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Salon.com hits a new low, and we still have 8 weeks to go

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Some of us are delighted that Sarah Palin is leading by example, proving that women can have families and careers, no trade-offs required.  Others see her rather differently: according to Salon.com, normally a rabidly partisan but reasonably civil and thoughtful site, she’s not in fact a woman.  On account of, well, there are too many choice quotes here to pick just one.  Let the classiness of the following wash over you like the slime from a tipped over dumpster, and if you still think there isn’t a culture war, read the whole piece.

Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms. What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right. The throat she’s so hot to cut is that of all American women.

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I did not think that women being downgraded to second-class, three-holed chattel would be a pressing concern in my lifetime. I thought it was like polio, or witch burning — an inhumane error that had already been corrected. But after eight years of Republican hegemony, and now the potential ascendance of this sheep in ewe’s clothing, I am so mortally offended I feel like it is really time for women to be angry, hardcore and disgusted again.

…

Relax: The war is God’s plan. (Or whatever.) Women, even if they are vice president, can always look pretty, worship their husbands in the fear of God and never, ever resist invasions from unwanted sperm.

Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She’s such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it’s easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.

Nope, I’m still not a feminist, not as long as this frothing monument to vulgarity and hatred is part of that particular club.

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Brigitte wonders: Why would anybody assume children are necessarily the result of invasive and “unwanted” sperm? What if these women happen to want more kids? Shouldn’t it be their – what’s the word I’m looking for – oh yeah, choice?

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Andrea thinks perhaps the author is Heather Mallick’s sister?

What does this say about our priorities?

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Barbara Kay in the Post is returning to one of her favourite themes: the inequity to men built into the mechanisms that award and enforce child custody. Keep in mind that this is a conservative-ish pundit writing in a conservative-ish newspaper. Lamenting the unfairness confronted by men has come to be the libertarian-right’s answer to mainstream feminism – superficially speaking truth to power, but really just going over the same talking points and not convincing anybody who didn’t already agree with you.

You know what would be really brave? Writing an editorial telling people that if they want what’s best for their kids, they’ll find a way to stay together and make it work. Yes, fathers are often treated poorly by the courts; yes, children need good relationships with both of their parents; yes, there are incentives that reward false accusations of abuse; yes, some women abuse the system. But better and fairer divorce is a pretty pathetic solution to this pervasive mess. Look, I’m all in favour of doctors developing better ways to treat bullet wounds. But a civilized society puts the emphasis on preventing people from getting shot in the first place, not just providing excellent care once they’re already wounded.

Not so fast, Rabbi

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A Saskatchewan rabbi criticizes a Catholic bishop who is protesting Morgentaler’s Order of Canada medal.  Here is the full text of the news article:

Saskatoon’s Roman Catholic bishop is calling on followers to protest the awarding of the Order of Canada to abortion-rights crusader Dr. Henry Morgentaler earlier this month. However, Bishop Albert LeGatt’s initiative is being criticized by a rabbi who says Dr. Morgentaler has done more for women’s rights than the Catholic Church. Saskatoon Rabbi emeritus Roger Pavey of the liberal congregation Agudas Israel said Bishop LeGatt was misguided, adding that even Orthodox Judaism considered abortion acceptable in some cases.

First, it is facile and offensive to suggest that Morgentaler has done more for women’s rights than the Catholic Church.  It reflects naked hostility to Catholicism that is unbecoming in a senior clergyman, profound bias, or ignorance of recent history, or most likely some blend of the three.  I’ll simply point out that given what we know about abortion and depression, breast cancer, and problems with subsequent pregnancies, Morgentaler has caused direct harm to many women quite apart from the actual damage women sustain when choosing to terminate a pregnancy.  The Catholic Church, like all massive and long-lived institutions, is imperfect, but in recognizing the sanctity of motherhood and encouraging women and men to form lifelong marriages, among others, it has certainly added to the net happiness of women in the world.

