Jenny’s Pennies

Via incoming links in my Wordpress blog stats I find that I have been linked to on a recent post at Birth Pangs. The writer April Reign shows us a letter written by a man named Michael who has compiled a list of bloggers who has written about the “Pill Kills”-campaign. And I, through my little post here, have made that list!

We who think that the campaign is ridiculous BS are called “Culture of Death bloggers”. And this is apparently just the “short list”. Gee guys, it’s such an honor to be nominated!

I reprint Michael’s letter below - yeah, I normally don’t want to give shit as this any attention, but I’ll do it this time - with the links to all my fellow “culture of death” bloggers.* Keep up the good work people!

Dear pro-life friends,

As many of you already know, American Life League is launching a campaign to inform the public about the abortifacient nature of oral contraceptives. (If you don’t already know about it, please take a moment to check out www.ThePillKills.com . Also, be sure to join our facebook page and invite your friends! www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=34501835075 ) Some of you have blogged about it, and we’re gearing up for a full-court press on this initiative.
But we need your help!
In just 2 days, “pro-choice” bloggers have filled the blogosphere with their vitriol and Culture of Death rhetoric. In fact, one blogger went so far as to state his hatred for babies, while a comment on another blog indicated a desire to show up to a designated protest area to “mess with” us.
Just to give you a sampling of who is saying what, I am sending you a “short” list of Culture of Death bloggers talking about The Pill Kills website. I don’t recommend wasting too much time reading their nonsense, but it is worth noting their overt hostility to anything that “just might” change their worldview of “promiscuity-made-safe.”
We present information. They present virtiol. Why is that? Makes one wonder what they’re so angry about!
Your voice is louder than theirs because you have the Truth! So let’s fill the blogosphere with the Truth! Send e-mails. Tell your friends. Post The Pill Kills button on your blogs! Do whatever it takes … just don’t let them silence our voice for those who don’t have one.
As always, thanks for everything you do for the pro-life cause. Our efforts would be a lot harder without yours!
–Michael

The Graduate
Birth Pangs
Medical-news-now.com
Citizen Girl
Melanie’s blog of good stuff
Signs of the times
Paging Lucina
Ms Magazine
Feministing
I’m A Feminist
Robotic squidling
Hangofwednesday
Church gal
Debate politics
Majikthise
Ravings of a semi-sane madwoman
Jenny’s Pennies LOOK, HERE I AM!
Matthew Yglesias
Tar hearted
Dark side of the mom
Power up
Overclocked drama
ifeminists
Eccentric bitch
Broken rubbers
Childfree hardcore
CelticBear’s musings
Feminist.org
Ginandkerosene’s blog
Items of interest
Feminocracy
The W.O.M.B.
Slog - the Stranger
Dead racists society
Lab Kat
Democratic underground

PS. sorry about the scattered posting lately, still feeling a bit off. Must be all that promotion of death and mayhem.

*Hyperlinked, cause my layout got completely messed up by those long URLs.

So I read a lot of blogs from the US of A (the progressive/feminist/queer variety) and if I were to write about every wackiness I find out about through them, I wouldn’t do much else, so I do stop myself most of the time. But sometimes I run across something so mind-boggling that I just need to blog it.

It’s the “the Pill Kills Babies”-campaign, organized by the American Life League, along with Pro-Life Wisconsin and Pharmacists for Life International (that last organization should really be renamed “pharmacists that don’t do their goddamned job and should have their ass fired”). They want to ban birth control. Because it causes abortion. You see, when I take my BC pills I potentially kill a tiny baby boy or a tiny baby girl. Yes, that’s how they put it.

The so-called science that “supports” their BS can be debunked by picking up a high school biology textbook. What do they think? That a fertilized but not yet implanted egg is a teeny weeny miniature person that, when looked at in a microscope, will smile at you and wave?

At least this campaign makes it painfully clear that the so called pro-life movement isn’t about saving the precious baaaaybeeez at all, it’s about controlling women’s sexuality, and subsequently our lives. The protest the pill-day is June 7th. The reason for this is (from the Pill Kills website. Won’t link, Google is your friend):

June 7 marks the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut. This was the first of many decisions that led to the culture of death we live in today.

On that day in 1965, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the Griswold v. Connecticut case, it set a legal precedent for claiming that the Constitution grants women the right to privacy in matters of sexual practice.

