Things to worry about today

“An army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners, abetted by achingly politically correct American tech bloggers, are terrorizing the entire community – lying, bullying and manipulating their way around the internet for profit and attention.”

Also, subversize in a commie kind of way.

From the ever vigilant Breitbart.

 

I’d say she got the ‘modestly dressed’ part just pitch-perfect

Who wouldn’t want to rush home to this little lady? Anyone? Anyone? Come on guys, look at that resume! Jeeez.

Something new is in the air. My sisters are waking up.

Here’s what’s new. Wendy Davis and Nina Turner. And many many other women, young women, around the country using an entirely different vocabulary and saying back off fellas, hands off.  This is a different conversation. It’s a different fight. It’s not about abortion this time. . .  it’s not about fetuses. It’s about them. Always was.

Here’s what’s old. Ohio. Texas. North Carolina. Mandatory vaginal probes. Forced ultrasound. Catholic Bishops. Religious right. Family Research Council. Todd Aiken. The American Taliban. Rep. Steve King. Louie Gomert!!!! Michele Bachmann. Personhood. Pat Robertson. Phyllis Schlafley. Pin-up boy Ralph Reed.

A little background? Try this. And this. And this.

Or just read a whole buncha posts about lady parts and the men who want, well, this is what  they want:

Available in other colors – as long as it’s black.

Like Wendy, Nina knows it’s not really about abortion. It’s about women.

Meet another woman warrior; I love this lady. Like Texas’ Wendy Davis, Turner gets that all this is really about women, about uppity women, about women having sex. Especially about punishing women for liking it.

Take it away Ohio State Senator Nina Turner (she really rolls at 4:38):

Here’s a glimpse of her Governor, ole John Kasich with his theocratic allies thrusting themselves (legislatively of course – what, you thought I meant something else?) into yet more lady parts:

Cool. Help is at hand.

I just learned from Ann Romney that Medicare isn’t the only thing the Republicans are going to save from those black-hearted Democrats. Thank Elvis, they’re gonna save the women too! The GOP has our back girls!

Yeah Mitt!

(IN FAIRNESS: The woman is a terrific speaker.)

Now, if only the storm were called Imogene instead of Isaac

Thanks to friend Ed . . . from David Letterman last night:

A hurricane headed directly for the Republicans, more proof that … God is a woman.

Choice is about more than abortion and let’s stop pretending it isn’t

In spite of the legions of sincere people who support pro-life policies, the impetus for the movement itself is the never-ending assault on women by those who deeply resent the counter movement toward gender equality. The forces propelling the likes of Todd Akins only pretend a tolerance for equality. They want their sovereignty back.

In a comment thread below, Patsouthward pointed me to an article on CNN by  a rape victim who had her child, now being sued by her rapist:

It would not be long before I would learn firsthand that in the vast majority of states — 31 — men who father through rape are able to assert the same custody and visitation rights to their children that other fathers enjoy. When no law prohibits a rapist from exercising these rights, a woman may feel forced to bargain away her legal rights to a criminal trial in exchange for the rapist dropping the bid to have access to her child. . . . I know it because I lived it. I went to law school to learn how to stop it.

This looks to me just like the campaign to deny women the right to abortion, where men – and the state – have sovereignty over a  woman. It’s the exact same thing.

A ‘scolds bridle’ used to silence wives and legal up to the 19th century

The kerfuffle of the day is not just about Todd Akin and his knuckle-dragging (to quote the Speaker of the House) cohorts who claim to be Christian but adhere to the Old Testament . . . it’s about attempts to restore the millennial old definition of women as property.

That was a concept in law right into the 19th century, not ancient history but from the  ‘modern era’. Here are a few examples (first photo and quote from tumblr, here) :

The “curb-plate” was frequently studded with spikes, so that if the tongue moved, it inflicted pain and made speaking impossible. Many men sustained in this “husband’s right” to “handle his wife”, and to use salutary restraints in any case of “misbehavior” without the intervention of what some court records of 1824 referred to as “vexatious prosecutions.” Generally a husband would need only to accuse his wife of disagreeing with his decisions, at which the Branks could be applied. The woman would then be paraded through the streets, or chained to the market cross where she was exposed to public ridicule. Wives that were seen as witches, shrews, gossips, nags and scolds, were forced to wear a brank’s bridle, which had been locked on the head of the woman and sometimes had a ring and chain attached to it as a leash so her husband could parade her around town and the town’s people could scold her and treat her with contempt; at times smearing excrement on her and beating her, sometimes to death.

