From the WebUrbanist, 12 monuments to women. I’m good with Queen Victoria (the ultimate have-it-all woman; she had a busy career and a busy family life way back before work-family balance was in fashion) and Molly Pitcher, not sure about the Red Light woman, and somewhat intrigued by the others. An interesting feature to ponder on a nice, warm evening.
Angelina Jolie: “Pregnancy great for sex life”.
______________________
Rebecca snorts: I started to make a list of all the ways in which Angelina is unrepresentative of normative motherhood, but my mother swiped the In Touch I was using for research purposes.
I am a bit conflicted on Bill C-484. I don’t object to it, but in a strict legal sense I don’t believe it to be necessary. I’m also far from convinced it would work as a deterrent or do anything to protect pregnant women from violence. But as a political expression of a society’s belief that unborn children are human and fragile and as such, deserve protection, it’s a fine dandy piece. So I guess that puts me in the “pro” camp, if somewhat reluctantly.
It’s not an easy topic, and deciding whether to be in favour or agaisnt Bill C-484 can be difficult. But scary? Not one bit, unless of course you are so entrenched in your pro-abortion views that you consider any indication that society may find the indiscriminate disposal of tiny human beings morally objectionable a threat to your position. I find it hard to believe that’s where most pro-choicers are.
Following this story from France. Please take the time to read this. And explain to me why, as far as I can tell, North American feminists have nothing to say about this issue.
__________________________________
Andrea adds:
In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt,” said the student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery on Thursday. “Right now, virginity is more important to me than life.
Um, how to say this. Clearly it is not, because you had sex. And now want to pretend that you did not.
As for why North American feminists have nothing to say, that much is clear. It is not Christianity they would be criticizing, so why bother.
I’ve been away on vacation for a while (yes, very nice thank you), and did not get a chance to keep an eye on this story, which I had briefly noted as I was fleeing town for the beach.
The annulment of a young Muslim couple’s marriage because the bride was not a virgin has caused anger in France, prompting President Sarkozy’s party to call for a change in the law.
The decision by a court in Lille was condemned by the Government, media, feminists and civil rights organisations after it was reported in a legal journal on Thursday. Patrick Devedjian, leader of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement, said it was unacceptable that the law could be used for religious reasons to repudiate a bride. It must be modified “to put an end to this extremely disturbing situation”, he said.
The case, which had previously gone unreported, involved an engineer in his 30s, named as Mr X, who married Ms Y, a student nurse in her 20s, in 2006. The wedding night party was still under way at the family’s home in Roubaix when the groom came down from the bedroom complaining that his bride was not a virgin. He could not display the blood-stained sheet that is traditionally exhibited as proof of the bride’s “purity”.
Mr X went to court the following morning and was granted a annulment on the grounds that his bride had deceived him on “one of the essential elements” of the marriage. In disgrace with both families, she acknowledged that she had led her groom to believe that she was a virgin when she had already had sexual intercourse. She did not oppose the annulment.
It appears, as you’ll see if you read the rest of the story as well as this one, that in France at least feminists and others are properly outraged and prepared to fight this “dangerous aberration”. I’m no expert on French marriage laws, but I never thought being in a position to “prove” one’s virginity by bleeding on the bedsheet was an “essential element” of marriage – or that it ought to be.
So my question to Canadian women’s rights groups and assorted feminists is: If you’re able and willing, more or less at the drop of a hat, to dig up decades-old cases of women being prosecuted in the United States for ending the lives of their unborn children as one of the main arguments against Bill C-484, can you say a little something against a small but tenacious portion of a religious culture that promotes and enforces such barbaric and retrograde views of women that failure to bleed on the wedding night is some kind of dishonour?
Anybody?
Assisted suicide bill passes California Assembly and Belgian legislators seek to legalize euthanasia for the unconscious and children.
California:
AB 2747 would authorize total sedation without nutrition and hydration for depressed and confused patients, whether or not their natural death was imminent. The bill would also allow family members to order the death of a mentally disabled person when a nurse opines they have less than a year to live, similar to Terry Schindler Schiavo’s death at the hands of her husband.
