Women's Issues

[rosemarykaye]

I noticed that the Edinburgh University Feminist Society has a writer called Mellissa Gira Grant coming to speak about sex workers next month.  I imagine I should have heard of her, but I haven't - has anyone else?

Rosemary

[MaryPage]

I have a granddaughter named Melissa N. Grant.  That is her married name, her maiden name being North, and she is a biologist who also teaches and lectures, but this is not she.  Melissa is my daughter Anne's daughter and the mother of Annabelle, the 11 year old Bella whose current voyage around the world I am sharing in Seniors & Friends.
I got my copy of Jimmy Carter's latest book yesterday, and stayed up late skimming it.  Will read it in depth as soon as I finish my current read, which I am very much into.  But I plead with each of you to read this book.  Buy it!  Own it!  Get every female you know to read it.  I am sending it to all my daughters and granddaughters.  Five daughters.  Thirteen granddaughters.  Twelve great granddaughters so far, but their mothers can take care that the older ones read it.  Only one is in college, while a second one will start next year. 

 Read:  A CALL TO ACTION, Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

[mabel1015j]

Is JC talking about women of the globe, or just women inthe USA?

[BarbStAubrey]

Both - all women - I am right behind MaryPage having ordered the book...

[MaryPage]

It is a small book.  He speaks of he and Roselind circumnavigating this planet and finding everywhere women being treated as unequal to men, often with violent results.  He speaks frankly of rape, of honor killings of innocent women by their own families, of female genital mutilation, of men misinterpreting religious writings to claim they allow the discrimination against women and girls because God meant it to be that way.  He shows this to have been the precise pattern in which it was excused that it was alright to mistreat blacks and people of other races and religions.  He points out that it is flat out wrong, and that more than half the population of this Earth is not being fully utilized because of this dreadful discrimination.  He writes humbly and sincerely and without hyperbole.

[MaryPage]

I was stunned, and I think you will be, too, at what I found in the March 31, 2014 issue of THE NEW YORKER on page 3.
Gallup never even asked if anyone would vote for a woman for president until 1937.  At that time, and for 3 years before they changed the wording, the question went like this:
"Would you vote for a woman for president if she were qualified in every other respect?"

I don't know about you, but that question as posed makes me feel my gender relegates me to an undesirable status.  Ugh and blah!

[BarbStAubrey]

ho ho ho

The owners of Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned craft supply chain, were so offended by the idea of having to include emergency contraceptives and intrauterine devices in their health insurance plans that they sued the Obama administration and took the case all the way up to the Supreme Court. But Mother Jones reported on Tuesday that the company's retirement plan has invested millions of dollars in the manufacturers of emergency contraception and drugs used to induce abortions.

Hobby Lobby's 401(k) employee retirement plan holds $73 million in mutual funds that invest in multiple pharmaceutical companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and abortion-inducing medications.

The companies Hobby Lobby invests in include Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which makes the Plan B morning-after pill and ParaGard, a copper IUD, as well as Pfizer, the maker of the abortion-inducing drugs Cytotec and Prostin E2. Hobby Lobby's mutual funds also invest in two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in their health care policies.

Hobby Lobby's attorneys argue that the provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires most employers to cover contraception in their health plans infringes on the company's right to exercise religious freedom because the company's owners believe that emergency contraception and IUDs are actually forms of abortion. Medical studies have debunked this claim.

Mother Jones reported that all nine of the mutual funds Hobby Lobby's retirement plan holds include investments that clash with the owners' religious beliefs about abortion.

[mabel1015j]

Nothing surprises me any more!?!

[MaryPage]

Thank God for Mother Jones!

[maryz]

I found it interesting (if patronizing) that, at the news conference this afternoon about the Fort Hood shooting, the general found it necessary to mention several times that the hero of the event was the "female MP".  He also mentioned a medic, but didn't feel the need to mention the gender of the medic. 

Is that too nit-picky of me? 

[BarbStAubrey]

We really do not know who he was addressing with the remarks about a female police officer - I think in the service they are still trying to sell the idea that women are an effective addition in perilous jobs and maybe he feels the public still questions the role of women in the service - but it does seem the armed forces are having their time trying to see women as equal to men in the same jobs.

[Steph]

wont go to HL.. Michaels and Joannes are in Florida.  Hypocrites bother me  way too much.. Oh by the way, Chick Filet is changing their tunes..Wondor why.

