In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Tag: Radical Right-Wingers

Is it time to talk about guns yet?

The suspect in the horrific shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin has now been identified. He is Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old army vet and described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white power band.” He’d also washed out of the army after a reduction in rank for being drunk on the job and was ineligible for enlistment. He may also have just broken up with his girlfriend. Tell me again why we don’t worry about violent white men or their sense of entitlement?

He also had a 9/11 tattoo and an apparent inability to tell brown people apart. An inability he shared with a lot of dumbshits in this country:

Though violence against Sikhs in Wisconsin was unheard of before the shooting, many in this community said they had sensed a rise in antipathy since the attacks on Sept. 11 and suspected it was because people mistake them for Muslims. Followers of Sikhism, or Gurmat, a monotheistic faith founded in the 15th century in South Asia, typically do not cut their hair, and men often wear colorful turbans and refrain from cutting their beards.

“Most people are so ignorant they don’t know the difference between religions,” said Ravi Chawla, 65, a businesswoman who moved to the region from Pakistan in the 1970s. “Just because they see the turban they think you’re Taliban.”

There are around 314,000 Sikhs in the United States, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. The temple in Oak Creek, one of two large congregations in the Milwaukee area, was founded in 1997 and has about 400 worshipers.

Threats against Sikh-Americans have become acute enough that in April, Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York and co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on Indians and Indian-Americans, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. urging the F.B.I. to collect data on hate crimes committed against them. In the previous year alone, he said in the letter, two Sikh men in Sacramento were slain, a Sikh temple in Michigan was vandalized, and a Sikh man was beaten in New York.

That’s not to say that violence against Muslims would be fine, but if you’re going to have a beef against members of one group, don’t go after members of a completely unrelated group just because you can’t be bothered to learn anything about the people you hate.

I’m glad law enforcement is explicitly calling this an act of domestic terrorism, something that they’re seemingly reluctant to do. But we still won’t talk about guns in any kind of rational manner. But count on it, someone will speculate that if only the priest had been carrying, this wouldn’t have happened.

Putting the money where their hearts are

This story about an elderly widow who was hit with a major tax burden because she was married to a woman and not a man is a sad read. The women were together for decades and made a series of great real estate buys, amassing quite a bit of wealth. Ms. Windsor (the surviving wife) cared for her partner for years through an illness, to which her wife eventually succumbed. Then, because of the Defense of Marriage Act, she was forced to pay enormous sums on her wife’s share of their assets — sums she would not have had to pay if she had been married to a man. Yes, it’s Rich People Things, but it’s still a wildly unfair application of the estate tax. The end of the piece, though, particularly stood out to me:

Prosecuting “Bad” Mothers

A must-read in this week’s New York Times Sunday Magazine about over-zealous Alabama prosecutors bringing charges against drug-addicted mothers. It’s a troubling and complex issue. Obviously no one thinks that using drugs during pregnancy is a good idea. Obviously it is a tragedy when a baby is stillborn, or born with drugs in its system. But many of these cases involve stillbirths which cannot be clearly tied to drug use — all the prosecutors know is that the pregnant woman used drugs (even one time) and the baby was stillborn, and so they assume (and argue, with little to no evidence) causation. And because most folks don’t understand just how complicated pregnancy actually is — and after the 80s “crack baby” hysteria, don’t understand that drug use during pregnancy actually doesn’t usually cause long-term problems in the child — people hear “drug-using mom” and “stillborn baby” and it’s easy to conclude that A led to B, even though that’s not actually how it works.

Prison Time for Women Who Use the Morning After Pill

There is terrible legislation being considered in Honduras which would send women to jail if they use the morning after pill. There is no exception for victims of sexual assault. The global activist group Avaaz is sounding the alarm on this terrible legislation, which is being actively debated in the Honduran Congress and may be “just days away.”

AZ legislator would like to make women watch abortions before they can have them.

When I was about 10, I was visiting my grandparents in Chicago and for some reason I still do not understand, they played us a video of my grandpa’s cataract surgery. It was a close-up of my grandpa’s eye, and then the eye got sliced into, and then a little vacuum thing went in and oh god I won’t get any more detailed but it was horrific and psychologically scarring. Anything eye-injury-related still freaks me out (even more, I suppose, than the standard amount of freaked-out normally associated with eye-related injuries).

Go to get Skittles for your little brother, end up dead

An unarmed 17-year-old boy was shot and killed last month by a Neighborhood Watch leader. What happened? The kid was walking home after buying some Skittles at a convenience store for his little brother. George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old man who headed the local Neighborhood Watch, saw the kid and thought he looked “suspicious.” Zimmerman called 911 to report a suspicious person. The 911 dispatcher told Zimmerman not to follow the kid. Zimmerman did anyway. Some sort of confrontation ensued, and Zimmerman shot the kid to death. Zimmerman has not been charged with any crime.

“Planned Parenthood: we’re going to get rid of that.” – Mitt Romney

Sure, he’s a totally moderate Republican who’s just a good businessman, right?

I actually don’t think Romney actually gives a fuck about Planned Parenthood. One year he loves ’em, the next year he hates ’em, whatever — homeboy will do or say whatever he needs to do or say to get elected. What’s scary is that if he is elected, he’ll be beholden to the party that got him there. And the GOP “base” are some scary folks — including people who are actively hostile to women’s basic health care needs, and would like to “get rid of” Planned Parenthood for that very reason.

What happens if you get rid of Planned Parenthood? You have a whole bunch of women, especially low-income women, who no longer have access to reproductive health care. The rate of birth control usage goes down. The abortion rate goes up. Complications from STIs increase. Fewer women have abnormal cervical cells or breast lumps caught early, and so rates of cancer increase. Literally not one good thing will happen if Planned Parenthood is destroyed.

I realize many people on the left are disenchanted with Obama. I am too! But between Romney and O, there are enormous differences. This is an important one.