liveonearth: (Default)
 
 
 
Ever since Tuberville made himself a household name by blocking Senate confirmation of military leaders, I've been wondering.  Is the military "woke"?  It seems unlikely. Does the military have some problems that need addressing? Of course.  Every department needs to keep improving.  Failing to change is failing.

The ideologies on both sides oversimplify the issue.  The left says that because the women are getting raped, it's the military's job to help them end those unwanted pregnancies.  The right says it doesn't matter how the sperm got in there, those sperm and egg combos are of utmost value.  Both sides irritate me.

The military started facilitating abortions for its female members because raping them and making them have babies didn't seem like a good idea.  The military said it was doing it to maintain military "readiness".  Raping them is still a good idea--there seem to be no repercussions for the sperm donors. A friend of mine suggests that men should lose a testicle each time they rape a woman.  While this may sound barbaric, so does shutting up women about their abuse by providing them with abortions.

We want strong, high-testosterone men in the military.  Burly beasts of men who are able to do what needs to be done are extremely valuable in this setting.  Unfortunately, hormone-laden brutes are prone to taking what they want.  Making them take trainings about consent will not fix the problem.  It raises the question of whether we should be putting women in the same units with men.  Perhaps our military would be better served by having units led by women and comprised entirely of women.  Then we would see what women can do.

There is no doubt that Tuberville's blockage is negatively impacting readiness.  The commanders of each branch have an important role, which is to see and understand the big picture, and to plan, prepare, and act accordingly.  Without commanders, our military coasts along without updating position or strategy.  Over time our vulnerability and weakness increase.  The protection of fertilized eggs is not, in my view, more important than having a functional defense, or being able to move aggressively when needed.
liveonearth: (Default)
 
It's 3:44 am and I've been restless, unsleeping.  I slept at first then woke with thoughts of Epstein, who just suicided because he didn't want to sit through a long trial about his sex trafficking of young girls.  He didn't want to be someone's bitch in prison after having made so many young girls serve as his bitch.  According to one report I read he wanted to inseminate as many women as possible to bear his children.  I wonder how many of his progeny already exist in the world.  According to another report he wanted his head and penis cryogenically preserved after his death.  I wonder if his penis is frozen somewhere after his ignominious suicide in prison.  I wonder how many American men secretly hold him as a hero.  He got stinkin' filthy rich though I read that it's not because of his skill as a financial manager.  He must have got that rich because men will pay a lot of money for girls they can abuse and get away with it.  This is one horror of our culture.

Then Lorena Bobbit came to mind.  She's the woman who cut off her husband's penis and threw it out the car window as she was driving away.  I saw a recent news bit about her, she's doing fine.  She did remark that everybody was fascinated about the penis, which was found and reattached.  Her husband went on to be a porn star, I imagine abusing women on camera.  People weren't nearly as interested in why she did it.  Why did she cut it off?  I'd bet she was furious.  She said it was because her husband "forced himself on her".  Not just once: many times.   She didn't use the word rape but I will.  Her husband considered sex with her to be his right and he raped her, so much and so unpleasantly that she was angry enough to cut off his penis.  Temporary insanity sounds like a nice plea deal but not the truth.  The truth is something more like justice.  If rape doesn't sound like a bad enough crime to you to justify that punishment, you are probably a man.

Another thing that comes to mind is this article, The Female Price of Male Pleasure.  This is truth.  Men get their rocks off and women tolerate.  The woman's pleasure is rarely a priority, much less her orgasm.  Men just want to get off.  If she's uncomfortable or in pain, they ignore it.  If she seeks medical help for her discomfort in sex, her care is not as well covered by insurance as his is for getting an erection.  As if men have more of a right to a big fat erection than women have to not be hurt.  Part of the obliviousness of men is because testosterone makes them that way.  They are impulsive and aggressive because their hormones make them that way.  Sex is an obsession dictated by evolution.  But their selfish behavior is in part due to a gender imbalance in our culture.

How many husbands have wives that never have orgasms, with them at least?  How many even know that or give a damn?  I know only about a few, but that's because they've confessed to me in private.  Usually the blame is on the woman for not doing what it takes to have an orgasm.  What if the whole experience is so unpleasant that women wait for the man to get off and fake orgasms so that they can be set free from the imbalanced sexual process for at least a few more hours?  Lots, that's my estimate.

I know all of this from my own experience.  My best lover ever was a woman.  We didn't have the hottest sex in the world, but she made the effort to give me orgasms.  She was sensitive and curious enough to learn how, and she taught me the lesbian creed of reciprocality.  Our orgasms might not happen at the same time, but we can each give the other one.  Lesbians emphasize this.  It just doesn't happen in many male-female relationships.  The male's orgasm is all that matters--the female can "take care of herself".  The male gets resentful if he has to "take care of himself".  This is disgusting.

My lesbian lover knew from her own experience how sensitive a woman's breasts are, how they can be used to excite, and how easily they can be hurt.  I can't tell you how many times a man has been cruel to my breasts and painfully pinched the nipple or grabbed one in his hand and squeezed it like a water balloon.  My breasts are not for men.  If men cannot use them to give me pleasure, they do not get to touch them.

