The Fundamentals of My Feminism

 An artist depicted a Great Wall of Vaginas (Vulvas, actually) and because I'm me, I thought about the amazing plaster caster Cynthia Albritton of recent blessed memory, who got depictions of the units of so many male artists including Jimi Hendrix. The monuments to assorted gifted phalli aren't necessarily controversial--but someone has decided to be the decider of correct and appropriate vulvularity. 

We did not need that. Purity culture is already doing a wonderful job of telling female-bodied people we are having bad vulvas. They are telling young girls they are used up by just using tampons for their menses. 

We are told we are worth less because of our "body count" and that multiple penises and births are making our one interesting feature (our vag) less useful. Sloppy, slippery, loose, etc. 

They do not seem to know we have muscles on our pelvic floor that can push out whole human life many times over. We are not spent because of little penetrations (tampons, penises) when we are made to birth big-headed babies. Vulvas are elastic and fantastic. 

But anatomy is not destiny. Having a vulva or a uterus does not mean you identify as female, and I support referring to people who birth, menstruate, or have uteruses or vulvas, as being referred to in that way as appropriate. I am not being referred to when someone is talking about a "birthing person" and I don't feel excluded by that. I technically might be able to--but I know despite being female, that isn't me. It's a term of fact, not a judgment. 

TWGB: No Kings

It makes sense to me to open this post with Donald Trump signing the front of Bibles for Alabamians who have survived the extraordinarily severe tornado outbreak that killed 23 people. He would surely sign the cover, as it is the only part I really think he ever looked at. But that isn't weird. A Bible is a keepsake book, a thing you won't throw away. And the signature of a President, no matter which one, is a kind of historical record. Many Christians have keepsake Bibles where there is a place to recognize family histories like births and deaths. It's a part of our family lore and hand-me-down heritage to gift a Bible to a newlywed couple to remind them to raise their family in the faith. My parents received such keepsake Bibles that I ferreted out as a unchurched child among our various basement treasures--put-away unfashionable clothes and holiday decorations and military mementos and other random things people in their thirties have that their kids might find. 

I found the religion I didn't have--and because I was a reader, read. But there was nothing in those keepsake gifted Bibles that made me feel anything different about us--other than that my immediate family never indoctrinated me into this thing of religion that their families obviously had, that we never practiced. I used the unused pages to try and fill in the family history bits that had been left not filled in, but didn't even know what apparently, family Bibles should have recorded. 

What I did know, though, was better than religion--I had safety. My parents taught me to be capable. I wasn't brave, but I could fake it. I wasn't strong, but I could find strength. I was not fast, but I could be ready. I was smart, but they taught me when to not be too clever. I don't know what Donald Trump was taught when he was a wee'un, but I don't think it is too much removed from his grandfather who started hotels that might have offered more than the usual accommodations. He was taught to monetize, to capitalize.  And this is what he does. He moved from residential real estate to casinos because here is more money there. And then branched out to other ventures like a modeling agency, that wasn't too far removed from human trafficking. 

Things being sex-trafficking adjacent though, are necessarily bad, and it looks like Trump and the GOP are pretty well sex-trafficking adjacent. (More so than usual.) A recent bust of a spa chain that deals in massages and more which was goddamn close to Mar-A-Lago brought in NFL Patriots owner Robert Kraft, but the founder of this little old business selfied with so many prominent GOP figures, but most notably Trump at the Super Bowl. Well, I guess for a person with a dodgy business, friend in high places could come in handy. She also took pics with Jesse Watters and Judge Pirro and all the Trump kids and so on. 

Donald Trump likes to talk about sex trafficking along the US border. This, under his very nose--is actual sex trafficking. 

But is there more to the story? Is the madam trafficker also selling access to a certain person inclined to be accessible at one of his business addresses?  Yes? He is often there and is apparently susceptible to people who want to drop him a note that says anything like "Dear king". 

Now, my friends, you know in this country there shouldn't be any kings but Jesus and Elvis, and Elvis has left the building. Trump is no "King Cyrus" either. Trump being called "King" is weird, but his accepting hints of policy from randos who frequent his business is also very weird.