Next point: Rabbi Pavey points out that “even Orthodox Judaism” permits abortion in some circumstances.  This is absolutely true.  Rabbi Pavey assuredly knows, though, that those circumstances are very narrow, and in fact bear no resemblance to the circumstances in which Morgentaler has performed abortions.  Jewish law permits (and in some cases requires) abortion if continuing a pregnancy would kill the mother.  Note, please, that this is a vanishingly rare situation in 21st century Canada.  It is also noteworthy that there is no “mental health” exemption, which has been used to such mischief in some jurisdictions; since depression during and after pregnancy are largely treatable, the vast majority of Jewish legal authorities do not consider mental distress at an unwanted pregnancy to be a reason to abort. 

There are also abundant sources indicating that, as a developing life, a fetus has great value and sanctity – but not quite as much as an existing life, so that when there is a mortal conflict between the life of the fetus and the life of the mother, we must choose the mother.  By the time either the head or the majority of the body has emerged from the womb, though, the baby has equal status as the mother, and it is forbidden to choose between them – no partial birth abortions permitted, in other words.  Also significant is that the conflict between the life of the fetus and an existing life applies only to the mother, ie the life that would be directly threatened if the pregnancy continued; destroying a fetus to save a third life, or many other lives, is also forbidden.

Here we get to the real intellectual dishonesty of Rabbi Pavey’s words.  Pavey is the Rabbi Emeritus of a Conservative congregation in Saskatoon.  Conservative Judaism, like Orthodox Judaism, believes in the binding and eternal nature of the covenant between God and the Jews.  Unlike Orthodox Judaism, which believes (to reduce a complicated issue to one phrase) that Jewish law is fixed, and can be applied to new situations but must not be adapted, Conservative Judaism believes that the component of the law that is subject to human interpretation can and must evolve as the understanding, wisdom and knowledge of humans evolve.  Nonetheless, Conservative Judaism recognizes that not all abortions are permitted by Jewish law.  The official position of Conservative Judaism on the politics of abortion is to oppose any law that might prevent abortions in the (extremely narrow set of) circumstances in which it is permitted by Jewish law.

Abortion to save the life of the mother has been permitted in Canada throughout Morgentaler’s career.  The slightly more lax circumstances in which Conservative Jewish law finds abortion acceptable (abortion to prevent serious injury to the mother, or severe mental anguish) have also been accommodated in practice in Canada throughout Morgentaler’s career.  Abortions that are permitted within Jewish law, in other words, already were permitted within Canadian law, and this has nothing to do with Morgentaler.  On the contrary, the very essence of Morgentaler was to shatter this status quo in favour of abortion at any time, for any woman, for any reason, and ideally at the taxpayer’s expense.  And he was most successful.

To discard a human life in a cavalier manner is profoundly contrary to the Jewish tradition, law and ethos.  To oppose laws that restrict abortion on the grounds that such laws might infringe upon the (incredibly rare) situations in which Jewish law permits abortion – the official position of Conservative Judaism – strikes me as extreme, unnuanced, but logically coherent.  To celebrate a man who devoted his life to making life disposable – the most sacred earthly thing in Judaism, such that we are permitted to break almost any other law in order to save a life – is reprehensible, and deeply unJewish.

Rabbi Pavey undoubtedly knows the position of his own movement on abortion.  He almost certainly knows that Orthodox Judaism (and until this century all of Judaism) sees abortion as a last resort, a tragic measure to be taken only to save the life of the mother.  I don’t know what he is trying to gain by this statement, but he has managed to fit contempt for women, Jewish law and tradition, both Orthodox and Conservative, and Catholicism, all into a couple of sentences.  There are better ways he could be using his time – teaching Jews and non-Jews alike that our religion holds all life to be sacred, even a developing life in the womb. How about that?

