Post from my blog (http://tenderhooligan.wordpress.com/):

Yesterday, my day was ruined by reading about some stalker “research”; today, it’s been ruined by reading about a law which is about to be enacted in Virginia. Under this law, women who seek abortions will be forced to undergo a “stunningly invasive procedure” beforehand “for no medical reason whatsoever”. The state wishes to see an ultrasound of the foetus before a woman can have an abortion. The aim? Well, presumably to shame the little tart into changing her mind. And here’s where it gets gruesome:

Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced.

Nice, huh? One would hope that the authors of this law had just not realised exactly what it is that they’re doing, and how brutal this procedure really is, but that’s not the case, as the following statement by one GOP lawmaker suggests. The thinking? Well, they’ve already consented to being “vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant.” *

Atta boy! If she’s a little slut already, then we can assume she won’t mind a lump of metal shoved up there. And, you know, that would be a proper shaming for the little tramp, amirite?

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(Source: thinkprogress)

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* UPDATE: Please note that this quote was initially attributed to Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R). That was an error. Gilbert is reported to have actually said: “in the vast majority of these cases, [abortions] are matters of lifestyle convenience,” which some might argue illustrates as little understanding of, or sympathy for, women’s lives, needs, and decisions as his GOP colleague above.

From my blog: tenderhooligan.wordpress.com/

I’ve put about 100 things aside recently to blog about and none of them are timely or current any longer. I’m not going to blog about the UK riots because I really have to make a commentary on them in a journal article I’m writing and I haven’t thought them all the way through yet. I’m also not going to blog about what’s going on in Libya because that is very far outside of my expertise. So, I’m going to backtrack on a few things I’ve been reading recently and hope that they’ve not disappeared too far into the ether to be no longer relevant. The Internet is a busy place and, it seems, you either comment on something quickly or you don’t bother commenting at all. Well, in my head it’s still 1998 so ya’ll can just have patience.

So, then, about two weeks ago Julie Bindel wrote in the New Statesman that “fun feminism” should be confined to the rubbish bin. By “fun feminism” she meant, for instance, movements such a SlutWalk(because challenging rape culture is a-laugh-a-freaking-minute, don’t you know). For Bindel, any form of feminism that isn’t defined as strictly radical (a definition of feminism that’s as moveable as any other, it’s worth noting) is just not feminism. Most of all, she dislikes the kind of feminism that attempts to include men and argues that “if men like a particular brand of feminism, it means it is not working.”

Now, I find myself disagreeing with Bindel a lot but never more so than on this occasion. I wrote on a comment on a friend’s blog at the time:

I have many problems with Bindel’s piece: she’s resolutely opposed to (and seemingly very threatened by) anything post-second-wave and remotely intersectional; she is dictating what type of feminism is acceptable (and what type apparently isn’t) and what sort of feminist everyone should be (as if there’s a bullet point list of criteria); and she’s horribly silencing of young or “just arrived” feminists who are still finding their place in the movement and figuring out where they stand. I thought it was a disgraceful article.

That pretty much sums up my stance, still. Let me develop on a few points. There is no bullet point list of criteria for feminism, and the argument that there is and that you must be a certain “type of feminist” is hurting the movement. I don’t personally have a tolerance for the belief that feminism is some sort of dirty word that should be avoided (and there’s a discourse, currently, that we should change the name because it’s so loaded with negativity), and I have little patience for the argument that the term has come to represent something that is so uncomfortable to many that they would rather deride feminism than identify with it, but at the same time, insisting that there is only one way to “do” feminism is nonsensical. (That sentence got very long; I apologise.) It’s not a case of “you are either with us or against us”; it’s a not a binary state. Yes, one would assume that there is a fundamental set of core beliefs that feminists share but there doesn’t need to be a rigid typology to which we all must subscribe. Bindel appears to be advocating that there is. If you are not part of a “radical” movement that seeks to overthrow the patriarchy, then you’re not allowed to play in her gang. I mean, who doesn’t want to overthrow the patriarchy? I certainly do. But if I’m the kind of feminist who doesn’t see that as our most crucial goal, would I be any less of a feminist? I don’t think I would. If I want my feminism to include men, am I not a feminist any more? Don’t be ridiculous!