I look at his trademarks, and have to wonder what this is all about. Is he eventually setting up actual escort services and what could generously be called spas along the lines of Mme. Yang at any of his properties abroad as a kind of full-service agreement? After all, this is the guy who is not at all circumspect with his own sexual continence. But I also wonder--what about the blackmail potential? Trump has used surveillance on people at his properties. To what end, though?

This Looks Crooked from Every Angle

The thing that bothers me about Michael Cohen's statement that he is the guy who paid Stormy Daniels for no particular reason whatsoever is that the fact that he paid her at all is really amazingly coincidental with his client, one Donald J. Trump, having been implicated in an affair with this woman, and in the throes of an election where the most recent scuttlebutt alleged that he was a womanizer, when this pay-off happened. He can try to pretend-separate this from the campaign, but there is no more obvious reason for this payoff than that the Trump campaign would prefer to not have another woman talk about his extra-marital sex bidness.

I think this right there is stupid, because we know now, after the election, that Trump's philandering was never a problem for his voters. He was accused of sexual harassment and rape during the election. I'm not sure how Stormy Daniels' story was going to be some kind of "too much". Coming on the heels of the several kinds of harassment and assault allegations happening just then, which Trump had no problem denying, I don't know why her story would have represented a damaging bit of pile-on that needed to be monetarily hushed.

Cohen alleges that his financial facilitation of a payment (through the creation of an LLC to sort of, shall we say, launder that monetary "gift") was done entirely without any coordination with the Trump Campaign or the Trump Foundation.

Yah right--and he isn't also suing Buzzfeed because of the Steele Dossier.  Cohen is a fixer, and he does shit for Trump whether it is really good shit to do or not. I kind of wonder whether he has significantly fuxxored himself by admitting he has paid for Stormy Daniels in lots of ways--he should not be offering his financial assistance to some client who is not indigent to influence any potential case--and Trump should seriously be staking his own bribes, right?  This is basic lack of lawyering ethics.

Also, this is either a bribe or a material boost to the Trump campaign because it pretend-refutes damaging info for the Trump Campaign.  Totally an in-kind donation, you might think?

I don't even know. Cohen strikes me as a bad actor anyway. I definitely don't give credence to his story.

Rep. Blake Fahrenthold Used Taxpayer Funds for His Sexual Harassment Settlement

He used $84K in a sexual harassment suit. As with the Joe Barton thing, I sort of really hope no one tweets any nude selfies of the Congress critter in my direction. Also, I forsee a sexual harassment claim on the up. Revisited, or, another, more liberated claimant.

UPDATE: Rep. Barbara Comstock, R, VA, has made the sensible suggestion that the millionaire representative could repay the taxpayers and resign to make up for his unacceptable bullshit. I see her point.

UPDATE 2: Heh. This just reminded me of Sen Susan Collins going off on him for being sexist.

UPDATE 3: No, I'm serious-there is probably more where this came from.

And Here's John Sununu and More Sexism

Heh. Heh. Oh, wow. So the punchline here is, if you missed it--Hillary Clinton is unfuckable. Because on the entire scale of what makes up our personal self-worth as women, the overriding factor beyond all professional, material, spiritual and familial accomplishments, needs to be whether we are penis-approved and coitus-validated. Somehow she and Bill Clinton made a 41 year partnership where both individuals exceeded the ambitions of most people and somehow created a child together, in a way where there was no intimacy at all? And this is very funny to Sununu and company, because wow--wasn't that what a wife was for? The idea that Sununu knows anything about the Clintons' intimacy is absurd and the assumption is crude and disgraceful, but the implication that if Hillary Clinton were a real success it would be easier for horrid monstrosities like himself to envision her, like, doin' it? Instead of doing things like negotiating nuclear treaties or trade deals? Tells me an awful lot about his expectations of what women are capable of. But I don't expect better from Sununu himself, anyway. It's part of a pattern endemic to this campaign, and something that I hold in a lot of contempt.

