Media Girl has an interesting post on the current presidential administration’s and conservatives’ obsession with appearing to be macho, while scorning liberals and Democrats for being feminine–and therefore “weak as women.” Our society’s contemptuous sentiments for anything in the least bit “feminine” and “womanly” in the characteristics or actions of a politician, thrown in of course for emphasis.
Conservative macho chic is in. We’ve seen it in Bush, how he tries to swagger when he walks. (We try to ignore how his manner of walking looks like he has something rammed up his backside.) We saw it in the debates, where his smirking Beavis-and-Butthead-like nervous chuckles tried to mask his belligerence, and where he shook Kerry’s hand in a way that said, “I can take you!” (Wingnuts, if physical prowess is what people want in a President, then why not nominate Mike Tyson?)
We saw it in Russia, when Bush made Putin the “bitch” by making him sit in the passenger seat of his own car. Message: Bush is the daddy.
We heard it in Karl Rove’s pean to ignorance:
“Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers,” Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State.
Never mind the stupidity of his worldview — praise of ignorant reaction is hardly a path to victory — let’s look at the macho sexist message the conservatives are sending.
Michelle Malkin (you know, “somewhere between meshugga and mendacious”) says:
The Dems are having a hissyfit over the comments, as if stating the obvious is on par with slandering American troops and invoking hysterical analogies.
You know the word: U-n-h-i-n-g-e-d.
Yes, hissyfit and unhinged. They try to position the Democrats as uppity women. How ironic, such language used by a woman. How telling of her own self-image. Poor girl.
Then we have the White House getting all upset that Democrats are “in a huff”:
On the morning talk shows, White House spokesman Dan Bartlett found the Democrats’ demands “puzzling,” and notes Rove apparently struck a chord. He says Rove was “very specific, very accurate” in who he was pointing out for criticism, specifically the liberal group MoveOn.org.
Bartlett says he doesn’t understand why Democrats “are throwing up such a huff.”
What these hacks are doing is appealing to their base where “moral values” means “macho values.” They want their supporters all stirred up and upset over how they’re oppressed by liberals. If Rove can keep people reacting emotionally, then they won’t actually think about what they’re doing, what we as a nation are doing. They want everyone to be hot and bothered and stupid, because then the conservative gang can remain in control. They don’t want anyone asking questions. They don’t want anyone sniffing around. No, better to keep everyone worked up over irrelevance. They advocate stupidity even when it costs American lives. Even when it diminishes American security.
They also love violence — especially against fellow Americans. For example, we have our lovely fellow citizens who want to go shooting Americans for having the audacity to have their own opinions, for daring to believe they are free, for not marching to the jack-boot drum cadence of these conservatives. They seem to have taken a page or two from the Communists: they want a country with only one party, where dissenters are shot and imprisoned, where having the wrong thoughts can be a crime. They also seem to take a page or two from the Fascists: private property is only for the in-crowd; torture means strength; capitalism means corporate and political rulers are the same people.
And they claim to hold American values? These wingnuts are all hot and bothered because of American values! These paranoid conservatives are out to destroy American values!
On the command deck of HMSS Wingnuttia, Captain Ed bellows his complaint:
That the party of Harry Truman has descended to this jaw-dropping level of political cowardice and sheer crybaby status boggles the mind.
–as if the Republicans haven’t been running the government on a platform of cowardice and crying victim. To listen to them, you’d think the Democrats were running the show. It’s especially ironic that the good captain cites Harry Truman, the man who made is name in the Senate by going after the very kind of war profiteering currently being perpetrated by Cheney’s Halliburton. Maybe the esteemed officer should harken back to the president who held office when Republicans at least stood for virtue:
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” –Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
How ironic that these paranoid radicals see liberal boogie men everywhere and start yapping like Pomeranians, yet demonstrate time and again their skill at preventing reality from penetrating their skulls. Could it be that they fear what we say because there’s truth to it? Could it be that deep down they know they’re wrong? That would be an affront to their machismo! Perhaps that’s why they keep returning to thumping on their chests, stroking their decisiveness and demanding that the rest of us bend over.
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You could, with just as much validity, frame this as “liberals and leftists are obsessed with perpetuating these gender role stereotypes.
Bush didn’t say that he had made Putin his “bitch” – MEDIA GIRL did.
Oh, no doubt it isn’t non-prevalent in the Democratic party as well, just not nearly as bad.
But yes, with people like Kos, it’s kind of hard to point the finger at conservatives being the only offenders.
Anti-feminism includes hyper masculinism. Anti-feminism is conservative. Many conservatives use insults that insinuate that thier opponents are feminine.
QED.
Heck, female conservatives insult female liberals by implying that the liberals are masculine. It’s all about gender roles, men dominating women, and not being dominated by women.
Every time I see one of the wingnuts pounding their chests and celebrating what a manly man Bush is (in sptie of the fact that he was a male cheerleader, not usually considered the most macho of activities) I hear the voice of Jane Goodall whispering “look, the charge of the silverback!”
It’s no coincidence that Bush looks like a monkey.
Or, to put it another way, for people who don’t believe in evolution they seem to be going out of their way to prove it’s validity.
I personally am impressed with this media girl publication. This is the first time I have heard of it, but the insight was very bristling. I especially chuckled at thie opening paragraph (tee hee -see I’m trying to show my feminine side, giggling like a school girl-tee hee)
“Conservative macho chic is in. We’ve seen it in Bush, how he tries to swagger when he walks. (We try to ignore how his manner of walking looks like he has something rammed up his backside.) We saw it in the debates, where his smirking Beavis-and-Butthead-like nervous chuckles tried to mask his belligerence, and where he shook Kerry’s hand in a way that said, “I can take you!”? (Wingnuts, if physical prowess is what people want in a President, then why not nominate Mike Tyson?)”
Who ever knew that women could be so funny?! Up until this point, all women were naked to me (I underessed them all with my eyes).
I tell you I am learning more about women every day. First I learn they can speak, and now make jokes, I tell you, what is next? Maybe one day I will even have a conversation with a woman.
You go girl!!!
BritGirl:
you didn’t have to put it another way, “Every time I see one of the wingnuts pounding their chests and celebrating what a manly man Bush is . . . I hear the voice of Jane Goodall whispering “look, the charge of the silverback!”” was the perfect description. I’m glad I emptied my bladder before I read it.
Robert, you’re right — I said it. They did it. They still do it. Femiphobia runs rampant in this country, but especially openly on the right. The joke is the accusation that we feminists are perpetuating stereotypes by pointing out stereotypes in our politics and culture. Is that kind of like blaming rape on rape clinics?
Kim, I heartily agree!
BritGirlSF, that is hysterical!
Pseudo-Adrienne, thanks for the plug!
GOP Tax-cutting guru Grover Norquist had this to say recently about his fellow-Republicans:
Speaking to the same group a few hours later, party strategist Grover Norquist lambasted three Republicans who broke party ranks over the issue of judicial filibusters. He referred to them as “the two girls from Maine and the nut-job from Arizona” – Sens. Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and John McCain.
Sounds pretty “macho” to me.
http://asilentcacophony.blogspot.com
Heh, two ‘girls’. Since when were we allowing adolescent females into politics. No, nothing offensive or chauvinist about that statement.
MediaGirl;
Great posts on KoS! :)
Thanks everyone. I’m blushing … and I’m not even naked.
BritGirlSF:
Every time I see one of the wingnuts pounding their chests and celebrating what a manly man Bush is (in sptie of the fact that he was a male cheerleader, not usually considered the most macho of activities) I hear the voice of Jane Goodall whispering “look, the charge of the silverback!”? It’s no coincidence that Bush looks like a monkey.
1) What reason could you have for bringing up the fact that he was a cheerleader, other than attempting to access the same meme that this thread decries?
2) Do you think that comparing a person to an animal constitutes an argument? If I say that Robin Morgan is sneaky, and then back it up by pointing out that she looks like a ferret, am I being witty, or am I being an ass?
(FTR I have no idea what Ms. Morgan looks like.)
– – – – – – – – – –
Josh Jasper:
Anti-feminism includes hyper masculinism. Anti-feminism is conservative. Many conservatives use insults that insinuate that thier opponents are feminine. QED.
QE huh? “Anti-feminism is conservative. ” That’s why the most visible anti-conservative – you know, the guy with a half-million web followers – is posting about how the feminists should shut up and stop distracting the people from the real issues – you know, the ones that men care about.
If Kos – and the thousands just like him on the left – is “conservative”, then sign me up for the Young Spartacus Brigade.
Many conservatives are anti-feminism. So are many liberals. Our team just doesn’t try to BS women about our beliefs. Many conservatives do indeed use feminizing insults. So do many liberals.
– – – – – – – – – –
media girl:
The joke is the accusation that we feminists are perpetuating stereotypes by pointing out stereotypes in our politics and culture. Is that kind of like blaming rape on rape clinics?
Pointing out, OK fine. But you aren’t “pointing out” a stereotype when you yourself initiate the stereotype. You’re using the stereotype – accessing the meme as an ordinary user, not as some ironic commentator. When you called Putin Bush’s “bitch”, the context of claiming that other, wicked, people make that kind of sexist argument is undermined.
See BritGirl’s comment above – “how can Bush be manly when he was a CHEERLEADER!” Same kind of thing.
– – – – – – – – – –
It’s all very well to work against the devaluation of women in language; I’m more or less on y’all’s side, there. And I surely concede that there are folks on my side of most things that I wish would shut up with the girl jokes. But pretending that your side has no motes in its eye has gotta be counterproductive for the task, no?
