Blog Archives

Feminists Must Fight For Men’s Rights?

MRAs blame feminism for problems caused by patriarchy

MRAs blame feminism for problems caused by patriarchy

Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) frequently say women should fight for men’s rights. Like this guy:

Men face sexism too. Who advocates for us?

Or this:

Why aren’t you mentioning the fact that sexism against men gets ignored?

So I ask this:

Why do MRAs insist that women must fight for them when they feel no obligation to fight for women?

Because they never do. Read the rest of this entry

Moms Jailed Cause Childcare Unaffordable. GOP Superego Hides Solutions

Kids playing in a park

Kids playing in a park

Poor moms face no-win situations where conservatives are concerned.

Moms shouldn’t work outside the home, because kids need them every second.

But POOR moms SHOULD work outside the home.

Which leads to another double-blind:

Poor moms must work outside the home, even when they can’t afford childcare.  Read the rest of this entry

Strip Searches Strip Our Liberty

Liberty Lost

Liberty Lost

As the law stands, anyone can be strip-searched when arrested, for any offense, at any time.

Oddly, it was the more libertarian justices of the Supreme Court who declared it so — the ones who usually claim to value liberty over all.

Albert Florence had been stopped for a driving violation. Once taken into custody he was told to “turn around. Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks.” He felt humiliated, “It made me feel like less of a man,” he said.

Naomi Wolf points out the absurdity. Justice Kennedy suggested that a 9/11 bomber could have been stopped for speeding. And strip searching him would have prevented the attack? Plans to blow up the twin towers may have been concealed in a body cavity?  Read the rest of this entry

Will the Rights of Fictional “Persons” Trump Actual People?

reproductive-choice-button-0580Should the rights of a disembodied, fictional “person” trump the rights of someone whose actual body and well-being could be gravely affected by a court ruling?

That’s a question the Supreme Court will be answering later this month.

Through the magic of legal fiction corporations have gained personhood. And now the “person” that is Hobby Lobby Inc. argues (without evidence) that some forms of birth control may cause abortion, making the Affordable Care Act’s free contraceptive directive a threat to (his? her?) religious tenants.

That this judicial question is under consideration is remarkable. Arguments before the court had centered on whether corporations can hold religious views. But what if a woman’s beliefs — or lack thereof — allow for contraception? Why must she follow the dictates of her employer instead her own conscience?

Where there’s a conflict between the rights of fictional bodies and actual bodies, surely the latter should win out.  Read the rest of this entry

No GOP War On Women? 

GOP war on women

GOP war on women

Republicans deny waging war on women. 

Well, how about the list below, which includes cuts to life-saving programs that mostly affect women.

Too many Republican legislators have:

  • Voted against equal pay for women
  • Sought to make miscarriage subject to criminal investigation
  • Sought to make women’s health insurance cost more than men’s
  • Cut funds to women’s clinics that screen for STDs and cancer of the breast and cervix
  • Insisted corporations should have more rights than women, when it comes to contraception. Even though it is women’s bodily and financial well-being that are at stake
  • Insisted that women seeking abortion undergo a vaginal probe — mirroring sexual assault
  • Refused to consider rape or incest, or a women’s health or life, when legislating against abortion
  • Said stupid stuff about rape, like insisting that it can’t cause pregnancy

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan’s budgetRead the rest of this entry

Denying Jesus Service at Arizona Cafes

arizona lgbt lawIf Jesus walked into a restaurant would good Christians refuse him service? After all, he said,

Even as ye have done unto the least of these ye have done it unto me.

Surely the Arizona Legislature would rank gays and lesbians among “the least,” given the bill they just passed allowing business owners to discriminate against LGBTQ folk.

Read the rest of this entry

Too rich, too thin, too in control of women’s bodies

Wolf_Of_Wall_Street.jpg.CROP.rectangle3-largeA rich Wall Streeter looks in the mirror and sees someone at the cusp of poverty.

An anorexic looks in the mirror and sees someone who is fat.

One is addicted to money. The other to starvation. As each grasps for power.

Enter Mike Huckabee.

***

In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough.

Read the rest of this entry

Men Mustn’t Pay For Pregnancies They Cause

2009-10-08-IMG_14331No fair! Men shouldn’t have to pay for women’s maternity care!

Oddly, that’s a recent GOP argument against the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, which says insurance companies can’t charge women more than men.

It’s left extremist men complaining, “No babies will ever pop out between my legs, so why should I have to pay for someone else’s pregnancy?”

After all, men have nothing to do with getting women pregnant. Right?

Next, they’ll be whining that babies should have to pay for their own care!

Yet babies don’t ask to be born.  Read the rest of this entry

Credit Bill Too High? Don’t Pay!

George Clooney on democracy

George Clooney on democracy

You buy an expensive computer on credit and later think, “That cost too much, so I won’t pay.”

Really?

That’s what anyone who refuses to raise the US debt ceiling is saying.

They are confused.

They think that not raising the debt ceiling means not raising the credit limit. They are actually refusing to pay a debt we’ve already incurred.

If the US refuses to pay their debts for the first time in history, chaos will erupt.

No one will trust us anymore.

And instead of saving money, interest rates will rise, and we’ll end up spending even more. One-month Treasury bill rates are already spiking.

(And, just one week of government shutdown — another matter — cost us $1.6 billion. Yet the deficit-phobe GOP doesn’t care?)

Still, more than half of Republicans think the US can miss the debt-limit deadline without serious trouble.

Most likely, Read the rest of this entry

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