Which brings me to a related point. We feminists can be an unforgiving lot. We will call you on your privilege, we will tell you each and every time you’re being patriarchal, and our –ism radar is like a finely tuned military machine. We will shout and scream. (Or maybe that’s just me.) The feminist interweb, which is where the majority of the feminist debate takes place now, is a minefield. Half of the feminist blogosphere seems to be waiting for the other half to say something which could remotely, vaguely, even at a stretch be construed as anti-women or anti-feminist. Sometimes this vigilance is welcome (trolls and misogynists are easily identified) but sometimes it means that feminists who have things they want to say are too terrified to say them. If you say something anti-woman/ feminist, then of course you should be called on it but too often that’s not the real motivation. In short, what some feminists are very good at doing is silencing other feminists. (If you’ve ever happened upon some in-fighting between feminists on one of the more popular blogs, you’ll know what I mean.) As a rule, it’s the young, “new” feminists who are most silenced by the older, established (and generally quite privileged) feminists who are there and ready to pounce. I don’t think it’s even a conscious action at times, but it is prevalent. Bindel is one such established (and privileged) feminist. And in defining and stating what she thinks is “pointless” feminism, she has silenced an enormous number of young feminists who are still trying to find their way with the movement and who have many important things to say.

By the way, I consider myself one of those “young feminists” even if I am next door to ancient. So well done Julie. If your aim is to establish some sort of monopoly on feminism, keep at it; you’re doing a good job. On the other hand, if you want to contribute meaningfully to a movement that is as vital now as it was when you first identified with it, then allow others to do the same.

This might well be the most important thing I post all year.

PLEASE follow this link and write to your local MP.

We need you to stand up for access to safe, legal abortion and the right to impartial information.

The Department of Health is planning to introduce new counselling requirements for women seeking abortion, which could limit their access to impartial advice and delay access to services.

Based on amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill, the proposals strip abortion providers of the right to provide pre-abortion counselling, and could see anti-choice groups invited to offer pregnancy counselling in their place.

The purpose of these proposals is to limit access to impartial information and deter women from having the procedure. We believe they are damaging, unnecessary and should be rejected.

The amendments could be debated and voted on in the House of Commons as early as 6th or 7th September.

We want to make sure MPs know the facts about what these changes would mean for women and hear the views of the pro-choice majority who support the right to safe, legal abortion in this country.

From my blog:

No, I’ve not stopped blogging again but I have done lots of other things (including moving house) that have kept me busy.

Anyway, |’m back now. Sort of. And I have a new design. I ain’t ‘alf tired of the stock of wordpress designs. They do add new designs often but none of them do quite what I would like. (I’m not sure what that is but I would know it if I saw it.)

The world seems to have been taking some very funny turns recently. I still can’t fathom what happened in Norway (though I’m not entirely surprised by it either). Breivik appeared to despise anyone who wasn’t white, western and male, and it’s always disconcerting to hear about those sorts of views. He’s not the only one, of course, but most anti-“other”s don’t go shooting up whole islands of young people. Most of the coverage of Breivik’s atrocities have, thus far, been predictable (the war on terrorism, a [re]new[ed] white-supremacy, a growing xenophobia towards the east) but I was intrigued by Anne Applebaum’s slate piece this morning which compared Breivik’s beliefs with those of thebirthers in the US. Applebaum argues that Breivik’s main objection is to his government’s legitimacy (or lack of) in the same way that the birthers question the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency. Such views are conspiratorial at best, and ridiculously paranoid at worst. But they’re still having their day.

In any case, while I think that Applebaum is not correct in dismissing Breivik’s racism (and sexism and homophobia etc.), she does make a good point about a growing (though disorganised) trend in these sorts of revolutionary movements.  She mentions Marx, too, but seems to be dismissing him as a nonsense. As I read about her thoughts on these new rebellions, however, I started to feel unnerved that The Revolution, when it’s arrived, has not been that advocated by Dear Old Karl, even though that’s the one that we’ve all been told to wait for.

