Open Thread: Regulating Men’s Reproductive Health Choices

Posted: March 11, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: fetus fetishists, Republican politics, U.S. Politics, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , | 23 Comments

Ohio State Senator Nina Turner

Last week Ohio State Senator Nina Turner introduced state bill 307, which would require men to have several sessions with a sex therapist, a cardiac stress test, and obtain a notarized statement from their sexual partners saying they are really impotent before they could get a prescription for Viagra or any other “erectile dysfunction” drug. In addition, doctors prescribing the drugs would have to notify the patient in writing of all their possible side effects, and all documentation, including the statement from the man’s sexual partner would be kept in his medical records. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Turner says she also wants to rally women across the country to push for similar bills in their states.

“It’s not a joke,” Turner told The Plain Dealer this week. “I’m dead serious. I want to continue this strong dialogue about what is fair and what is equal.”

“It is crucial that we take the appropriate steps to shelter vulnerable men from the potential side effects of these drugs,” she said in a written statement.

“The men in our lives, including members of the General Assembly, generously devote time to fundamental female reproductive issues. The least we can do is return the favor.”

Furthermore, Turner is concerned about the serious side effects of ED drugs:

“The side effects of these drugs are very real,” she told The Plain Dealer. “I want to [protect] fragile men who are vulnerable and are not able to make decisions for themselves.”

Turner says her bill is based on medical recommendations for the use of these powerful drugs::

Under Senate Bill 307, men taking the drugs would continue to be tested for heart problems, receive counseling about possible side effects and receive information about “pursuing celibacy as a viable lifestyle choice.”

“Even the FDA recommends that doctors make sure that assessments are taken that target the nature of the symptoms, whether it’s physical or psychological,” Turner said. “I certainly want to stand up for men’s health and take this seriously and legislate it the same way mostly men say they want to legislate a woman’s womb.”

Illinois State Rep. Kelly Cassidy

In Illinois, State Senator Kelly Cassidy has proposed an amendment to a state sponsored rape bill bill requiring ultrasounds for women seeking abortions. The amendment would require any man who asks for a prescription for Viagra to “watch a graphic video on the side effects” of the drug first. From HuffPo:

“If they’re serious about us not being about to make our own health care decisions, then I’m just as serious about them not being able to make theirs,” she told HuffPost on Monday….

Cassidy is one of a string of female lawmakers across the country who have introduced gender-equity amendments to anti-abortion bills. Wilmington, Del. City Councilwoman Loretta Walsh authored a resolution that declares “each ‘egg person’ and each ‘sperm person’ … equal in the eyes of the government.” Oklahoma Sen. Constance Johnson (D) proposed a “spilled semen” amendment to the state’s fetal personhood bill that would declare it an act against unborn children for men to waste sperm. Va. Sen. Janet Howell (D), meanwhile, introduced an amendment to a mandatory ultrasound bill that would require men to have a rectal exam before being prescribed Viagra.

The Meaning of Mitt’s Massachusetts Record

Posted: March 11, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 37 Comments

Romney campaigns in Mississippi: "I like grits!"

I’ve written a couple of posts about Mitt Romney’s economic record in Massachusetts. It’s a very poor record. I can’t seem to dig up the links to my previous posts right now, but I’m including two from The Boston Globe. I’ve also written about Romney’s cold and distant, almost robot-like behavior–as have a number of journalists–for examples see here and here.

As a citizen of Massachusetts who didn’t follow state politics very closely, I had a sense of Romney as a deeply amoral man, a user who only ran for office–first for Senator against Ted Kennedy and then for Governor–as a stepping-stone to the presidency. During his time as Governor, Romney turned Massachusetts’ already regressive income tax into a flat tax and increased fees so that the economic burden fell more heavily on the poor. His record on jobs was abominable, and the population in the state actually dropped as Bay-Staters went elsewhere in search of work.