[…]
This is the fourth time that the assisted suicide bill has been pushed by Assembly Democrats Patty Berg and Lloyd Levine. But this year, instead of proposing to have doctors administer lethal injections, AB 2747 aims to produce death by sedation abuse, a clear violation of life-affirming medical ethics. Until now, total sedation has been used only when death was imminent – within hours or days – and when strong pain medication was not enough. Medical ethics require that food and water (nutrition and hydration) not be removed when sleep-inducing drugs are used, since doing so would cause unnatural, as opposed to natural, death. Yet AB 2747 pushes total sedation even if patients have not rejected food and water.
Belgium:
A group of legislators in Belgium is seeking to expand the practice of euthanasia to include those who are unconscious, as well as minors, according to a recent article in the Spanish newspaper Hoy.
The initiative, spearheaded by former Senator Jean-Jacques de Gucht, was originally launched in 2004 and failed, the article states.
The new proposed legislation will allow people to create a type of “living will” that will allow doctors to euthanize them if they are unconscious and unable to give consent.
While euthanasia has been legal in Belgium 2002, the existing law has prohibited the practice under the above-mentioned circumstances.
Doctors who refuse to kill their patients under the law will be required to refer them to a doctor who is willing to do it, reports Hoy.
Ah, progress. What would we do without it?
An adorable story from this morning’s National Post:
SURREY, B.C. -Andrew Binns, five-year-old, took charge after his mom Shawna tumbled face-first down a flight of stairs, knocking herself unconscious. Andrew first called his father and then 911. That done, he prepared a bottle for his 23-month-old brother Ethan, to calm him down while they waited for paramedics to arrive. “You never know what your kids can do until thrown into that situation. I’m very proud of him,” Shawna said. “He tried to call my husband first. He didn’t answer, so he called 911.” Shawna had cracked her nose badly and was bleeding. Though not able to get up, she still heard a bit of the 911 call. “I guess they asked him where mommy was bleeding, and he said, ‘She’s bleeding on the carpet.’ “
According to this news story, kids aged 10 to 16 spend something like 6 hours A DAY in front of a screen. That’s almost a full-time job… yikes. And 90 per cent of children in this country aren’t getting enough exercise.
I guess planting the little nippers in front of the tube is easier than playing with them or driving them to soccer practice. But really, that’s no way to parent. And since 90 per cent is awfully close to 100 per cent of children, it means virtually every parent in this country can – and should – do better.
Because there are protest ideas that just aren’t worth it:
MONTREAL — Canadian women are being asked to send their panties to the Burma embassy in Ottawa to protest the actions of the country’s military regime.
The call for the underwear is part of the Panties for Peace! campaign, launched by rights activists in Montreal.
Activists say the campaign is meant to send a message to Burma’s authoritarian leaders, who reportedly fear contact with women’s underwear will sap their power.
It’s not because these guys are both idiotic and nasty that we have to imitate them.
Two stories jumped at me this morning. One about Julie Couillard (Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier’s ex-girlfriend, of past biker-gang and inappropriate décolletés fame) and how she feels “destroyed” and “abandoned” and how “her name has been dragged through the mud” and the other about Miley Cyrus and how “hurting” she is after her monumental bedsheet-picture-on-the-cover-of-Vanity-Fair gaffe.
At the risk of sounding dreadfully old-fashioned [what, again? – ed.], what could you possibly expect? If you spend as much time in close contact with bikers as Ms. Couillard did (marrying one such dude and dating another, one of whom – I forget which – wound up dead in a ditch), or if you display too much skin in inappropriate places as both Ms. Couillard and Ms. Cyrus did, yeah, that kind of thing will stick to your name. It’s called CONSEQUENCES. That doesn’t mean you can’t bounce back from that sort of setback – I’m a huge believer in redemption. But in order to redeem yourself you have to start by acknowledging that you made mistakes for which you feel truly sorry instead of complaining about how “hurt” you are.
You want to be in control of your life, lady? Start by taking responsibility for your actions – the good ones and the ridiculously bad ones.
______________________
Evening update: Make that the former foreign affairs minister…