Whooooooooooooooooooooooooops.
[Getty Images]
Quote of the Day
"I am 52 and it looks like menopause has finally arrived. I was 13 when Roe was decided. The window of reproductive choice in the U.S. appears to have lasted only as long as my periods did."—Shaker scribbles14, in comments. (Posted on the main page with her permission.)
What a powerful and terrifying observation.
She further notes: "It's even more depressing to reflect that 'choice' has been compromised for so many even during this era of supposedly freer choice."
Utah Moves Closer to No Sex Ed
[Content Note: Reproductive rights.]
I feel like I went to sleep one night in the real world and woke up the next morning in one of Margaret Atwood's nightmares: The Utah House has passed a bill allowing schools to abolish sex education courses and "prohibit[ing] instruction in the use of contraception in those that keep the courses."
"We've been culturally watered down to think we have to teach about sex, about having sex and how to get away with it, which is intellectually dishonest," said bill sponsor Rep. Bill Wright, R-Holden. "Why don't we just be honest with them upfront that sex outside marriage is devastating?"Wow. Just wow.
"Get away with it?" Whut. "Sex outside of marriage is devastating?" Yikes.
This stuff is so far outside my own human experience that I am beginning to suspect I am an alien species. I wish the mothership would come pick me the fuck up already.
Rhetorical Question of the Day
What is it going to take for President Obama to give an address dedicated to reproductive rights? It's kind of a major issue.
At what point will he agree?
Number of the Day
[Content Note: Reproductive rights.]
58%: The percentage of all oral contraceptive users who "rely on the method, at least in part, for purposes other than pregnancy prevention—meaning that only 42% use the pill exclusively for contraceptive reasons."
The study documenting this finding, "Beyond Birth Control: The Overlooked Benefits of Oral Contraceptive Pills," (pdf) by Rachel K. Jones of the Guttmacher Institute ... revealed that after pregnancy prevention (86%), the most common reasons women use the pill include reducing cramps or menstrual pain (31%); menstrual regulation, which for some women may help prevent migraines and other painful "side effects" of menstruation (28%); treatment of acne (14%); and treatment of endometriosis (4%). Additionally, it found that some 762,000 women who have never had sex use the pill, and they do so almost exclusively (99%) for noncontraceptive reasons.Just like the fact that most abortion-seeking women are already mothers gets left out of the "dirty slut" framing about abortion, the fact that contraception is used for reasons other than and in addition to preventing pregnancy is getting left out of the "dirty slut" framing about contraception.
["Other hormonal methods such as the ring, patch, implant and IUD offer the same types of noncontraceptive benefits as the pill" but were not included in this study.]
..."It is well established that oral contraceptives are essential health care because they prevent unintended pregnancies," said study author Rachel K. Jones. "This study shows that there are other important health reasons why oral contraceptives should be readily available to the millions of women who rely on them each year."
I would suggest that someone needs to send a memo to the clueless dudes controlling the debate, but I know that they are already aware of these realities. They just don't fucking care.
[H/T to Jacqueline M.]
Daily Dose of Cute
Here is a wee video of Zelly being cute when she wanted to go out last Sunday morning. I have described many times her "Jabba the Mutt" strategy of nose-poking to let us know she wants something, and finally managed to record a bit of it.
She is such a good girl. She is the sweetest, most adorable, clever little dog, and I cannot believe how lucky we are that we found her, just sitting at the pound on death row, waiting for us to spring her. I love her to infinitesimal pieces.