It became a joke in the state that Romney was never around–he was always traveling around the country building support for his presidential run. After his one term in the State House (he was very unpopular and unlikely to win reelection), Romney moved on to greener pastures where he proceeded to criticize and mock Massachusetts in order to win favor with the right.

Yesterday, The New York Times ran an article by Michael Barbaro that I want to call to your attention. Barbaro (or his contributors Ashley Southall and Kitty Bennett) actually talked to a number of people who did watch state politics very closely during Romney’s governorship–other politicians, specifically state legislators. What they had to say only confirms my intuitive sense of Romney as a person.

He was aloof and distant–not unfriendly per se, but he didn’t care for schmoozing with other politicians. He saw himself as the CEO who could delegate responsibilities and didn’t need to reach out to legislators. He had the attitude that he could simply make a decision and that was the end of it. This anecdote is typical of many who spoke to Barbaro:

Well into Mitt Romney’s tenure as governor of Massachusetts, a state legislator named Jay Kaufman developed a nagging suspicion: the governor had no idea who he was.

A committee chairman and a veteran Democrat in the State House of Representatives, Mr. Kaufman routinely waved to Mr. Romney from his capitol office, right above the governor’s parking spot. But when he crossed Mr. Romney’s path in the building’s marble corridors one day, his fears were confirmed.

“Hello, Senator,” Mr. Romney called to Mr. Kaufman.

Sitting in his office five years later, Mr. Kaufman still seemed wounded by the slight. “No name, wrong title,” he said. “Give me a break.”

Instead of compromising, he vetoed hundreds of pieces of legislation and then the vetoes were routinely overturned by the legislature.

On working with the legislature:

Even though he worked just a few hundred feet from them for four years, Mr. Romney displayed little interest in getting to know lawmakers and never developed real relationships with most members of the Democratic-dominated body, according to interviews with two dozen current and former lawmakers of both parties and members of the governor’s staff….

“Romney just didn’t want to deal with legislators,” said Robert A. Antonioni, a Democratic state senator and a chairman of the Education Committee during the Romney years. “Typically, the governor wants to have a productive relationship with the legislature. That is not something that happened with him.”

A number of politicians who were interviewed said that Romney could have accomplished much more as governor if he had simply deigned to show a little respect for the legislative body it was his responsibility to deal with.

Some complained that Romney disrespected them when he visited their districts–forcing them to sit withe the rest of the audience in the “cheap seats” rather than “front and center.” Other were shocked when Romney

personally helped recruit 131 Republican candidates to run against Democratic legislators in 2004, an unusual frontal assault against incumbents….The effort backfired. Republicans lost seats that year, and Mr. Romney earned the enmity of the Democrats he had sought to unseat, especially those who had supported his initiatives….When Mr. Romney needed their votes, Mr. O’Keefe remembers several offended lawmakers rejecting his request by saying, “Talk to the next guy.”

One of Romney’s decisions that most insulted legislators was when he blocked off one the elevators in the State House for his personal use–so that he wouldn’t need to ride up with legislators. His staff claimed this was done for security reasons after 9/11, which seems to me to be a pretty feeble excuse.

The overall picture of Romney presented by those who worked most closely with him in Massachusetts rings true based on my own observations and on the general reactions of the media and the public to Romney as presidential candidate. He appears to be arrogant, insensitive, ham-handed, and authoritarian. In many ways he resembles Barack Obama who has also be criticized for being distant with Congress. But Romney makes Obama look like friendly and approachable.

We’ve also seen that Romney will lie with a straight face no matter how often his supposed position on an issue changes. For whatever reason–probably daddy issues–Romney has always wanted to be president. But in my opinion Romney is not tempermentally suited for the job. We’ve already had two presidents in a row with daddy issues. That’s just not a good reason.

The only other reason I can figure that Romney wants the job is so he can make sure that rich people get a lot richer and poor people bear the economic burdens of the country. That’s what he did in Massachusetts.