Let’s face it, many of us would be quite happy with the overthrow of capitalism (at least those of us who have old socialist souls), but at the same time we can all be secure in the knowledge that it’s not likely to happen any time soon so we don’t have to worry about imminent mess and inconvenience. One can’t be so sure with these illegitimists.

Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)

Below is an excellent and interesting critique of the recent announcement by Dave (Cameron) et al that said that we need to halt the over-sexualisation of our young girls. Dave et al are backing several proposals (from a Christian organisation, it’s worth noting) that aim to protect children from sexual imagery (e.g., by selling top shelf magazines in brown sleeves). In predictable Tory fashion, Dave said that such change is about “social responsibility, not state control”. The conservatives are always keen to giveth autonomy with one hand and to very quickly taketh it away with the other. Whether it’s their plan or not, any measures introduced to combat over-sexualisation of young people will, inevitably, result in greater state control. But that’s an aside (for now).

Now, don’t get me wrong – over-sexualisation of young girls is a very serious issue and is unavoidably an aspect of our patriarchal objectification and sexualisation of women, and the impossible centrality of their physical appearance (they must be attractive but not too attractive because that’s inaccessible, they must be thin but not too thin because that’s emaciated, they must be curvy but not too curvy because that’s slutty and/ or fat, they must be lightly dressed but not too lightly dressed because that’s also slutty, etc. etc.) In short, they must be perfect but not too perfect  because then they’d never bang you. These norms are communicated to our young people everywhere they look, alongside the image of women as (available and willing) sex objects. So, should we do something about all of this? Yes, we absolutely should. Though we should be honest about it. If it’s about addressing the issue of pervasive sexual imagery and messages, that’s one thing; if it’s a cover for something else entirely, though, then we have a whole new problem. Laura Woodhouse from the f-word unpicks what is really going on with this conservative policy.

… the real problem with thongs and padded bras being marketed at young girls and pop culture being defined by women writhing around half naked is that it encourages children and teenagers to have sex.

…

For these right-wing, often conservative Christian types, the commercialised vision of sex being thrust in kids’ faces is dangerous because their view of “normal” has no place for anything other than sex between one man and one woman, bound together for life, who are willing to accept the tiny wee bundle of a consequence that may result. Sex for pleasure, sex outside relationships, sex that results in abortion – any sexual activity that deviates from their norm – is a sinful, threatening act that tears another rip in the moral fabric of a fading social order they are doing their darnedest to resurrect. This kind of sex is dark and dirty, while children are pure and innocent. By bringing the sinful world of sex into childhood, we defile our children.

So is it about saving our children’s innocence, protecting them from the horrid world of the patriarchy, and teaching them that they don’t have to subscribe to these messages? Or is it just that the right-wingers don’t want anyone (apart from a happily married man and woman) having sex? I’m inclining towards Woodhouse’s argument. Nadine Dorries, for example, is notoriously anti-abortion. By and large, if I may generalise, anti-abortionists are also anti-non-marital, non-procreative, sex-for-the-hell-of-it sex. But here’s the rub: sex is “normal”, teenage sex is “normal”, teenagers are horny little rascals, teenagers are walking frickin’ sexers. Teens have been having sex for as long as anyone’s been having sex. Teenagers living in a vacuum would still have sex.

Yes, girls need to know that they don’t have to be anything for anyone, that they don’t have to do anything for anyone, that the messages they see every day present a patriarchal view to which they do not have to subscribe, but if Dave’s new bandwagon is about preventing sex and little else, then the conservatives are once again barking up the wrong tree.

From my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress)

Yes, I know Osama Bin Laden was killed today or yesterday or overnight but I have a feeling that’s been done to death (pun intended) at this stage. Frankly, I’m trying to avoid seeing any more menacing crowds full of people who seem to be delighting in the bloodlust. It’s stomach-churning.

And I want to write about something else anyway.