No divorce for you!

Here’s another one – from England – just before our Civil War (here):

Once married, it was extremely difficult for a woman to obtain a divorce. The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 gave men the right to divorce their wives on the grounds of adultery. However, married women were not able to obtain a divorce if they discovered that their husbands had been unfaithful. Once divorced, the children became the man’s property and the mother could be prevented from seeing her children.

Ladies, how about this?

We can’t all whip out clever youtube videos, so how about painting the town in bras? Get your old bras, buy a bunch more at Goodwill . . .then drop those babies around town, drape them on parking meters, mailboxes, doorknobs on government offices, Republican HQ (let’s double down on that one) churches (certain ones anyway) . . . Picture it: bras everywhere!!! We could make it rain bras! It would bring our American Taliban to their knees, I tell you . . . to their knees! (pssssttt, tell your facebook friends to do it too.)

Oh damn, am I going to have to go find an old bra so I can burn it?

From TPM:

Rep. Steve King . . .  did not strongly condemn Rep. Todd Akin Monday for his remarks regarding pregnancy and rape  [and] signaled he might agree with parts of Akin’s assertion.

King told an Iowa reporter he’s never heard of a child getting pregnant from statutory rape or incest.  “Well I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way,” King told KMEG-TV Monday, “and I’d be open to discussion about that subject matter.”

In any personal way?  Open to discussion? 

Prediction: Romney will rue the day . . .

Just make it stop

What is it with these Republican men?  They’re at it again in Congress because  apparently contraception is still the enemy of freedom.

A Letter to the Editor in my paper a few weeks ago provided a nice list of religious beliefs and rules that are ignored, indeed violated,  by civil law:

• The Catholic ban on divorce
• Muslim and Jewish laws about women and children
• Buddhist and HIndu prohibitions against killing animals
• Capital punishment
• Quakers and conscientious objectors pay taxes that finance wars
• Christian Scientist pay taxes to support medical care they abjure.

Dick Cheney’s daughter got all gay-married

Damn that Obama.

 

Let me just say “vagina”. Also, “vagina”.

In case the troglodytes in the Michigan legislature can’t hear us, I’ll make my own voice a little louder:

Vagina.   VAGINA.   VAGINA!

POSTED BY ORHAN

Corey Robin

Katha Pollitt writing in the Nation about the Hilary Rosen/Ann Romney fracas:

But the brouhaha over Hilary Rosen’s injudicious remarks is not really about whether what stay-home mothers do is work. Because we know the answer to that: it depends. When performed by married women in their own homes, domestic labor is work—difficult, sacred, noble work. Ann says Mitt called it more important work than his own, which does make you wonder why he didn’t stay home with the boys himself. When performed for pay, however, this supremely important, difficult job becomes low-wage labor that almost anyone can do—teenagers, elderly women, even despised illegal immigrants. But here’s the real magic: when performed by low-income single mothers in their own homes, those same exact tasks—changing diapers, going to the playground and the store, making dinner, washing the dishes, giving a bath—are not only not work; they are idleness itself.

…

So…

View original post 41 more words

My grandmother couldn’t vote till she was almost 40 years old

100 Years ago today, half a million women marched on Washington DC to demand the right to vote. They got it – eight years later.

Here’s to you, ladies! Here’s to you.

(We’ll stay vigilant, Gramma. We’ll not let the American Taliban reverse the arc of history.)

If you dance in public, you’re not a serious person. Unless you’re a man.

This photo from the Summit of the Americas will no doubt be titillating to viewers of  FOX News tomorrow. (They’ve never been able to shut down those visions of Clintonish sugarplums dancing in their heads.) The randy Telegraph (UK) kicked off the next! big! thing! with this headline (this really is the headline):

Is Hillary Clinton becoming an embarrassment as Secretary of State?  

That’s the headline; here’s the sin:

Truly barbaric

Florida just lifted a law requiring that women in prison be shackled during childbirth.