Because people can read and remember, and there’s no shortage of “good guys” doing the same damn thing. Criticize the bad behavior qua bad behavior, and all its specific perpetrators, not the set of people who engage in the bad behavior and who happen to be on the wrong side of the partisan fence.
Our team just doesn’t try to BS women about our beliefs.
Oh, foo. You know this is BS.
Mythago, how many left-wing men have you met who claim to be feminist or pro-feminist or what have you?
And what portion of them are full of shit?
Robert, I wasn’t talking about just the language, but the entire ethos that’s being presented. The fact that it seems to work for so many Americans I feel is telling. Especially so when it came to perceptions that decorated war veteran Kerry was the wimp and draft-dodging chicken hawk Bush was the tough guy.
I don’t get so worked up about words themselves — I’m from the “sticks and stones” generation — but rather what the words and behaviors reveal about our culture. And let’s face it, our culture is severely femiphobic. The Rove-Bush crowd has taken it to a point where even simple thought and reflection is feared as a sign of weakness.
This kind of rhetorical posing, however, can and does lead to violent outcomes. That’s why not all speech is protected. Some of it is incitement to riot, to murder, to create mayhem — like the bumper stickers in the original post (the images aren’t in the quoted text above).
Anyway, I wasn’t initating any stereotype. My training is in media, where we learn early on that people hear what they see. (I just saw “Out to Sea” and loved hearing that line in that film!) JFK’s people knew that in 1960. Reagan knew it in 1980. You can be damn sure Bush and Rove know what they’re doing in 2005.
The question is, Can any of us talk about it without being accused of being sexist?
Talk about it, yes.
Do it, no.
You can talk about how racists use the word “nigger”, and you can give examples. When you make up your own examples, and you yourself start calling black people “nigger”, then you’re not talking about it anymore.
But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.
You’re right about not calling Bush a cheerleader, or a chimp, not helping arguments.
But do you ever look at him and think his features look a bit…siminan?
But do you ever look at him and think his features look a bit…siminan?
Sure. He looks a bit like an ape. News flash: so do you. So do I.
Not much like one; but, enough to give our pattern-loving brains a match.
I blame cartoonists for this. (Everything is the fault of cartoonists, the most feared and powerful of all social groups.) It’s just so easy to draw Teddy Kennedy as a pig; it’s just so right. Even a slight resemblance makes the caricature flow.
One thing I like about Amp’s cartoons is that he draws people as people. The ranting right-wing Republican father is a guy. The lesbian feminist is a gal. I suspect that this has its roots in an implicit manifestation of Amp’s stated philosophy of trying to be kind to people, even people we don’t like. (I try to follow that philosophy too; not very well, though.)
Either that, or he can’t draw animals.
Antigone, re-reading that, “News flash” comes across as snarky. It was intended to be funny, not snarky. Sorry ’bout that.
Robert, I wasn’t disagreeing with you about the liberal/conservative thing. I was disagreeing with the ‘at least we’re honest’ line.
I can get as snarky as the next gal. I’ll own up to using sharp language, especially in a rant. I laugh at portrayals of Bush as a chimp, but I don’t call him a chimp. I’ll call him a liar and idiot. Really, if we want to talk caricatures, he’s more like Beavis.
However I still do not believe I was being sexist in pointing out the macho ethos many of the loudest and most powerful conservatives are putting forth. Yes, I used the word “bitch” to describe an image — but that’s the real message I see. I don’t know if Putin even realized it. Through the macho cultural lens of our politics these days, he appeared weak like a woman. How? By letting himself be manipulated into the spouse image in photo op after photo op.
I’m with Media Girl on this one. I live in the Bay Area. I do not habitually insult people based on their deviation from gender norms. Hell, I’m more likely to praise people for it. However, hypocrisy is fair game. Which is what the Bush the cheerleader comment was meant to point out – the whole Republican Machismo thing is essentially advertising. It’s designed to appeal to people’s worst instincts. People who swoon over Bush in his flight suit wouldn’t much care for less than macho images of him, which is exactly why leftists should use them.
I would rather go after him on his fake “just regular folks” persona, but we’ve tried that and it doesn’t seem to be working. It isn’t going to work as long as Americans insist on pretending that they don’t have a class system.
And snark is a perfectly acceptable political tool. In fact, I think leftists need to snark at and undermine and mock the Right a great deal more often. Starting with Tucker Carlson and his idiotic bow tie – does he think he’s a character in “Metropolitan”?
The point is, why should we feel obliged to be nice? The other side has been anything but nice for a very long time, but they keep insisting that WE should be sensitive about their feelings. Bullshit. MediaGirl, you have nothing to apologise for.
Maybe we’re supposed to be nice because we’re girls? ;)
Maybe you’re supposed to be nice because you’re people.
Snark is effective, in the short run. In the long term it seems to drive people away. I encourage you to engage in short-term thinking. ;)
That sounds reasonable in the abstract, Robert, but the (very well organized) right wing media has been doing the ideological equivalent of beating the hell out of liberals with a baseball bat for years. When Limbaugh, Hannitty, Rove and friends agree to stop the mud-slinging and treat politics like a civlized conversation between reasonable adults I will be delighted to join them. Until that happens, the left needs to start fighting back.
Of course I understand why you would like us to be nice and not point out when the Emperor has no clothes. However, given your ideological position, I’m sure you’ll understand why I am likely to take any advice on strategy from you with a very large grain of salt.
Besides, really, for anyone on the Right who doesn’t like it when leftists say nasty things about Republicans I have one thing to – Swift Boat Veterans For Truth. That was about the most nasty, underhanded piece of policial rhetoric I’ve ever seen. That and the rumor-mongering abotu John McCain’s “black baby”. Compared to that comments about Bush in a cheerleading outfit are positively gushy.
Hi,
I may not articulate this very well and hope it is not going to be very long but I am really glad you have this subject up for debate right now. I am in the middle of reading the Second Sex after having just gone through the Feminine Mystique. I live in a very patriarchal male-dominated society (Cairo, Egypt). I am an American woman, who was raised on the West Coast by extremely liberal parents.
I guess the reason for me to post those things may not be obvious to people but I am trying to give context on my own values/assumptions so that my opinions or assertions may be easier to get.
OK, on to the assertions: It continues to shock and surprise me when people belittle each other using words that seem to be equating belittling with women. It especially shocks me when “liberals” do it.
I sort of expect the chest beating conservative idiots like those quoted in the Media Girl comment in the original post above, to try to get away with this (“The democrats are throwing a hissy fit” e.g.) because they are anti-women scum of the earth.
But when Steve Gilliard or Kos or some of the Atrios posters say things like “George Bush is such a cheerleading wuss” or “the chickenhawks are pussies” and then a bunch of other (mainly male) people go “yeah!” it just makes me shocked. I just can’t get why it’s so easy for them to slip into that exact same mindset. Bush is a murderous torture apologist lying scum. For heaven’s sake, isn’t that bad enough? Why is his being a “wuss” or a “cheerleader” #1, relevant, and #2, even considered an insult to him, unless you’re trying to say he is a “feminine man” and THAT’s BAD? Or to put it another way, Why are you using this sort of language to feminize his flaws? That’s an insult to women.
Then when women on these comment threads or in e-mails call someone on this, they get really reamed for it and it ends up with another set of posts by “serious” men liberal bloggers on how we should all be united against the enemy (bush et al) instead of wrangling, and it is the women’s fault for this wrangling. Where are our (women’s) friends? Why don’t liberal guys understand this? It actually is not that HARD. Using feminizing adjectives as specific insults to be used against men, is just saying basically that women are inferior to men and you, a man, are acting like an inferior woman. You can’t say that, it’s wrong.
Also, comparing Bush or Rove sort of behavior with the behavior of a dominant silverback to me is NOT wrong. There is a good deal in common between the two. If apes were a constituency, and if they were part of the social contract, it would be wrong because it would be insulting *them*.
But the using of feminizing adjectives to me is wrong not because it is demeaning to the bad-behaved person (e.g. bush or whoever) but because it is demeaning to women and the subcontext is so clearly that anything identified with women is somehow bad or associated with mockery.
Robert, context matters. Using words like “nigger” or “bitch” to criticize the (percieved) bigotry of public figures towards blacks and women is not the same thing as using those same words to directly attack blacks and women.
When an anti-racist activist, characterizing the way white society views blacks, says “no matter how successful or accomplished you may be, in a racist society you’re still just another nigger,” that’s not the same thing as a Klansman using the word “nigger” to denigrate blacks. To claim they are the same thing, which is what you seem to be doing, is to totally ignore context and meaning, and reduce bigotry to a matter of using (or not using) naughty words.
* * *
That said, I do think the Democrats have been playing the same political games with “anxious masculinity” – they just haven’t been doing it as skillfully. The reason that Kerry was touted as “electable” was because so many democrats thought he could out-masculine Bush – after all, Kerry has personally shot people to death! (Who has Bush ever personally killed? Whadda wimp!)
Democrats didn’t resist a war that most of them knew was a terrible idea because they were terrified of seeming like unmasculine girly-men. Kerry ran away from women’s issues and talked tough against gay marriage because he was afraid that if he didn’t, he’d look like a fag.
The Kos thing, which was annoying, was about an ad. The Bush team, ont he other hand, is using faked science to deny women free access to emergency contraception.
Sure, Markos is sexist, he’s also an ass from time to time. But I don’t think he’s anti-feminist. I leave that to the conservatives, who really are. Not all of them, but the core of the movement certainly is.
Hmmm… I’m rather insulted by the use of the word “conservative” to describe George W. Bush, as I see him as nothing of the kind.
I see Bush as a Wilsonian imperialist who wants to recreate the world in the image of the US.
I also do not see his goal of flooding the US with cheap Mexican labor as being particularly conservative.
