On her ship...tied to the mast...

[callistra]

am I the only one who gets hot over the song Golden Brown?? Fuck it's great.
:-) It's just so sensual and intricate. :-)
*sighs happily*

WTF is it with the number of women's groups who have a specific cause *other* than the empowerment of women?



Also, cricktk linked to an article about men's rights in abortion. By the way, I had better mention right here that this is an american article, and I'm mostly talking about america. I'm sure the author himself is a wonderful person, and individually, every human being is a wonderful person (I'm not dripping sarcasm but I may as well be) but really, men over the past few millenia have spent their credibility. Yes, there are fantastic men out there who would be wonderful at raising children they have accidentally conceived. On an individual basis, if a man is that wonderful then I expect that it would be a two person decision. But randomly giving *any* man the right to have a say in whether his child is aborted or not is... well, it makes me hesitate. Actually, it makes me want to scream "WHY THE FUCK YOU ABSOLUTE TOSSERS WANT THIS I HAVE NO IDEA" but I need to remind myself about sanity occasionally.

I also believe that men and women have a huge amount of growning up to do before life is perfect. I also believe life will never *be* perfect for a few more thousands of years. But firstly, I think women need to learn that a) they are human beings, b) they deserve respect and c) how to control and relate to their own bodies. To that end, I don't think there should be any legislation to enforce men to be allowed to have a say in abortion. If we do that, we're going back towards the male ownership of women.

I believe men have just as much responsibility for their reproductive rights as women. Once the child is concieved, it's too late for him to cry "But you said you were on the pill!" because it's not just her problem. He has far easier access to condoms than women do (why ARE the condom machines only in male toilets in pubs?) and there are other options such as male pills. The distinct lack of take up shows that men just don't want to take responsibility for their penises. Or may be there are other problems - but when we got the pill, we had to fight for it. Maybe men need to fight for it too?

But once the child is conceived, that's a different kettle of fish. If men could carry children, then I would have no hesitations in saying that if the mother doesn't want it, then the man could bear it. Childbirth fucks a woman's body up for the rest of her life. The hormones take 2 - 3 years to filter out of her system completely. And you think some stupid little fuck who didn't mention that the condom had broken would have a chance to have a say in the resulting child? And would you trust him to raise a child?

I can't trust a society in which there was a suggestion that all miscarriages had to be reported. One of the american states wanted to put into place a law which meant that if you lost a baby, you had to report it to the sheriff's office. Within 24 hours. It makes me so angry that the idea even got TABLED! Or another state that when you want to have an abortion, you had to notify the father. A woman who had been raped by two men was told she had to take an advertisement in the local paper to find the father(s) before she could abort. FUCK YOU AMERICA. How did THAT law come into being? Women get treated as irresponsible and unable to look after themselves, so a man who fucks them has to do it for them?

And, you know what? We're going to make mistakes. A lot of them. Children do. And we've been treated like children and objects for thousands of years. Go get fucked and let us make the mistakes. It's OUR RIGHT to make mistakes.

I'd also like to point out that the law is there to service the people who least need it on a personal level. If a child is conceieved with mature adult persons, a decision would be made between the two of them. It might not be a happy resolution for every one, or it might be. Families get redefined all the time, and as we mature as a race and society, I can imagine that we'll be finding techniques to make blended families happier. I can see that group parenting might have to come back into form. The way is hard though, and the trailblazers few. But right now, that law would only aid people who would use it to get an emotional score against a woman they had fucked. They should revere her. She was brave (or stupid or unwilling) enough to let them into her body, and an accident has resulted. Instead of calling her a cunt and trying to destory her chance of remaining a person instead of just a baby incubater, they should be talking to her and working on a solution between the two of them. About 30 years ago, every single marriage I know of (except one) was based on a pregnancy. And, strangely enough in my circle of friends, they are all still together too.

It's not love that keeps a marriage together. I think it is shared vision. I have a vision that John has too; it's that we're going to grow old together and have children together. We started in love, and continue to love each other, and sometimes we are IN love with each other and sometimes we're just cruisy. A basis for a marriage has to have more than just love, or else it all falls apart.

When women feel safe, then we'll let men back in. But first, we need to feel safe and assured that we will be treated like humans instead of breeding cattle. It's our bodies. We've been sold, raped, abused, tormented, told we're stupid, ugly, foul, unclean, incompetent, for thousands of years. A couple of men going "Hey, they're wrong!" is not going to make us feel safe when the rest of the population (and that includes women too) still think that way. We get left with the children traditionally, and every woman in her heart knows that. I've heard too many stories of "By the way, I'm leaving you and the kids".

