War on Women – Yeah, It’s Real

Okay, so I’m not normally quite this rabid, but this is one of those times when I have to get all frothing and foamy.  (In a bad way.)

Opposing Views, which I follow on FB and read sometimes, had an article that I pulled up about a girl in India who got revenge on her rapist.  It was her uncle, and he was a religious doctor (called a tantrik) who claimed he could heal her but instead raped her.  He wanted her to come back for more “treatment.”  She came prepared – she brought a cell phone and a knife.  She recorded their conversation using the cell phone, and then she castrated him with the knife.  Nice and simple, right?

There’s even a nice picture of people standing around holding a sign that says “Stop Crimes on Women.”

But the rest of the page seems to give a totally different message.  There are five different images across the top that are meant to drag the viewer on.  Of these, four of them are of women: one of an attractive woman crying, mascara smeared; one of two women kissing, labeled “Celebrities That Swing Both Ways!”; one of a woman in very tight, very small clothing with a police officer looking on; the last one of a woman in lingerie and heels in a provocative pose, labeled “The 10 Best Butts in Hollywood!”

Seriously, Opposing Views?  Seriously?  This is the shit that you chose to pair with a story about rape?  Four different stories with images (and probably “stories” – if you can call a list of “best butts” a story) that clearly treat women as objects.  The photo of the woman in small, tight clothing doesn’t even show her face – clearly, that’s not an important part of a woman – and the headline is “New Rule in Seabrook, TX,” although I bet that, whatever was the closest town to the viewer would be reflected there.  It’s click bait.  Meaningless crap that shows women off as, well, meaningless crap.

So I’m no longer following them on FB.  And I’m posting up this blog.  Maybe if they lose enough click-thrus and followers, they might learn that women don’t appreciate being treated this way.  Maybe they’re learn that women should be treated with respect and…oh, who am I kidding?  They’ll never learn.  But at least we can stop giving them their clicks.

Dear Hobby Lobby…

I'm not going to bother stating much about Hobby Lobby because most of it has already been said.  These four articles (while not exactly brand new) cover it pretty well. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/30/hobby-lobby-viagra_n_5543916.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/30/supreme-court-hobby-lobby_n_5521444.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000046&ir=Women

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/best-lines-hobby-lobby-decision

http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/01/investing/hobby-lobby-401k-contraception/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Me, though, I’ve stopped shopping there.  If I can’t get it at Michael’s, I find it online.  I’ve been told JoAnn’s is a pretty good place, too, so I’m going to check them out sooner or later. 

So rather than re-hash all the “Hobby Lobby is evil” crap, I’ve decided instead to tell four different stories that I think do a good job of illustrating why we need to be careful of a slippery slope that might lead us back to where we were…

First story: One that’s near and dear to me.  Many years ago – okay, so maybe 30 or so – my mother went to open up a bank account with some money she had earned selling her crochet patterns.  She brought a check to the bank down the street.  They would not let her open a personal account without her husband’s permission.  Seriously.  My father, according to the bank, had to come down and allow her to have a private account.  He could have opened one without her, but she could not open one without him.  Fast-forward twenty years.  She decided to go back to her maiden name.  Technically, all she needed to do was show up at Social Security with a form.  But when she got there, they questioned her.  Why was she changing it?  Did she have permission from her husband?  Had they gotten divorced?  She pointed out that since it was her maiden name, she could choose to use it again at any time.  In the end, they allowed her to change it, but she had to fight them.  And she shouldn’t have had to.

Second story: One of my mother’s friends that I got to know.  When she had her child, back in the 1960s, she got stuck in the hospital.  Why?  Because her husband had been deployed, and she was not allowed to check herself out of the hospital.  She had to wait for her father to come sign her out.  If she had been a single mother, she could have left, but since she was married, she was as good as “owned.”

Third story: A friend’s mother was left on the operating table in the middle of a C-Section.  This was around 1968 or so.  Why was she left there?  Well, the doctor left her to go ask her husband in the waiting room if he should go ahead and tie her tubes so that she wouldn’t have any more babies.  Did the doctor ask her?  No.  He asked her husband.  Luckily, even though her husband was a complete asshole that she wound up divorcing, he still responded the proper way – “Why are you asking me? Go ask her!”

Fourth and final story: And this one is a doozy.  Back in 1944, my father was born.  His mother was knocked out for the birth, as was common at the time.  She woke up, they presented my father, and home she went with her son.  Then she went back for a check-up, and the nurse said, “Oh, and you’re the one who had twins.”  She said, “No, I had a single baby – my son.”  At which point both she and nurse became very confused.  What had happened was that she had, in fact, given birth to twins.  One of them was stillborn.  The doctor, not wanting to stress her out, had gone ahead and just gotten rid of the dead twin.  He hadn’t told her.  But it was there on the birth certificate – twin birth, one stillborn. 

Horrified yet?  I hope so.  Whenever I hear that we should let men make decisions, that we don’t need feminism, that everything will be okay, I think about those stories, and I know that I can’t shop at Hobby Lobby.  And I hope you can’t shop there, too.

Image by stockimages via freedigitalphotos.net

Talk Down to Me, Baby!

I am beyond thankful to Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina for helping GOP men understand why more women aren’t involved in politics or government. 

“Men do tend to talk about things on a much higher level. Many of my male colleagues, when they go to the House floor, you know, they’ve got some piechart or graph behind them and they’re talking about trillions of dollars and how, you know, the debt is awful and, you know, we all agree with that. …We need our male colleagues to understand that if you can bring it down to a woman’s level and what everything that she is balancing in her life — that’s the way to go.” Ellmers then stated that what women really want is more time to get ready in the morning.

 

Here are a few pie charts I’ve made to help Rep. Ellmers understand women.

Any other suggestions for charts I need to make?