I will agree that the neocon rhetoric seems to indicate a level of insecurity in their masculinity.
More on that later.
Sure, Markos is sexist, he’s also an ass from time to time. But I don’t think he’s anti-feminist
Oh, I dunno, throwing a tantrum about “women’s studies” types for questioning the ad and continually going on about how women’s issues just aren’t interesting and not his problem strikes me as anti-feminist. You’re arguing degree and ability to harm, which is fine, but I don’t think you have to buy a CWA membership to be anti-feminist.
The Kos thing was not about the pie ad, it was about his, and his defenders’, reaction to exception taken by a few women (and perhaps men). It was about how women and women’s concerns are shouted down and dismissed as not part of the “important shit” in today’s political landscape.
What we’ve seen in this thread is some of the same attitudes — the I actually agree with you, but you should STFU kind of response. What some people really don’t like is when we don’t back down and be meek like an abused woman is supposed to. The abuser shouts and draws blood and pushes her around, but when she shouts back she is suddenly the offender.
To me, there are good men and the rest, and it doesn’t depend upon political stripes. But as a movement, the conservative movement — and I’m sorry, they are “conservatives,” no matter how unlike Goldwater they might be — exploits what runs through our culture: a subtle misogyny that makes it okay to beat women, shout women down or try to shame women into silence. Robert may claim virtue in the honesty of his misogyny (I hope he was kidding), but with the epidemic of violence against women that has gone on for ages, and the deliberate dehumanizing of women by the right in their effort to take away women’s authority over their bodies, women’s knowledge of their bodies and women’s privacy regarding their bodies, I find it especially offensive.
My original post quoted here has a photo of a bumper sticker: “Liberal Hunting Permit,” implying it’s now time to start shooting anyone who dissents from the government propaganda. What I’ve seen lately in the intensity of the blogosphere is that “Feminist Hunting Permits” have been legal and held by all too many people for far too long. Since when does standing up for equal rights make us deserving of being targeted?
A comment upthread reminded me of another tendency on top of casting male Democrats/progressives as feminine – the tendency to cast female Democrats/progressives as underage (“girls”) or lesbian (as done to Hilary Clinton by Klein in his book).
“My original post quoted here has a photo of a bumper sticker: ‘Liberal Hunting Permit,’ implying it’s now time to start shooting anyone who dissents from the government propaganda.”
I think what the problem with a lot of the liberals is, is that they don’t realize that a lot of people see them the same way they see conservatives.
I find it interesting that you see liberals as “dissenting from the government propaganda,” considering that most liberals have no problem using the government to advance their agenda.
Put another way, the reason that a lot of people dislike liberals isn’t because they are upset that the liberals won’t use the government to enforce their beliefs, but because they see the liberals as using the government to force them out of their beliefs. They see liberals as wanting to take their money through taxes to support programs they don’t believe in, they see liberals as wanting not just to protect a woman’s right to get an abortion but as wanting to force them to provide abortions (i.e. by paying for abortions with tax dollars). They see liberals as wanting to take away their property with environmental regulations (essentially, if someone tells you that you can’t build anything on your property they are telling you that you don’t really own it). They see liberals as wanting to force secular values onto their kids by forcing them to send them to public schools where secular values are taught (for example, if a student believes based on their religion that homosexuality is wrong, should the school teach him that his religious beliefs are wrong, or should the school remain neutral?); they see anti-suburban sprawl legislation as attempts to force them to live in cities when they would rather live in suburbs.
The fact of the matter is that any political philosophy, liberal or conservative, that proposes to use government to achieve certain goals, is going to infringe on someone’s liberty in order to achieve those goals. You may argue that it is worth it, but it seems to me that too many liberals see themselves as championing freedom and don’t see how other people may view their ideas as infringing on their freedom.
I would characterize the neocon’s masculinity as as overconfident. Sorta jock-esque. I see it as an effort to use traditional gender roles to brand Republicans as male and Democrats as female, and in terms of that meme, Republicans are the ones who can get the real important stuff done, while Democrats are stuck in the German KKK (Kinder, Kirche, Kuche (sorry, can’t do umlauts) – kids, church, kitchen).
The bumper sticker reminds me of a T-shirt Matt, Amp and I saw the other day coming out of the grocery store. It read:
“America, love it or get out!” in the 4th section. For some reason it struck a chord in me and made me SO angry. A grocery store, for crying out loud. The onslaught against liberals in this country is one of immense magnitude, and also immense denial.
Robert; it makes your comments come off as incredibly fluffish when this is typical tone that conservatives take with liberals. Be nice? Liberals have gotten into this mess by consistently being too nice and rolling over for the ‘hey, aren’t you the ones that are supposed to be kinder, and gentler?’ routine. My ass. It’s far too common a tactic for conservatives to go way the hell overboard with commentary and accusations, then turn around and try to stifle protest or disagreement from liberals by this blatantly hypocritical notion of minding ones manners, lest the audience get offended.
I for one thought the Jane G. comment was hilarious and dead on. Especially if you are familiar with her voice; that makes it even more comical.
And finally:
Josh;
He did an amazing job of portraying an anti-feminist in the past month or so. Making what he did to be no big deal is bullshit. He needs to understand loud and clear that women are a huge portion of the liberal base, and his rallying attempts, coupled with expectations that women sacrafice women’s issues for the greater good is bullshit. The NARAL commentary, coupled with his absolutely unapologetic spew against women last month knocked him way down on my personal respect list, and prior to that he’d actually had a good bit of my respect as a blog pundit.
I guess y’all read more Kos than I do. I just found his tone obnoxiously antagonistic and format too annoying to deal with.
So, OK. He’s anti-faminist. My mistake.
But I still maintain that anti-feminism is a part of the core conservative ideology. It just gets passed around by some liberals from time to time as well.
Glaivester, I really don’t understand how your comments respond to the quote you cite at the head of your comment. Are you saying that conservatives are justified to shoot liberals because they feel oppressed?
The idea that liberals are trying to tell people how to live is truly laughable. In case you haven’t noticed, liberals have not been in power for quite a few years now. In case you haven’t noticed, liberals don’t try to legislate what’s permissible in the bedroom. Or what can be said in the doctor’s office. In case you haven’t noticed, environmentalism isn’t about whether you can build a treehouse in your backyard but whether the power plant upwind from you can continue to spew poison into the air you and your children breathe and into the water you and your children drink.
If conservatives don’t like taxes, then they might try booting out Republicans. The only time the Federal deficit went down in the last 40 years was under Clinton and Carter — who both cut taxes, too. So how are liberals to blame for taxes? It seems to me the president and congress in power are Republicans, and they can’t seem to print money fast enough. Who’s going to pay for that? I am. You are. And our children and grandchildren, too.
Of course, I could just use the conservative approach: If you think you’re taxed too much in America, go somewhere else.
How’s all that for straying off topic?
**Delurking here**
The damnedest thing about Republicans feminizing Democrats is that Republicans find emotions a-ok when it suits THEIR purposes (example: portraying pro-choicers as cold and logical, while casting anti-abortionists as good hearted, feeling & caring folk). When Democrats get emotional, that’s deemed a “hissyfit”.
What was it that someone said once, that when women enter a profession/do something traditionally coded as “male”, it becomes less desirable to be in that profession/do that thing because it’s been feminized? Notice how thinking and reflecting on actions is considered “wussy” nowdays, while swaggering and blowing stuff up, i.e. reacting w/out thought, is the “manly” thing to do.
Is it also coincidental that professors/teachers/scientists/careers requiring brain power are seen as “elitists”, just as more women than men are entering colleges and universities? Coincidental that the Democrats, who still have more female voters at this point, are being “feminized” by Republicans?
**I apologize ahead of time if I didn’t make myself clear enough for understanding**
You may argue that it is worth it, but it seems to me that too many liberals see themselves as championing freedom and don’t see how other people may view their ideas as infringing on their freedom.
Well, the conservatives have the appeal to fear, greed and power locked up. It’s kinda hard to beat that.
I really don’t understand how your comments respond to the quote you cite at the head of your comment. Are you saying that conservatives are justified to shoot liberals because they feel oppressed?
I wasn’t agreeing with the idea that liberals should be shot, just disagreeing with the idea that liberals want a less intrusive government than conservatives want. Granted, in issues of sex, they want a much less intrusive government; but on financial issues, they want it much more intrusive. If I own a business, liberals want government to scrutinize my hiring decisions and to require me to prove that I am not discriminating against anyone. A lot of liberals want to disarm me and not allow me to carry a gun in self-defense. On issues like abortion, they want more than just that I not intefere with a woman getting an abortion, they want me to be forced to pay for the abortion through my tax dollars. On a lot of other issues, they believe that everyone should be taxed to pay for massive social programs. In Canada, the issue is no longer whether or not gays should have the right to exist, the issue is whether or not those whose beliefs say that homosexuality is wrong have the right to voice their opinions (this is essentially infringement on freedom of speech, and of religion, because religions are not being allowed to have politically incorrect opinions on such issues).
That’s my only point; liberals are not the enemy of intrusive government, they just want it intrusive in other places than conservatives do.
Glav, it’s awfully strange that you state that liberals want you to pay for abortion. I always find it a tad ironic that conservatives would have us fund anything but social programs.
While I gather from your blog that you’re not a war enthusiast to any extreme degree, you must admit that it’s a bit silly to point the finger at liberals wanting family planning funding (much more than just you paying for abortions), while conservatives want us to fund blowing up half the middle east, including children and pregnant women. Hmmm.
BTW, total aside, but are you genuinely a fan of Wendy McElroy and Ifeminists?
