Women's Issues

[maryz]

Women's Issues If Art imitates Life, what does Literature show about the place of women in our society? From the Red Tent to the new movie Anna Karenina,  to Malala Yousafzai in the news, has the state of women changed? What IS the state of women today, in your opinion? Let's talk about how women are portrayed in the press, and in literature, and how accurate it is.   How does advertising reflect, if it does, how women are portrayed?  (Remember heels and pearls to sell refrigerators?) How does it seem to you that women are portrayed today? Let's talk! National Women's History Project

I admire Sotomayor, too, MaryPage.  However, she's written a book that's just been released, and that's why she's showing up on so many shows recently.  I'll record the show to watch later.

[Steph]

I plan on reading her book.. She sounds interesting. Elizabeth Warren is an incredible woman. If any man did half of what she did, they would have been touted for President several years ago.

[MaryPage]

Absolutely!

And Sotomayor was fabulous.  The hour sped by on wings and seemed like just a few minutes long.

[mabel1015j]

I saw about 40 minutes of Charlie's show last night. I also saw Sotomayor on Booktv over the weekend. She has a wonderful use of language, almost poetic. CR's show airs first at midnight here and i'm babysitting this morning for #2 grandson, so i didn't watch the whole show. But it airs again today. I'll try to see the end of the show today. She seems to be very thoughtful in her answers, very sensible. I enjoyed hearing her.

[Steph]

I watched an interview on some news show or another just recently with her. She is a very down to earth person.. An excellent choice for the Supreme court..

[maryz]

Did you read that a number of state legislatures (IA, WI, etc.) are again introducing bills to make abortion more difficult - including our wonderful TN guys, with an abdominal ultrasound bill.

[MaryPage]

WHAT IS IT?  

WHAT IN THIS WORLD, ON THIS PLANET, IS IT?

WITH THESE OLD GEEZERS AND PREGNANCIES?

SCHEESCH!

AS IF THERE WERE NOT IMPORTANT MATTERS THREATENING THE WELL BEING OF THE POPULATION OF THIS HALLOWED NATION?

WHY IS ABORTION OUT THERE CONSTANTLY AS NUMBER ONE?

WHAT IS IT?

[MaryPage]

Last year, there was a young woman in Phoenix, Arizona who showed up in hospital with Toxemia and about to go into Eclampsia.  Just like Sybil in Downton Abbey, only she was 11 weeks pregnant.  The fetus literally turns on the mother and the poisons collect and kill them both.

So this young mother of 4 small children at home goes to the Catholic hospital there.  And there is a hurried conference with a slew of doctors and the nun who headed up the hospital.  Bottom line, we either abort or watch her die.  The nun said to abort.  They did.  The young mother went home to her husband and children and other family.

The Archbishop of the Diocese found out and excommunicated the nun and took away the Catholic credentials of the hospital.

Amazing!  How over the top the rage of that bishop!  The church's bottom line?  The Catholic church wanted that young woman dead.  Dead along with the unaborted fetus.  Four young children left without their mother.  NATURE wanted this fetus aborted, but the church in the person of this man wanted her dead.  My very Catholic daughter who teaches in a Catholic school says she and all the nuns and female faculty there think the bishop was the wrong one.

WHAT, I ask, is this all about?  Women have been aborting, naturally and with intent, for tens of thousands of years.  And they will continue to do so for as long as our species exists.  So WHAT is this all about?

[maryz]

MaryPage - it's all about power and control!

[MaryPage]

WHY?  To what end?

What is the core principle here?

It cannot be the QUALITY of life.  The church does not go all grandparenty and see to it that the unaborted  babies are fed.  Are clothed.  Are sheltered in beds of their own.  Are loved and cared for and taught.

What is their point?  Their basic belief?  That every fertilized egg is a soul that must be born in order to be saved and see God?  Where in the world did they get THAT notion?  That scenario?  Know they not that millions of women have an egg (or more) fertilized every single day and that frequently that egg cannot eventually find a safe little nesting spot to plug into in the wall of the uterus they pass through on their way from the fallopian tube and they head right straight to the toilets of this planet and into nothingness?  Are those billions of aborted by nature souls all roasting in hell with the dread punishment of never seeing the Face of God, through no fault of their own?  I mean, these fertilized "souls" don't even have brains.

There ya' go!  There's the problem!

These old men in skirts running the Church lack brains, as well!

[BarbStAubrey]

On top of which at this time in history to encourage the no holds bared on births is a crime against humanity - our earth cannot take it - I was shocked to hear on a nature program with Attenborough  that in 1979 there were 4 million folks on this planet and now there are well into 7 million - that is roughly a million people ever decade - nature is feeling the pinch as more of the land that supports animals is disappearing - the oceans are being harvested to extinction and we have global warming. We talk about green it is time to think green related to population explosion. Even the early Christian Church has a greater time for an abortion by several weeks than what was decided during Roe.