And then there is porn.  You don't have to look much to know that one of the biggest themes is domination and abuse of females by males.  To start with females are expected to be unnaturally shaven and denuded of protective hair.  To follow up with that we're supposed to enjoy being tied up, abused, ejaculated on.  Maybe some do enjoy this but I can tell you that the vast majority of women want to be caressed and adored, we want to be seduced, not raped.  But a whole lot of really sad young men have their only sexual experiences interacting with this twisted porn, and it makes them even more messed up than they were to start with.  How are they going to learn how to seduce a woman from this?

So in addition to all the other crises facing our time, there is this.  Women are deeply angry because we've come to realize that we've been mistreated and it does not have to be this way.  The sexual imbalance in our culture has come into very clear focus.  We are furious.  Sexism in sexuality is an ugly thing.  Men can't help that they have testosterone and are horny, but they can decide to be egalitarian, they can learn to be good lovers and sensitive partners.  They can take on the lesbian practice of reciprocality in pleasure and orgasm.  For many in the boomer generation it may be too late; they are stuck in their ways.  But for Gen X and onward I think there is still hope that men and women can find a new equilibrium in which women's pleasure is given at least equal priority and men don't think they have a right to sex in spite of how unpleasant it is for their partner, much less license to rape little girls or their wives.

I suppose we have the creep in chief to thank for this nexus.  His naked misogyny in addition to the nasty racism has emboldened a lot of creeps to act out, and women have had to defend ourselves more and more.  A supreme court justice who probably had some fun at the expense of many young women is just one of three accused on our highest court.  The reversal of Roe v Wade is on the horizon, and with that men will be able to legally hijack a woman's body for the purpose of propagating their sperm.  Add to that the fact that abortion is getting harder to access even before the Roe reversal, and that in some states rapists have parental rights, and we have even more reasons to be furious.

I'm not in favor of abortion in general, I think it is an archaic solution to a problem that should be addressed much earlier in the sequence of events.  No woman should be raped or in any other way get pregnant when she is not prepared to raise a child.  But this is another issue that would require all night to even just begin writing about.  Then there's income equality which puts women in a dependent position, and many more sticky wickets.  The pit is deep.

But just one more thing.  We have every right and reason to be angry.  Women have been through a lot of crap in service to men's desires, and it is our turn to serve ourselves.  It is our turn not just to have pleasure instead of pain, but to run this place and change the culture.  We are not bitches, we are justified and motivated.  We don't need men; we only need sperm if we want babies.  Justice may be a ways off but I can smell it through my tears.  Look out all you creepy guys who buy and bully for sex.  The world is changing.

 
 
liveonearth: (life is a killer (smoking))
This hypothesis may not be as well supported as evolution but there has been a lot of research since the 1970's that supports it.

DONOHUE-LEVITT HYPOTHESIS = The theory that legal abortion reduces crime by reducing the number of unwanted births, neglected and abused youth. As the theory goes, those troubled children grow up to be the next generation of criminals. Research shows that children of women denied an abortion require more public assistance including psychiatric services and foster homes, and engage in more criminal and antisocial behavior than their wanted counterparts.

Most crimes are committed by males aged 18-24. Roe versus Wade (legalizing abortion) was passed by SCOTUS in 1973, and 18 years later the country experienced a significant decrease in crime. One of the justices had offered the rationale that a family unready to support a child should not be required to have one. States that had already legalized abortion had earlier reductions in crime, and higher abortion rates correlated with greater reductions in crime. Australian and Canadian studies have detected a correlation between legalized abortion and reduced crime overall. Of course all of these interpretations have been challenged, and more research is needed. Among other possible contributors to decreasing crime is the removal of lead from gasoline in the same year as Roe vs Wade. Lead ingestion lowers intelligence and increases impulsivity and aggressive behavior.
liveonearth: (Default)
The idea behind the bill is to make sure that the women are aware of the gestational age and viability of the fetus before they are permitted to abort it. It passed, but they dropped the requirement for the transvaginal ultrasound, instead requiring that the women submit to the procedure to the exterior of their abdomens. It would be difficult to pass a law saying a woman must submit to imaging that requires invasion of a body cavity, even if it is the best way to visualize the fetus. The Republicans said that a woman has "a right to know" about the fetus. I wonder, does a woman have a right to remain ignorant?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/va-senate-approves-contentious-ultrasound-bill/2012/02/27/gIQAvhiVgR_story.html?wpisrc=al_comboNP
liveonearth: (Default)
This morning I awakened to a story on the radio about the "Personhood" initiative. Some well-meaning folks are seeking to have states pass laws saying that "life begins at conception" and to ban all abortion and all uses of human cells. I appreciate their purism and their willingness to take this value to its logical end. At least these "lifers" are not hypocrites! But unfortunately for them, their initiatives are falling like flies under a flyswatter. Why? People are unwilling to force women to have babies they don't want. It is problematic. If you MUST give birth to any conceptus that sticks, do you still then have to mother it? Or can you ignore and abuse it? Well it turns out, you CAN ignore and abuse it. If the government notices how bad you treat your kids, it takes them away and they get treated even worse. These people who wish that every conceptus become a child are neglecting to consider the logical outcome of their actions. MORE unwanted children helps create a desperately sick society that doesn't respect life at any age.

