— from Cindy Wolf —
The horse is gone and, barring a miracle or several, this ol’ barn door is creaking in the wind. If Kavanaugh isn’t confirmed, someone just as antediluvian will be confirmed next year. There would have to be both a sudden change of heart on the part of a few Republican and Senators plus a Blue AND solidly pro-choice shift in the Senate in the coming midterm election to avoid this fate. Nevertheless, persist. Please don’t give up. Lean in. Focus on controlling local government. State level reproductive rights will likely be all that American women have during the fertile decades of your daughter’s generation. That means pay attention, vet for a pro-choice stance and vote in EVERY election from school board on up. Local politicians and activists become state politicians and party leaders.
It is tragic that women’s right to choose was considered a secondary issue or somehow magically protected legal precedent in the last Presidential election cycle by so many otherwise progressive people. I look at my daughter and think of the 10 year old girls headed for lives of early motherhood, poverty, ignorance, and disenfranchisement. We didn’t have the luxury to put anything else ahead of their self-determination.
It galls me deeply to hear people say they didn’t vote because they were not motivated or inspired. There, after all, is the root of the problem. Somehow the fate of the nation’s daughters wasn’t inspiring enough.
The fact that there are women as well as men who still say this to me speaks to how deeply entrenched misogyny and self-effacement run in our culture. Who told you that addressing human rights, economic injustice, and bodily sanctity were of utmost importance only if they helped men? Are women not more than half of humanity?
If you are a woman reading this letter, please hear me loud and clear. No one will prioritize your health and wellbeing if you don’t. This is as true in politics as it is in personal life. Your young friends and relatives need you to model how this is done. Take steps to build on the right to vote and go to school and the small gains made in political representation and anti-harassment laws, rather than lose what our mothers and grandmothers won for us. Register to vote. Vote at every opportunity. NEVER support a candidate who thinks your bodily functions are negotiable political currency. There are men who will support you and men who won’t, but none of them will ever know your panic following the suspected failure of birth control or the feeling of the future crashing in and crushing down that an unwanted pregnancy can bring to a young woman with no choice in the matter of whether to give birth.
You and your daughter and your nieces and sisters are human beings deserving of rights and freedoms. On this one, it is okay to put yourselves first.
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There is also the choice of women and men to look at other ways to control the need for abortion as a last resort. I do not see a lot of talks about birth control .
The Catholic religion is for procreation while we continue to hear about the abuse !
Pierrette,
Even the best birth control fails upon occasion, but the more salient question is why on earth is a woman’s body the government’s business? Of course believe what you will according to your religion, which incidentally does not condone birth control, but to make laws about what a woman can and cannot do with her own body is to make her a second class citizen un-entitled to the same freedom of self determination available to a man.
If Roe v Wade is over turned, then it falls to the States to decide what their people group does. I think that is the best solution to preserving our rights at the local level. It seems that if those rights not explicitly referenced in the constitution are batted about at the Federal level, we will always be at the whim of one or two Supreme Court Justices who swing this way or that way to make decision for hundreds of millions of people.
If it falls to the states, little will change. Most of the States have laws on the books that support their majority views. And the debate can be taken up more personally with your local state representative. They can be held more accountable, then the Big Money influenced representatives at the Federal level.
Rick,
I think you are saying women have more protection from government infringement on personal decision making if the ability to obtain an abortion ceases to be tied to Constitutionally guaranteed rights on a federal level? Federally guaranteed constitutional rights exist in part to set a basic standard of equal protection. I think we soon will have to live with devolution to the states, but I think it is a terrible idea.
A democracy should support and protect rights of the minority populations and not simply go with what the majority votes!
Cindy makes good points and I’m given no option but to side with her final conclusion; and also as it pertains to protections being retained at the federal / national level.
Why do I seem reluctant?
Because I’m big on people taking responsibility and exercising CHOICE with their bodies BEFORE PREGNANCY as well as AFTER THE FACT when the choice becomes so complicated, unnecessary and painful.
Women and men need to be accountable for their sexual activity. Period! They should be responsible and plan to have a family when they’re ready.