All this because Pope Paul stopped the Papal Commission on Population Control, Family and Birth Control from being included in Vatican II and instead issued Humanae Vitae

http://www.amazon.com/Turning-Point-Control-Commission-Humanae/dp/0824514580.

Now they are back to attacking contraception with a force to weaken the emotions of those trying to follow the teachings of the church and yet, couples know they cannot bring more children into the world - the idea that women can simply stay home in order to care for more children is sending thousands of families into poverty that means more taxes on the rest of us to support the programs that is the safety net for the poor. Plus, we have the cost of additional resources a community provides like sewers, electricity, schools and additional land and water for the growth of food products.

This is beyond the battle for a woman's subjugation to her uterus and as the church defines the purpose of marriage to satisfy a man's desires - this is about bringing all of us down as we struggle to give dignity to this added population as we loose our capitol resources and the heritage and safety valve of our land and water.

What we do  not consider is this attitude sifts down to street kids - we may not have a large population of kids living on their own in the streets like many in the Philippines, South American and even Eastern Europe but these kids get pregnant - at least the Philippines has just this past fall approved Birth Control while the Bishop in the area is retaliating with continued instruction, telling the people the evils of contraceptives.

This is a nation that has police boats patrolling the surrounding waters protecting the fish that still remain since the ocean that used to be its economic source is fished out as families fished to feed the burdening size families. The typical size family is 11 to 12 children. One island in the chain legally is separate and PBS had a documentary showing the success that birth control brought to families who can now afford to allow their children to attend school - and this was the Dad's talking about the benefits.

[MaryPage]

NO! NO! NO!  BARBARA!

You have written Million.  The word is actually

BILLION

We are on the road to 9 Billion people in our lifetime.  Millions will die of starvation.  Millions more will go on the rampage to get to where there is food and water.

But the old men in the Vatican putter on, making of women nothing but basins in which to grow ever more and more and more babies.

Excuse me?

[Steph]

I blame Paul for all this. He really disliked women and wanted them barred from everything in the church.The church was meant for men with women as slaves. I can remember as an early teen being told by the minister in confirmation classes, that women were not good enough to be ministers.. or deacons. They were meant to listen to their fathers and husbands etc. I thought it was hooey then and I still do.

[MaryPage]

Well, the world is beginning to see.  To SEE.

My third and last husband, the Love of My Life, was such a brilliant and kind and modest and thoughtful person, and he was completely and totally at ease with the idea that the male and the female of our species were equal in every way.  Different, yes;  and oh, how he loved those differences!  But he truly admired and respected my brains and opinions and thoughts and ideas and talents, etc.  Always.  Every moment of every day.  He did not own a misogynistic cell in his body.

I do not believe there was ever a better man taking breath, but some now seem to be following his perception patterns.  51% of our adult world is Female.  Fifty-one per cent.  Where women are not allowed to go to school, to venture forth in public, to have a say in the running of the community around them, there is NO progress.  None.  Some men are actually taking this in and beginning to try to adopt measures to improve things.  Well, they must, or there is no hope for our species other than war and death and destruction.  Hatred and fear and extremism.  Brutality and beastilism.

[BarbStAubrey]

I agree on Paul but I also cut him some slack - his followers were mostly Greek and true to form most of the inroads made by Catholics that still holds true today is to wrap their traditions into this new concept of God - just like we learn that many of our holy days were originally days celebrating harvest or mid winter or planting and many of the revered holy people of the various areas became saints with all the trappings of a cult following surrounding their special day. Well Paul wrapped the story of Jesus and Christianity around the traditions the Greeks would not abandon which included their concept of a woman's place in the home and in society.

The one I have more problems with giving any slack to is St. Augustine - here he lived free and easy with a women for I think it is 20 years - they had children together and all the time his mom - Saint Monica is not only aloud telling him not to marry but praying days and years on end for him to go back to his roots as a Christian and become a leader in the church. And so what does he do - he abandons this women and his children - takes up writing and becomes one of the most influential theologians to become one of the original Doctors of the Church and his writings are filled with disparaging attitudes about women - except he would not have known the myth but making women sound like the Lorelei's to the detriment of man.  Its his attitude and writings that seem to have hung on and became the bedrock of thinking for the Curia to this day. This Church, as many a liberal Bishop like Sydney's Auxiliary Bishop Geoffrey Robinson tell us, has never discussed or even understood sex.

[MaryPage]

Except they are experts on raping little boys.

And if you are reported on, then you get sent off to be a fresh face as priest at another church.  One where they don't know you.  Yet.