[MaryPage]

Hey STEPH!  So happy to see you back here, and hope you are feeling better and better every single day.  love and a hug from MaryPage

[mabel1015j]

Celebrate the 50th anniversary year of the Civil Rights Act that now includes rights for ethnic groups, women, persons w/ disabilities and those of us over 40. What are you doing today that you couldn 't do in 1953? Thank you to the thousands of brave men and women, girls and boys who worked to get that bill to LBJ's desk for signature!

President Obama gave a great speech at the LBJ Library today.

http://t.mediaite.com/mediaite/#!/entry/watch-live-obama-speaks-at-civil-rights-summit,5346c8b2b7d8d24162d5d877

[Steph]

Wish Obama had paid closer attention to how LBJ operated. That was a truly clever man..

[maryz]

LBJ had all those years of experience in Congress to know how things worked.  That doesn't seem to be the way things work now.

[BarbStAubrey]

Its a different time - the NewsHour last night had a good interview with four - do not remember all of them but Linda Robb was one and the women who was the first black mayor of Atlanta and some guy who worked for Lindsy (not sure of spelling who later became Mayor or NY and was a Republican Congressmen at the time) anyhow he was 24 years old when he worked for Lindsy in D.C. and was very much in the middle of the Civil Rights changes to the Constitution. And then a young women professor at UT - something about public affairs and she was not born in the US - could not tell if she was of Indian or Mexican decent - anyhow the guy who worked for Lindsy shared how it was a different Congress - that there were more Middle of the road Republicans and some Liberal Republicans - that Congress worked together to make things happen and yes, there were areas of the country that had a different view point but the focus was on a more cohesive group regardless the viewpoints so you did not have 8 viewpoints all vying for attention or such bitterness between those behind differing viewpoints as now -

That said to me Johnson not only had years of skill and years to know all these folks which was one of his major skills but he had a very different Congress to work with. I get the impression now it would not matter how well you knew Congressional representatives they have an agenda that is to stop anything they can coming from the White House - its all about putting up road blocks rather than figuring out how to work together to solve something so each gets a piece. To me I see they work hard to make sure their constituents are angry and then they can turn that anger into a vote since of course they will blame the other side.

[MaryPage]

As stated, LBJ had decades of wily experience.  He was taught by the experts, and he was the leader of the bunch.  Obama was new boy on scene, and none of us had ever heard of him until he gave that speech at the Democrats Convention.  He has had no debts to pull in;  no IOUs filling his pockets.
Also, when all is said and done, LBJ made a huge choice:  i.e., do this as a matter of justice served and end my own career, or continue in the old ways and bury my itching conscience.
I will always applaud the choice he made.
One thing that startles me is the history, made back there in what seems ever so short a time ago, seems largely wiped out and forgotten now.  Chris Matthews was telling of having read it in a brand new book the other day, and he sounded astounded.  But why SHOULD he be?  The history as given was accurate, and America is suffering amnesia if they do not remember!
I REMEMBER!  Perhaps I remember because I am 85 next month, and I was there before it all happened.  I dunno.  But I was a LIFELONG Republican, born and raised.  An extreme rarity in my home state of Virginia!  Yes, Virginia, you WERE a Democrat owned and run state back in the day of Senator Harry Byrd!  You, and ALL the Southern states had been totally Democrat controlled since the Civil War!

[MaryPage]

Then LBJ did the unexpected and fought for Civil Rights.  Southern Democrats had apoplexy big time.  They left the Democratic Party lock, stock and barrel.  Under the flag suddenly named DIXIECRATS, they became REPUBLICANS.  And my party, the little old party of Lincoln, suddenly had this huge flood of men who were possessed of great Power in this nation.  What is more, they were Old, White, Southern BIGOTS.
And they took over my party.  The Party of Abraham Lincoln and Civil Rights.  They kicked the civil rights out the door, brought in fundamentalist Christians by the busload and train and planeload, and LO!  By 1980, they were inserting Abortion in their platform!
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!  MY PARTY!
And me, a raging suffragette, feminist, equal rightser all of my born days!
I bolted.  And when I did, I could not understand why so few did!  I said, LOOK at what they are doing!  And they would say, oh, it is not important.  We don't have to buy into that stuff.  This is OUR party, the Party of Lincoln.
And I would say, The Hell You Say!  They have taken it over like a disease.
Well, I have been voting for Democrats since 1980, but it took until 2004 for me to garner up my courage and go and change my party affiliation at the Office of Elections.  I admit it was hard!
But hey, AT LEAST I knew and understood what was happening!
How quickly we forget.
And how little attention we pay to connecting the dots at the very time History IS happening!