I've felt perfect love and perfect trust, and believe me it aint anything like what we offer as a society. Right now, all our society offers is value for the dollar. And I think that's wrong.

Comments

[babalon-93.livejournal.com]

I too, love golden brown.

Do you have a link to the original article? I think the original post might be friends locked 'cause I couldn't find it.

p.s. I plan to leave here at about 11.

[callistra.livejournal.com]

http://webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/stuart_lord/001408.html

coolio
:-)

[cricketk.livejournal.com]

Hiya,

Friended you. I meant to do it after lunch the other day, but totally forgot.

Cheers,
K

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Golden Brown is a very fine song.

There are so many womens groups that have a specific group other than the empowerment of women because feminism contains multitudes. There are a lot of different types of feminism, and they all have very different ideas about how women need to be empowered.

American attitudes to abortion are complete rubbish.

[divaflip.livejournal.com]

there is also the idea that there are women's groups that aren't necessarily political in agenda

- a women's reading group, which might allow babies which allows women short of time to participate in a social discussion group;
- some ethnic or cultural group where women can discuss issued that affect them in a non-threatening environment, or even just chat in another language together over a cup of tea;
- some kind of women only competitive group, like sports, where they can challenge each other without necessarily running into issues like body image problems as much

all of these might have some feminist traits in their purpose and how they are run, but it isn't the primary purpose of the group and most members would not identify it as such.

unless I'm completely crazy and have misunderstood the original question :)

[callistra.livejournal.com]

Yes, you are completely correct.

And I realise that.
:-)

But still... I still get the feeling that being FOR women overtly is still ...discouraged? Negatively connotationed?

[divaflip.livejournal.com]

I suspect that is just as much the fault of sections of the women's movement as anything else. they either diss the women who aren't lesbian separatists, who then think that because they don't have the same views they couldn't possibly be feminists. Or they look at what famewhoring germaine greer is up to this week, see what a fraud she is, and decided that if she is an example of a feminist, then they aren't interested.

I have a number of female friends in a couple of hobby groups (book clubs etc) who consider themselves not feminists because they don't protest or burn bras or hate men. yet they are still interested in things like equal wages for equal work, adequate and affordable childcare, respect for women who either stay at home with children or decide to return to work full time and so on.

There certainly are some negative connotations, but it isn't just the 'patriarchy' who are responsible for that. Definitely some of the reason but not all of it.

[callistra.livejournal.com]

I think that shows a large lack of interest in the current state of feminism, really.
;-)

But yes, I know exactly what you mean here too. We're so modest, it's bad form to want to be promoting ourselves beyond what we already have.

[callistra.livejournal.com]

Oooo, I meant to ask, what's with Germaine Greer? I haven't read anything of hers or anything, just wondering.
;-)

[hkneale.livejournal.com]

I still get the feeling that being FOR women overtly is still ...discouraged? Negatively connotationed?

You're probably looking at the wrong women's groups.

I belong to a women's group that's pretty good about, well, everything. It was founded upon and continues to remain to this day (over 150 years later) about empowering women. It has no political agenda, doesn't do the "hate men" thing, and does me a world of good.

It's always been a proponent of rights like higher education, suffrage, self-enrichment and a whole bunch of other personal-growth stuff.

It's one of the largest women's groups in the world, with millions of members, yet if I were to mention its name, most of you would probably give me a blank look.

A good women's group should focus on empowering a person who just happens to be a woman. It should never focus on "women need to be empowered because compared to X (usually men, or the establishment, or the patriarchy) they lack power".

That's not true empowerment. That's reactionary thinking that accomplishes little beyond one-up-manship.

True empowerment comes from taking an individual and making them better than they are.

[valeskah1.livejournal.com]

I -adore- Golden Brown. It's just the best to play with headphones on, so you can immerse yourself.

[callistra.livejournal.com]

I just find it so sensual!! It makes me want to flick my hair and give long sexy glances at people!!

:-)

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

I thought you did that anyhow, without music??

(And, as for the US laws that appear, I believe there's a vast part of that due to first-past-the-post non-compulsory voting. You end up with the nutty end of the political scale "caring" enough to vote and therefore you get extremist politicians. Not the mention the number of laws that then aren't enforced, except when someone wants to persecute someone else. It's all an awful mess.)

[callistra.livejournal.com]

In cunt: a declaration of independance, Inga was saying that when the leaders of other countries have been muscled out, people have protested, yet in her country people just seemed to accept it and move on.

The politics in america does sound very messy. I hope we never get as bad, but I still think we need to fix things here too! But that will require research....
;-)