Many of my betters have commented on calmdowndeargate before me (and have done so better than I could hope to) so I won’t labour over it again in much detail. For those of you who have been in hiding, or who have genuinely not read about or watched anything but the royal nonsense for a week, you may not know that our delightful PM, David (“Call me Dave”) Cameron, last week instructed a member of the opposition in the Commons to, “calm down, dear” during Prime Minister’s Questions. It will not come as any surprise to you that said member is a woman.

Cath Elliott wrote a wonderful piece in Comment in Free which lambasted Dave for his sexist remark. In the piece, she discusses Cameron’s categorical denial that he’s a sexist pig by rightly arguing that if he were not, such a remark would not have just rolled off his tongue. Sexism (just like racism, ableism, ageism, homophobia, etc. etc.) does not just “slip out” if you’ve never considered it before. Dave has all the trappings of a would-be-sexist, of course: old Etonian and member of the Bullingdon Club in Oxford (I went to Oxford; I’ve had some of the misogyny from those charmers first-hand), so the evidence is already stacked against him. Add into the mix his brutal budget cuts, most of which impinge on women most severely, and his virtually all-male cabinet, and there’s little point in him denying his sexism further. That, Dave, is a cert.

But why the vehemence of the reaction, you ask. Well, it’s because we’re fucking sick of it. Women have been told to “calm down” since time began, normally when they’re trying to make a point, argue a perspective, or offer an opinion. To do so, and to do so passionately, is hysteria, you see. Women shouldn’t have discussions because they get too damn emotional and invariably need to, yes, calm down. From Cath Elliott again:

Whatever his excuse turns out to be though, any woman who watched [Wednesday’s] exchange will be able to attest that “Calm down, dear” is neither humorous nor edgy; it is instead a classic sexist put-down, designed to shut women up and put them back “in their place”. “Calm down, dear” is what women hear when we’re allegedly being “hysterical” or “overemotional”. It’s that tired old gender stereotyping, the sort that implies that if we can’t even keep our emotions in check, then we obviously aren’t cut out for the more serious male world of politics and debate.

I have a colleague – a classic misogynist who thinks he’s a feminist because he “likes” women and supports them in their little endeavours – who tells his female colleagues to calm down all the time. He doesn’t realise (or doesn’t care) how utterly offensive and silencing those two little words are. I’ve told him, but it doesn’t need to matter to him. He and Dave are never told to calm down because they’re educated, privileged, white men who are allowed to have opinions and to express them in whatever way they please. Their faults, whatever they are, could never be called “uncalm”.

Women, on the other hand, have to checked, reprimanded, and reminded of their place all the time. That’s the first rule of the patriarchy. Let’s face it, they’d be better off not speaking in the first place if they can’t avoid being hysterical, amirite? ‘Course I am. And wouldn’t that be a happy day for you, Dave?

From my blog (tenderhooligan/wordpress).

In most countries in the world, parents can tell their kids that if they work hard and do everything right, they could grow up to be the head of state and the symbol of their nation. Not us. Our head of state is decided by one factor, and one factor alone: did he pass through the womb of one particular aristocratic Windsor woman living in a golden palace? The American head of state grew up with a mother on food stamps. The British head of state grew up with a mother on postage stamps. Is that a contrast that fills you with pride?

- Johann Hari

If ever the problem with the monarchy can be summed up, it’s in that quote. Elitism, privilege, and a spurious claim to power indeed. Incidentally, Johann Hari makes a very good case for a republic in the remainder of that piece. This country doesn’t “need” a monarchy (despite the claims that the tourism industry would fold if it were disbanded) and I, for one, am tired of my tax dollars keeping it in an ostentatious lifestyle.