He isn’t pointing the finger at liberals wanting the taxpayer to pay for their agenda. He’s pointing out that neither liberals nor conservatives can legitimately claim to be for limited government; both groups are for a big, meddling government. Just meddling in different things.
I actually pretty much agree with Glaivester; it’s true that both conservatives and liberals want government intrusion in some areas.
The difference is that liberals don’t (by and large) embrace a rhetoric that says that government intrusion is always Bad and Evil, so we’re not being inconsistent when we say that some kinds of government intrusion are beneficial.
A more fundamental difference, in my opinion, is that liberal intrusions tend to increase real freedom – by which I mean, increasing the menu of worthwhile options most citizens have – whereas conservative intrusions tend to be about taking freedom away.
Universal health care – including, yes, government-funded abortions – does take a bit of Glaivester’s freedom away; his taxes will be slightly higher, leaving him with a bit less to spend on whatever he’d like. That’s an intrusion on his personal freedom – but not a huge one, because he still has income remaining to spend.
On the other hand, everyone who can’t afford decent medical care has a HUGE increase in their real personal freedom if we have universal health care. On the whole, I think the trade-off creates more worthwhile options for more people.
Glaivester claims that in Canada, people have lost their freedom to dissent against homosexuality. Probably that’s true, if what he means is that Canadians can be prosecuted for saying that homosexuals should all be rounded up into labor camps and shot.
However, if Glaivester means that Canadians can no longer say that SSM is wrong, or that homosexuality is harmful or against God’s plan, without being arrested or fined, then I think it’s obvious he’s mistaken.
(Besides, it seems dubious to bring up what other countries’ left wings do in an attempt to characterize liberals in the USA; left liberals in the USA are the equivalent of centrists in many other countries, after all.)
I think the various attempts to make abortion and birth control either illegal or in practice unavailable illustrates how conservative intrusions tend to be aimed at taking real freedom away.
This is quite silly. Let’s take it one at a time, shall we?
I wasn’t agreeing with the idea that liberals should be shot, just disagreeing with the idea that liberals want a less intrusive government than conservatives want.
Yes, the difference is in what areas of our lives the government has any business meddling.
Granted, in issues of sex, they want a much less intrusive government; but on financial issues, they want it much more intrusive. If I own a business, liberals want government to scrutinize my hiring decisions and to require me to prove that I am not discriminating against anyone.
I am a business owner, and can say that conservatives are not friends of small business. In fact, conservatives have disempowered my business in many ways, including doing everything they can to make healthcare completely unaffordable to anyone but the wealthy. It is in my interest as a business owner to have healthy workers with benefits, but the conservatives don’t seem to want that, they would rather baby Fortune500 pharmaceutical companies and foreign insurance firms who are making 4-5 times the profit of most F500 companies. It is in my interest as a business owner to have a stable economy with government spending under control, so that my customers feel optimistic about the future and want to invest in the future. Conservatives work very hard against that. You want carte blanche to discriminate. I want to embrace the diversity in this country, because that is this country’s greatest strength — and, if allowed to flourish by the corporatocracy running things these days, what will help America succeed in a global captialist marketplace.
A lot of liberals want to disarm me and not allow me to carry a gun in self-defense.
I want to protect my family from people carrying concealed weapons in civilized society, ready to go shooting people because they got cut off in traffic or because their beer was a tad warm. I want to protect my family from lunatics who think they need surface-to-surface missiles to defend their home. I live in a rural area, and feel that firearms can have a role in home security. Police are 20 minutes away at best. But that doesn’t mean I’m all for private militias ready to take everyone down with their Bradleys and grenade launchers. Thanks but no thanks.
On issues like abortion, they want more than just that I not intefere with a woman getting an abortion, they want me to be forced to pay for the abortion through my tax dollars.
Since when do you or anybody have a line-item veto on government spending? If a woman or girl needs to have an abortion, it’s a healthcare issue, and it is in our interests as a society to provide healthcare for all people — everyone — not just the wealthy.
On a lot of other issues, they believe that everyone should be taxed to pay for massive social programs.
Yes, it’s called the social safety net. And it exists because of shit like the Great Depression can happen. It exists because people lose their jobs. Without a safety net, a flourishing and versatile capitalist economy cannot exist …. unless you want mass starvation and suffering.
By the way, why aren’t you objecting to the corporate welfare the conservatives love, you know, the sweetheart tax shelters and government contracts they give corporations before they jump into the private sector … as executives for those very same corporations?
In Canada, the issue is no longer whether or not gays should have the right to exist, the issue is whether or not those whose beliefs say that homosexuality is wrong have the right to voice their opinions (this is essentially infringement on freedom of speech, and of religion, because religions are not being allowed to have politically incorrect opinions on such issues).
Now you’re just not reading the news. Part of the law is that no clergy are required to perform any services against their convictions.
Of course, all of this has to do with reality, with which it seems you have only a passing acquaintance.
Harsh? Sorry. I try to be a good girl, but I guess I’m just born bad!
Media Girl, it doesn’t seem to me that you’re really disagreeing with Glaivester’s central point (or what I see as Glaivester’s central point). You’re arguing that the government intrusions favored by liberals are good ideas, because they create more good than harm; and that conservative policies harm small businesses more than liberal policies do.
As it happens, I agree with you on almost all of that (although I’m opposed to gun bans). But it remains true, as Glaivester says, that liberals do favor some government intrusions on personal freedom.
I don’t see what’s silly about stating that – or why there’s anything wrong with that. Especially at the level of “paying taxes,” some intrusions on freedom are good, because they create more real freedom for the wider society.
I am somewhat a fan of Ifeminists. I don’t agree with everything there, but I like a lot of their positions. I really like LewRockwell.com
I think Robert states my position fairly clearly on liberals and “conservatives.” I also have often ridiculed so-called “conservatives” who tout Bush’s tax-cutting without realizing that his free-spending ways are ultimately causing an “inflation tax,” which media girl #39 referred to:
“they can’t seem to print money fast enough”
“Universal health care – including, yes, government-funded abortions – does take a bit of Glaivester’s freedom away; his taxes will be slightly higher, leaving him with a bit less to spend on whatever he’d like.”
Although my point is that on the abortion issue, it makes me complicit in abortion; on that issue, it’s not just about the money, it’s about the principle. I also object to people who wish to force me to be complicit in abortion calling themelves “pro-choice.”
On the issue of homosexuality, this is what I as referring to.
And I think that Ampersand’s response to media girl was essentially correct. My original objection was to this statement:
“‘Liberal Hunting Permit,’ implying it’s now time to start shooting anyone who dissents from the government propaganda.” (media girl, #33)
which I saw as implying that liberals = “small, unintrusive government” while conservatives = “large intrusive government.”
Well, that’s life in a representative democracy.
Personally, I object to taxes making me complicit in invading Iraq; but I don’t think anyone in a representative democracy has a right to never have the government spend any money on anything they, personally, find offensive. There is no constitutional right to not be offended by government spending, Glaivester.
I don’t think that’s a very substantive approach to the debate. Your complaint makes as much sense as me complaining that people who force me to be complicit in needless invasions – and, for that matter, in the death penalty – calling themselves “pro-life.”
A more substantive approach recognizes that both “pro-choice” and “pro-life” are, in general, terms referring to particular positions in the debate about reproductive rights. Both sides are fond of implying that the other side is hypocritical because pro-choicers don’t actually favor EVERY possible “choice,” and pro-lifers don’t favor EVERY possible measure to extend “life.” Such an approach to the issue is more about scoring points than anything else, in my opinion.
Regarding the over-two-years-old newspaper article you linked to (featuring a Christian who referenced the bible in a way that implied that gays ought be put to death), that’s an outlier. In Canada, folks who are anti-gay have been perfectly free to say so, as long as they managed to steer clear of implicitly or explicitly calling for things like executing gays.
I have to admit, I can’t see how that reading of Media Girl’s original statement is all supportable. I think you infered a lot from what Media Girl said that simply wasn’t in the original text.
And on the war issue, it makes liberals complicit in the war efforts, regardless of whether it goes against our principles.
A ton of government spending pisses me off on principle. Some of it makes me say hooray, though.
*shrug*
Back on topic:
Let me first state here that I do believe that men and women have (on average) innate psychological and emotional differences, much of which is due to biology (some is due to social conditioning, but no where near all). Therefore, I take no offense at analyzing anyone’s behavior in terms of trying to be masculine.
Having said that, it occurred to me that one of the rising stars of the GOP is biologically very masculine. That is, he has injected himself with chemical masculinity. Considering that such hyper-masculinity appears to be associated with violence, aggressiveness, and even rape, does anyone else worry about where someone like Ah-nuld could take us if he used his position to become prominent in the federal government (even if he can’t, at the present time, run for president).
As for Bush, he has a lot of reasons to be insecure in his masculinity (if by masculinity, we mean the characteristics associated with an adult male). His whole demeanor is that of a boy, not a man. When he tries to be macho, he doesn’t strike me as a dangerous and violent jock. He strikes me as a little boy who wants to prove that he is too a REAL MAN! Granted, a destructive little boy, but nonetheless he seems incapable of entering the adult world. In essence, he makes the same mistake little boys make; assuming that the key to becoming a man is to over-develop the characteristics of masculinity that distinguish it from femininity, rather than those that distinguish it from puerility.
I don’t think that’s a very substantive approach to the debate. Your complaint makes as much sense as me complaining that people who force me to be complicit in needless invasions – and, for that matter, in the death penalty – calling themselves “pro-life.”?
It wouldn’t matter to me so much if so many pro-choicers didn’t insist on calling pro-lifers “anti-choice” and object to being called “pro-abortion.”