Rudy Giuliani Has Advice About Women

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani is sort of an interesting surrogate for Trump because I don't actually think he does anything for Donald Trump's likeability--and especially not with any of the demographics Trump's struggling with. But he is a guy who is at home on a television news set because for some reason, his opinion regarding things like policing and national security seems to be sought out. Which gives us the opportunity to hear opinions like this:

Donald Trump should skip the next two debates unless he gets special guarantees from the moderators, former New York mayor and top Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani told reporters after the debate.

Lester Holt, the NBC News anchor who moderated the debate, should be “ashamed of himself,” Giuliani said after the debate. He said Holt was wrong to attempt to fact-check Trump on the constitutionality of stop-and-frisk and his claimed opposition to the Iraq War.

Facts are apparently Trump's kryptonite. And who brings kryptonite to a fight?--Lex Luthor, that's who. So Lester Holt is equally as bad as Lex Luthor.  Those are just the results of brain-logics. He's distributing them to you because you can't just know facts and derive conclusions from them like some sort of rational actor! You need authoritarian interlocutors to tell you what the facts even mean, right?

Ted. Cruz. Sex. Scandal?

If you're nasty and you know it, raise your hand!

Based on the news of the day, I picked a hell of an election year to stop being a blackout drunk. Apparently, the competition between GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and second place Senator Ted Cruz has devolved from a race to see who could offer a more disturbingly bad game plan for addressing terrorism in Europe, to juvenile sexism and now, a tabloid tale about Cruz being a serial adulterer.

Damn, that's distasteful to think about. Naturally, Cruz alleges that this is some of the Trump campaign's nasty handiwork, which has some merit, as this level of ratfucking is a Roger Stone specialty and National Enquirer's CEO David Pecker and Donald Trump go back a ways. But there's some possibility that this salacious story has Team Rubio's entirely normal sized fingers all over it.

Given that Marco Rubio is no longer in the race, that's not so much a matter of strategic story-placement, as a delightful display of positively personal animus. Still, I wonder...

As Senator Cruz is a family man and I'm just a humble blogger, I've only got so much freude to schaden over the story, except to say that in a match-up with a grandiose braggart whose digit-measuring borders on the obsessive, there is one person who might actually benefit from a rumor that Ted Cruz is getting busy like a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest--

Think about that for a minute.

As to the idea that it's absurd to think Ted Cruz actually can or does get more tail than a peacock ranch, friends, I can't even. But as Kissinger once said, "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac" and rolling up on the honeys with "Hi, I'm a US Senator" might work with the congress-groupies. I. Guess. Probably. Exist. Hmm. Also, preacher's kids, right? and something about the biggest sexual organ is the brain.

I reserve judgment. I have the feeling I may need it later. After all,  holier than any of y'all Ted Cruz has accepted the endorsement of every homophobic bigot you could shake a stick at.  And while the Ten Commandments refrains from mentioning gay folks, it does bother to list adultery as a big no-no.

As with train wrecks and people with something nasty hanging off their face, one both wants to look away, and can't.

A Politicization of Human Bodies

The inadvertent revelation that there was a strong political component to the House Select Committee on Benghazi would necessarily make me leery of the promotion of another Select Committee on Planned Parenthood--is "select" a euphemism for GOP enemies' list, perhaps? But the thing of it is, since the Tea Party "wave" election year of 2010, abortion access has been directly in the sights of many conservative legislators. Planned Parenthood, as the biggest provider of those services, has been particularly targeted. This is not the first time that a GOP-led House has decided that hoax videos should result in defunding Planned Parenthood.  I've known for a while that right-wingers basically are opposed to the idea of any family planning services for low-income people at all, regardless of whether they are abortion-related, because you never hear "Hyde Amendment" brought up at all.