Praise the gods one journalist was able to keep her head screwed on about the royal nonsense while all the others fawned, bleated and generally disgraced themselves when they allowed their critical faculties to escape them for the day. Laurie Penny rather wonderfully (as always) discussed in a number of pieces in the New Statesman how the reality  of life in the country continued abound while we were all subjected to the royal celebration. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m sure Wills and Kate are very much in love and I don’t begrudge them that. But the country spending yet more money on unnecessary whimsy,  and it being the sole focus of most of the news for days if not weeks while 1000s in this country continue to lose their jobs, their homes, and, quite possibly, their minds, is very troublesome. The Wedding of Mass Distraction indeed. (Incidentally, the best hidden news of the daycame courtesy of the BBC at approximately 11.30, around about the time they said their vows, most likely. The regulator of NHS foundation trusts in England has warned hospitals they must make even bigger efficiency savings than previously thought. Nice work, Beeb.) Penny also points out the affront of this debacle to democracy and liberty. Protestors were told that they could not protest at the event and pre-emptive arrests of potential dissenters were made. Since when did we live in a nation where we arrest people before the fact (said “fact” being subject to definition if and when a definition is required)? Since about two weeks ago, is when.

It’ll all blow over, of course, and we’ll be talking about something else come Wednesday but I intend to remain bitter about the whole sorry situation for quite a time to come. And so should you. The next time you hear of a governmental cut to something as important as the Poppy Project (links 1, 2, 3), ask yourself if it could possibly have been avoided had the royal couple decided to get married in a village church in Berkshire. Answer: yeah, probably.

And come on, we might as well be honest in any case. What has most of the chatter around the royal wedding been about anyway? That’s right. Babies. Our Kate better be able to spit out the babies or she’s not going to be of any use to her new husband. He might not be king yet but he needs an ‘eir nonetheless. Just as her father “gave her away”, and she is the only one of the newly-entangled duo to wear a wedding ring, she is now a possession of the royal house. And, as she should know from her betters before her, she needs to procreate and she probably needs to do it fast. THAT, the great British public, is her role now. And, although they’re going to start discussing the Law of Primogeniture (where a younger brother can accede to the throne before his older sisters), she still better hope it’s a boy.

Some may feel that my concentration on the sexual hinterland of the royal bride is a little prurient, but let’s get this perfectly straight: this royal wedding, like all other royal weddings that involve the line of succession, is all about sex and nothing else. I say sex but what I really mean is procreation – I say procreation but what I really mean is breeding, although not “breeding” in the sense used by old-fashioned snobs, but breeding as practised selectively by members of the Kennel Club, or, indeed, adherents of a satanic cult that uses a so-called “broodmare” in its rituals.

Too right Mr Self. Too right.

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In case you missed it: Charlie Brooker’s précis of the day.

Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).

Ok, yes, I possibly have been on the Interbets all week. Here’s some of what’s been happening:

• It’s quite unbelievable, still, that France passed the “Ban on the Burka” law last week, but it did. Needless to add, there was outrage. The irony of telling women that they’re not allowed to wear what a patriarchal culture tells them to wear is not lost on Sarkozy, I’m sure, even if he is brainless. You cannot beat oppression with oppression. (Though we shouldn’t fool ourselves that Sarkozy et al were thinking of the women at all here. No, this is thinly veiled - pun intended - Islamophobia at its best.) And as if it’s not offensive enough as it is, the Guardian reported that refusing to comply with the ban will result in a fine or a condition to have lessons in “French citizenship”. Arrange the following words in a sentence: off, fuck. Within hours of the ban coming into force, women were being arrested for continuing to wear the veil. Well, you would wouldn’t you! There are several excellent blog posts around the Interweb which discuss this issue in much more detail than I do here: thefword, delilah-mj, msmagazine, and lattelabour for starters.

• Budget 2011 leaves women out in the cold (fawcettsociety). The 2011 budget spells trouble for women in Britain. There’s been talk for a some time now of how the vast array of cuts introduced by the coalition government will affect women, and the picture is now becomnig clearer. First, a piece from the Guardian reveals that job losses have affected women the most and, second, a report produced in partnership with the Fawcett Society (‘The Impact on Women of the Budget 2011’) highlights the following issues. It is not looking good.