But if you are a female, and you have an abortion, BURN HER AT THE STAKE!  STONE HER TO DEATH IN PUBLIC.

Does anyone besides me remember that Frank Sinatra's mother paid for his Catholic Parochial School tuition and uniforms by being a back street abortionist?

What an Alice In Wonderland world we inhabit.  It is with a great deal of relief that I admit to being glad I will not much longer have to cope with it.

By the way, I sound anti Catholic.  I am not against the Faith.  I now believe it all a fable, but I was Roman Catholic for 10 years of my life and raised some little Catholics, only one of whom still practices that religion, and I went 2 years to my beloved Sisters of the Visitation and had both an aunt and a sister-in-law who were nuns.  I admire the women of the church totally and some few of the men.  Do you think they poisoned Pope John XXIII?

[BarbStAubrey]

I doubt it - and also raping is not sex and raping kids is not sex - it is about power - plus no one ever has good sex with kids - again it is about power to get kids to do what you want that you have to use different tactics to get an equal to do what you want. But there is no discussion or information much less training about sex even in a seminary where they are supposed to learn to be confessors and offer support to parishioners.

There are two sides to the church and we forget that there is the political side with a hierarchy that is part of a system that is a monarchy with it rules and secretary of state and  ambassadors etc all within the Curia - then there is the spiritual side that is most often found flourishing in monasteries and convents. Most monasteries are not within the Bishopric - they have their own more simple hierarchy with often an abbot running the show. Most monasteries are like a large company is to the US - they get permission to start the company and must comply with the law which for the church is called Dogma but they are independent of the Bishops which includes the Bishop of Rome called the Pope.

I agree MaryPage, for most of us our spiritual life is not practiced as a political expression of loyalty as it once was in Europe - Today our challenge is to sort the two sides of the church as an ongoing process. There are many active theologies under the umbrella of the Roman Catholic Church but only the Curia and Bishops represent the official face of the religion.

With so much new scientific exploration some of the newer theologies are fascinating like the Activation of Energy being the source of God - de Chardin started that line of reasoning - and Karl Jaspers theology of  Religion particularly Christianity without Myth - Sister Barbara Fiend continues in this line of thinking writing that we may need new metaphors and symbols to further our dualistic ways of understanding and interpreting reality and of naming our God and Hans Urs von Balthasar a Swiss Theologian wrote about the Cosmic Christ and get this...Meditations on the Tarot.

As varied as many a college level curriculum with other theologians even considering God and our need to express devotion is all tooled into our brain - all of these folks worked in a monastery or convent or university setting. Not in some local parish or in rooms shared by the local Bishops. And yet, their inquiry and writing is followed by many in the church today.

[Steph]

Hmm, St. Augustine.. Now that was interesting since I am not catholic and did not know his back story. The saints of early Rome were peculiar to put it mildly. My course is covering what is called heresies..But I suspect politics had a lot to do with it even early in Christianity.
I have been following the rape stories out of South Africa.. They don't seem to say..Are these black women being raped by white men or black men?? or white women.. There is no way that rape is part of any culture. It is power and rage.. and castration always struck me as a good answer..

[MaryPage]

Castration may be fitting punishment for those who rape, but it does not solve the problem of the mindset of those who dismiss rape as something men will do and women are asking for.

But until we figure out how to change the mindset, you've got another vote for castration here.

[BarbStAubrey]

Steph Catholic or not any philosophy class includes St. Augustine - he had a huge influence on Rene Descartes, and is credited for his belief that humans are uniquely capable of deductive truth and logic as well as, he wrote about 'time' being something in the human mind as we grapple with reality. He was one of the hero philosophers during the Medieval ages.

His big personal dilemma was in accepting free will and the accepting responsibility for our actions because he believed in predestination - he was alive in the 4th century and even the Bible had words about predestination so he came by his dilemma with just cause. (e.g. Those whom He predestined He also called; and those whom He called He also justified; and those whom He justified He also glorified. -Rom. 8:30)

He also has doubts that man can behave with 'right' morals - he believes we are born with a stain (original sin) that keeps God at arms length and prevents people from living a moral life. And so most of his writings it based on the assumption that he must justify why someone should be not so much right minded as behave righteously. In other words legally.

[Steph]

Since he was not involved in the books  or religious beliefs that were deemed heresy , he is not covered in the course. I am struggling with gnostics just now.
I read yesterday that in South AFrica, the common male belief is women wont say 'Yes", so you rape them. That is absolutely disgusting. Anyone who really uses that as an excuse should be locked away forever.