Video Description: Zelda stands in front of the couch, between Iain and me, looking at us and wagging her tail. "What do you think?" I ask her. "Zelda, what do you think about it?" (I don't remember what it was we had been talking about, but probably something to do with Full Metal Jousting, which we were watching and being horrified by at the time.) Wag wag wah. "Sht!" says Iain. Wag wag wah. "Tell Daddy to be sht!" I whisper. Zelly cocks her head. Wag wag wah. "Tell him! Say, 'Daddy, be shushed!'" Wag wag wah. Zelly looks at Iain. "Go on and tell him," I tell her. "Tell him, Zelda!" Zelda pokes him with her nose then backs up and looks at me. "I think that fart really spoke a thousand words," Iain says. Wag wag wah. "Did you fart, Zelly?" I ask. "Did you? Are you Lady Fartington? Eh?" She pokes Iain with her nose then backs up. Wag wag wah. "I think Zelda wants to go out; what do you think?" I ask. "No, she's fine," says Iain. Wag wag wah. "Zelda!" I exclaim. "Do you want to go out?" She cocks her head. Wag wag wah. Iain gets up out of his chair and Zelly looks at him excitedly, doing two steps of her excited dance. "OH MY GOD!" says Iain, as he walks for the door. Zelly follows. Wag wag wah. "LIVSY!" exclaims Iain, at Livs, who is offscreen. I laugh. "DUDLEY!" he cries. The video cuts out there, but he went on to say, "DUDLEY YOU'RE A DOG! REPORT FOR DOG BUSINESS!"
Below the fold, a still image of Zelly being cute for those who cannot view video, and Dudley's reaction to the GOP debate last night...
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Gaye Bykers On Acid: "Everything's Groovy"
On Youtube, the video's creator Flux Lasers wrote this:
A video I made on a particularly boring day during the summer of 1991. It was made using a Hi8 video camera and a domestic Sony video recorder.
It features the first laser I ever owned.... and stuff from my flat, including my cat.
I love this video.
About that same time I was making similar videos. The rubber skeletons, the plasma ball, the candles, the Grebo music. I used every one of those. This person may as well have been my doppelganger.
I love this video so hard.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Content Note: Reproductive rights, racism, homophobia.]
James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal—Unplanned Parenthood: Illegitimacy and the liberal elite.
Just the title alone is GREAT, is it not?
I think my favorite line is: "Not an insignificant number of affluent women who want children make the same mistake of putting off marriage until it's too late, because of unrealistic expectations about men and about the duration of their own fertility."
But my favorite part of the whole piece is the barfy piece of clipart accompanying the article:
LOL.
More Debate Highlights
[Content Note: Reference to spanking.]
For those of you who missed the debate last night (LUCKY!), here are some more highlights that the ELITE MEDIA doesn't want you to see:
Ron Paul went in the Spanking Machine!
Newt Gingrich led the crowd in a rousing rendition of "We Are the World."
Mitt Romney left Gingrich hanging! BURN!
Romney and Gingrich had a good laugh about that time Romney left Gingrich hanging.
Rick Santorum offered to stick his thumb up Romney's butt. Romney was into it.
The cheese stood alone.
Primarily Gross
So, the Four Horsemen of the Crapocalypse had another debate last night, who can say on what channel. It's a mystery lost to the sands of time. To keep things interesting after 87,000 debates, the candidates were all inexplicably seated at elementary school desks from THE FUTURE. Neat!
Here is my Executive Summary of the debate: Taxes, morning-after abortion pills, illegals, nukes, Obamacare, bootstraps, America, Jesus, taxes, amen.
In what was probably my most retweeted tweet of all time, I described the debate last night as: Four white men talking about contraception without saying "women" and immigration without saying "immigrants."
As always, I recommend Richard's coverage.
* * *
The highlight of the evening—which was COMPREHENSIVELY AWESOME, don't get me wrong!—was when John King asked the candidates this viewer question: "Since birth control is the latest hot topic, which candidates believe in birth control, and, if not, why?" HA HA YEP! In the year 2012, in the United States of America, presidential candidates are being asked if they "believe" in birth control! It almost makes me want to live here TOO much!
Anyway, the audience greeted this question with jeers and boos, and—surprise!—it is not because they are angry the question even needs to be asked, or because their candidates are overreaching, but because it's SO UNFAIR that anyone would question these fine, upstanding, ethical defenders of forcible pregnancy:
[John King asks question, followed by audience jeering and booing, then John King starts to say, "Look, we're not gonna spend a ton of time on this—" when Newt Gingrich interrupts him]Everything about those sentences is wrong. Also: Get a load of the unmitigated cheek that Newt Gingrich is complaining about being required to address contraception as an issue when his party has been busily making it a central issue of this election.