- The current economic strategy looks set to undermine gender equality in the labour market: if current trends continue, more women than men in the UK will be unemployed, for the first time since records began. - The bonfire of regulations will remove the protections that women and men with caring responsibilities need in order to be able to work. - The increase in the Personal Tax Allowance threshold will not touch the most vulnerable, and among those who will benefit, men will gain £140 million more than women. - Without action to tackle entrenched gender inequality within the apprenticeship sector, where women earn on average 21 per cent less than men, the Government’s flagship expansion in apprenticeships and training opportunities will not improve the employment opportunities young women face and do nothing for older women. - The businesses set to benefit most from new tax breaks and other incentives are typically owned and invested in by men while schemes to support women in business are scrapped.

• The Ivory Coast standoff ends, but the nightmare for women continues (msmagazine). Most mornings when I wake up, I’m inclined to be rather discontent with my lot for a few minutes before I come to (I’m tired, it’s cold, I have too much to do; that sort of thing). Reading about the women in the Ivory Coast reminds me that I don’t even know I’m born. Though the conflict in the Ivory Coast has come to an end now, women and girls there are still being persecuted (kidnapped, beaten up and raped) daily. They’ve been through all of this before in 2004 and they’re going through it all again. And we don’t know the half of it.

Pender [a gender-based violence Technical Advisor for IRC] conveyed reports from women of gang rapes, rapes of entire families and sexual slavery, as women and girls are “taken as wives” for weeks at a time. “These women have experienced things that we cannot even imagine–and many for the second time,” said Pender. The collective memory of rape and violence from the last Ivorian war, in 2004, is still fresh. In fact, the recollection of “what happened last time,” and the threat of new violence has driven many girls and women to flee.

• Finally, Americans seem to [want to] forget slavery (prospect). When a research centre asked why the American Civil War took place, a frightening number of respondents answered that they thought it was about the rights of states. The reason for the war is disputed, of course, but even I (a European) know that slavery was as central a reason as any other.

That so many young Americans believe a revisionist account of the Civil War is, if anything, another sign of our collective refusal to deal with our difficult past. Slaves built the White House and fueled Wall Street, but we want nothing more than to forget slavery and the central role it played in our nation’s history.

Couple this finding with the recent revisionist adaption of Huckleberry Finn (to remove the n-word) and one wonders if America wants to forget all about its sordid past altogether. I hope not.

Post from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).

If only I could spend all day online reading blogs, I would. I can’t, so I can only give you what I see. Recently:

• David Willets: feminism has held back working class men (thetelegraph). This is from weeks ago, of course, but never let it be said I’m in fashion. Willets (our Universities Minister for our sins) declared recently that feminism has led to the ruination of working class men. (For those of you who don’t know what feminism is, it’s all about them women who want to wear trousers, answer their own front doors, and belch in public.) On what planet Willets resides, I do not know but let’s mention the one very glaring incongruity. Women and working class men are not, and have never been, on the opposite ends of any sociological or economic spectrum so the reason for his putting them there was lost on just about everyone.  So his argument was flawed from the start. If Willets had his way, women would be relegated to the reserve workforce again and only called upon in times of extreme need. If I ever see him, I’ll run up to him and tell him what I think of him. I’ll be able to run as I’ll be wearing trousers, you see.

• “Virginity Tests” Forced On Egyptian Women Protesters (msmagazine). Another relatively old piece but important nonetheless. One wonders where to start with all of this. How could one’s virginity or otherwise be relevant to anything? Well it’s not, of course, and it was never intended to be. The only purpose of these “tests” has been to inflict humiliation. The women protesting in Egypt were subjected to verbal, physical and sexual abuse on many occasions and we can’t, of course,  forget about the CBS reporter who was raped during the protests.

Amnesty International is now condemning the treatment of at least 18 women who were held in military detention after being arrested during a protest on March 9 (a month after Mubarak stepped down).  The women told Amnesty International that they were beaten, given electric shocks, and subjected to strip searches while being photographed.  They were then forced to submit to “virginity tests” and told that if they were “found not to be virgins,” they could be charged with prostitution.