[Steph]

Pity me, I live inFlorida and almost surely in the next governors election, there will not be anyone that I can vote for.. Rick(ugh), but Charlie is not any better. Why oh why are the extremists taking over our poor country.We were founded on bargaining... seeing the others choices.... gently turning each corner. What has happened to us.

[MaryPage]

Steph, think about it for a moment. 

The extremists are world wide.  They are the ones who crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

They are the bigots of this world.  Hate and mistrust your neighbor.  Despise the people who worship in that building down the street.  Kill those who disagree with you!  Keep women in their place as servants and slaves of males who believe as we do.

I think, and I know that you think, too, that we have nothing to fear from peoples just because they have majorities of different religious faiths and/or races.  Their race has nothing to do with it.  Their religion has nothing to do with it, albeit the controlling often USE an extremist view of a religion, ANY given religion including Christianity, to spread their poisonous dogma.  This world's woes are wrought by men who are Bigots, hate women, and are full of greed for Power and control of the wealth.  They don't give a cool damn whom they kill, or how many they kill, or how many lies they tell.  Any means to the desired ends!

And the poisonous dogmas are being propagated right here in our own midst.  We are being totally arrogant and full of hubris if we do not see and acknowledge that truth!

[BarbStAubrey]

AND if you look at the extremists regardless where in the world they operate and how much they shout, hit, belittle, kill, insist, minimize other viewpoints, accuse, blame, judge, criticize, they are all carrying out the typical abusive behavior of a 'Wife beater' which is nothing more than men covering their weakness with control.  

Their thousands of years traditional lifestyle is unraveling and they are loosing their place on the thrown given to them the day they were born a man. Not only is the balance of power being challenged, and not in just one corner of the globe but, in every nook and cranny in addition the world is tilting. Science and technology has taken away their crown and scepter and so like a dying animal gored they are on a rampage.

Most of us will not see the end of the bridge - it is like we are all walking the Selma bridge while many are experiencing the dogs and hoses of Birmingham but humanity is changing much like the change from the dark ages to the Renascence which did include the acceptance of romantic love as compared to arranged marriages with no love intended or expected. That, at the time was a monster change. One that most churches never contended with since most church marriage laws and reproduction laws were written before courtly and romantic love were acknowledged, named or practiced. And now we have the change from blind obedience to a man made sense of community welfare to individual freedom to express our own power. We want to gather in like-communities rather than in enforced-communities established and ruled by male leadership. That leadership is going berzerk  - no different than the foreman on horseback along with others that have worked themselves into a rant chasing down run-away-slaves.

The western Renascence had the Medici's we have the 1% that church and political leaders fawn over to fund their rant.    

[MaryPage]

Very well put, Barbara.  A most excellent perspective.

And again, blessings pour on Jimmy Carter, who has written it all down from the perspective of an Old, White, Southern, Religious MALE, whose brains are actually inside his skull.  If his mother, Miss Lillian, could return from her grave and read this, it would surely "do her proud!"

[Steph]

Jimmy has the benefit of a wonderful mother and wife who both kept him thinking. Not a good president, but a good human and one we could learn from.

[BarbStAubrey]

here is our hope for the future

http://www.becauseofthemwecan.com/blogs/stories/13118149-celebrating-womens-history

[marjifay]

I remember Miss Lillian, Jimmy Carter's mother.  She used to post to a Los Angeles radio talk show and they'd call her just to talk to her.  Loved to hear her talk.  She was a real kick and  loved baseball.

Marj

[Steph]

I think that Obama could have benefitted from a strong mother, but never got much of a chance with her.. She was a most peculiar woman..

[mabel1015j]

But Steph, i think Obama had great women in his life and great role models. Maybe you have different information than i have, but his mother seems to me to have been adventurous and daring and his grandmother, who seems to have had a strong influence was a bank official and gave him a solid family life. He had the good sense to chose a smart, strong woman for a wife and seems to know how to treat her well. What were you referring to?

I just found what appears to be a great blog Elderchicks: http://www.elderchicks.com

It's administered by two women in their 80s, retired academics. Scroll down on the right to listen to a radio interview of them from PBS, check out the "books we should read" link, and i'm subscribing to their blog. Looks like fun and also informative.

Jean

[CallieOK]

Thanks for that link, Mabel.  I just subscribed.

[mabel1015j]

Check out Elderchicks Facebook page. There's a lot of currant info on it, especially about their book and interviews that they are doing or have done. There's a link from their blog page.

Jean

[CallieOK]

Thanks for the suggestion, Mabel.  It's a dreary afternoon in central Oklahoma and I'm doing a lot of browsing.  Will add that to the list.

[Steph]

I think Obamas mother suited herself, but not her children. She picked up and went to suit the men in her life.. All in all, not a good role model. His grandparents were good role models, but he had no way of fitting in for so many years. His wife is strong, not a favorite of mine for a number of reasons, but she is good for him and he loves having a family of his own.
Excitement. I did laugh this morning..Bill and Hillary are over the moon..A grandchild.. They are both funny..

[MaryPage]

Hey Gals!  Ya just gotta check out these little girls coming along behind us!  Phew!  To think that I have despaired over the future of womankind!

Twelve year old MADISON KIMREY in North Carolina.  Google search her on the web, in images, and in video.  Hear her speak!  Rejoice!

Eight year old Olivia McConnell in South Carolina.  What a gem!  Google search her, too:  on the web, in Images, and in video.  Hear HER speak!  Dance a little jig for Joy!

[Steph]

will look this morning.

[MaryPage]

I DO NOT BELIEVE THE WOMEN OF THESE UNITED STATES realize the extent to which we have become a backward country compared with the other hundreds of nations on this planet ALL DUE to men, particularly religious Christian men, who firmly believe we are not their equals.

I point to page 182 of President Jimmy Carter's most recent book:  A CALL TO ACTION:

"The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women has now been ratified by all nations except

IRAN, PALAU, SOMALIA, SUDAN, TONGA, and the UNITED STATES."

Yep, we're right in there with IRAN.  And most women smugly believe that is not the case.

It upsets me so very much.  It is so sad and so unfair that men want to keep us in a second class category.

[Steph]

hmm, ratified, but a lot of the countries not mentioned, do not have equality for women.Think of Saudi..

[MaryPage]

Have been behind with things, and feeling a bit scattered and frustrated as a result.  Thus it is that I have a pile of The New Yorkers to get to, and have just read the article that will, if it has not already, surely sink the Chris Christie ship.  Amazing stuff.  Sure, I have heard that New Jersey politics stink, who hasn't?  But I did not really know details.  Wow!  Wow again!
So I urge you, if you want to be in the loop, to grab hold of the April 14, 2014 issue of The New Yorker.  Obama on the front cover giving a spoonful of medicine to Mitch McConnell.  The New Yorker has not, in my nearly 85 years of reading it, and yes, my dad subscribed when I was tiny and I can remember looking at all the cartoons way back then and wondering what the people sitting up in bed were saying to each other in some and wishing I could have some of the goodies on the dessert carts being pushed up to all the chunky ladies in hats dining out in others, anyway, The New Yorker has not written trash articles and/or stuff they could not fully and truly back up according to the old fashioned values of journalism.  So I take every word as gospel, and have never been let down.  Sometimes, of course, their writers are not yet aware of ALL of the facts, but they don't try to fill in the cracks with made up stuff or gossip and speculation.  Anyway, this is an ARTICLE not to be missed, no matter your loyalties.  As I said:  WOW!

[rosemarykaye]

MaryPage - I am always behind with things, and the more reviewing I do, the worse it gets    At the moment I am aiming to attend three events per week in Edinburgh, all of which I then write up for the Edinburgh Reporter.  I'm also reviewing books for Trip Fiction (though not as many as I would like, just not enough time) and I've just started a weekly 'what's on in the arts in Edinburgh' sort of round-up for the reporter too.

The trouble is, I really love doing all of these things - the things I don't like doing are the laundry, cooking, shopping, general admin (which I have a lot of at the moment as am in the middle of buying/selling houses and also trying to help sister-in-law with finding carers and other support for her ailing parents) - but unfortunately many of those things are inescapable - I'm not prepared to give up the stuff I do like, so I too have this constant feeling of chasing my own tail.  But it's better than being bored!  My mother is still involved in a lot of things in her eighties, and she says that the people who retire and just sit in front of the TV all day complaining (I don't mean people with health issues that make anything else impossible) grow old a lot more quickly.

So we're doing the right thing - it's just that sometimes it does get a bit out of hand!

Rosemary

[MaryPage]

Rosemary, you and I are soulmates!
I adored my children, but did not enjoy being couped up with them and tending to their every mundane need.
I hate housework.  I love gardening and reading.
I think cook is an obscene 4-letter word.

[MaryPage]

Unless you have one who works for you, of course.
The verb to cook is horrid.
The noun, to have a cook working in your kitchen, is divine!