Saturday, January 12, 2008

Castrate the Government Already!

Via my favorite looney bin of the interwebs -- an article linking the growth of government to women's suffrage.

Let's seen. Apparently, women desire a bigger goverment. No doubt this stems from our inherent penis envy.
"The gender gap exists on various issues. The major one is the issue of smaller
government and lower taxes, which is a much higher priority for men than for
women."

Oh, that gender gap, and those gender roles. And according to these nutjob, I guess I'm back to being a very, very bad woman. What with my tendencies toward libertarianism and all that. Yes, give me small government! Please. One that doesn't spend my money on pointless wars, tell me who I can and can't love, can and can't worship, etc.

"Women's average incomes are also slightly lower and less likely to vary over
time, which gives single women an incentive to prefer more progressive income
taxes. Once women become married, however, they bear a greater share of taxes
through their husbands' relatively higher income. In that circumstance, women's
support for high taxes understandably declines."


Wait. Aren't we missing the root cause of the problem here? If we fix/get rid of/revolutionize the sexist system that discriminates against women, and suddenly women weren't stuck in the lower reaches of the economic food chain, and their salaries were actually equal to those of men, according to this fellow's logic, that should also result in less support among women for a progressive tax system. (Although, this one will still consider progressive tax systems far less of an evil than regressive taxes, because that's a matter of moral principle. Maybe a flat tax? Not an economist here.) Destroy sexism -- pay less in taxes! There's a new slogan for you!

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Do these nutters never give up?

Apparently, adding "gender identity and expression" to hate crimes legislation in New Jersey endangers women and children.

How, pray tell?

“What is the protection from these people going into a restroom where they identify themselves as a different gender, yet they’re using the facilities at the same time you are?” he said. “It’s exposing children — an unintended consequence of the law.”

First, learn some English syntax and get back to me. Second, my god, restrooms -- what are us delicate women and children going to be exposed to in our nice, American style restrooms with freaking stall doors! I mean, the mens will be all right -- after all, if this hate crimes legislation doesn't get in the way, they can always beat up anyone who threatens their poor, embattled masculinity. I suppose, separate restrooms for males and females are enshrined in the Bible. No, no we can't give you a verse. But it's there. Yeah. Sure.

These people (the religious right, that is) make me sick.

Let's just hope he continues to lose his sheeps.

There's no such thing as a bad decision...

...there's only research.

I make bad decisions. I tend to make them most often when I'm sleep-deprived, and so far, I've avoided making any bad decisions that have had truly tragic, irreversible outcomes.

So, is it the government's job to protect people from making decisions that they will later regret? Specifically, protect people by restricting their right to make that decision.

I hadn't realized how much that question was a part of anti-abortion advocacy -- at least, not the legal part. I had seen reports of post-abortion depression, trauma, etc., on anti-abortion sites -- particularly those geared toward dissuading individual women from choosing to go through with an abortion. I had not realized that claims that women might regret having an abortion would actually effect judicial rulings on the legality of abortion. (Why, yes. I suppose I am naive like that.) Flashback to Roman Empire much -- all women are perpetual children in need of a guardian to prevent them from hurting their sweet little heads?

Yeah. Sorry, if this is your reason for opposing legalized abortion, you are sexist and anti-woman. No ifs, ands, or buts, about it. Prohibiting an individual from making a choice because she might potentially regret it -- that demeans that individuals personhood and agency and is throughly despicable. Bringing that into legal advocacy designed to overturn previous court rulings and restrict the ability of women to choose whether or not they have an abortion simply reveals the sexist presumptions of the majority (if not all) of anti-abortion groups.

And, of course, women need better options than abortion, but those must to begin a hell of a long time before whenever human life may or may not begin. We need comprehensive sex education in our school systems. We need unrestricted access to birth control, both the traditional and emergency versions there of. A legal system that does a bit better at holding fathers responsible could be nice. Maybe even public school systems that actually educate EVERYONE and not just the little darlings in rich suburbs. Oh, this is a crazy idea -- a living wage! So that women have the option to feed the kid once it's been birthed. Madness.

And I'm not claiming that there aren't people who are opposed to legalized abortion and also recognize that there needs to be far greater changes to the structures of society and a simple ban just won't cut it. I don't find people who oppose abortion because they genuinely believe human life starts at conception despicable, or even necessarily sexist.

But all the organizations really seem to be more concerned with maintaining that women are inferior beings who can't be allowed to make choices, because they might regret it. Or worse, because the male involved might regret it.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Always look on the bright side of life...

Okay, so, thankfully, this doesn't seem to have a chance of happening, but here's the only reason I would possibly want Fred Thompson and John Edwards to get their respective party nominations.

So I could sit around, watch the debates, and analyze the differences between educated Tennessee and educated Carolina accents.

Because there is a difference. No one Southern accent. Right ya'll?

As a side note, it makes me sad that the media completely ignores Ron Paul and the other Republican candidates bully him. Especially when he says "crazy" things like, you know, the root problem in the Middle East isn't Radical Islam it's the American history of colonizing the region and propping brutal dictators for our economic benefit. Or that all religions have their radical elements. Not that I really want Paul for President, but a little Libertarian critique would be useful.

Kill the Radio

When I first started spending the majority of my time in Memphis, I declared that Memphis had far better radio stations than Nashville. (I don't listen to most country of my own free will.) I don't know if that still true or not, as radio stations do have a tendency to change. But it was true about 3 years ago when 93X actually did play pretty good mix of rock, older, newer, very new. And maybe the D.J.'s were just as bad then -- my feminist consciousness is a work in progress.

I haven't listened to the radio in a number of months. My first forswearing of the radio was two summers ago when that terrible "Hate Me" song -- I think Blue October was the group -- was getting played at least once an hour. It's not that I dislike all music that qualifies as whiny -- I think I was tossing in Depeche Mode's Ultra to replace the radio -- but could we have a little art with whiny? Or at least striking sounds? Subtlety? And if I can't have subtlety, I insist on drums.

Like much misguided popularity, the song faded, I needed a change from my CD collection, and I flipped back on the radio this summer during my treks from Rhodent land to UofM.

And they were running some "girls of summer," super-sexist, derogatory, demeaning, crass contest to get hot pictures of "babes" on their website. Oh, without -- as far as I could tell -- any real effort to ensure that the pictures were posted with the models contest. So, the commercials for that were making me a bit testy, and I killed the radio and rotated back through Soundgarden, Depeche Mode, and the Dresden Dolls.

Last night, I flipped on the radio. Yes, 93X. Mistake. It was 9:50 or so, whenever they play a local band. And, I promptly remembered why I gave up the radio in the first place. First, the opening clip was something about local rock and "all the skanks that go with it." Uhuh . . . nice, great, that's right. Let's make sure to preserve the connection between rock and roll and misogyny. Then they played a local artist who happens to be female. Hey, that's kind of cool -- not too many women making it big in rock. Granted, she won't be making it big in rock, but it would have been fun music at a club. And then, the D.J. started talking about how cool it was to get an album from a girl rocker and encouraging other women local groups or solo artist to send in their music. I begin to think -- hey, he could just temporarily redeem his little self!

Nope, soon enough he had wrapped back around to how hot girl rockers are and they're prettier to look at that guys in rock and some other nonsense. Because, first and foremost, you had better be sexy if you are a chick looking to get into rock and roll.

Murr . . . need feminist D.J.'s. I can take a certain level of sexism and misogyny in my music -- particularly classic rock. But overt sexism in the chatter -- not so much.

Off to see if there are other rock stations in Memphis that might leave me feeling less murderous.