Gingrich: Can I just make a point? [crosstalk] I wanna make two quick points, John. The first is: There is a legitimate question about the power of the government to impose on religion activities which any religion opposes. That's legitimate. [applause] But I just want to point out: You did not once in the 2008 campaign, not once did anyone in the elite media, ask why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide. [huge cheers and applause] Okay? So let's be clear here: If we're gonna have a debate about who the extremist is on these issues, it is President Obama, who, as a state senator voted to protect doctors who kill babies who survive the abortion. [cheers and applause] It is not the Republicans!
"We just want to create and subsequently exploit contentious and deeply divisive issues! We don't want to be held accountable for it! Geez!"—The GOP.
* * *
Best tweet of the night, for undilutedly gormless understatement, goes to CNN's David Gergen:
Many women on twitter saying these candidates don't get women's rights, live in past, want to control.Your view?#cnndebate
— David Gergen (@David_Gergen) February 23, 2012
LOL FOREVER. "Your view?" LOL. LOL. LOL. Sob.
* * *
Here are some real things the candidates said during the debate:
Ron Paul: "You don't have women's rights or men's rights."
Rick Santorum: "The most prolific proliferator in the world."
Mitt Romney: "I get to give the answers I want."
Newt Gingrich spent a minute or so mocking the idea of instilling children with self-esteem, which of course got big applause and cheers from the audience.
There's no dignity in compassionateconservativismball!
* * *
Here's a fun fact about the debate: Throughout the entire thing, only one candidate said the word "unemployment" once, and that was Newt Gingrich referencing a low unemployment rate while he was Speaker (and Bill Clinton was president). None of them addressed the chronic levels of record high unemployment the country is currently suffering.
They did manage, however, to address at length the HORROR of Title X—the federal grant program designed to provide family planning and preventive health services to low-income and/or uninsured individuals and families, which was enacted in 1970 by renowned dirty hippie Richard Nixon.
PRIORITIES! The Republican Party has them!
* * *
Next Up: Super Tuesday!
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Republican Debate
Is anyone else watching this fucking thing? HOLY SHIT. Whoooooooooooooops our democracy!
Question of the Day
What was the last thing you accomplished that, ten years earlier, you never would have believed you'd accomplish?
YOWZA: DOMA's Federal Definition of Marriage Ruled Unconstitutional
This is big news! Big GOOD news!
Today, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued its order finding that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act -- the federal definition of marriage -- is unconstitutional in Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management, Karen Golinski's challenge to the denial of her request for equal health insurance benefits for her wife.Now this is where the President's instruction to the Justice Department to cease defending the constitutionality of DOMA in court any longer comes into play. Tara Borelli, the lead Lambda Legal attorney on the case, said in a statement: "This ruling, the first to come after the Justice Department announced it would no longer defend this discriminatory statute in court, spells doom for DOMA. The Court recognized the clear fact that a law that denies one class of individuals the rights and benefits available to all others because of their sexual orientation violates the constitutional guarantee of equality embodied in the Fifth Amendment."
Golinski, a federal court employee, brought suit after her request was denied. She is represented by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Rock the fuck on.
You can read the entire decision here (pdf).
ETA. Next up: Passing the Respect for Marriage Act, which, fortunately, already has the President's support.
We Ride Inside
[Content Note: Animal cruelty.]
[Click on the image to visit Dogs Against Romney.]
Recently, it has emerged that, despite Mitt Romney's claims that his dog Seamus loved riding on top of their car and Ann Romney's claims that Seamus lived to a ripe old age, two of their sons "had an off-record conversation with reporters where they revealed the dog ran away when they reached their destination on that infamous journey in 1983."
There are a lot of reasons that Mitt Romney should never be president, and there are those who would argue this is the least among them. I am personally of the opinion that a man who mistreats an animal in his care and then lies about it has breached a sacred trust, and yet one of the easiest to uphold for anyone with a functional sense of empathy. He has disqualified himself.
[Previously: Primarily Gross; Photo of the Day.]
I Cannot Truly Want What I Am Told I Must Have
This is my experience: I have never wanted children.
When Iain and I first started talking about the possibility of spending some significant part of our lives together, I told him flatly: "I don't want children. If that's a deal-breaker, I understand, but don't get involved with me thinking you'll change my mind, because I won't." He said, with the obnoxious confidence of a young privileged man dating his first feminist, "It's not a deal-breaker, although I think you might change your mind." I chuckled. Instead, he has changed his.