The current fight is in part fueled by a particular donor/agitator, Stephen Baer. He's sort of pushed the rumor that might have shut down the McCarthy speakership by alluding to a Kevin McCarthy/Renee Ellmers affair. (I'm calling bullshit on the affair bit because it isn't verified and every time I try to think of it, my mind goes to a super-cut of scenes with Majors Houlihan and Burns from the popular 1970's sitcom M*A*S*H*.) But let's be honest, an odd-numbered year is when there aren't elections, and the signifying whackadoodles can feel like doing shit like threatening to not raise the debt ceiling (if they know what that is) or shut down the government. They're bloody nihilists, that way. It stimulates the gawkers. It's fireworks. It costs taxpayer money, but we've already established that they don't care. They take that expense, turn around, and fundraise off it. It's ballocks but they're working it.

Josh Duggar and Ashley Madison--Thinking it Out

The gawking over the continued comeuppance of the Duggar clan by way of the revelations that the way in which these many children of the Quiverfull faithful aren't necessarily guaranteed to be exceptionally sexually continent, in the person of one Josh Duggar, is a little bit petty, I think.

Not because I think that the hypocrisy of the Christian Right isn't in and of itself shameful--it is.

But because I think, being a rationalist, I am not sure that we have any reason to expect someone raised in his worldview to behave better--we don't. He was raised to believe that sex outside of marriage--outside of straight, missionary, and vanilla, was a kind of damnable sin. Experiencing urges or temptations to act outside of the prescribed sexual roles, Josh Duggar figured he was damned enough and decided to roll with it. In a black and white view of morality, if you aren't simon-pure--what are you?

You're a perv. So that's the fitting role for old middle-aged before his time Josh Duggar. The first son--so if I understand the many pictures taken with so many of the GOP 2016 primary contestants, I would have to assume, the one the Duggar clan kind of thought might go into politics to spread the various odd ideas about family, homeschooling, and sexual continence...

And it turns out is exactly the example we've got for how traditional values go wrong. Because we learn a bit about how the fundamentalists find that incest is awfully common. And that for an aggrieved spouse, however humiliating the situation, leaving isn't socially permissible. So it kind of seems like an adulterous or incestuous individual can just do a smidgen of physical labor, get absolved by the powerful people in the same cult, and even hurt their family, ask for forgiveness, and be kind of okay, learning exactly nothing--especially how to regard their spouse as a human being and sexual partner who needs to be respected, consulted, and considered in all one's doings.

Getting the Duggar Interview out of My System

Sometimes I really want to leave a particular story be and just stop blogging about it, but something about it won't let me--the Duggars are that way. I never had any interest in their reality show because I basically think reality tv is a sign, in and of itself, of a kind of unhealthy exhibitionism. What's the pull in watching the day-to-day doings of your friendly next-door conservative Christian fertility cultists? The most I could sniff about is that a reality show is inherently exploitative, and that, since many of the children are minors--they don't really have the ability to knowingly consent to having their family's business aired. That these kids are otherwise very highly sheltered from what I would think of as "the world" never struck me as being as obviously a problem.  It's a bit easy to assume that the Duggar parents, however, have some idea of what they're doing.

It's easy enough for me, not being a parent, to snipe. But the interview revealed certain things (Salon uses the term "horrifying"--which only seems sensational until you think about the context) that make me genuinely wonder what they think they are sheltering their children from. Because among the things they actually said out loud where people could hear is that they compared notes with other families and what Josh Duggar did wasn't that bad.

I am assuming they did not join a support group, where one might expect to find people with similar experiences, but they just happen to be around people who have their kids feeling up on each other. Their homeschooling mentor Bill Gothard was a serial sexual harasser and the law enforcement officer they turned to to give their son a stern talking-to was deep into the child porn.

Do these people know anyone with a healthy concept of sexual boundaries?

If Santorum Enters the Race, It's Like I Get All the Hits

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This Wasn't Ever Going To Not Happen

There might be people who would question whether there's anything just too coincidental about Monica Lewinsky penning her memoirs and a possible Hilary Clinton presidential run.