• The Effort to End Acid Violence (msmagazine). This is another one that is not for the faint-hearted. If women in Bangladesh, India and Cambodia don’t do as their told, and deviate from their “expected behaviours”, they risk being attacked with acid. (Though don’t be fooled that it can’t happen elsewhere too.) The physical and health ramifications of these attacks are boundless. These women often lose their jobs, their homes (because they lose the “support” of their spouses), and fade into exclusion and poverty. While these crimes might not, apparently, be as entrenched as honour killings or public stonings, they’re still as problematic.

“This is a form of gender terrorism,” says Sital Kalantry, director of Cornell Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic. “If we [women] deviate from what’s expected of us, this is the punishment that we receive.” …The report found that women were most often attacked for refusing marriage proposals or sexual advances. The attackers believe that if they can’t “have” the victim, then no one should. Thus, they seek to “destroy what society considers to be one of the most valuable traits of a woman–her beauty.” Acid is also thrown at women for transgressing the boundaries of expected behavior, or for exercising seemingly any modicum of independence. Women have been attacked for initiating divorce proceedings or attempting to keep wages they’ve earned at a job.

• Conservatives are encouraging parents to divert their kids from thoughts of college (friendlyatheist). Apparently it might give them “ideas” (you know what I mean: critical thought, mind of their own, that sort of thing). I’ll say no more.

• Slut Shame: Attacking Women for Their Sex Lives (alternet). We’re still calling women sluts and we still don’t like it when they choose to have sex with whomever they please. Why? There’s a variety of reasons. One is that women’s bodies should be reserved for procreation and having sex for any other reason is some sort of crime against nature. Another is that a woman doesn’t have any right to make her own sexual choices (or any choices about what she does with her body), and that being sexual in any way is not natural or expected behaviour for women anyway. Ultimately, the piece hits the nail on the head when it says that the term “slut” is meant to put women back in their place (with their legs firmly closed), and make them ashamed of their own desires and pleasures. We wouldn’t want them enjoying themselves now, would we? All hell might break loose.

• On a related note, abstinence-only sex education results? 150 pregnancies since august (edenfantasys). Well, if ever you needed some evidence that abstinence-only education (wherein you’re told just that you shouldn’t be at it) does. not. work. you can look to this Texas school board which, despite its commitment to such education, has had to report 150 student pregnancies since the start of the school year. Ooops! One word: contraception. Or at least make a flipping stab at it.

• On another related note, contraception use is the norm among religious women (feministe). See, God can’t hate the non-procreation sex that much, can he? Or are they all damned to the burning fires of hell too?

More later.

They’re plenty prepared to tell you what to do with your uterus but it will not be mentioned by name. Dirty, filthy, lady bits!

Let’s face it: the GOP has some problems with understanding science. It probably comes from embracing creationism, or their refusal to listen to those dread agents of the government, teachers. But whatever the cause, Republicans tend to react to discussions of scientific fact by covering their ears, shouting “LA LA LA CAN’T HEAR YOU!”, and asserting that several lobbyists have assured them that the Sun does too orbit the Earth, and that there’s no such thing as “water,” and that contraceptives actually increase the likelihood of pregnancy when they’re not causing abortions.

Still, while I’m used to Republicans boiling all arguments down beyond reductio ad absurdum, they still have the capacity to surprise me. Take the Florida Republicans, please:

At one point [Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando] suggested that his wife “incorporate her uterus” to stop Republicans from pushing measures that would restrict abortions. Republicans, after all, wouldn’t want to further regulate a Florida business.

Apparently the GOP leadership of the House didn’t like the one-liner.

They told Democrats that Randolph is not to discuss body parts on the House floor.

“The point was that Republicans are always talking about deregulation and big government,” Randolph said Thursday. “And I always say their philosophy is small government for the big guy and big government for the little guy. And so, if my wife’s uterus was incorporated or my friend’s bedroom was incorporated, maybe they (Republicans) would be talking about deregulating.

“It’s not like I used slang,” said Randolph, who actually got the line from his wife.

First, it is a good line. Randolph has a smart wife. Second, “uterus?” Really, you can’t mention body parts on the floor of the Florida House?

Hell no you can’t!