Our family is complete.
Part of being a straight cis woman who is childless by choice is that you get asked why—why you don't have children, and, if you are bold enough to say you don't want them, why it is that you don't.
I started saying I don't want children from a very young age—my oldest ladyfriend, the oft-mentioned C whom I have known since I was 11, once described a shocking event by saying, "The only thing weirder would have been you announcing you were pregnant!"—so I've been asked to consider why it is that I don't want children for much of my life, and I've never had a great answer.
I used to say, simply and straightforwardly, "I'm selfish," which is true. I like lots of time to myself, and I relish the particular flexible liberty that can't coexist with obligation, and I enjoy the psychic freedom of never having to stay on top of a child's schedule in addition to my own. But it's more than that. I knew that even when I said it, and I said it primarily because that is what people tend to believe, irrespective of its veracity.
I sometimes say, to people with whom I can be more frank, that it is because I am afraid to be pregnant (true) and that I am afraid to duplicate the same dysfunctions that defined my family of origin (also true). But it's more than that, too.
Not having an answer isn't something that plagues my mind, because "I just don't" is sufficient for my own self-satisfaction, and I have never felt as though I owe anyone a more detailed explanation than that which contents my own curiosity.
But watching the onslaught of legislative attacks on reproductive rights unfold over the last couple of years, something has begun to percolate at the back of my mind—an answer to that question, a response to the why. In the last few weeks, under the oppressive drumbeat of this dehumanization, this thought has crawled out of its chrysalis and inched its way forward toward conscious thought.
I have never been more acutely aware of my reductive purpose as a babymaking machine, more subject to incessant, inescapable, insistent reminders that my personhood is debatable, that I am nothing if I don't use my body to have children, that I am a uterus with some meat attached in service to its reproductive capacity.
And comes the realization from deep down in the darkest depths of me that I do not want children, that I have never wanted children, because of my desperate yearning to be a whole person, to matter, always and only, on the value of me and not the other little people I am supposed to create.
Please understand: I do not judge other women who are parents by the measure of their reproductive choice. I am merely acknowledging my understanding of how society, and some of the particular subcultures and communities of which I am a member, would judge me if I made the same choice—and certainly judges them.
No one, after all, knows better the ways that motherhood can be used to devalue women than a mother.
I have understood, intuitively, from a very early age that, in this culture, in the spaces in which I move, to have children is to dilute one's value as a human, even as it is to enhance one's value as a woman.
To have children, in this culture, in the spaces in which I move, has felt and feels still like a concession to a destiny in which I felt I had no choice, unless I chose childlessness.
This is the thought that the assault on reproductive rights has laid across my consciousness in the past days, weeks: I don't want children, because I so dearly want a choice, because I so ardently want autonomy, because I so desperately want my full humanity. And I have lived a lifetime in spaces—familial spaces, religious spaces, educational spaces, cultural spaces—in which virtually every message I received encouraged me, coaxed me, cajoled me, coerced me into childbearing.
And now it is the endgame: Now they fight to force me.
It should come as no surprise that a movement seeking to limit my choice makes me feel like I don't have one. And still, I am rather astonished to discover that I have simply never felt that having children was ever a choice I believed I could enthusiastically make on my own, without having been compromised by the crushing pressure of procreative, anti-choice rhetoric.
For the first time, I consider the possibility that I don't even really know if I want children or don't want them. All I know with certainty is that I will not have them.
Not like this.
Quote of the Day
"My family and I took a view and we're sticking by it. My girls are no longer Girl Scouts. They're now going to join American Heritage Girls."—Indiana State Representative and Professor of Smartology at Genius University Bob Morris (R-Ancid), doubling down on, and refusing to apologize for, his contention that the Girl Scouts is a 'radicalized organization' that promotes abortion and homosexuality.
I love how, in 24 hours, it went from his view to the view of his entire family, despite the fact that he came to his conclusion by doing "a small amount of web-based research," not by, y'know, actually speaking to "his girls" who are, or were, actually Girl Scouts.
Interesting, that. By which I mean: Totally predictable.
Btw, the American Heritage Girls is, in case you hadn't guessed, "an alternative group for young girls run by conservative Christians."