That’s the model!!— and while it can never command perfect compliance, it should be held up and taught BEFORE decisions are made and the dysfunction instilled.
We can’t be so overcome with being too sensitive in not creating any “negative” energy around a young person such that we deneuter, demean and debilitate them.
We need to hold up, encourage and demand as parents that the model be the goal and reserve the compassionate acceptance of imperfect compliance after a genuine and sincere effort was at least attempted.
We don’t do that anymore.
The past was too harsh; now, the overly sensitive present ( the reaction) overshoots and actually debilitates the young into powerless and unaccountable “halves” of their true potential.
I truly think our permissiveness is a significant contributing factor that increases the incident rates leading to this unfortunate predicament.
The even bigger harm done to young women (and young men) occurs when they are abandoned at the most critical formative stages of their young lives where the foundations for a life of future bad decisions are laid —where “aborting” is often a symptom of deeper life-long problems to come.
It’s poor parenting where immature and ill-prepared parents (children themselves, really) giving birth to other children. Don’t criticize this, many say. Just support and encourage the cycle so that it repeats— to the point where we end with large dysfunctional segments of our general population who fail to participate and contribute. This destroys them as much as it harms the larger psyche of our human community.
Weak and ill-prepared women powerless to lead, prosper and set examples for both men and women is the huge price society pays for this cylce of unaccountability disguised as compassion. What is it really? Misplaced compassion!— and it does serious damage.
We see the consequences clearly today; but we also see examples of what happens when young women (and young men) are raised by parents who both love and hold them accountable—they run our societies, they’re our artists; they’re our jurists and they train to be astronauts, doctors and pilots.
The young woman who flew me to Boeing Field a couple hours ago on a Kenmore’s Cessna Caravan out of Eastsound is a perfect example:
a powerful, self-possessed, commanding young woman who instilled we passengers with immense confidence.
It may seem nerdy to say this today, but it makes me so happy to see that kind of positive and life-affirming “conquest” given our country’s (and world’s) history relating to our female halves.
Unfortunately, it’s not now politically correct to focus on accountability. And who suffers most because of the shortcuts that stymie many young men and women from growing into fully functional, contributing and powerful older women and men? The very young men and women who are often the very subjects of this debate.
So my solution is to fix the underlying problem and not spend all of our resources on the damage control aspect of Abortion.
Get this subject out of ICU and into Rehab by thinking more deeply about the deeper causes
and then address them instead of excusing them.
But, until then, society cannot remove a woman’s choice over her OWN body.
My hope is that this concern will greatly abate and be replaced by success story after success story of young men and women being ushered responsibly into the world by engaged and wise parents who pass their lessons of errors and successes onto their children so that each successive generation benefits that much more.
That’s the model!
Hold it up and ask your children to achieve it. How you love them tells them that there’s no such thing as failure, really. Not guiding them with a dynamic and living template, however, sets them up for the kind of failure and dysfunction that no amount of parental love can repair.
Yes, believe it or not, it’s really about parenting!!!
Neil— that was the very conscious and deliberate aim of our Founders. To have seen Napolean and the ensuing Tyranny of the Majority which replaced the Tryanny of the One (Despot).—de Tocqueville later came to witness the marvel himself and wrote of it in Democracy of America. May we rediscover our original aim and understanding of “individual rights” that was so vividly understood in 18th century Europe and America.
I am saddened to see the vast majority approving of abortion as a reasonably expected right. How is killing your baby before it is born any different than killing it while it is in your arms? While there are always medical exceptions, those are not what we are talking about. We are really talking about killing millions of babies because they were inconvenient. Apparently, being responsible enough to make the effort necessary for birth control is even more inconvenient. Is it possible that no one views being responsible as worth the effort anymore? When your daughter, sister, niece, lose their right to live, they are dead, no matter where they are in the life cycle. Life begins and ends with a heartbeat.
Oops…my love of alliteration got the best of me…”neuter,” not deneuter.
and, it’s “Democracy in America,” not “of America.”
and it’s really only “18th Century America,” excluding Europe. We’ve been the “political” avant garde since the late 18th Century (which we risk abandoning these days). Europe has since followed our lead in the areas of environmental protection, the establishment of the national park systems, civil rights, constitutional protections for minority / individual rights (that’s partly why both Rhode Island and California have the same number of powerful US Senators).