AIDS, hysteria, and bad health policy

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The amusingly named head of the WHO’s AIDS department issues the following words of wisdom, confirming what a lot of people have known for a while, but weren’t allowed to say:

Kevin de Cock, who has headed the global battle against Aids, said at the weekend that, outside very poor African countries, Aids is confined to “high-risk groups”, including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers. And even in these communities it remains quite rare. “It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in countries [outside sub-Saharan Africa]“, he said. In other words? All that hysterical fearmongering about Aids spreading among sexed-up western youth was a pack of lies.

The sad reality is that it will take a long time to undo the damage that’s been done by a couple of decades of AIDS hysteria. Public health educators put a tremendous emphasis on condoms as the best way to minimize risk of AIDS, leaving untold number of teens and young adults unaware of the diseases that can be sexually transmitted even with a condom, including HPV, a precursor to cancer. This emphasis on condoms and AIDS avoidance is also in no small part responsible for the increasing perception that only vaginal intercourse is sex (well, partial credit also to Bill Clinton) and the escalation of other forms of sexual activity amongst ever younger kids.

In a more abstract sense, the preoccupation with AIDS, condoms, and physical safety led to the increased commodification of sex, and an emphasis on sex as a physical act. It’s not a coincidence that a generation who was taught all about the physical details of sex, and almost nothing about the emotional or moral implications of it, proceeded to create the hook-up culture. By all means, let’s do everything we can to minimize unplanned pregnancy, STDs, and non-consensual sex. But if we’re serious about making more responsible choices, we have to ask people to consider their hearts, minds and souls, and not only their bodies.

We should also learn from this the folly of directing healthcare spending according to fads and crazes. AIDS kills far fewer people than cancer, heart attacks, and car accidents, as well as suicides, and for those under 35, homicides. An honest evaluation of who is actually at risk for AIDS would enable us to focus education and prevention where it will help the most, give kids in health class accurate and helpful information, and avoid needlessly scaring people who were never at risk to begin with.

When OBGYNs think they’re helping women but are actually hurting them

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And I’m not talking about abortion. William Saletan defends western doctors who do “hymen reconstructions” to “revirginize” women (overwhelmingly, and in the context of this article, Muslim women) so they don’t face the (sometimes fatal) consequences of not being virgins on their wedding nights. I have very mixed feelings about this.

Certainly, in any individual case, the compassionate and appropriate response may well be to do the operation. Even in situations where women who aren’t virgins (or, in fact, may well be virgins but not have sufficient evidence of this) aren’t in fear for their physical safety, humiliation and ostracism aren’t fun. And if we allow consenting adult women to pay to have saline implanted in their chests or synthetic substances injected into their lips, it’s hard to make a case that hymen reconstruction shouldn’t be done. But every doctor who plays along with this sick worldview helps this sort of treatment of women to limp along for another day.

Thoughts on Sex and the City (spoilers)

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Last night I saw Sex and the City. I ended up going to a different cinemaplex than we’d originally planned because all three early evening showings at the first theatre were sold out, and we were stuck in the very front row at our second choice. My appreciation for the series is limited; years ago I started watching the show with some friends I’d just met, and as time passed, I grew more and more fond of the friends, and less and less fond of the show. So I’m not sure if I would have bothered to see the movie, had these friends not really wanted us all to watch it together for old times’ sake.

 

The trademark quirks of the show – the literal glint in each character’s eye, Carrie’s overly enunciated narration, the not-even-groanworthy puns – are all intact, and if they aren’t exaggerated in Sex and the City’s movie incarnation, they certainly seem that way. The characters are all sketched out in the opening credits, with flashbacks to the series, and it’s remarkable how about 40 seconds of montage each tells you all you need to know, if you had never seen the series. Complexity has never been the point of SATC.

 

Unlike the fans and critics who saw the series as striking a blow for women everywhere by portraying them as liberated, independent, and answering to no man, I always thought the show was in many ways regressive (and I only partially mean that in a bad way.) Certainly the “girls” were sleeping with whomever they choose, dealing with the consequences (STDs, abortions, unwed motherhood) in a cavalier way, and putting themselves before any other relationship in their lives – not only with men, but also with family. The only relatives I remember from the show are Miranda’s mother-in-law, and Charlotte’s first mother-in-law. But then part of the conceit of the show was that friends are the new family.

 

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Huckabee gets something right

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I’m not a Huckabee supporter for a bunch of reasons, but he is bang on here:

The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it’s this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it’s a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says “look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don’t get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it.” Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it’s not an American message. It doesn’t fly. People aren’t going to buy that, because that’s not the way we are as a people. That’s not historic Republicanism. Historic Republicanism does not hate government; it’s just there to be as little of it as there can be. But they also recognize that government has to be paid for.

H/T Ramesh Ponnuru at The Corner

I don’t know where to begin

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Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric specialist at [Boston’s Children’s Hospital], has launched a clinic for transgendered kids — boys who feel like girls, girls who want to be boys — and he’s opening his doors to patients as young as 7.
Spack offers his younger patients counseling and drugs that delay the onset of puberty. The drugs stop the natural flood of hormones that would make it difficult to have a sex alteration later in life, allowing patients more time to decide whether they want to make the change.

 

 

Just so we’re clear – we’re talking about pre-pubertal children. You know, kids at an age where they want to be an astronaut in the summer and a snow plough driver in the winter. The age when they plan to live at home at 47 because they can’t imagine ever sleeping more than 3 meters away from Mummy. Kids who are too young, by several years, to vote, drive, get a job without their parents’ permission, get married, or even decide they’re done with school. And this guy is proposing to let them take drugs, the long-term health consequences of which are totally unknown, while they try to decide what gender they want to be?

I really hope my esteemed colleagues, and our valued readers, speak up, because I truly don’t know what else to say, just that there is a whole lot more that must be said.

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Brigitte adds: A new slogan for the age might be “You’re Never Too Young To Pump Your Body Full of Hormones”, or perhaps “It’s Never Too Early to Get Confused”. I would have been a candidate for such a clinic back when I was 7 years old. I used to think being a girl stank, because you weren’t supposed to do fun things like drive go-karts or climb trees (at least, I wasn’t) and I always thought the boys were having more fun. Somehow I managed to stay off puberty-delaying hormones and eventually I outgrew my gender unhappiness. Am I meant to feel aggrieved because my “condition” went “untreated”?

Maybe fish who have bicycles respect the value of other fish more highly

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Starbucks has these little inspiration quotes on their paper cups. Some of them are odd, some of them are worth a moment’s thought. Newt Gingrich, for instance, is quoted as saying that “in the battle of ideas, winning requires marching toward the sound of cannons” (from memory – can’t find it online.) That’s good advice for anybody on the side of traditional families, these days – criticism means you’re goring sacred cows, which is in our case a good thing.

On cup #256, we have a gem from Gloria Steinem, and this is a direct quote since I’m holding a macchiato in my hand:

Women’s bodies are valued as ornaments.  Men’s bodies are valued as instruments.

This is one of the more ridiculous things I’ve seen attributed to her, and there is plenty of competition for that title. Could anyone who has given birth seriously think this way? Feminism, with its championing of risky birth control, unlimited abortion, and the proposition that women should be as promiscuous and callous as men at their historical worst, places far less value on women’s bodies, never mind their hearts and souls, than the good old patriarchy ever did.

Bad moment in history to be parents of teenagers

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From NRO:

1 in 4 teenaged girls has a sexually transmitted disease. On the same day that story came out, newspapers reported another study showing that 17 percent of middle-school students had used alcohol within the past year, and 6 percent had been drunk within the past month. A previous study had shown that 47 percent of eighth graders have had alcohol, 20 percent had done so in the last month, and 12 percent had consumed “five or more drinks in a row in the previous 2 weeks.”

The author goes on to point out signs of a recurrence of the tiniest smidge of sexual morality, such as the phrase “walk of shame” to describe the act of going home from an overnight date in clothing that makes the evening’s conclusion obvious.  I don’t know that I agree; the fact that the phrase is so prevalent indicates that this behaviour isn’t unusual.

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