I think my reading of media girl’s statement came from the use of the term “government propaganda.” I saw that as juxtaposing liberals to the opposite side from the government. Perhaps my interpretation was based on my libertarian leanings, which make me see government as generally a monster always wanting more control; that is, she meant the propaganda of the current administration and I thought she meant the propaganda of government in general.
There is more to freedom than freedom from government. For example, there’s freedom from crime, which demands a powerful and active government ruled by law, not men. There’s freedom from poverty, which may be arguable as a right but desireable by all. Freedom from slavery, which can be perpetrated by corporations as well as government. Freedom from discrimination based on anything but merit, which is hard to measure but something just about everyone, except perhaps some white men, can understand. Freedom from having to breath and drink poisons someone is dumping into my neighborhood just so he can make a few bucks. Freedom from abuse of contracts. It goes on….
I don’t consider my freedom from being shot by you to be a particularly offensive infringement on your rights. Maybe you would disagree. But society has an interest in preventing people from shooting each other, and experience tells us that means not having people packing heat as they go about their days … and nights. That the 2nd Amendment is couched in the premise of a “well regulated militia” makes the issue at least debateable. Again, I’m not for banning guns, but it seems to me that Tec-9s are not necessary to ride the bus with peace of mind.
In other words, “freedom” does not necessarily always mean small government. Otherwise freedom would mean anarchy, which would be a recipe for violent disaster and economic ruin.
The question is how the government governs. To make all abortions illegal, for example, would effectively make all women of childbearing years breeder slaves of the state, and last I checked slavery was outlawed in an amendment to the constitution.
But the problem is, someone who is pro-life, can also be said to be pro-choice. They might support a woman’s right to choose, but would never choose to have an abortion themselves. An anti-choice person can also be pro-life, but being anti-choice does not automatically make them pro-life.
The number of liberals I see online worshipping Dean –despite his long record of neoliberalism– tells me that most liberals are caught up in the cult of machismo as much as are most conservatives. It’s all about surfaces, not substance. Appearing “angry” wins the laurel wreaths, not any history of having done anything terribly helpful for the public with that “anger.”
Once or twice on this blog and elsewhere, I posted links that attempted to give the lie to our “humanitarian” bombing in the former Yugoslavia. There was even one from the Guardian (hardly a nest of incoherent, unwashed, conspiracy nuts) that pointed to the ever-popular long arm of Haliburton as a major factor in that “humanitarian” mission. I never got any response to that posting, and most liberals still insist that there was something noble about those bombings that is sadly lacking in Iraq. Myself, I see little real difference except that a Democrat was at the helm in the former. Same hypocrisy, same macho bullshit targetting civilians and not the elite.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Most Democrats, deep down, want their very own Ronald Reagan– Hollywood-style-old-West machismo and all. Nothing else explains it. :( Democrats will prove themselves more open-minded than Republicans by casting Hilary as John Wayne next time out, but for some reason, that doesn’t cheer me. Machismo with different chromosomes is still machismo: Destructive and worthless to the health of society.
Don’t ask me about the huge argument my partner and I had about his continued posting on Kos over the weekend, either. :/
alsis39,
I agree with you. I often tell my wife, who felt very comfortable with Bill Clinton, that all he did was make democrats feel okay with being numb.
He trashed welfare; fell over himself running away from gay marriage; bombed the former yugoslavia and which country was it – Libya – the day after his canoodling with Monica came to light (how’s that for machismo); picked two supreme court judges who don’t vote much differently from their so called moderate republican colleges; watched over the Democratic party while it systematically disenfranchised black voters (See “The ‘New’ Criminal Justice System: State Repression from 1968 to 2001,” Monthly Review, July 2001); signed the 1994 Violent Crime Control And Law Enforcement Act, which offered up a cop’s cornucopia of $30.2 billion in federal cash; in 1996 Clinton gave us the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which massively expanded the use of the death penalty and eviscerated federal habeas corpus; also in 1996 we got the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act,” which eliminated the undocumented person’s right to due process and helped bring Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) funding up to four billion annually.
Then we have Kerry saying we need to reach out to anti-abortion democrats…the same Kerry who can’t get it right on gay marriage.
I don’t see much difference between Democrats and Republicans. Both are anti-feminist as parties at their core. Here I define feminism broadly, to include reduction of white racism, reduction of industrial prison complex, gay marriage, equal treatment and access for abortion, equal wages for equal jobs, universal healthcare, an end to the diet industry; an end to imprisoning people with severe disabilities.
Bush continues what Clinton continues. What Bush has done is galvanized Democrats. Now they have someone they really don’t like as a rallying point, somewho will helps them forget their priviledge and complicity.
As for your husband continuing to read Kos, I always wonder when other men justify continuing to support another sexist man. If Kos had said, “racism is not our issue. Let’s get back to the issues at hand,” who would admit to reading him?
What disappoints me, but does not surprise me, is that more men don’t see this fact. Kos, Clinton, Kerry,Bush, they all act very anxious about their masculinity and seem anti-feminist by degrees.
Fabulous points, Jay. I agree with just about everything.
Jay: I agree with you. I often tell my wife, who felt very comfortable with Bill Clinton, that all he did was make democrats feel okay with being numb.
Right on! Plus, he made it OK to say, “I feel your pain,” as if that were sufficient in and of itself.
“…As for your husband continuing to read Kos, I always wonder when other men justify continuing to support another sexist man. If Kos had said, “racism is not our issue. Let’s get back to the issues at hand,”? who would admit to reading him?”
Well, we’re not married, but– yeah, I did pretty much ask him that. He didn’t really have any response.
“What disappoints me, but does not surprise me, is that more men don’t see this fact. Kos, Clinton, Kerry,Bush, they all act very anxious about their masculinity and seem anti-feminist by degrees. ”
Yep. Just as feminists are expected to cringe at the supposed epithet of “hairy-legged dyke,” et al, liberal men are expected to cringe at the supposed epithet of “unmanly.” I personally have tried to cultivate the attitude of, “What exactly is so awful about being a hairy-legged dyke, anyway ? Is there something inherently unworthy about hairy legs or same-sex attraction, just because I’m a woman ? What, exactly, would that be ?”
Most people who favor such techniques are used to simply having the “fact” of such “unworthiness” accepted as gospel. It’s fun to pull the rug out from under them sometimes and watch them try to scrabble back up on their feet.
If liberal men were serious about being anti-war, or serious about fighting the victimization of the powerless in this country, they’d try the same technique. As it is, when you see the Kos-bots in action, it seems like what really bugs them is that they can’t run the master’s house themselves because those darn Republicans got to the top floor first. Actually tearing down the house –or at least moving out of it– doesn’t seem to interest them all that much.
“But the problem is, someone who is pro-life, can also be said to be pro-choice. They might support a woman’s right to choose, but would never choose to have an abortion themselves.”
Is the fact that I have never raped anyone enough to make me anti-rape in your eyes? Why should people who consider the fetus to be a human life consider the fact that someone would never have an abortion themselves enough to make them pro-life?
If you think that someone who doesn’t believe that abortion should be legal is anti-choice, why is it wrong to call someone who wants to force me to pay for their abortion anti-choice? Why should I agree to let you set the terms of the debate?
My broader point is that a lot of the hatred betwen conservatives and liberals comes from the fact that neither side tries to see themsevles the way that others see them.
And on the war issue, it makes liberals complicit in the war efforts, regardless of whether it goes against our principles.
But turn that around for a second. How do you look at Bush for making you complicit in the Iraq War? Has it occurred to you that maybe some people who view the fetus as a human life look at you the exact same way for wanting to force them to pay for abortions?
My point is that people on both sides tend to view people on the opposite side as monsters, whose motivation can only be explained by evil and greed. Sometimes I wonder if it would help the political debate if the rank-and-file of both sides took a minute to ask themselves how the other side sees them. (I say “rank-and-file” because I believe that a lot of the leaders on each side truly are monsters, whose only concern is power).
As I’ve said about four billion times before, Glaivester, it’s besides the point for me to see you as you see yourself. I understand very well how you see yourself. I just don’t care, because more importantly than how you see yourself is this: Your POV has as one of its fundamental tenets the principle of YOUR RIGHT TO INTERFERE WITH MY LIFE. You will step on my life, all over it, to save something you think is more worthy of life than I am. Even though as a pro-choicer, I would never do that to you. I would never force anyone to abort, and I would never carp at, say, paying through taxes to school your hypothetical twelve kids. This, despite my lack of “moral” support for your hypothetical decision to have those twelve kids.
As I’ve said about four billion times before, pro-life and pro-choice are not perfect opposites on a single spectrum: The former has as a basic tenet the RIGHT to intervene in my life. Pro-choice, OTOH, does not in any way contain any right on my part to intervene in your life.
I don’t care how you see me. I also don’t care if you are a “monster” or not. It’s enough to me that you consider it your right to manipulate my body to suit your own beliefs. That itself is a monstrous belief. The belief itself is terrible enough.
mediagirl, thanks! I’m really starting to dig the phrase “anxious masculinity.”
Lee: “he made it OK to say, “I feel your pain,”? as if that were sufficient in and of itself.” Truly this statement is a credo of anxious masculinity. “I feel you pain but dammit don’t expect me to change! I’m talking about my feelings after all!?!”
alsis39: “As it is, when you see the Kos-bots in action, it seems like what really bugs them is that they can’t run the master’s house themselves because those darn Republicans got to the top floor first. ” Kos-bots! Excellent.
maybe men who exhibit anxious masculinity get the nickname Kos-bots?!
