts, the crows wait until it is safe and hop back out for the food."
A couple of things occur to me. First, I can't believe how long it has taken scientists to understand that human intelligence is not necessarily the only peak of evolution. The fact that men have spent literally hundreds of years testing animals on human intelligence scales would be funny if it weren't so stupid. After all, how many of us can do what squirrels, dogs, or birds do? If they ran the world, wouldn't we all look pretty dumb to them as well? Furthermore, men make the persistent error of determining that different from them is always lesser. Consider again the ongoing "biological differences" argument regarding differences between the sexes. This is the same error in assumption, repeated across disciplines and across time and applied to widely varying cases, from birds to women.
On that note, today there is also an article by Cornelia Dean, the first woman science editor of the New York Times. Here are some of her stories:
"At a dinner for scientific eminences, a colleague introduced me to one of the nations leading neuroscientists. 'Oh yes,' the scientist murmured as he scanned the room clearly ignoring me. 'Who is the new science editor of the New York Times, that twerpy girl in short skirts?' Dumbfounded, I replied, 'That would be me.'"
"Not long aftter I answered the office telephone, and the caller, a (male) scientist, asked me to speak to several of my colleagues, all male and all out. 'May I help you?' I inquired. 'No, no, no,' he replied. 'I don't want to talk to you, I want to talk to someone important."
"Another friend, graduating as a math major, was advised not to bother applying for a graduate research assistantship because they were not given to women. She eventually earned a doctorate in math, but one of her early forays into the job market ended abruptly when she was told she should stay home with her husband rather than seek employment out of town."
I've been having great conversations with friends about this subject lately, and here's what the conversations have come to: most of the high-achieving women we know tend to personalize their own failure or lack of advance in the field. They assume that they are not achieving at the level of men in their field or department because they simply aren't trying hard enough, or aren't dedicated enough. What most of us do not see is that we are all facing the same kind of attitudes and barriers repeatedly, across fields and almost without exception. Consider, for example, my good friend who was told by a man in her husband's department that if she got a Ph.D. in the same discipline as her husband, it would be "really cool," because then she could be his [her husband's] full time research assistant.
We must reconsider the way we relate to other women, in the world and in our fields of study. We are rewarded for disliking women. In fact, I have for my whole life prided myself on being someone who was 'not girly,' not interested in fitting in to all female groups, and so on; being someone who was good at science, good at math, and friends almost exclusively with guys. I have received a lot of positive male attention for not being like other women and for openly disparaging women's perspective, attitude and approach to the world. I thought it was a compliment. Now, I don't. As friend A. put it, when we meet a woman we don't like, we think "I don't like women"; when we meet a man we don't like, we think, "I don't like him."
We personalize failure. Men personalize success. We as women will not be able to change the underlying gender relations in society until we realize that we women are all in one lifeboat, and rather than beating each other with paddles (in order to get the attention of the men on the yacht above us) we should start rowing together.
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