There is no way this man should be president. If he doesn’t feel ready for retirement yet, he should return to the business world.

Women Of Courage

Posted: March 11, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, Feminists, Festivities, fetus fetishists, Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us, Human Rights, Violence against women, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | 9 Comments

To read the biographies of this year’s recipients of the Women of Courage awards is nothing short of inspiring.  These are women who have put their lives and futures on the line to improve the quality of life for others, most specifically women and girls in parts of the world where to be female is extraordinarily difficult, even life-threatening.  These are women who would make our Bread and Roses mavens proud, infuse enough energy to conjure those slumbering spirits for another boisterous rally, another yelp for dignity and freedom.

Maryam Durani, a member of the Provencial Council, Kandahar, Afghanistan was one of ten women cited and honored last Thursday in a ceremony, hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Here’s a wee bit of her story:

Afghanistan as we all know is not an oasis of women’s liberation.  But Ms. Durani  has pitched herself against the traditional Afghani sensibility, standing as a role model and leader in a country of ancient tribal traditions and strict paternalistic mindsets.  She is the director of the nonprofit Women’s Center for Culture and owns and operates a radio station, which focuses on informing women of their rights.  And the inherent risks of demanding those rights.

She should know.  A suicide bomber nearly ended her life, leaving her with serious injuries.  The death threats haven’t stopped.  Yet, she persists as do the women she serves because in a world where women, by virtue of their gender are considered the enemy, a threat by merely existing as autonomous human beings, there is only one response: fight back.

Here is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton introducting Ms. Durani during the Awards Ceremony last week:

Many of the women honored this year and in the past have put themselves on the frontline, encountering serious security threats to themselves and their families.  They are not the first and sadly, they won’t be the last.  The complete list of awardees can be found here.

In January 2011, many people were horrified when the body of Susana Chavez was discovered in a shallow grave.  Chavez, a young poet activist, gave voice to the disappeared women in Juarez, Mexico, nearly 800 women at the time, only to be ‘disappeared’ herself. She was later found tortured, strangled, her body mutilated.

What was her offense?

She would not stop questioning, haranguing, annoying public officials for their inadequate investigations into the deaths of so many women. She was making trouble because she gave voice to those who had no voice, often no identity because their bodies had been disfigured, disposed of, forgotten.

Chavez refused to forget. She refused to be silent.  Giving voice to the abuse of others seems to be a constant thread in all these stories.

In addition to the official US awards, PEN International remembered the murdered women writers of Mexico, eleven murders in 2011, five of whom were women. Since 2006, forty-five writers/journalists/bloggers have been murdered or disappeared because of their investigative/ activist work.

Susana Chavez is on the PEN International list. So is Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz, the mother of two and a veteran crime/political reporter.  She was abducted by gunmen in front of her home, only to be later found decapitated.  The message is clear: remain silent or this could be you.

Threats, torture, rape, imprisonment and murder is too often the fate of women who will not be silent, who refuse to get with programs that would restrain and silence them and their sisters.  And yet, like Maryam Durani and others, they persist.  They refuse to back down.

We have our own homegrown fight in the United States, those who would roll back a woman’s right to direct her reproductive life, choose her own destiny.  Here the punishment is humiliation, censor, scorn, name-calling, legislative measures to equate a woman’s fully realized life with that of a zygote, even the willingness to probe a woman’s decision-making process [because authoritarians find women incapable of ‘right-minded’ action, otherwise known as ‘their way or the highway’].

In all these efforts, the purpose is to demean, limit, control, even eliminate women because the Daughters of Eve are traditionally viewed as a danger, a threat to the status quo.  There’s a reason Lilith is rarely mentioned.  She was wa-a-ay too uppity.

But here’s the thing: even for those of us not facing mortal danger, we can have an impact by the way we live our lives, support other women, raise our daughters and sons and in the way we give voice to those who have pushed back against female abuse in all its forms, here and around the world, past and present.