Your POV has as one of its fundamental tenets the principle of YOUR RIGHT TO INTERFERE WITH MY LIFE
Right. And your POV has as one of its fundamental tenets the principle of YOUR RIGHT TO INTERFERE WITH THE CHILD’S LIFE.>
As you note, it’s not a perfect mirror-opposite; you don’t want to interfere with Glaivester’s life. But you both want to interfere with someone else’s life.
Yep. And since that “someone” is a THING, and in MY body, not yours, keep your grubby hands off it. Thanks.
Jay wrote:
Truly this statement is a credo of anxious masculinity. “I feel you pain but dammit don’t expect me to change! I’m talking about my feelings after all!?!”?
Bingo. And you are more than welcome to use the phrase “Kos-bots,” though I preferred the term a feminist blogger used not long ago in some similar dust up. She mentioned the “Chicks In Front” attitude of the 1960s antiwar patriarchs, and thought that calling them their modern-day counterparts the “Chicks-In-Fronters” might work. Plus, it would help prevent the further feeding of Kos’ ego, which gets plenty to eat already, if you ask me.
Your POV has as one of its fundamental tenets the principle of YOUR RIGHT TO INTERFERE WITH MY LIFE. You will step on my life, all over it, to save something you think is more worthy of life than I am. Even though as a pro-choicer, I would never do that to you.
My point is that YES, YOU WOULD, you just think that the way in which you interfere in my life is trivial, so it doesn’t count.
Most people who really hate liberals do not hate them because of ways in which liberals do not wish to interfere (e.g. abortion), they hate them because of the ways in which they see liberals as interfering with them (e.g. gun control, high taxes).
and I would never carp at, say, paying through taxes to school your hypothetical twelve kids.
Which is saying, in effect, because you wouldn’t mind being forced to pay for my decisions, I have no right to mind being forced to pay for yours or someone else’s. Because you see being forced to pay for schooling my hypothetical twelve kids as a trivial infringement on your rights, you don’t see that other people might see being forced to pay taxes to pay for social programs, etc. as being stepped on.
The high taxes argument is such a smoke screen. Bush is far more a federalist than what a republican should be, and yet this is ignored? Come on already, the administration is all about tax payers paying huge amounts for all sorts of things that are extremely controversial, and yet you’d have the audacity (yes, sheer freaking audacity) to point at liberals, as if we have some sort of monopoly on the schtick. Take some accountability here, for gosh sake.
And since that “someone”? is a THING
Right to the crux of things. Thanks.
Every oppressor in history has dehumanized the people he or she was oppressing. They aren’t people; they’re animals. They aren’t real people; they’re a sort of sub-human. They aren’t people; they’re things.
Feminism is predicated on the (true) idea that throughout history, men have treated women as things, instead of as human beings. I believe that a positive movement to correct this historical injustice has been radically sidetracked by the abortion issue, where to be “feminist” means (by and large) being obliged to endorse a worldview that views unborn humans as objects.
Feminists ought not to concern themselves overmuch with the question of why a fusty old male traditionalist like myself isn’t a feminist. But it seems that they would be vitally interested in the question of why women like my mom – socially liberal, theistically progressive, gender-equality-believing – aren’t feminists.
Neither my wife nor my mother nor my aunt nor my grandmother are feminists, although all are very strong women who believe in equality of the sexes. Why are they not feminists? Because they cannot endorse the idea that the children they bore within themselves were objects.
“My point is that YES, YOU WOULD, you just think that the way in which you interfere in my life is trivial, so it doesn’t count…”
???
“…Because you see being forced to pay for schooling my hypothetical twelve kids as a trivial infringement…”
??????
G, are you sitting down ? Good. I think you need to know that I actually don’t regard the payment of taxes as an infringement at all– “trivial” or “serious” doesn’t even enter into it. However, it’s always appreciated when fetus-worshippers start yammering about “their tax money” and whatnot. It’s a poignant reminder that you aparently can’t talk about saving precious fetuses without talking about saving your precious $$$ as well. “Saving” in your scenario invariably having largely to do with controlling women who aren’t living your team’s dream of proper femininity. Money being always an excellent vehicle for exercizing control over others.
I’m sure your family and friends find you a wonderful person, G. However, it shouldn’t really surprise you that knowing little else about you except your views on abortion, I am humbly grateful to count myself as neither your relative nor your friend. However, I’m sure you’ll have a grand old time building bridges with Kos. After all, he says that abortion is not an integral part of the Democratic platform. Perhaps he, too, deep down, just thinks his taxes are too high and that slutty women should stop “infringing” on his rights. Why, you can’t expect poor and working women to get coverage for abortion, much less for birth-related and childcare-related expenses, if it costs so much as a dime’s worth of assistance from him. I mean, how can that be right if he doesn’t have the power to personally subject each and every last breeder female out there to the Kos test of approval ?
Really,G, I think he’s the sort of non-conservative you need to go hold hands with. Machismo –as exhibitied in the various and sundry ways in which men trumpet their right to control women– is a great unifier and party-spanner. On the other hand, I’m pretty much a lost cause when it comes to machismo’s charms, and quite proud to be lost, Thanks.
Patriarchy: It’s what’s for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner !
Actually, Kim, I agree with you about Bush, and in fact, about almost all of the sorry lot in power today that call themselves conservatives.
The one thing that I appreciate about liberals in respect to private property is that they are honest about believing that it is unimportant. Most liberals are willing to say that they want to take your money to pay for their vision of society.
Bush, on the other hand, and his GOP cronies, continuously pay lip service to private property rights while continuously inflating the currency and upping spending in a way that a Democrat could never get away with.
Actually, on that thought, I also want to put out there that any analysis of Bush’s psychology (e.g. that he is insecure in his masculinity) based on how he conducts himself in public is likely to be flawed. I don’t think that we see the REAL George W. Bush in public. I have a feeling that he is a lot more intelligent and cunning that he lets on. Essentially, he likes to give the impression of being stupid so that people will trust him, and will excuse his lies as mere mistakes. Sort of like Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects.
I have heard that those who know him personally says that he comes across as a lot nastier and meaner in private than he does in public. (A lot like his mother, who has a reputation for nastiness, but whom a lot of people think is a sweeet old gransmother due to the fact that she wrote a book and claimed that it was written by her dog – credit Steve Sailer for that reference).
Considering how many people who hate massive government spending (or claim to) but who absolutely adore Bush (ahem Rush Limbaugh, ahem Richard Poe, ahem Sean Hannity), I think that the only appropriate model to compare Bush to is that of a cult leader. And I’m not talking about some harmless hppie cult, I’m talking Heaven’s Gate, Jim Jones, Branch Davidian-type cult.
You know, Robert, Amp and other have talked millions of times on this blog as to why a fetus is not a full-fledged human. You don’t agree, and I don’t agree with you. So you really might as well save the bandwidth required to acuse pro-choicers of the “dehumanizing” effect of abortion. That’s a core tenet that is never going to be agreed upon, so why keep wasting time on it ?
“Neither my wife nor my mother nor my aunt nor my grandmother are feminists, although all are very strong women who believe in equality of the sexes. Why are they not feminists? Because they cannot endorse the idea that the children they bore within themselves were objects.”
Robert, it’s funny how awfully confident you are that conservative women, including those personally known to you, have never aborted. Has it occurred to you that you are the last person on earth your wife, mother, aunt, sister, etc would tell if she had had one ? I mean, given your own very clear attitudes on women and how we should live, I gather that a woman in your family would readily choose silence over dealing with your reaction.
But, please, continue maintaining that illusion. “Your women” are “your property,” and as you fancy yourself a moral person, surely your property is held under your protective moral mantle as well. None of “your women” could ever have aborted and greeted the process with relief. Nope. Never. [Yawn.]
Alsis, where have I said or implied that conservative women, whether known to me or not, haven’t aborted? There are people in my family who have aborted, and they told me about it. The straw man version of me that you have constructed, maybe nobody would talk to; but that version exists only in your imagination.
You may well yawn; the constant invocation of ideas and concepts that are not only not to be found in my writing, but are explicitly contradicted by that corpus’ plain text, is incredibly boring. However, it’s your fabulation; bore yourself silly.
You, and many other feminists, are welcome to continue to insist that “a fetus is not a full-fledged human” and “a fetus is a THING” are interchangeable concepts, which can be switched between however the tactical political argument is running. But my point – unaddressed by you, other than with a lame digression about your telepathic knowledge of my family’s abortion history – stands: there are a hell of a lot of women who are in agreement with feminist ideals but who will never stand with you while you are dehumanizing their children.
Is it really so difficult to acknowledge the humanity of our offspring? Does supporting a woman’s ability to choose her own life path require such an absolute derogation of what a fetus is? I don’t think that it does; of course, such an acknowledgement would mean that abortion would be something that would be hard and confusing and full of nuance and heartbreak.
Which, I suspect, is how many women do indeed view it. It’s certainly how the women in my family view it. And you will never be able to reach those women so long as you are compelled to dismiss the complexity of their experience with objectification and dehumanization.
“Alsis, where have I said or implied that conservative women, whether known to me or not, haven’t aborted?”
Here: “Neither my wife nor my mother nor my aunt nor my grandmother are feminists, although all are very strong women who believe in equality of the sexes. Why are they not feminists? Because they cannot endorse the idea that the children they bore within themselves were objects.”?
If you were not implying that conservative women avoid abortion at all times, what were you implying, Robert ? Are you implying that it’s all right to abort if one tells herself that fetuses are NOT objects, and that the woman who tells herself this is more moral than the woman who doesn’t spend time reflecting on this question before aborting ? Is there a specific number of times that a woman would have to berate herself as an inhuman murderer before she could be considered “dues paying” in your universe ?