Oh the horror! The right to privacy for women in matters of sexual practice, we certainly can’t have that! I file this under reason 17,314 (or possibly 17,315, I lost count) why I’m happy to live in Sweden. I stand firmly behind my American sisters in their fight against this, and I’m sure some pretty awesome counter-activism will be done on June 7th.

Via; more here.

(If you don’t get the headline reference, you lose, but thanks for playing)

What’s with the asshats and their flower references? (more flower themed stupidity in previous post)

I often wish I read more languages so I could take on all the world’s dumbfuckery. Today, Natalia Antonova has done a great job of translating and taking on a Russian misogynist called Dmitrii Artemyev who concludes that International Woman’s Day is Teh Evil because:

I have to admit: the natural qualities of woman - for example, the ability to give birth, or, even more so, the ability to be a mother, raise children, and so on - may, perhaps, deserve respect and even admiration, though not in the form of a holiday. But this isn’t what we are talking about anyway; we would then celebrate Mother’s Day, or something along the same lines. Oh no, we are talking about the feminine in its most basic form. We are, factually, admiring the qualities of the feminine soul and body of the lowest, most sinful caliber. Female breasts, genitals, the womb - this is what we worship when we worship “woman.”

… This becomes apparent in the symbolism of the holiday. Women are given flowers, and the givers know well that a flower is a plant’s genital organ, opening up to be fertilized. A flower is a symbol of tempting lust. This is actually why having little flowers on your balconies is a sin, an innocent-seeming bouquet is an honest symbol of orgiastic sin, of group sex, and any interest or delight one might take in flowers is therefore sinful.

If you can smell a rose, this means you won’t be too disgusted to smell the unmentionable body parts of a woman - because this, at its essence, is the same thing.

So, according to Artemyev’s church (he’s a self-described Orthodox Christian) the Garden of Eden was, what, paved? Covered in manly concrete?

My eyes have rolled so far back in my head I need to sleep now.

Oh sweet Blind Io and all minor deities!
In today’s Dagens Nyheter, there is a letter to the editor signed Jakob E:son Söderbaum. Now for some reason DN doesn’t publish their readers’ letters on their website, but fortunately Jakob E:son Söderbaum has a blog (that I don’t want to link to, but if you read Swedish you can google his name and go on an adventure in a parallel universe). Jakob E:son Söderbaum is a “progress friendly conservative” (by “progress” he means returning to some unknown decade when we honored the king, kept our hands above the covers and our women in the kitchen), in his upper twenties or lower thirties. If you thought that Sweden was free of the “sex is gross, ewww icky icky icky”-crowd, think again.

Some background: a few days ago, Folkpartiet (the Liberal Party of Sweden) suggested repealing the law that makes it legal for parents to take their children out of certain lessons at school, such as sex ed or PE, due to religious or cultural reasons, and to force all children to take all classes. There has been some discussion on whether the Liberal Party’s idea is the best way to address the problem that some children aren’t allowed to learn about their bodies or to be seen in a bathing suit. I’m not sure how I feel about their proposal, but let’s leave that aside and focus on Jakob E:son Söderbaum.

He does not agree with the Liberal Party’s idea. No, he wants to excuse all children from sex ed. And he’s not even in with the abstinence only-crowd. He’s in the no mention of gross icky sex in school ever-crowd. Some of his arguments, put forth in the letter and in the ensuing discussion on his blog, are (with extra-craziness in bold, and my snarky responses in brackets):

- Sex ed teaches girls that they need to spread their legs for anyone, otherwise they are abnormal. (Because telling girls that they are not sluts or hoes if they like sex automatically means that you encourage them to do it anywhere with anyone. There can be no balance.)
- Sex should be taught by parents, only then can the serious nature of sexuality be properly conveyed to the rising generation. (And the parental version of sex ed should go “sex is gross and disgusting so you must save it for someone you love”.)
- Sex is for procreation only and sex ed teaches how to avoid procreation (Yes, let’s conveniently forget about reality: that the majority of adults will have sex a number of times without wanting to get pregnant. And that it could be a good thing to learn how to avoid STDs. And that not all people are heterosexual. But to base education on reality is such a bad idea.)
- Sex ed teachers are raping our children because talking to young girls about sex if you’re not their parent is akin to raping them. (He trivializes rape. What a surprise.)
- Sex ed teachers must be perverts, how else can they stand there talking about the subject day in and day out. (Yes, just like language teachers constantly mumble verb declinations and home ec teachers are unable to have a conversation that doesn’t revolve around pie crusts and cleaning products. Ohmigod, imagine what it must be like for OB/Gyns. They must be the most perverted people out there ever, staring at women’s icky parts all day and talking about stuff related to teh sex!!!!11!!!!eleven!)
- There’s too much sex in today’s society, it was better when it was a shameful secret. (So why are you discussing it? Doesn’t that add to the sexual fixation too?)
- Girls enjoying sex are almost whores. (And there he throws in some slut shaming to. Lovely.)
- Sexual pleasure is the lowest form of human feeling, and to acknowledge and seek sexual pleasure will lead you to become a sex addict who constantly think about and seek sex. (Oh, me thinks someone doth protest too much. Söderbaum says he’s in a “steady relationship”, but he doesn’t say he’s married, so he must be a virgin. For someone who’s not married, he seems awfully focused on sex. Doesn’t he know that subject is reserved for married people? Oh, I see, it’s only unmarried girls who aren’t allowed to think about sex. If you’re an unmarried conservative man - then it’s a-okay!)

Thank heavens that people like Söderbaum are a minority here and that he is sure to get some serious counter-arguments against him - it has already started on his blog. Now I need to go read some deviant and sex positive stuff before my head explodes.

Hoe-looking man writes too, and titles her piece “hardcore porn pussy anus lesbian sex dicks huge cock fuck ass pictures”, so that Söderbaum will find it when he goes on nightly internet adventures. LOL!

(Update: Here you can read more about the proposal from the liberal party, and reactions to it, in English)

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon has also commented on the “we need to breed”-nonsense that I wrote about yesterday. She also has a video from the Nation that summarizes the article.

And, today in Dagens Nyheter, the latest statistics from SCB (Swedish bureau of statistics), that show that more people are getting married and having children in Sweden than in previous years. Marriages are up 5 percent from 2006 (to the highest number since 1968, if you discount 1989 when a change in law regarding pensions for widows/widowers made many people drive into marriage-ville) and births are up 1.4 percent. In 2006, we had a excess of births over deaths of 15 692. So no, we are not going extinct. Of course, we don’t know how many of those births that are of the “right” babies (you know, blond, blue-eyed and born of God-fearing parents who only had sex to create that baby). But there it is.
If you’re into statistics, SCB has it all in English here.

Kathryn Joyce of The Nation has written a long article called “Missing: the ‘Right’ Babies” about the so called “demographic winter of Europe” - that the “West” is failing to produce enough babies and is in danger of becoming “out-breeded” by the Muslim immigrants and their purportedly numerous offspring. From the article, a quote by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who quit the republican presidential race in the beginning of February:

“Europe is facing a demographic disaster” due to its modernized, secular culture, particularly its “weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for human life and eroded morality.”

This nativist “pro-family” movement is a mess of sexism and nationalism blended with religious extremism. For them, women’s liberation, contraception, gay rights, divorce, abortion, and secular humanism is to blame for the demise of Europe. The movement is spearheaded by American right-wing Christians, but has the backing of politicians and organizations in Europe. Even Muslims are sometimes allowed into the unholy alliance - when it comes to blocking rights for women and gays at the UN, these people are happy to gang up with Iran and Saudi Arabia. But when it comes to babies, they want the right babies - white babies.

But for this to work, women need to dedicate their lives and their wombs to this demographic warfare. And I have a suspicion that the way they want to do this is not by implementing true family-friendly policies: not by ending work place discrimination against women who have children, not by making life easier for single parents, not by improving child care and education, addressing poverty, and ensuring access to equal and affordable health care.

This quote by Paul Mero and Allan Carlson, writers of The Natural Family Manifesto, says it all:

“Above all, we believe in rights that recognize women’s unique gifts of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding.”

If they want to get me behind the idea of preserving “Western culture” they will have to include in their definition of this culture all the progress that we have made in the last decades and that makes me happy to live in Sweden: the possibility for women to have careers outside the home or the schoolteacher/nurse option, the advancement in rights for gays and in how non-heterosexuals are viewed in the society, the right to choose one’s own religion or lack thereof, the ability to chose and control the number of children you have, and so on.