But back to the question of when life begins. Life "began" when a bunch of chemical components somehow found themselves able to do something that they couldn't do separately. And somehow they became able to spread, expand, and later to reproduce. Since then life has been continuous. We are an extension of the life that began in the slime. Tentacles of life reach out all the time, in every direction. We are host to more living cells that are NOT us than to cells that ARE us. Life is a network, a collage, a confusing interconnected amazing self-promoting thing. Cells die but life goes on. Skin cells. Stomach cells. Sperm cells. Egg cells. The idea that a sperm cell + an egg cell is somehow sacred because it is more alive than any other cells is exaggerated. The web of life goes on. The boundaries of death remain.
liveonearth: (Homer Simpson "D'oh!")

I was a Campfire Girl, not a Girlscout or Brownie. So I don't know from the inside. But from the outside, having been a river guide and taking many screaming groups of Brownies rafting on whitewater rivers, the organization appears squeaky clean and rather conservative. I never would have guessed that the organization would teach girls about abortion. But who knows? Maybe they are. That's what the teenaged girls from Texas are saying, and they're making news on The Daily Beast. It occurs to me though that the organization will probably have its name cleared. The organization officially does not endorse any political party or birth control method. Meanwhile, the offended girls have started a blog to get their story out. The case they are making is that the official girl scout materials mention websites and people who are "pro-abortion" and so if you follow the links you will discover that these perspectives are ubiquitous. Big surprise. I wonder what fraction of the links in the girl scout material go to sites that hold the opposite viewpoints. It seems to me that the org would serve the girls best by exposing them to many opposing viewpoints so that they could learn to think and decide for themselves. Girls who want to be cloistered would be better served in a nunnery.
liveonearth: (Default)
He recently said that an anti-abortion position is a libertarian position based on faith. Faith in what? The bogusness of global warming? HIS god? I am offended. Faith has no legitimacy as a basis for social law, because we don't all have faith in the same things. I had thought that Ron Paul was for the true and full separation of church and state, and that he could be counted on to keep them separate in his own dealings. He has just proven me wrong. The man I had thought was the last moral politician has fallen by the wayside. It all comes down to that same old debate about when life begins.

SOURCE
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/04/ron-paul-anti-abortion.html
liveonearth: (Default)
In 2005 a 23 year old gay man was murdered in Arizona, and found in the Colorado River near Yuma. I lived in Arizona then, but I did not hear about it. I heard a lot about the Japanese woman who was murdered and found in Havasu Creek. But the boy who played girl was not in the news, not in the river grapevine. I just found out about him today, though an org called Equality Arizona. How they found me and my Oregon address I do not know. I guess I must have made my position known enough about my belief that people have every right to love who they love, and no right to say who someone else may love. It just strikes me as ironic and sad that I hear about this death now, near the end of 2008, from another state. I suppose I'm more tapped into the gay rights movement than I have been in the past. I'm certainly getting more willing to express my views.
olds and news tidbits )
liveonearth: (Default)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/25/sean.bell.trial/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

I like what Al Sharpton had to say. To paraphrase, he said it wasn't a miscarriage of justice. Justice doesn't miscarry. This was an abortion of justice. Justice was aborted.
liveonearth: (Default)
According to Msgr. Gianfranco Girotti in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Catholics now have some new instructions beyond avoiding the Seven Mortal Sins. A review for those of us not fully indoctrinated:

Seven Mortal Sins
pride
envy
gluttony
greed
lust
wrath
sloth

The new instructions are to avoid the Seven Modern Vices, which are based on violating the "basic rights of human nature". I didn't find an explanation of the rights, but here are the vices:
polluting
genetic engineering
being obscenely wealthy
taking drugs
abortion
pedophilia
causing social injustic

Abortion

Jan. 11th, 2008 03:54 pm
liveonearth: (Default)
I'm going to begin here to collect ethical arguments pertaining to the issue of abortion in the US. These notes will be the backdrop of a paper that I will write later.
notes )
liveonearth: (Default)

I read today that Ron Paul said life begins at conception. If he really believes this then I have a bone to pick with him. Life is continuous. The egg is alive. The sperm is alive. It swims! Life is a flow from one being to another. Otherwise we would not be here. To abort a child at any stage is stopping a life. We stop lives all the time. I don't understand how the abortion issue is removed from the war issue. But I do see that sometimes the end of one life is beneficial to many other lives. I don't know about "right" and "wrong". We need to get past the whole question of abortion. Choosing to end a pregnancy is not "playing God", it is just what people do in order to manage families and civilizations. Certainly it is better to use a condom than to throw a live baby in a dumpster. Nobody would abort if they hadn't gotten pregnant in the first place. Let's focus on ways of managing our fertility rather than forcing people to raise unwanted children that they will then mistreat and turn into axe murderers. Please.

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