Category Archives: equality

Big Bird breathes sigh of relief…

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Congratulations, President Obama. Big Bird lives on…:)

I know better, but I was listening to the rightwing radio last night and they were painting a dim picture of Obama’s win.  I turned it off and went to bed to read…thinking we were going to get Bush III…

Indiana voted in Mike do-nothing Pence for Governor,  and now has a super majority in the legislature…<sigh>

…well, at least I am spared Richard my-sperm-is-a-gift-from-God Mourdock…

The news on the reaction in the Middle East.  I hope this means a peaceful movement in Israel is underway….

DN! has this up on the elections.  Elizabeth Warren is animated after her win.  Thank God.

Unfortunately, the GMO lobby won and Californians defeated the measure requiring GMO labeling. Shit.

O”Reilly had a nice take on why Obama won–because people want “stuff” and Obama was going to give it to them…

Well, now…Romney has the gov’t pay $77,000 for the care and housing of his horse…has money in offshore accounts and John McCain has so many houses he can’t even remember how many he has…all because they don’t pay their fair share of taxes…now who feels entitled?

Is it entitlement when one wants to eat? Have a roof over their head? Get medical care? I’m confused.

They went on to talk about the shift away from the standard–now women and minorities are getting their voices heard. The boys of the old school are threatened…and it will probably get uglier before it’s all done.

To my sisters who were the power behind getting President Obama re-elected:  Thank you.  We can move mountains when we focus on what’s important to us and fight for it.

I want to say, though, that women have been characterized as of “one mind”–that any woman who manages to get before a microphone speaks for all women.  They don’t.

This is one of the reasons that the middle-of-the-road women backed away from the Feminist Movement–they were treated as if they spoke for all women.  Women who wanted to stay home with their children were characterized as dull twits who lacked ambition.  Women who didn’t believe in abortion but believed in equality were marginalized, also.

And the 70s Feminists who fought against alimony because it…well, I’m not really sure why they were fighting against alimony…but as this quote by Barbara Seaman, amongst others, puts it quite well–this is something that I lost out on when I divorced.  I also got less than half of the assets (with a mortgage to pay off) and my ex got away with only paying one-fifth ($20,000) of his income to support his three children.  Although I had stayed home for eleven years, the judge did not allow for that, and had instead computed the amount of support as if I had a job!!  Yes, I had a lousy lawyer–whose partner still smirks at me to this day whenever I have to trudge back to the place I grew up in…I’ve always wondered what that smirk means….

Anyway, I hope that with the election that women and minorities will do their homework, and support thoughtful politicians who approach the legislative process with the “Do unto others…” mindset…it would make life so much easier and just might bring about Peace…

Pens for women? God help us.

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commondreams has this link up of the increasingly stooopid marketing crap of pink, pink, pink crap for women. (Abby Zimet notes that it’s bad enough that we have to deal with Mourdock…um, no, unless you live here in Indiana, you only have to suffer listening to it–you don’t have to fear that he is probably going to get elected…

…and his comment that a pregnancy after rape was a gift from God kind of gives new meaning of men who think of themselves as a gift from God, doesn’t it??  I suppose his sperm should be considered a gift from God, too??)

The comments of customer feedback are too, too delicious.  I was going to suggest a pen in the shape of a vagina, but somebody beat me to it.

…or perhaps we could have one in the shape of a boob.

Some of the best ones:

I allowed my wife to write the grocery list with one of my pens. Shortly thereafter she went out and bought a bunch of flannel shirts, cut the sleeves off and grew a mullet. While she was writing her feminist manifesto, I secretly switched out the man pen with a BiC For Her. She’s now back to baking apple pies, vacuuming in heels, and popping bennies in order to keep her girlish figure… like a proper American gal.

Thank you BiC!

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I tried these on a whim, and I have to say I wasn’t very impressed. The applicator mechanism is far too fiddly, and the plastic tampon inside far too thin (not to mention uncomfortable and non-absorbant) – I’m sure there must be a knack to using them, but I couldn’t find it. They also stained my knickers blue for some reason. I really wanted to like these, but it’s back to pads for me.

bwahahahahahaha

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Native American Heritage Month

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From Turtle Talk--a guest post by Bridget Mary McCormick.

Turtle Talk also has a link up to an obit of Betty Binns Fletcher–a woman to admire.

In the article, she stated that she had a hard time getting hired as an attorney after graduation because of the prejudice in law firms.  Yeah, well, I wish I could say that it has changed, but it’s still there…at least if you’re an assistant.  I took paralegal courses and got A’s.  However, when I and a couple of classmates went to look for a job afterward…nothing.  There were several attorney’s assistants taking the course–all of them blond and in their twenties and high school graduates.  The classmates that couldn’t get a job?  In our forties.  And two of us had Bachelor of Arts degrees.  You can draw your own conclusions.

Also on the blog is this link to a case of a non-Indian mother who gave birth to a child of a Cherokee father, who did not assert his parental rights…at first…but after finding out the child was to be adopted, he filed a case to block it.  It’s ridiculous that this dragged out for two years while the child was becoming attached to the adoptive parents–the father had indicated he did not want her to be adopted by strangers at four months of age–at that point, he should have been custody of the child.  This would have made her life so much more easier than to drag it out.

The father was not abusive, according to the document (I only read to page 26), and other than his initial reluctance, he stepped up and that should have been considered a positive for this little girl.  I mean, the details are scant about the people involved in the case, but something that leaped out at me was  the implication that it was a negative against the father because the father was going to be aided by his parents in caring for the child–the Native Americans raise children differently than Europeans–the entire tribe looks after the little ones.  At least, that is the traditional way…not sure if they still adhere to this, but it wouldn’t be abnormal for the father’s parents to help raise the little girl.  What is seen as a negative by white folks (assuming that the professionals involved were white folks) is seen as positive by the Native American culture.  Lastly, there is the elephant in the room of whether the adoptive parents were Christian and the Native American father practiced traditional tribal spirituality.  The Mormons used this angle to kidnap Native American children from their parents and adopt them legally.

 

 

Whitley County tea party billboard

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<sigh> from people who claim environmentalists are scary, scary people….

….the Whitley County *cough* Patriots put up billboards that implicitly compare Barack Obama as a terrorist who needs to be “taken out”.

Link here:  http://www.wsbt.com/news/wsbt-tea-partiers-forced-to-move-controversial-antiobama-billboard-20121016,0,4031528.story

All that’s missing is the bulls-eye that Sarah Palin had painted on Gabby Giffords’ head…

 

Weekend

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I checked out videos of Hotel Rwanda and Schindler’s List from the library for the weekend.

Yeah, it’s not something I would recommend…pretty depressing.

I go round and round about what pushes people to treat another human being as “cockroaches” (Rwanda) or “vermin” (Nazi Germany).

I used to think of it like psychiatry has promoted–these folks were abused as children, therefore, they acted out their anger.  But then I realized that there are many people who are abused who do not go on to hurt others–they go on to be good parents, wives/husbands, citizens, etc.

So, then I go back to the start and ask again why some folks grow up to be bullies and others don’t?

I mean, in Schindler’s List, Goeth, a high raking officer, was clearly mentally ill by being torn between loving his Jewish maid, whom he said he wanted to grow old with, but beating her because she was a Jewish “bitch”.  He randomly would shoot people for no reason at all.  He had a Jewish woman engineer shot because she was telling him that the concrete foundation they had poured for a building was not level and it needed to be re-poured.  After she was shot, he  told them to tear up the foundation and redo it like she said.  Just craziness.

But none of what happened in Rwanda and Nazi Germany could have been possible without people going along with it.  People who fed their hatred and jealousy and fear.  People who loved having power over others.

I’m reminded of the Native American story of the Grandfather and the grandson.  The grandson had told his grandfather that he had two wolves inside him:  one was dark that was mean, hateful, selfish, greedy; and the other was Light that was kind, loving, compassionate, and generous.  He asked his grandfather which wolf would win, and the grandfather replied, “Whichever one you feed.”

 

 

 

Obama as a witch doctor…

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…but I’m not racist.  Of course, Faux news is right there to defend this guy in saying there were death threats.  Was anyone arrested?  No?  Then I would question the validity of the person claiming there were death threats.  I mean, really, the guy is trying to play the victim here?  With someone who is in such denial about being a racist, I would question his claim of people threatening his life.
I just don’t see it.

 

Dennis Banks on DN

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DN! has a clip up of Dennis Banks on Columbus Day, or Indigenous Peoples Day.  

I never learned about how Columbus and the Spaniards treated the Native peoples until college.  They would  sharpen their knives and then cut the Natives to see if they were sharp enough, they raped the women, and worked the men, women, and children until they literally dropped dead mining gold.   There are horror stories of babies being pulled from their mothers’ arms and being fed to dogs.  And then there was the religious bullying of converting them to Catholicism because their spirituality intimidated the Spaniards.

Paradise lost…

 

Women of Togo March

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…I guess the go-for-a-week-without-sex-thing didn’t work out so well.  No mention of it, anyway.

In other news, Koch Conservatives are urging women to keep their clothes on for other reasons….

You know, I’m almost disappointed that the election is coming up so soon…things are just starting to get interesting…

…chastity belts will be the next thing advocated by these groups…