We shackled women during childbirth? Until 2012?

I weep.

Let’s let Bill Maher explain

Mr. Limbaugh of Palm Beach along with the rest of the perpetually outraged professional right-wing defend the four times married morbidly obese one with what they claim is equivalence:”But Bill Maher called Palin a cunt!”.

Silly comparison. Maher explains it precisely:

MAHER:  To compare that to Rush is ridiculous – he went after a civilian about very specific behavior, that was a lie, speaking for a party that has systematically gone after women’s rights all year, on the public airwaves. I used a rude word about a public figure who gives as good as she gets, who’s called people “terrorist” and “unAmerican.” Sarah Barracuda. The First Amendment was specifically designed for citizens to insult politicians. Libel laws were written to protect law students speaking out on political issues from getting called whores by Oxycontin addicts.

Nice girls do NOT like it. Nor do good girls. Only those other kind.

It’s always been okay for the boys  . . . but us? Well, we’re supposed to endure sex, as our grandmothers (for younger women, your great-grandmothers) were taught. And we are never supposed to enjoy it.

But we did. And we do. And there is the outrage, there is why we must be punished. For if all this business, this shaming, is anything recognizable, it is punishment.

Doonesbury notices and, of course, gets banned. The truth must never be spoken.

 

 

A light amusement for we persons with lady-parts

Girls, it does not get better than this. Where has Ann Friedman been all my life???? Brilliant. She calls this “International Slutty Women’s Day: A Story in GIF’s” and if you don’t go there and see the entire thing, I’ll never talk to you again.

 

Such a joker

Any comedian knows that the more they repeat the very same ‘joke’ to the same audience, over and over, the funnier it gets.  (from Think Progress)

Remember Rush and the Viagra and the cops?

An oldie but very relevant goodie here. (Was he procreating I wonder – and how did that go?) Hat tip to friend Ed – great find!

Limbaugh was detained for more than three hours Monday at the airport after returning from a vacation in the Dominican Republic. Customs officials found the Viagra in his luggage but his name was not on the prescription, said Paul Miller, a spokesman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. . . .

In true celebrity fashion, he made a deal with the Sheriff’s office: by tying the matter to his other little legal problem, he gave up nothing and the Sheriff gave up everything. Quite the deal.

Under the deal reached last month with prosecutors, Limbaugh was not to be arrested for any infraction for 18 months in exchange for authorities deferring a charge of “doctor shopping.” Prosecutors had alleged the conservative talk-show host illegally deceived multiple physicians to receive overlapping painkiller prescriptions.

Something like this becomes a story when the person is a celebrity, or when ther person . . . well,  just read the rest:

Before his own problems became public, Limbaugh had decried drug use and abuse and mocked President Clinton for saying he had not inhaled when he tried marijuana . . .

“Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. … And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up,” Limbaugh said on his short-lived television show on Oct. 5, 1995. . well,  just read the rest.

Oh, let the good times roll !!!

In Oklahoma, Constance Johnson attached an “every sperm is sacred” amendment to the GOP’s Personhood bill.  The amendment would have construed any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina as an action against an unborn child.

From here. For the theme video? Here.

The 19th century continues to spill into the 21st

Ed sent this:

Several Girl Scout troops in Chantilly, Va., have been banned from meeting at a local Catholic church and a neighboring school.

St. Timothy Catholic Church said that scouts won’t be allowed to meet or wear their uniforms on church property. The edict also applies to the adjacent St. Timothy School, which enrolls students from preschool to eighth grade.

According to the Arlington Diocese, the pastor did not believe the National Girl Scouts membership to the World Association of Girl Guides & Girl Scouts aligned with the message of the church, stemming from a perceived connection between WAGGGS and Planned Parenthood.

Happily, I think we’ll see a steady stream of comic relief.  Susie sent this:

A group of female Democratic legislators in the Georgia House of Representatives has proposed a bill that would ban men from seeking vasectomies.

“Thousands of children are deprived of birth in this state every year because of the lack of state regulation over vasectomies,” said bill author Yasmin Neal in a statement

What are all these men afraid of? Giggle, giggle.

The modern Republican Party

FROM the front page of Little Green Footballs at 11:55pm. Here are screen shots of five of the seven stories.

Blog here, elsewhere is me

Understand this, Yoda would. Lately my blog posts have been either derivative or stuff I’ve posted because I think I should post. My heart is perhaps tired. I’ve even just re-blogged for the first time (new WordPress feature that is very very easy and very very tempting).

I’m  not going  to go dark here or get all unbloggy . . . but nor am I going to just toss stuff up. I must set out to find my mojo. It may have been used up for now by the astonishing tone of the GOP race and the more astonishing and bold steps by Republicans to reign in we ‘uppity’ women.

Find it, I will. Lost, it is not. Hiding, it is.

Friday night oldie

Been a time-travelin’ kind of week to be a woman. Especially for those of us who’ve been there and done that – already. But those boys – especially the chubby grey haired white ones – keep popping up hoping it’s 1950 again. (Sorry boys. All over.) When I get a yearning for some 1950s kind of love, I know I’ll find it only if I travel in my own special way-back machine.

Maybe Margaret and Helen will join in

Kay has a post up today on yet another legislative proposal from the American Taliban that is moving through the Virginia legislature –  it would require women to undergo an ultrasound probe before an abortion. That is, “a trans-vaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced”.

(The second-to-last-Republican-President-in-waiting tried it in his State last spring. I’m thinkin’ that’s why he did so well in the recent primaries and why he’s now running up a whopping 30% approval rating at home.)

It could pass. From Kay’s post:

[A different lawmaker suggested that women who consent to sex also consent to vaginal probing.]

Well then, let’s have us a consent form – consent doesn’t count without a form, makes it all nice and legal. To whom exactly do they consent I wonder? A petitioner? Must the petitioner be the one who is hoping to penetrate? Can a parent stand in to petition? Or to consent?  This part is a little confusing.

(Of course, no signee, no sexee . . .that’s the one weapon we know works.)

I’m really getting tired of this shit. Women may need to go back to the streets and remind our vice police wanna-be’s of a few things. I know Margaret and Helen* would help!

(* Margaret and Helen, they of the nearly 5 million blog hits. America does love its old ladies.)

Part 5: Where are the women?

Didn’t think the Republicans would hand me a brand new graphic to add to Tuesday’s series of posts. I really thought I’d drained that pond. But no . . . Rep. Darryl Issa (multiply charged criminal-CA) had him a little panel today. He didn’t want any girls to mess things up though cuz it was all about religious freedom. He even has a rabbi and a black guy, so it’s the real thing.

Dear Elvis, can you get their deity out of my legislators. And my body. Please.

Some random thoughts arising from my extreme annoyance caused by the legions of men who think they know best:

Republican men in suits on my teevee keep telling me that birth control is a sin and that same sex marraige is an abomination, because it was ordained by their god to be between one man and one woman. They’ve successfully sold that marriage part to their fellow religionists while the rest of the country moves on. But that birth control bit is, I think, going to cause them a bit of trouble.

Historically – and to the present in many parts of the world (no matter what the Reverend Republicans say) – marriage has been an economic contract, not a religious state. Even the English expression ‘took a wife’ is a reminder of what was once a universal tenet – that women were property. This idea is apparently enjoying something of a revival among the overly religious who demand  authority over women’s bodies. They also want the State to give them that authority, all legal like. (No more the ‘mommy state’, now comes the ‘daddy state’.)

One man and one woman? Meh. Even that Commandment about ‘cleaving’ feels a bit empty since it was handed down to a man who himself had a few Mrs. Moseses.  Multiple wives abound in the Old Testament and in ‘holy’ scriptures of all religions. (Of course, today’s version of that is the taking of serial wives, as practiced by Messrs. Gingrich, Trump, Limbaugh, and other stalwarts of traditional values. )

Marriage, no matter the attitudes and rituals of the religious, is a civil contract, one which requires a license.

Remember the Florida ‘Uterati’? (Background here)

Just go away I say.

No contraception! “Every sperm is sacred”

I think the recent Catholic objection to paying for contraception was not without merit on First Amendment grounds. But that’s the constitutional part. I am otherwise delighted to join in the mockery, so richly deserved.

This Monty Python classic has been getting a bit of play around the interwebs today. (Should I email it to the local archbishop I wonder? It might be okay cuz it’s not about lady parts.)