Because to quote Hillary Clinton’s famous line: Women’s Rights are indeed Human Rights.  Our quest should be to fulfill Susana Chavez’s words:  Ni Una Mas.  Ni Una Mas.

Not One More.

Women's Empowerment

Doonesbury Takes on the Zygote Zealots

Posted: March 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , | 8 Comments

Several newspapers will not be running next week’s Doonesbury cartoons.  The strip has been censored before.  Next week’s strip takes on the newly passed transvaginal ultrasounds laws states of Texas and Virginia for women exercising their constitutional rights early in their pregnancies.  The demeaning procedure–frequently referred to as a form of state approved rape–has already been forced on Texas women.

Here’s what’s in the strips:

Monday: Young woman arrives for her pre-termination sonogram, is told to take a seat in the shaming room, a middle-aged male state legislator will be right with her.

Tuesday: He asks her if this is her first visit to the center, she replies no, that she’s been using the contraceptive services for some time. He says, “I see. Do your parents know you’re a slut?”

Wednesday: A different male is reading to her about the transvaginal exam process.

Thursday: In the stirrups, she is telling a nurse that she doesn’t want a transvaginal exam. Doctor says “Sorry miss, you’re first trimester. The male Republicans who run Texas require that all abortion seekers be examined with a 10″ shaming wand.” She asks “Will it hurt?” Nurse says, “Well, it’s not comfortable, honey. But Texas feels you should have thought of that.” Doctor says, “By the authority invested in me by the GOP base, I thee rape.”

Friday: Doctor is explaining that the Texas GOP requires her to have an intimate encounter with her fetus. He begins describing it to her. Last panel, he says, “Shall I describe it’s hopes and dreams?” She replies, “If it wants to be the next Rick Perry, I’ve made up my mind.”

Saturday: Back in the reception area, she asks where she goes now for the actual abortion. Receptionist tells her there’s a 24-hour waiting period: “The Republican Party is hoping you get caught in a shame spiral and change your mind.” Last panel: She says, “A final indignity.” Receptionist replies, “Not quite. Here’s your bill.”

Cartoonist Gary Trudeau has given an interview on the strips.

I chose the topic of compulsory sonograms because it was in the news and because of its relevance to the broader battle over women’s health currently being waged in several states. For some reason, the GOP has chosen 2012 to re-litigate reproductive freedom, an issue that was resolved decades ago. Why [Rick] Santorum, [Rush] Limbaugh et al. thought this would be a good time to declare war on half the electorate, I cannot say. But to ignore it would have been comedy malpractice.

Several papers will be running the cartoons.

Debbie Van Tassel, assistant managing editor of features at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, tells Comic Riffs that she and other top editors have decided to run next week’s strips, which feature a woman who sits in a “shaming room” as she awaits a pre-termination sonogram and a check-up from a legislator. “We didn’t deliberate long,” Van Tassel tells Comic Riffs. “We all agreed that some readers will be upset by them, mainly because they appear on the comics page, but also because of the graphic depiction of a transvaginal sonogram.”

Van Tassel cites the larger journalistic context in which “Doonesbury” appears. “This newspaper deals with those issues routinely in the news sections and in our health section,” she tells us. “Our page one today, for example, carries a story about the movement by women legislators across the country to curb men’s abilities to get vasectomies and prescriptions for erectile dysfunction. I haven’t heard of any objections to that story yet.”

The Plain Dealer also believes “Doonesbury” deserves a long satiric leash. “Garry Trudeau’s metier is political satire; if we choose to carry ‘Doonesbury,’ we can’t yank the strip every time it deals with a highly charged issue. His fans are every bit as vocal as his critics. We are alerting readers to the nature of the strips so they can decide whether to read them next week.”

Good for them and shame on the papers that censor Trudeau.

Saturday: Politics, Physics, and… Purr-pics!

Posted: March 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 72 Comments

Morning, news junkies!

