ProWomanProLife

This is a post about euphemisms and double standards.

Carol Downer was just a guest on CBC’s The Current. I got a call (thank you) to tune in, and only caught the end, but Carol advocates for Do It Yourself Abortions. Only she doesn’t call them abortions. She calls an abortion  ”menstrual extraction.” Funny that, I’m pretty sure women who get unexpectedly pregnant don’t generally feel crappy because it’s just one heck of a period.

So the lady is not a doctor, a nurse or a medical person of any kind and she wants to do abortions at home, but won’t call them that.

Introducing your “women’s rights advocates,” my friends.

_____________________

Brigitte adds: If you have the stomach for it, go read the description Wikipedia has for “menstrual extraction”.

A longer article about what makes a feminist. It’s hard to nail down and this conversation is going to continue for as long as there are women on the planet, but one thing remains clear:  

And these divisions don’t begin to address the biggest bone of contention of all: abortion. The writer and movie director Nora Ephron answered the what-is-feminism quiz simply by announcing: “You can’t call yourself a feminist if you don’t believe in the right to abortion.” Many liberals agree. Yet most Grizzlies oppose abortion; Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, who lost in November, even rejected it in the cases of rape and incest. Palin has praised young women who carry unintended pregnancies to term as “strong,” “smart,” and “capable.” It seems unlikely that the Grizzlies can successfully recast feminism as antiabortion, but surveys suggest that women have been growing less sympathetic to the proabortion position—so who knows?

I’m not sure I care whether feminism can be recast to include pro-life women. I am, however, confident that women will come round to seeing being pro-life as a reasonable position to take, regardless of their position on trillion dollar deficits, national defence or any other matter.

Reading this piece, long on rhetoric, short on substance and reason, made me think of wispy clouds and how Heather Mallick’s words are like them. Or they could be like cumulus clouds, puffier, taking up even more space whilst lacking similarly in weight:

Abortion rights across Canada are like computer-generated word clouds, or to use a more old-fashioned analogy, ordinary sky clouds. Abortion availability is good and prominent in bigger cities in bigger provinces, wispy in small towns and the more backward provinces like New Brunswick. And in P.E.I., as always, it’s a heartless and empty sky.

You know, I have no idea what she’s talking about… And I suspect she doesn’t, either.

In this morning’s Ottawa Citizen, a journalist asks: “… as women happily display themselves as sex objects. It raises the question: Is feminism dead?” I don’t know if feminism is dead but I wanted to point out that feminism is not about women displaying themselves as sex objects but about equal rights and equal opportunities. And when it comes to equal rights and opportunities, there is often more than meets the eye.

Take abortion for instance: poster procedure for women’s rights and equal opportunities… Or is it? I don’t need to start linking to previous posts: just scroll down long enough to find the next post on campus free speech, informed consent, pregnancy crisis centres, abortion counseling or post-abortion trauma (post-abortion what??) and you will find a world that doesn’t really want women to know what’s going on with abortion as long as they get it done. How equal is that? And I’m not even getting into coerced abortion (coerced what??), whether the coercion is physical or psychological.That’s it girls, just go and be whatever you want to be: firefighter, CEO, Secretary of State. Just don’t bother us with your babies. Everybody is treated equally here, like a man.

Go ahead and soothe yourself thinking that women still have a long way to go because there are 50-foot posters of half-naked girls adorning the outside walls of La Senza. It reminded me of walking back to the office on a warm summer afternoon, a couple of steps behind a co-worker who had just had her breasts, ahem, “enhanced”. Yes, men were ogling. But that’s — arguably — why she had it done. Where’s the inequality? The last time I went to La Senza, it was a woman’s store selling women things. Unless this has changed radically, the titillating images are selling something to women, not men. Poor taste? Probably. Inequality? No. Just like a boob job.

Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla is shedding light on the short-sightedness of Internet software like Google Adwords: apparently, the bits and pieces are showing poor judgment in choosing which sites to place Government of Canada ads on, including a site that demeans women by showing them naked. See the article here.

Now, I am the last person who will defend posting GoC  ads on such websites. But the concern about demeaning women is a little over the top, especially coming from a Liberal MP. After all, these are the same people who think that maternal and child health in developing countries must include abortion, a mentally and physically damaging procedure. How is the commoditization of childbirth and childrearing working for us after all? Divorce rates are soaring, as are rates of paediatric mental illness and rates of weak-men-who-can’t commit and women-who-have-much-better-things-to-do-than-mothering.

It reminded me of a recent episode of House where the “good doctor” meets a starry-eyed idealist medical student (see Office Politics). Asked if she would lie to a patient to save his life she answers “Of course not!” then asked if she would lie to her grandma after receiving an ugly tea cozie for Christmas she said she would… “but that’s not the same thing!”. House replies “So you won’t lie when it matters but you will when it doesn’t. Congratulations: you’re fired!”

Apparently, demeaning women by making sure they don’t learn the nitty-gritty about abortion is fine… as long as you don’t show them naked. That would be demeaning.

Those are the words of an abortionist, Dr. Elizabeth Newhall. She has a vision for a day when the fact that women have abortions becomes totally invisible. Right now we are aware of the injustice, because we have private clinics. If only all doctors would just provide abortions as part of the regular checkup… Listen for yourself.

That’s the sort of thing they should be up in arms about, right?

LONDON — A leading Muslim cleric has sparked controversy in Britain by claiming that it is impossible for men to rape their wives.

Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, who is president of the Islamic Sharia Council, told a website that “sex is part of marriage” and suggested that husbands who commit such acts should not be prosecuted.

“Clearly there cannot be any rape within the marriage,” he told The Samosa website. “Maybe aggression, maybe indecent activity… Because when they got married, the understanding was that sexual intercourse was part of the marriage, so there cannot be anything against sex in marriage. Of course, if it happened without her desire, that is no good, that is not desirable.”

Today’s Globe has  a large spread on successful women. Nothing wrong with that. But I take issue with the tone. And I take issue with targets, which Sheelagh Whittaker, Director of Imperial Oil and Standard Life, advocates for in a taped message. You can listen here. (If you do, you’ll note her defence of targets isn’t very substantive and amounts to a desire for poor quality candidates everywhere. Furthermore, it’s quite condescending…”We’ll be equal when there as many incompetent women working as incompetent men”?? Really? You rose to the top on sentiments like that?)

I’ve been reading up on the female and male biological disposition in books like George Gilder’s Men and Marriage and other places too. And it has opened my eyes to the ways in which gender differences work. One thing is that men are naturally more aggressive and competitive than women. This is one of Gilder’s points and I happen to agree.

This means that in a competition in the workforce or in politics, men are, all things being otherwise equal, more likely to win. That doesn’t offend me. It just means Margaret Thatcher is that much more of a success. (And there are many other areas where women “win” since we are all so keen in our culture today on playing the gender warfare game. And we need things to be so very equal. One for the men, one for the women. It reminds me of spending time with my small and adorable nieces. Share! Your turn is over! That’s not yours! Thing is, they are both below the age of four. We really shouldn’t be doing this anymore as adults.)

The problem with targets is it is clear evidence that women cannot succeed without discriminatory policies (against men) working in their favour. I find that very patronizing, to use a word feminists wouldn’t like. This sort of discrimination causes unrest amongst women and men alike.

Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll be working for Sheelagh anytime soon.

Senator Ruth has come out with a book in which, one must concede, she is talking to herself. The title? Speaking Truth to Power! But she is power these days, alongside all of her feminist friends. Now if I got a meeting with her, that might be called speaking truth to power. Though only over my cold, dead body would any book of mine be so entitled. Too cliché.

Table of contents and introduction, here.