Category Archives: rights

Why I watch

A really smart person surprised me by asking about my last posting.  Why do I care what people say about my rights?  After all, this is America.  It’s 2012!

I care because I’m a student of history. Ninety-two years ago, women in the United States were still fighting for the right to vote. We didn’t achieve that until ratification by three-fourths of the states of the Nineteenth Amendment, August 18, 1920, when women finally gained the right to vote in a federal election. 


Mississippi did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1984.

Not until 1965 (Griswold v. Connecticut) was it legal in every U.S. state for a married couple to use birth control. 

Most people know that extremist factions in Afghanistan prohibited women from attending school, working, driving, going out in public without a male relative, or even appearing in public without being covered, head-to-toe. But it wasn’t always like that.

“Before 1996… nearly half the doctors, university students and teachers in Kabul were women.” (see citations 1 and 2, below*)

Did you know that? Extremism can happen.  Even in America. After all, a lawmaker in our country recently had this to say: 

NPR article – “Girl Scouts destroying ‘American Family Values’.”

I have no printable words to sufficiently express my thoughts on his comments, except: are you #&@! kidding me?!?**  This person was elected to make laws in our country.

I have a niece in third grade. I watch. I care. I also laugh:

Big Train (satirical) Sexism Debate

*1: Read more: Time on Women in Afghanistan

*2:  PBS on Women in Afghanistan
** Standard disclaimer: Swearing like…? I am, literally, a sailor.  😀 





Quote of the Day

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
~ Ayn Rand


That’s all that needs to be said on this subject 🙂



Rights

Today’s posting isn’t about things that make me laugh.  This time it’s about things that make me pay attention. That’s what I did when I saw the photo of the panel in this House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on the contraceptive coverage rule. –> All male panel at Congressional hearing. Where are the women?



Here’s my nomination:

CONGRESSIONAL PANEL TO DETERMINE 
CONTRACEPTION COVERAGE
AND VIAGRA FUNDING POLICY:
click here to read about these qualified ladies

My family tree includes roots of Pilgrims, Presbyterians, Catholics, and Quakers, and branches of Jews, Unitarians, Methodists, etc. It makes for a great Thanksgiving table! This is one country where we all have the right to practice any religion we choose, (even none), with none endorsed by the state and none imposing its beliefs on the other. But this Congressional hearings group, and the actions behind it, makes me feel like I’m looking at the Taliban! 


I’m blessed to have a loving, ethical, responsible dad, husband, brother, and sons. Would they make good choices for my religion or my body? Probably. Will I permit them to make my choices? No. I may consult them, and consider their input, but in the end, decisions about my faith and my body are mine. I may choose to have as many children as my body allows.  Blessed with 19 children  Or I may choose to have none, or just one, and be thankful for that blessing. Birth control is a personal choice, as is religion. 


If do not permit my own beloved men, whom I trust, to make determinations about my body, I certainly will not permit politicians to do so. There are, sadly, men, fathers, brothers, politicians, and even religious leaders in this world who’ve proven appallingly dangerous to women. Just see the links at the bottom of the page 🙁  


Why shouldn’t men be able to make choices about women’s bodies?  Well, first, these bodies belong to us, and no-one else. We women will choose differently from each other for our bodies.  But we have the ability, right, responsibility, and power to make our own choices about them.  


Therein lies the problem, for some: power.

Ah, power. Birth control allowed it to shift. And that makes some people very uncomfortable; some, abroad and at home, are willing to to anything to change it. Gender and anatomy no longer determine what a woman might choose to do with her life, or how long she has to accomplish her goals. Stepping into a time machine – “It’s all dudes.” 

A paternalistic society enables some to believe that men have the right to use power over women, (see links below) and may even cause some women to believe it, too. In the long run, this isn’t healthy for women, or for men. Our sons and daughters all deserve to live a life of kindness, compassion, and respect, as do we.

When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.~ Pearl S. Buck

So, where’s today’s silver lining?  It’s in literacy – I just read multiple sources on this issue, from all different points of view, in order to be informed. 

And the silver lining is drawn with a pen; as a start, I wrote to my Congressional representative.

I’m grateful that I saw this sight today~

 



Links on why women must preserve their right to self-determination:

Sara Robinson’s analysis of social change : “anatomy really was destiny — and all of the world’s societies were organized around that central fact. Women were born to bear children; they had no other life options…Our biology reduced us to a kind of chattel, subject to strictures that owed more to property law than the more rights-based laws that applied to men…”