Here’s your Saturday morning link dump… grab a cuppa or have your furry one pour you a refill… and let’s get started!

“What Barack Obama seems to want to do is go back before those days when we were in different classes based on income, based on color of skin.”

–another moment of Grizzly Inanity, on Sean Profanity’s show

JACKSON, Miss. – Campaigning in the Deep South, where he faces tough opposition from more-conservative rivals for the GOP nomination, Mitt Romney is promoting an antiregulatory theme and a vision of a new environment in which regulators “see businesses and enterprises of all kinds as their friends.”

At a town hall meeting here on Friday, Romney also slammed the Obama administration for imposing a moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil-spill disaster.

“We were in Pascagoula yesterday and we saw behind us a couple of large drilling rigs not being used right now,” Romney said. “The use of drilling rigs in the Gulf is the lowest of any place in the world, lowest utilization. That’s because of this president and the moratorium he put in place that’s illegal.”

  • This headline made my Friday night: “Gloria Allred seeks Rush Limbaugh prosecution“…. Bwahahaha! Classic! Whatever you think of Gloria Allred and her skill/intentions at seizing any opportunity to take on a high profile lawsuit, she still serves as a check and balance in our misogynist culture… anytime she gets on her legal eagle box, it’s a barometer of sorts. So I says… Go get him, Glo! LOL.
  • You don’t hear me say this often, so listen up: Thank you, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Obama Administration for not granting a waiver that would free up funds meant for the Women’s Health Program here in Texas. The banning of this program, due to icky Planned Parenthood cooties, has been such a maddening and saddening story to watch unfold. So to have the HHS and President do this is a welcome surprise for me. I hope it is more than a showhorse (rather than workhorse) move during an election year–but I’m not foolish enough to discount that possibility either. Still, this is a GOOD showhorse move, with symbolic heft to it.
  • I always give credit where it’s due… So, while I am firmly in the “Honey Badger for President” camp and have zero intention of voting for Obama (or any other Republican running, Obama being one himself in everything but name…), here is another move that I must give the President credit for this week: Obama Personally Lobbied to Defeat XL Pipeline. More election pandering? Probably. It is Obama’s typical “we need more studies first” stance. But, I was still very glad to see the measure defeated. And, we do need more studies first–at minimum.

Alright. Now for a bit of Blogger housekeeping…

I apologize for not getting the Kitty or the Hillary posts out last weekend as promised. I’m not sure *when* I’m going to be able to get the Saturday afternoon kitteh posts going, though I haven’t forgotten about doing them one bit (and commenter paperdoll, if you’re reading, I haven’t forgotten about the dog pics I am super duper tardy on owing you, either!) It’s just going to take a few weeks more or so for me to deliver. This afternoon I have to attend the first birthday of my cousin’s first kid, so this weekend is a non-starter. And, I’m in the process of moving into some new digs (move-in date is Saint Patrick’s day)! And, then at the end of this month I turn thirty-one. So it’s nonstop nonstopping for me for a bit 😉 As soon as things settle down, I’ll re-organize my blogger schedule and fit everything in.

I  will have a new “Cinematherapy in Feminist Perspective” post  over at Taylor Marsh’s this evening, so check it out.

Until then… here’s a picture of Rue reading the Economist with me:

If you’re curious (or nosey like Rue’s sister, Lily), here’s what we were reading last Saturday night…

Sex and Advertising: Retail Therapy -- How Ernest Dichter, an acolyte of S. Freud, revolutionized marketing (The Economist, Dec. 2011, holiday double issue)

As for the Hillary blogging–well, I’ve tried to keep my morning read on the lighter side this Saturday so I can spend more time on a super duper sized Hillary Sundae post for you this weekend.

Therefore… it is now your turn in the comments… What’s on your read-n-rant list this morning? Hope you have a lovely Saturday!

Oh… and here is Rue telling Lily some kind of secret…

(…actually, Rue was just grooming Lils…)

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →