ProWomanProLife

There’s a seminar tonight at Carleton University put on by the Womyn’s Centre. I think the idea is to have normal pro-life men and women go so as to maybe ask a reasonable question or two. Plus, I find these events usually teach me something about the pro-abortion mindset.

So, the information:

Tonight, Monday, March 15

A panel discussion addressing access and legal issues surrounding reproductive freedom and women’s health

Room 214, Residence Commons

6:30-8:30 pm

You and, admittedly, a couple dozen million Canadians besides. The government decided not to mess with the national anthem. A couple of people are unhappy, including the senator who reportedly came up with the daffy idea. Here’s what she had to say:

If it’s been pulled, it’s an example of how much violence I think there is against women. This is such a relatively small thing to do.”

And you, Nancy Ruth of Ontario, are an example of why people don’t take feminists seriously.

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Andrea adds: “Me, and a couple dozen million Canadians.” But mostly me, I’m quite sure.

Another good column about how women in Canada are doing well, thank you very much.

What the author fails to understand, however, is that I–and women like me–are the problem. What I’m supposed to do is gripe more about injustices levelled against me. And the one injustice I do gripe about, daily, is the one I’m supposed to support with a smile. Alas.

Identify and explain five (5) elements of gender architecture and how they apply to your everyday life.

Failing that, read this amusing piece by Tasha Kheiriddin and chuckle to your little heart’s content.

Apparently it now includes easy access to Plan B in military clinics and hospitals.

After recommendations from the Pentagon’s Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee and a successful vote to include the morning after pill on the list of drugs that military facilities should stock, officials announced the Department of Defense will begin making the pill available in its hospital and clinics around the world. It’s the latest step taken by the Obama administration to reverse women’s health policies made during George W. Bush’s administration, and fulfills a request from 2002 by women’s health advocates. “It’s a tragedy that women in uniform have been denied such basic health care,” said Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “We applaud the medical experts for standing up for military women.”

I thought it was somehow against the rules of feminism to conform yourself to arbitrary beauty standards in order to please the males in your lives. Evidently, there’s something I’m not getting.

When U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid proposed a five per cent levy on elective cosmetic surgeries and procedures to help fund the US$848-billion Senate health care bill last month, a Robin Hood-style logic appeared to be at work: let those who can afford Botox or facelifts subsidize low- to middle-income citizens currently without health care to the tune of US$6 billion over 10 years. What he didn’t foresee was that those very low- to middle-income Americans would take to the streets to protest the so-called “Bo-tax” as an infringement of a perceived enshrined right to smooth foreheads and surgically enhanced breasts.

“Washington leave our boobs alone” read a placard at a rally in New York’s Times Square organized by a Park Avenue cosmetic surgeon. “The tax directly affects me,” Irma Cadiz, a 33-year-old hairstylist saving for a US$7,000 tummy tuck, told the New York Daily News. “If I have a heart attack, will they tax that, too?” she asked, revealing how conflated elective cosmetic procedures have become with necessary medical intervention. Opposition to the Bo-tax from the American Medical Association further muddled the matter. As did its denunciation by the National Organization for Women (NOW), the largest feminist lobby in the U.S. NOW’s president Terry O’Neill argued the Bo-tax unfairly targeted women, who comprise 90 per cent of cosmetic surgery recipients—especially middle-aged women facing workplace discrimination who rely on sometimes risky cosmetic procedures to “freshen” their image.

I’m confused. Am I supposed to care what I look like, or not?

A nice little piece that I missed earlier this month about how men and women are different.

The author, Marni Soupcoff, describes varying reactions from men and women to rejected articles. As a woman who pitches articles to newspapers I can faithfully report I have a great deal of experience with rejection. And I can honestly say it never occured to me to challenge those rejections. You don’t want my article? OK. Can I do something else to please you? Change it? Make it better? Make you a latté? I’ve actually grieved articles (it was terrible, it will never be published) on the assumption that it will be rejected only to find, nope, it was fine, it’s going in and the editor just didn’t have time to get back to me.

What’s my point? I’m not sure, only that it is empirically true that men and women are different. That men will interact differently with women in the workplace. And that they should, in fact, interact differently with women in the workplace. Because we are different. (And any good editor should reject this blog post for using the word “different” four times in rapid succession. However, what I don’t do on my own web site is reject myself. Nothing but loving, nurturing, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and doggone it, people like me” here.)

I think I can ignore these gender-crazed “scholars” when they denounce Thomas the Tank. But do read the article about it, because the whole thing is quite humourous, starting with the lede:

A researcher has blown the whistle [Editor's Note: Toot, Toot! All aboard! Now nowhere in the article does it indicate that the whistle-blowing researchers said that. But I can imagine that if you are gender-dissecting Thomas the Tank and need motivation, that might be one way to get some. Chugga chugga, chugga chugga, chugga chugga--TOOT, TOOT!] on Thomas the Tank Engine, saying the classic series was pushing “conservative political ideology” on to kids.

As a side note, I have learned that the Little Engine that Could and Thomas the Tank are not related. Not even cousins. Interesting. Further musings lead me to believe that The Little Engine that Could is also foisting conservative ideology on children. And then I wonder: was the research grant not large enough to flesh out important details like this? Hmmmm.

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Brigitte is no expert on which children’s tank engine is more misogynist than the others: But she did like this piece.  Especially:

The ridiculous part (not that the whole Thomas-as-misogynist thing isn’t more than a little ridiculous in itself) is that the professor in question, Shauna Hilton, has a three-year-old daughter who loves Thomas. Hilton — a political scientist at the University of Alberta, Augustana — seems to be of the view that it’s good that her daughter watches the show and plays with Thomas trains and toys. She just thinks it’s important that she talks to her daughter about the episodes and points out the ways in which they are sexist, anachronistic and potentially damaging. Oh, Mommy, what fun!

For some reason, I saw a connection between the above and this piece about how the British government is considering a ban on parents who smoke in front of their children to protect the little ones against the, um, well, obviously to guard against the, ah, something or other having to do with parents who may, you never know, indulge in habits that aren’t government-approved.

Is it me, or are people worried about the wrong things?

No, you cannot express any kind of concern for young white males who are suddenly finding themselves behind other groups at university thanks to affirmative action.

This PC nonsense is so annoying. If you disagree with that particular university president, then you ought to debate her on the merits of what she’s saying. That would be the grown-up thing to do.

Apparently, Opposition parties are boycotting the 20th anniversary of the Polytechnique massacre because “Conservative policies have ‘rolled back the fight for women’s equality and safety.’”

Citing the elimination of the court challenges program and the move to abolish the gun registry as reasons that the Conservatives have endangered women, Bloc MP Nicole Demers said the ceremony remembering the victims was a “hypocritical gesture”. And Liberal MP Anita Neville said: “I find it difficult to stand beside a minister who chooses not to advocate for women, who chooses to follow the party line, who chooses to endorse the elimination of the long-gun registry.”