I wouldn't be one of them. I've always had a soft place in my heart, in a way, for Lewinsky. I think it's maybe because we aren't so different in age, and I just feel entirely sympathetic to the idea that the media and the instant, sick and sometimes anonymous, gratification culture of the internet and the 24 hour news cycle violated her personal life in a virtually irreparable way that I don't think she or President Clinton could have ever fathomed. I don't think Clinton ever understood that his private business would ever be anything but private because he imagined it inconsequential in the grander scheme of things. And as for Monica Lewinsky, imagine you find a companionship and intimacy with the president of the US--I don't know what to call that relationship. But I understand how she got caught in it, and I think we all get in retrospect, how it might have always been doomed to be eternally spun.

And it had to follow, like night the day, that the signal jibber-jabber gossip mongering that became the defining scandal of the Clinton years had to be revived. This was not ever not going to happen.

No conspiracy needed. And I can not even blame Lewinsky for deciding the iron was hot. What Hillary Clinton chooses to do with this thing, if it even becomes a thing, when she runs (if she chooses to run) is so up to her.

But all agita aside, this was exactly what was going to be.

Doesn't Seem Housebroken

I suppose that's a bit of a crude way to describe my general impression of former US Rep. Anthony Weiner's recent admissions, but I think it's safe to say, there could definitely be cruder ways to put it. As of his resignation from the House two years ago, I was pretty well done with interest in his political career, and haven't put a lot of stock in his "comeback" to run for mayor of NYC. In the first place, his original problem struck me as being a kind of gross immaturity, and if he hadn't already gotten an idea of the loaded game he was playing with his public image the first time around, well, two years isn't a lot of time for growing up and figuring out What Not to Do.  It looks like a bad case of what we'd call "boundary issues"-and learning where the acceptable boundaries are and how to respect them is best learned as a pup.

But also, with the recent revelations of alter ego "Carlos Danger", I think I'm getting the picture (just as an educated guess) that skirting the boundaries and testing reactions is a part of the thrill of the kind of transgressive play that Weiner likes. To use the "housebroken" analogy--you can't really scold someone for making a mess of things if they thrive on the scolding, or you'll just see more messes.

Now, that doesn't mean he can't be a brilliant guy or a good politician in other ways, and if he had a cause that wasn't ultimately self-serving, and wanted to throw himself into it, I'd be like--"Go! Do that thing!" But running for an office like mayor of New York and having one of these "wife awkwardly supportive at his side" press dealios as he weathers yet another self-set sex-themed media time-bomb? No, I think he's burning up the oxygen in the race and needs to take his going-up-in-flames-ass outside, now.

Does that sound prudish of me? Well, I think the problem is, he hasn't been respectful of some of the women he's been all up in the sextmoshine with before, and all speculation about how his wife feels about this aside, she is a professional politico too, and this isn't really a big help for her, either.  It isn't just a thing he does without consequences and respecting other people's consent. I could care less what he was into--if he could balance it with his public life intelligently. That sure isn't what it looks like. And it hurts his political allies.

He should probably get out of the race, is all. Maybe he can throw his support to someone else, be a  consigliere to a candidate he believes in, but just...not ...be the candidate himself. Nothing personal.

(Everything personal.)

Ken Cuccinelli's Unnatural Act: Or, the AG and the BJ's

I'll admit, I was aware that Ken Cuccinelli was up for bigger things back in 2010, when it looked like he was trying to take on climate science as his signifying crusade; but deep down, I was hoping he would go full-metal-wingnut over something a little more representative of his social conservative bona fides.  After all, this is the guy who weirded out over boobies post-Ashcroft. I won't have Rick Santorum to kick around forever--why not be on the look-out for a new field of ripe prudish whackadoodlehood?

But the other reason I was hoping Cuccinelli would pick a crusade with social conservative value is that there is a religious right bubble--on one hand, they seem to be aware that they're out of the mainstream and that their values aren't represented by Hollyweird and the mainstream media, but on the other hand, there seems to be a an almost naive lack of awareness that they don't represent a silent, moral majority of people who think exactly as they do. Case in point, I believe, is his request for a re-hearing of Virginia's anti-sodomy law:

This specific case deals with a man who was prosecuted under the "Crimes Against Nature" statute for having had oral sex with women, a felony offense under that law. The man in the case, William MacDonald, was in his late 40s when he was charged with having consensual oral sex with two young women who were, at the time, ages 16 and 17. While that might be seen as creepy, in Virginia, the age of consent is 15 years old. It is considered statutory rape—a felony offense—to have sex with anyone under that age. Under state law, an adult can be prosecuted for "causing" delinquency by having sex with someone between the ages of 15 and 18, but that is only a misdemeanor. MacDonald was convicted of such a misdemeanor, and his lawyers aren't challenging that conviction. But they have challenged—so far, successfully—the state's attempt to prosecute him for violating the "Crimes Against Nature" law. 

Because Virginia still has this anti-sodomy law on the books, the state wants to use it against MacDonald and win a felony conviction. The state, however, couldn't prosecute him under this statute if he had engaged in vaginal sex. That is, the state is trying to use a loophole in the law that makes oral, but not vaginal, sex a felony in order to go after this guy. The court of appeals determined that MacDonald could not be prosecuted under this law because the US Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that such laws are an unconstitutional "intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual."

At issue with the statute that he's using is that he's specifically singling out, not the issue of the ages of the young women in question nor the issue of consent, but the actual nature of the act itself. He wants a felony conviction because the act is oral sex.

He wants oral sex to be treated as a serious crime.  Let that sink in. Is that really where most people are on the subject?  Because I am willing to bet they are not. And yet he's going to be "the anti-oral sex guy" on the cusp of a gubernatorial run--is that natural, I ask you? (And this is just the latest thing in a string of things, which includes being birther-curious and paranoid about being tracked by one's Social Security number.)

Anyway, I suspect Cuccinelli will make for interesting watching in the months, nay, years to come.

Heh Heh Propinquity--Pat Robertson and the Ten Commandments

See, although your Old Testament might show that adultery is one of the ten things God said you really, really, shouldn't do, Pat Robertson, like the anything goes hippy scoundrel he is, understands why if you were General Petraeus, you'd really want to hit that ass. Because really, what choice do you even have, if you are a man with a penis? Like, free will and shit?

BWWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! You are a dude with a penis. Shut up you should tap that hell out of that.  Pat  Robertson says and it's not like he's a sleazeball plutocrat; patrirachy-reinforcing peddler of nonsense from the dangers of Halloween candy to the susceptibility of all us for living where the gays and Democrats and feminists and all'em can make God send Hurrycanes! Like 9/11's.  For giving money to the ACLU and getting divorced and all the things that--

Okay--long story short, Pat Robertson has been blaming shit on me, personally, as the person who ended my marriage, started practicing witchcraft, and taking birth control. I'm kind of fed up with it. I went to atheism--no good.  I switched to PFAW for my donations--nada. And yet somehow, I think adultery is bad faith you shouldn't have with your spouse--you should totally talk it out and see where you stand on that--

Robertson is all like "Men cheat".

Who's permissive?

Lessons Not Learned--Handel's Hallelujah Chorus

I wanted to review some comments of one Karen Handel, the wingnut warrior alleged to be the driver of the bus she was eventually thrown under in the whole Susan G. Komen dumping Planned Parenthood debacle. She recently had a friendly interview with CBN, that got picked-up by somewhat less-friendly Rawstory.

Here's stuff she actually said:

“And lets remember Komen is a breast cancer organization,” Handel continued. “We’re not involved in politics or this type of guerrilla grassroots campaigning that Planned Parenthood unleashed on us. All for, not the sake of women’s health, but for the sake of politics and their political agenda, which should make all of us very, very concerned. 

“This was nothing sort of a shake down,” she said. “To watch what played out, and somehow an organization like Planned Parenthood to be held up as sort of the face of the women’s movement was stunning to me. There is clearly a real bias around this, that somehow the right to an abortion equals women’s rights, and I reject that. It is outrageous, absolutely outrageous. 

Handel ran in the Republican primary for Georgia governor in 2010, but lost in a tightly contested runoff to Nathan Deal. Part of her political platform was ensuring no taxpayer funds were used by Planned Parenthood.