[mabel1015j]

A brilliant blog from "Nurse Clio" on third graders thinking about equal pay and why do we have to label people? It's a little long, but easily skimmed, especially since i assume you all wld agree w/ what she says..........

http://nursingclio.org/2013/02/12/what-i-learned-in-third-grade/

The issue of our frequently stereotyping or labeling people is thought provoking. Every time i start to state such, a little voice in my head asks me "do you need to say this?" But when voicing a stereotype we use a shorthand in communication. If i say "she's a typical looking Swede" you know exactly what she looks like without my having to describe her features, even though all Swedes are not tall, blonde and blue-eyed.  I really have problems with the labeling words that are mentioned in the article. I caution the younger generation is my family about the words they use about their children. My DIL comments about how OCD her 3 yr old can be. Of course, he doesn't get it now, but at some point he may and kids tend to become what they are labeled. The 3rd grader who thinks of herself as a big mouth probably won't for many years be able to see that as a positive. Although in this story,  she is using it as a positive. i think her mother probably wasn't. I cringe a little when i hear comedians using labels and stereotyping, even tho i may laugh at what they are saying. I guess it's called being a thoughtful human, confusing, but thoughtful.

[MaryPage]

Excellent!

[kidsal]

The Violence Against Women Act passed the Senate today -- now on to the House???  My senator, a doctor  and Republican, voted against it even though we have an Indian Reservation here in Wyoming. Go figure???

[Steph]

our  congress does not vote on whether the bills are good or bad, just what their stupid party tells them to. They should be ashamed.

[maryz]

Both of our Republican senators voted FOR the Defense of Women Act.  We were surprised, but pleased.

[mabel1015j]

Congratulations to them, Mary!

I'm calling my Congressman, John Runyon, once to ask Spkr Boehner to bring VAWA to the floor for a vote, once to tell him to vote for it, once to tell him to ask Boehner to bring the gun reform bill to a vote, once to tell him to vote for it.

[BarbStAubrey]

[Steph]

Rubio is the poster boy for conservative except for any votes allowing more and more Cubans to come here..So he was a no..His speech was funny, but not quite true. His house in Miami is for sale.They are all moving to DC.. I guess he will use his parents as his voting address. The man is consumed with being the first Cuban President. I can certainly hope not and will work actively against him if he runs.

[MaryPage]

I have nothing against Rubia other than having a different perception of how things should be done best for the country, and I know little about him, but there is one ugly thing that sticks in my mind, and it is this.  He went around telling publicly one story about how his family came here and it turned out to be a lie.  Wasn't it that he claimed they were refugees from Castro and the Communists?  And it turned out they were not refugees at all and had come here before that time?  I cannot remember the details, but what stuck in my craw at the time and is still there is that he Started Out With A Lie!  That really, really turns me off.  I could never feel any trust in someone who did that.

[mabel1015j]

Rubio's speech was filled w/ irony for me. He kept talking about people being dependent on govt. Is he not dependent on goverment for his livlihood? Then he talked about how he could not have gone to college w/ out govt aid and how medicare has helped his parents!?! Is he living in some alternative universe? It certainly had no logic for me.

[Steph]

Yes Rubio started out with lies, but in Miami, you need to be a refugee to count..
Molly Ivans. found an old book of hers yesterday while putting out the books for the book sale.."Shrub".. She was a very perceptive woman who cloaked a great intelligence in laughter.

[BarbStAubrey]

Here is our history as women - some of this was the last vestiges of taboos that were common when I was growing up.

http://www.bartleby.com/196/40.html

[Steph]

Will save the link.Today is another book sale day and I must walk dogs, get some breakfast, etc. even maybe make sure the world has not blown up last night.

[MaryPage]

Thank you, Barbara.  That is quite marvelous and I have sent it to my 5 daughters and 13 granddaughters.

[Steph]

mark

[mabel1015j]

Interesting chapter Barb. I thought as i read it that today many, men and women, are relieved when she gets her period.

I do believe that some of men's fear and aggressiveness against women is an historical memory of the wonder of women giving birth and noone understanding how that happened. I'm not completely convinced about the idea of "memory" being passed down thru generations genetically, but i'm willing to speculate about it. Maybe some men still today have a jealousy that women have the power to give birth, even if they understand their part in it.

[Steph]

I note that the Red Tent used this as a backdrop on the story.. Thank heaven in a good part of the world, this is gone.. I guess I was odd, but I never seemed to have any of the premenstrual nonsense, that women talk of today. I had problems during menopause and still do with night sweats and mood changes, but I learned to deal mostly.. so I am not a good judge of a lot of the problems. I think that many men think of our moon changes as mysteries..

[PatH]

even maybe make sure the world has not blown up last night.

Steph, if you have to ask, it hasn't.

[Steph]

Ah but it is so hard to tell some days if the world is still even sane..