electricland

From crankygrrl: Working girls, broken society

While the benefits of career equality are axiomatic, its negative repercussions are wilfully ignored. In a contentious essay that is sparking fierce debate in Britain, a King's College professor argues that we must confront the losses to society when women choose work over family

Still sorting out my response to this. I find it a tad simplistic. I am struck by the near-total absence of men in this discussion. Also by the absence of possible alternatives. I think our societies are somewhat fucked up, she has that right, but as long as career success and financial success are seen as THE important things for both men and women I don't think that's going to change. I don't get why women are supposed to take on the whole job of being altruistic and volunteering and looking after children and making common cause with other people in different walks of life. Where is this Angel in the House and in the Public Sphere business coming from?

Yeah. Yeah, getting to it. To drastically simplify her argument:

1. Historically, educated women had few jobs open to them.
a) Most women had a lot in common -- marriage, babies -- with other women.
b) Women had a lot of time in which to bring up their kids and volunteer.

2. Now educated women can do pretty much anything they like.
a) There is tremendous disparity between educated professional women and less educated working-class women who may work part-time and take a lot of time off to raise children.
b) Women aren't volunteering any more.

3. In consequence, women aren't bringing the traditionally feminine concerns of altruism and service into the public sphere any more.
a) Sisterhood is dying out.
b) The voluntary sector is becoming less voluntary and more professional.
c) The world is going to hell in a handbasket.
d) Woe!

4. Educated professional women face huge economic disadvantages if they have children.
a) So they don't have as many.
b) But children are intrinsically wonderful and rewarding.
c) Woe!

5. Conclusions:
a) I'd list them here, but I can't actually figure out what she's trying to get at.
b) At a guess, she means, but does not wish to say,* that educated women should stop being so pushy and taking rewarding highly paid jobs and get back to raising children and making the world a better place to be.
c) As usual, it's all your fault.

*Because the feminists would attack!

Feldman has rebutted by email much more nicely than I can. (May I quote?)

Some links:

Via makinglight's comments section, also shetterly:

Cecilia Fire Thunder, Oglala Sioux Tribal President, is kind of annoyed at South Dakota's recent unpleasantness. So she's hoping to establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which is of course sovereign territory and no subject to South Dakota law (in this case and many others). Planned Parenthood clinics are, of course, good for much more than just abortions.

Ways to donate, in case you want to help with this.

Next, Salon has more on a disturbing story:

[T]he anti-birth-control movement's efforts are making a significant political impact: Supporters have pressured insurance companies to refuse coverage of contraception, lobbied for "conscience clause" laws to protect pharmacists from having to dispense birth control, and are redefining the very meaning of pregnancy to classify certain contraceptive methods as abortion. In increasing numbers, women and men opposed to contraception are marshaling health facts and figures to bolster their convictions that sex for anything but procreation is morally wrong and potentially deadly. Although its medical arguments are really just thinly veiled moral and religious arguments, using findings that are biased and unfounded, the rising anti-contraception movement, echoed by the Catholic Church, is making significant inroads. Leaders of the pro-choice movement know it, are worried about it, and realize they can't take it lightly, as they mount their own strategies to battle it.

"It is very hard to awaken people to the threat," says Gloria Feldt, the former president of Planned Parenthood, "because who can believe that something so accessible can be at risk? But that's what [people] said when they started attacking Roe, and now look at how close we are to losing Roe."

And Dan Savage notes:

Straight Rights Update: Earlier this month Republicans in South Dakota successfully banned abortion in that state. Last week the GOP-controlled state house of representatives in Missouri voted to ban state-funded family planning clinics from dispensing birth control. "If you hand out contraception to single women," one Republican state rep told the Kansas City Star, "we're saying promiscuity is okay." On the federal level, Republicans are blocking the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception and keeping a 100 percent effective HPV vaccine—a vaccine that will save the lives of thousands of women every year—from being made available.

The GOP's message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to fuck up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no life-saving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough shit. You're going to have those babies, ladies, and you're going to make those child-support payments, gentlemen. And if you get HPV and it leads to cervical cancer, well, that's too bad. Have a nice funeral, slut.

What's it going to take to get a straight-rights movement off the ground? The GOP in Kansas is seeking to criminalize hetero heavy petting, for God's sake! Wake up and smell the freaking Holy War, breeders! The religious right hates heterosexuality just as much as it hates homosexuality. Fight back!

Finally, because it's never too late to keep those hits coming and this seems like an excellent post for it: Bill Napoli.

napoli (not to be confused with the proper noun, which indicates the Italian city)
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): napolied
Pronunciation: nA’poli

1. To brutalize and rape, sodomize as bad as you can possibly make it, a young, religious virgin woman who was saving herself for marriage. 2. To hella rape somebody.

Etymology: From State Senator Bill Napoli’s (R-SD) words on an acceptable description of rape that would merit an exemption from South Dakota’s abortion ban.

[Edited to add stuff. I knew I had more than I originally put in...]