So, politics wasn't involved until Handel got involved, with a previous agenda to defund Planned Parenthood,  and once Komen announced that the partnership was ended, a grassroots effort (which means, a "bottom-up" effort--not orchestrated by PP, even if they put up a petition or donation widget on their site--like dur, who wouldn't? But no--they did not orchestrate the response nor did they attack or politicize--)

Actually, the Komen decision politicized breast care eligibility by judging the women who sought exams or referrals from PP as "less-than" because PP services low-income people and also offers abortion services in the first place. Planned Parenthood was one avenue for low income women to get early detection--which could lead to early necessary cancer care. Breast cancer survivors are intimately cognizant of the importance of early detection and treatment. They often do know of someone whose cancer was not diagnosed early enough due to poor access, and they have every reason to be pissed without any influence from PP.

I appreciate that Karen Handel wants creative control over the songs that are sung for her in Wingnut Valhalla, but it is still too soon--we still know what her role was and how Komen failed as a result of her urging.

She disrupted, badly.

They don't even realize how stupid they're being when they do this shit--

Utah just passed a fairly stupid bill regarding sex ed, which is exactly the sort of thing that shows how uneducated some of our lawmakers are regarding reproductive issues:

The bill forbids advocating for “the use of contraceptive methods or devices,” sex outside marriage or homosexuality. It also restricts teaching about sexual intercourse or erotic behavior.

Public and charter schools would have the option of developing an abstinence-only curriculum or skipping the discussion of sexuality altogether.

“We’ve been culturally watered down to think we have to teach about sex, about having sex and how to get away with it, which is intellectually dishonest,” Wright said in defense of the bill. “Why don’t we just be honest with them upfront that sex outside marriage is devastating?”

Who, pray tell, is having sex and "getting away with it"? Am I off base to presume that male persons, who don't get pregnant, have about a 100% "getting away with it" rate, and the real problem is that female people just aren't getting knocked up like the trollops they are since they are using protection?  Which just goes to show that people who are for abstinence know abstinence isn't going to happen, and they mostly just want to punish women for having functioning libidos--and that they pretty much know that contraception works (or else--where is the "getting away with it" factor coming in, hmm?), they just don't think women of any age should have the information for it or access to it.

Sex outside of marriage isn't devastating. Unprotected, uninformed, desperate sex following dumb urban myths about contraception with outmoded attitudes about sin and shame, might be, but luckily, we don't have to live that way. And I am of late far less patient with this outlook than I have ever been before. These sex-loony mostly-religious right nonsense-pushers don't care if their misinformation leads to death.  They aren't pro-life, they are just anti-sex and anti-woman.

All the stories like this of late have me simply shaking mad.

Rick Santorum and Illegal Blow jobs

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NH Republican Jeanine Notter states that the pill causes prostate cancer--zuh?

You know, I think a big part of this reproductive health care issue has to do with politicians discussing medical issues with insufficient background and without much attempt to obtain valid information. That we have the spectacle of the GOP taking us to Sunday school when they need sex ed is fairly depressing.

Open Letter To PETA--

This nearly knocked the pork rinds out of my hands.



Your advertisement for veganism seems to indicate that hurting women is a desirable thing, and that a woman who was physically harmed by violent love-making would be interested in risking her body again. You aren't promulgating the adoption of a lifestyle that is better for the poor wee animals that would otherwise be eaten if this woman's partner were still eating meat, or showing how he might benefit in many non-violent ways. You're promulgating a view that equates sex with violence and actually implies that rough and harmful sexual encounters are desireable--a view which makes life worse for the female primates (like myself)who go about our being-female way on this planet.

I understand that being shocking gets you guys eyeballs and publicizes your "concern". I'm dead-set against many factory-farm procedures and despise the cruelty in much of the meat industry, myself. I'm an educated meat-eater and former vegan--and this ad made me sick.

Stop exploiting human beings if you care about living things you damn, dumb, fucking knobs. Violence against women isn't funny or interesting; it's a real thing that happens everyday. You aren't being provacative in a way that benefits your cause or makes people think--you just espoused sexual violence!

Get real, or get gone.

Not really yours, but respectfully,

Vixen