“Is it really so difficult to acknowledge the humanity of our offspring? Does supporting a woman’s ability to choose her own life path require such an absolute derogation of what a fetus is?”
Actually, what I think it requires is for my choice to remain mine, and for your female relatives’ choices to remain their choices. The fetus itself isn’t the primary issue here. The woman who carries it is the primary issue.
That’s why I could never be a pro-lifer, Robert. It seems to require a collossial arrogance that I simply find abhorent. I can read Amp’s links about when an embryo starts to exhibit human characteristics, when a fetus can be said to show brain activity, and so on– until the end of time. What I CANNOT, and will not, try to do, is get inside your wife’s head, my best friend’s head, my neighbor’s head, and tell them that my perception of how important this is overrides their own. I CANNOT, and will not, tell them that it’s all right to abort if you already have six kids, or if this future kid has Downs, or if you’d have to go on welfare for this future kid to eat, and so on, and so on. That’s between them and their partner’s/families/god/whomever, and nothing at all to do with me.
The trouble with your POV, Robert, and with Glaivester’s, is that it implies that the opinion of someone who doesn’t carry the future kid has as much or more influence than that of the person who does. Despite what Glaivester says above, I don’t have any trouble comprehending that people feel that way. Comprehending them, however, doesn’t make me interested in holding hands and singing “kumbaya” with them. There’s a difference.
“I don’t think that it does; of course, such an acknowledgement would mean that abortion would be something that would be hard and confusing and full of nuance and heartbreak.”
You sound like that res ipsa character who was here a month or so ago to prattle about how liberals and lefties aren’t talking to each other about the great importance of “responsibility” vis a vis reporductive choice. No matter how many folks showed up to explain that they DID discuss it, and often, and that there was evidence of such deep consideration on this very space available for the taking, he had his tack and he was sticking to it.
Amazingly enough, Robert, I don’t need you to explain to me that reproduction, or choosing not to reproduce, requires more emotional and logical engagement than does picking a nice place to have pizza for dinner. I could do without the implication from yourself and other pro-lifers that a pro-choice position is synonymous with lack of reflection. In fact, just the opposite is true: It’s the very importance of the question that leads me to heartily wish that people like you and Glaivester would just let me alone to draw the conclusions that will work for me. If you were serious about friendlier relations with the other side, that would be the way to demonstrate it. I’ve spent years thinking over these questions, far longer than I’ve spent actually being physically able to bear children, and far longer than I’ve been sexually active. If I wake up tomorrow with a proverbial blue test, I’ll have more than enough to think about and discuss with my partner and friends without having to deal with your clamor on the subject as well.
I think you need to know that I actually don’t regard the payment of taxes as an infringement at all”“ “trivial”? or “serious”? doesn’t even enter into it.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you don’t believe in property rights. Therefore, you can take away everything I have beyond that which is absolutely necessary to survive, and still maintain that you are not interfering with my life.
Which is essentially my point. The reason so many people dislike liberals is that they see the essential liberal philosophy as being that I can only possess material goods at the sufferance of the government. I don’t have any fundamental right to anything I buy, earn, or make; if the government (or whoever is in charge of society) wants to take everything I have, it has every right to do so, and I am a selfish greedy bastard if I object. If I am responsible and work hard, and someone else is irresponsible and decides that they want to have children they cannot afford, I am expected to support them, because I have no fundamental right to the fruits of my labor.
Come on already, the administration is all about tax payers paying huge amounts for all sorts of things that are extremely controversial, and yet you’d have the audacity (yes, sheer freaking audacity) to point at liberals, as if we have some sort of monopoly on the schtick. Take some accountability here, for gosh sake.
I’m not saying that liberals have a monopoly on it. I am saying that conservatives don’t. The general tone of the original post here struck me as “conservatives want to control our lives, liberals want us to be free, and the conservatives hate the liberals because the liberals don’t want the conservatives to control them.” My point is that a lot of conservatives dislike liberals because they see the liberals as wanting to control them.
Both liberals and conservatives want to make taxpayers spend money on stuff that many of them believe in morally wrong. I don’t see why people are so surprised that conservatives resent liberals for it the same way that liberals resent conservatives.
Also, I don’t see why I should take accountability for the actions of an administration that I didn’t vote for and that I actively oppose, just because we both label ourselves “conservative.”
“Therefore, you can take away everything I have beyond that which is absolutely necessary to survive, and still maintain that you are not interferring with my life.”
[snort] I’ve been through variations on what folks like you might mean by “everything” or “survival” in this context about a billion times, Glaivester. So you’ll have to excuse me if I decide to pass on it this time, as I already have a good idea of what you might mean. I’ll leave you free to go reach across that great divide with somebody else. Have fun.
Either you guys are just plum stupid or you’re just striking a pose to stir up controversy. It may be news to you, but liberals did not invent taxes. If you think you’re taxed too high, then why don’t you try moving to another country and see what taxes they pay? Taxes are dues you pay to live in this country. Taxes built the roads you drove on, the sewers you crap into, the water lines. Taxes pay for the armies that stand to protect this country. They pay for the police who protect your kids and the fire department that puts out the fire in your kitchen.
If you tink you’d be better off without taxes, then you’re a bigger fool than you seem already. Frankly, I do not want to live or do business in anarchy. There’s no profit in it. There’s no peace in it.
Now if you’re arguing for some sort of line-item veto on how your taxes are spent, well get in line. There’s plenty of crap I don’t want my tax dollars paying for.
But you say I oppress you because you pay taxes? Puhleez!
Your claim that an embryo or fetus is a child is also unfounded on any sound science. Is your ejaculate full of babies, too? Maybe we should outlaw masturbation? Maybe it should be illegal for any woman to turn away from a gleam in a man’s eye?
Meanwhile the rights of women are well established, and being forced into being a breeder slave of the state is not American. Maybe those of the Old Confederacy might disagree, but I’m sorry, slavery simply is not an option.
What I find interesting is that the highest abortion rates are in these “red states” where everyone is supposedly so moral. Chart here. If conservatives really were serious about reducing the number of abortions, then they would get serious about preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place. But that would mean real sex education, making contraception legal and available to teenagers, subsidized for the poor, and stopping this silly and dangerous propaganda programs from the right that put out information like “condoms cause cancer” and “the Pill makes you infertile.”
But we don’t see that, do we? No, that would be too empowering for women and girls. No, if we did that, then women would not be punished for having sex.
So please, spare us all the crocodile tears and come back when you have something rational to propose, instead of a slavery-or-prison option for women who get pregnant.
Media girl, I love you!
Warm fuzzies aside, you made the point that popped into my head.
Property rights and social responsibility can occur in tandem and harmony. Saying that liberals don’t respect property rights is silly. Yeah, maybe Henry David Thoreau didn’t believe in property rights, and philosophically it’s likely that many liberals even admire his logic, that doesn’t mean the majority of US liberals especially are out to take your property. The notion of cherry picking which programs your money should go to is unreasonable. Hell, we’d need to create a department to oversee which people’s taxes went where to make everyone happy, which would make me unhappy, because my tax dollars would be spent paying for such a silly department.
Let me state my position clearly.
I am not advocating non-payment of taxes, or saying that people should never be forced to pay taxes for something they find immoral.
I am not saying that only liberals want to force me to pay for social programs.
What I am saying is that it is hypocritical to say that only conservatives want to interfere in other people’s lives, or to argue that forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions is not interference in their lives.
You may argue that such interference is a good thing, and like Amp, you may say that the interference is minimal compared to the benefits obtained, but it is hypocritical to argue that liberals are not interfering in other people’s lives.
My second point was that the a lot of people who resent liberals do so because they feel the liberals want to interfere with their lives, not because they want to interfere with the liberals’ lives.
You may argue that such interference is a good thing, and like Amp, you may say that the interference is minimal compared to the benefits obtained, but it is hypocritical to argue that liberals are not interfering in other people’s lives.
My second point was that the a lot of people who resent liberals do so because they feel the liberals want to interfere with their lives, not because they want to interfere with the liberals’ lives.
Again you get back to not liking how your taxes are spent. The fact is that you’re benefiting from living in this society — this Great Society — where if you fall flat on your ass, you get a second chance. The social safety net is what makes our capitalist economy thrive. All you have to do is peek back through time via Dickens to see what capitalism without the social safety net is like.
I’d say more, but you’re a moving target, Glaivester. It’s ludicrous to try to equate your objection to how tax dollars are spent with our objections to enslaving women as breeder slaves or charging women with murder for not putting their bodies, their health and their lives on the line to carry through on a pregnancy.
Me: “Alsis, where have I said or implied that conservative women, whether known to me or not, haven’t aborted?”?
Alsis, quoting me: Here: “Neither my wife nor my mother nor my aunt nor my grandmother are feminists, although all are very strong women who believe in equality of the sexes. Why are they not feminists? Because they cannot endorse the idea that the children they bore within themselves were objects.”?
Alsis:If you were not implying that conservative women avoid abortion at all imes, what were you implying, Robert ?
I wasn’t implying anything. I don’t generally imply. I generally come right out and say it. However, your assumption about my implication leaves me scratching my head. I don’t see the connection between what I said and the implication you draw from it.
Are you working from a starting assumption that all women who abort are doing so under your paradigm that a fetus is an object? Because I don’t think that’s the case.
As for the rest, it seems to boil down to an objection that other people’s beliefs have moral penumbras that affect all of our lives, or at least an objection in the case of reproduction. I can see a strong case that abortion is a deeply private matter. So is marriage and a lot of other things, and we still have state intervention into them, let alone social intervention.
“Are you working from a starting assumption that all women who abort are doing so under your paradigm that a fetus is an object? Because I don’t think that’s the case.”