But this is not what they wish to preserve. To them, all the things which I see as good and positive developments, are a threat to “our way of life”. In their logic, by allowing freedom for women and freedom of (or from) religion, we are being overrun by people who treat their women miserably and advocates killing all the infidels. Funny how their world views coincide…

(Update: the article is also reprinted over at Alternet; it’s always interesting to read the comments section there.)

Via Feministing, I found this story called “Marry him: The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough“, written by a Lori Gottlieb and published in the US magazine The Atlantic.

Short story: If you’re a single and childless woman over thirty, you should stop being picky and just settle for a guy you find tolerable. From the article:

And despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra to get married young was finally (and, it seemed, refreshingly) replaced by encouragement to postpone that milestone in pursuit of high ideals (education! career! but also true love!), every woman I know—no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure—feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.

Oh, I know—I’m guessing there are single 30-year-old women reading this right now who will be writing letters to the editor to say that the women I know aren’t widely representative, that I’ve been co-opted by the cult of the feminist backlash, and basically, that I have no idea what I’m talking about. And all I can say is, if you say you’re not worried, either you’re in denial or you’re lying. In fact, take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous.

That’s right. If you’re not worried about your state of (heterosexual) singleness when you’re a female over thirty, you’re either lying or in denial. You can’t possibly be happy with the way things are. No missy, what you need to do is this:

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.

So it’s better to already be disillusioned to begin with, than to have experienced passion and butterflies in the stomach-happiness and then realizing that no, it wasn’t forever (but that you can work on it)?

Now, that small annoying habits and weird tastes shouldn’t be definite deal-breakers with a partner you otherwise feel happy with, I can agree with. But that you shouldn’t worry about passion and intense connection, that is just sad. There is a vast difference between expecting a knight in shining armor on a white stallion to sweep you off your feet and take you to the land of magical faeries and lollipops where you’ll be happily ever after™, and settle for just anyone that you can tolerate.

I think Hugo Schwyzer put it really well in his response to Gottlieb’s article:

There’s much to be said for compromise in intimate relationships. But wisdom is knowing the difference between a “have to have” and a “would like to have”. And I think the collective experience of a great many people is that at least a period of powerful, mutual, sexual longing falls into the first category.

The article is really long, and just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. For instance, she’s telling people (sorry, women), that when you’re forty, even if the thought of being touched by a certain guy repulses you, you should make an “adult compromise”.

Choosing to spend your life with a guy who doesn’t delight in the small things in life might be considered settling at 30, but not at 35. By 40, if you get a cold shiver down your spine at the thought of embracing a certain guy, but you enjoy his company more than anyone else’s, is that settling or making an adult compromise?

To Gottlieb, marriage seems to be a business arrangement. The husband is a way of getting a free babysitter and financial security - this quote is particularly puke-worthy:

Even women who settle but end up divorced might be in a better position than those of us who became mothers on our own, because many ex-wives get both child-support payments and a free night off when the kids go to Dad’s house for a sleepover.

Yay, first I married a guy I didn’t really care about and whose touch sent shivers down my spine and now we’re divorced and everything turned out so well cause he still gives me money AND I get a night off when he takes the kids to his place. I’m so happy!!!
/snark

You know, couples who do marry because they love each other and have an “intense connection” and truly want to spend the rest of their lives together - even these couples grow apart and get tired and weary of each other. So what’s going to happen to the couple who merely “settled” with each other? Somehow I don’t think they will hold the blueprint to a healthy, happy, equal relationship.

What’s disturbing is her lack of feeling for the man in the equation - is she going to tell him that she has “settled”, or is she going to put on a charade to lead him to think that it’s twu vuw while she really suspects that he’s gay? (Yes, that is an example from the article.)

And to bring children into this equation is just evil. Gottlieb is a single mother (she used a sperm donor). So when she “settles”, she will not only inflict a bad relationship on herself but also on her kid. And kids notice when their parents aren’t happy with each other. There doesn’t have to be any yelling or slamming in doors or abuse of any kind. Kids notice when there is a lack of love. Kids notice when adults pretend. And it’s not making them feel good about themselves.
Trust me on this one.

Pandagon takes on the article here, and Feministing here.