Nice reversal. :/
One more time, Robert. It was you, not me, who wrote:
“Neither my wife nor my mother nor my aunt nor my grandmother are feminists, although all are very strong women who believe in equality of the sexes. Why are they not feminists? Because they cannot endorse the idea that the children they bore within themselves were objects.”?
IOW, it was you, not me, who introduced into this thread the notion that pro-choicers considered a zygote/fetus/what-have-you to be an object. Furthermore, in your scenario, it is most assuredly implied that conservatives do not sully themselves by aborting, and that this is what keeps the women in your life from embracing feminism. Backpedal all you want, but the implication is obvious, not to mention more than a tad weird, as if no mother were pro-choice and no childfree woman were pro-life. Please. You know better than that, since you read the same threads here that everyone else does.
NOTA, but I wish there was some kind of “Golden Eel” award, for slippery posters, Robert. Because you’d win it hands down. The amount of joy you so clearly take in messing with feminists’ heads never ceases to amaze me.
“…So is marriage and a lot of other things, and we still have state intervention into them, let alone social intervention.”
I don’t see the parallel here, and I’m also not sure what you mean by “intervention.” It would be quite a trick for the state to “intervene” in a marriage while the husband or wife was still a zygote, embryo, or fetus. Are you writing another chapter of the “Terminator” saga, or what ?
IOW, it was you, not me, who introduced into this thread the notion that pro-choicers considered a zygote/fetus/what-have-you to be an object.
It was you who said in comment #65, referring to the unborn, that “And since that “someone”? is a THING…”
Please acknowledge that this was your statement, or if I have grossly misread what appears to be a relatively simple thesis, provide a correction.
My statement had nothing to do with whether the women in my family had had abortions – or even if they were pro- or anti-choice. My statement was quite simply that the women in my family were repelled by the predominant meme in the hardcore pro-choice element of the feminist movement that fetuses are things, not people.
You may think that this has necessary implications as to their abortion status and beliefs regarding same is obvious; I don’t see it as even being discernable. Sorry. As you say, there are lots of pro-choice moms and pro-lifers with abortion histories.
The amount of joy you so clearly take in messing with feminists’ heads never ceases to amaze me.
Have a logically coherent philosophy and my ability to “mess with your head” disappears.
“Have a logically coherent philosophy and my ability to “mess with your head”? disappears.”
[shrug] Can’t help you there, Mr. Eel. I find my philosophy plenty coherent.
To wit: I don’t presume to know what’s best for other women and the children they may or may not have. I respect women’s right to decide for themselves whether or not to have kids. I do not respect unborn zygotes, fetuses, or what-have-you, at the expense of adult women. I expect the same sort of respect from other adults, and I have zero interest in feigning any love for other adults who can’t grant me that simple courtesy.
Whether or not you find that coherent enough is your own damn problem.
As for my use of the word “thing,” I beg your pardon. Do you find that offensive ? Tough. I don’t much care for the notion that a hypothetical fertilized egg gets to be more of a “someone” than I get to be. Shall we split hairs owing to the fact that the English language makes it hard to describe a living thing that is neither purely inanimate nor capable of surviving on its own ? Is it a “thing” in the same way that a sock is ? No. A sock is not alive. But a fertilized egg is also not a “someone” in the same way that I am. It can’t survive outside my body, for one thing.
Don’t agree ? Fine. As I’ve said countless times, sire all the kids you want, and keep your grubby paws the hell off my body and anything that might be in it.
Now, this may give you added fuel for your own smug assertion that pro-choicers are somehow to blame for the fact that we can’t sell your female family members on the notion of feminism. However, I think you know that one left-of-liberal feminist who has no kids and zero patience for your ongoing semantic games does not make up the entire feminist movement. Perhaps they’d respond better to someone like Kim (basement), for instance. She’s a devoted mom with another kid on the way. Or perhaps they’d reject her out of hand, too, for some other reason. I have no way of knowing, and in any case, there’s nothing I can do if they choose not to wear the label “feminist.” I care less about what labels they wear than whether or not they respect my own right to run my life as I see fit, truthfully.
Kim,
About the “America: love it or leave it” type jingoism-
That attitude used to make me near homicidal until I read Al Franken’s wonderful take on it. He explains that the love it or leave it folks love America like a three year old loves their mommy. Mommy/America can do no wrong, and can never be criticized because the love it or leave it types are too immature to experience anything but three year old type love. Those of us who dissent and criticize our country, however, have the love for America that is like the mature true love that a grownup has for their long-term spouse. We know that we can love our country, but still find fault with it, and love it while trying to change it for the better.
So now, when I see a bumpersticker that says “America: love it or get the fuck out”, I laugh, seeing the insecure three year old that is driving the car.
hello. i’ve never posted here before but felt the need to speak up. first of all there is a difference between being “pro-life” and thinking that fetuses aren’t objects. as robert said, there are people who think fetuses have rights, etc who have had an abortion. the difference is “pro-life”=abortion is illegal. clearly people who have had abortions struggled with it (as alsis said, it’s not like deciding where to go to dinner) but the fact still remains that the “pro-lifers” don’t want to give people that option at all.
on the issue of feminism. i really hate when people toss around the word “feminism” like it means one particular thing. it does not. there are many different varieties of feminism. at the broadest level a feminist is someone who believes in the equality of the sexes (politically, socially, economically, etc). it is not necessarily a pro-choice, liberal, socialist thing. there are pro-life feminists and conservative feminists and a million other kinds of feminists.
“The question is how the government governs. To make all abortions illegal, for example, would effectively make all women of childbearing years breeder slaves of the state, and last I checked slavery was outlawed in an amendment to the constitution.” – Glaivester
“But turn that around for a second. How do you look at Bush for making you complicit in the Iraq War? Has it occurred to you that maybe some people who view the fetus as a human life look at you the exact same way for wanting to force them to pay for abortions?” – Glaivester
In the midst of those two statements, the poster “Robert” effectively compared (as many pro-Lifers do) the dehumanizing statements of the slavery supporters last century as a slam against those who support a woman’s right to control which parasite leeches nutrients out of her body and which does not. I can’t help but find it sadly amusing that the problem isn’t immediately obvious– even someone who can state the case as clearly as Glaive’s first quote still doesn’t grasp that once you’ve understood that it is slavery for the state to force women to produce offspring against their will, ever, you are not allowed to continue saying “but still women shouldn’t be able to control their bodies because there are *people* eventually coming out of those bodies.”
I was further disappointed in you, Glaive, when, after your diatribe on libertarian economics and the Liberals’ supposed hatred of small-business, you skipped entirely over your fellow business owner (MediaGirl)’s response to why you were entirely incorrect.
I find that when most people stop to sort through most of the propaganda and labels, the intelligent, honest, thoughtful types I speak about these things to tend to find themselves more allied with progressive ideals than they realized at first. The key is to get them to stop proudly proclaiming “I am a ____ican/ian” and start listening to the ideas one at a time, and thoroughly discussing them. To the point of this reply, Glaive, is that I cannot comprehend how someone as intelligent as you can recognize intellectually that abortion prohibition is womb-slavery, and then fail to understand that it then becomes your obligation as a fellow American to help provide the financial, legal, and social support for that to never happen to anyone.
That is what it mens to be a society of liberty.
means… what it MEANS to be …
there are pro-life feminists and conservative feminists
who must be very, very lonely.
But those afternoon high teas (i-teas ?) at Lutece’ are to die for.
I’d likek to interject here that I, too, do not think of the zygote/embryo/fetus as a “thing,” any more than I think of a woman’s lungs or heart as a “thing.” Until childbirth, the zygote/embryo/fetus is part of the woman, no more. The state has no claim on sovereignty over this one part of the woman’s body any more than it has claim over a woman’s leg or left eyeball.
Maybe if the men arguing for enslavement of women stopped to consider what it would be like if the state made claim on their testicles, they’d maybe learn something.
As for feminists, you can’t paint us all with the same chauvinist brush.
1. anonymous124…@yahoo.com Jul 21, 8:42 am show options
Newsgroups: alt.feminism, alt.politics.liberalism, alt.politics.democrat, alt.politics.democrats, alt.politics.libertarian
From: anonymous124…@yahoo.com – Find messages by this author
Date: 21 Jul 2005 05:42:18 -0700
Local: Thurs,Jul 21 2005 8:42 am
Subject: JOHN ROBERTS: A GIFT TO THE DEMOCRATS FROM JESUS
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Halleluyah! Praise Jesus! John Roberts is the best thing to happen to
the Democrats since Nutt Goongrich. Lets see now: We have Georgie
bringing the Supreme Court back to the 19th century with a return to an
8-man, 1-woman court. Clearly, King George believes that the place of
the woman is pregnant, barefoot, and in the kitchen. With no chance
for an abortion.
Roberts is a judicial activist who has advocated (on record) using the
Supreme CT to overthow Rowe v Wade. The Democrats need to hammer the
message home to every woman of child-bearing age that if Roberts is
approved, they will soon no longer have the right to have an abortion.
Even if they’re raped.
This is an issue so explosive that even church-going women who are
supposedly pro-life will respond to. Most of these women just go along
with the majority opinion but actually want the right to choose.
Democratic obstructionism should be maximized. This is free
advertising for the Democrats. Bush wants to turn the Supreme Court
back to some all-male 19th century creation. He wants to take away a
woman’s right to choose. This could even break apart the uneasy
coalition in the Republican party between the pro-choicers and the
pro-lifers.
This could well be the DUMBEST decision Bush has made so far! Praise
Jesus, and pass the tax-free status. That’s another thing: Time to
examine whether some of these “Christian” conservatives deserve a tax
break.
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