So when you hear speak of today in America from the progressive left, no less, of favoring “majority rule,” pay particular note of their utter lack of education, history, trial and error because they speak of Tyranny no less.
Any individual worthy of such a title recoils from group-think and mob mentality—either from the left or the right.
The extreme left and the extreme right are actually star-crossed lovers; at the end of the day they walk hand in hand. Their only aim: Power!
Caveat Emptor— of that type of political theater posing as serious philosophy.
If i were the Editor of this forum, I would remove “my” prior comments and replace them with what follows, which is a direct response to the “Letter to the Editor” written by Cindy Wolf—but in truth has universal application—to wit:
I read Cindy’s letter again and while I don’t disagree at all with her remarks (or with my earlier
comments in response), I was struck by the emotional content of and in her words.
More importantly, I’m also rather struck by an over-arching older realization that we are befuddled and lost in our own human-based, culturally-contrived narratives about all subjects discussed here and elsewhere while the plain primordial reality of who and what we actually are (which is far, far less than all the “stories” we’ve written since our first bi-pedal, hominid-sapien appearance) looks on in utter shock and awe at the narratives we’ve weaved, re-weaved and will forever keep weaving, ad infinitum.
misogyny, religion, the devil, god, homophobia, freedom, choice, civil rights, crimes against humanity, democracy, socialism, free speech, freedom of the press, and on and on and on and on…
Have you ever stopped to realize that all of this is invented? It’s our own made-up human narrative, including, of course, all of our religions, customs
and belief systems.
Just think about that for a moment.
Weigh the reality of this factual observation against the weight of your convictions derived from your own invented narratives.
Then ponder how short your time on earth truly is.
What, if anything, shocks you to your core about this observation?
Apart from retaining your physical (animal-required) freedoms (hence the absolute horror and cruelty of incarceration), what else does the human animal write on the chalkboard as a truly “necessary” condition for survival and peaceful cohabitation?
Do you see NOW how and why humanity’s stories began to be written and orally tramsmitted, including pictorially on cave walls, since reaching our cognitive ability to communicate in one form or another? All of our stories. All of our narratives.
All of it— contrived and invented by us.
So, what’s the upshot of this observation?
We need to take a deep breath and stop speaking about these issues, all of our “issues of the day,” in sacred, religious tones and tongues with such deep and utter conviction so as to bring ourselves to tears. Why?
These are fictions, folks.
We can use them to regualte our behavior.
We can legislate them into law.
But we should not believe in them.
Do you see why? Do you see the danger? The danger to the evolution of knowledge? The danger to our progress as a species?
Do what you must to satisfy your most truly basic needs for a contented life and then relax.
We so easily turn everything into a religion; by which I mean we actually believe our own made-up narratives; true, many have written great stories… noble, artful and so very well-crafted….BUT….
they are all make-believe
BTW, this should change the “quality” of your understanding of just about everything.
Count the days, months, or years you have remaining and then take a deep breath.
I’ve been aware of reality since before the mid-80’s
and yet I still catch myself speaking about these themes with such deep reverie and religiosity as I‘ve done in this forum and then I pull back in utter surprise at how easy it is to believe the fiction— due to our deep and utter fear and insecurity of being so fundamentally ignorant. But, it’s good to wake up now and again and catch your breath.
Hey, wars and conflicts? …they’re hard to fight without believing in something. As John sang, “Imagine”.
Just sayin’
(needed to point the above out even at the risk of the ire it may cause (me))
Cindy,
So…if you think this through deeply and sauté it in your mind’s wok, everything you “believe” changes. Everything you thought you understood changes. Qualitatively, your ability to see the source will be radically altered. The difficulty will be that the answers aren’t as easy as passing a law. It’s far deeper and much more intractable than you might imagine.
Beliefs? Fictional Narratives? Still Think they’re harmless little stories? Still think irrational minds are harmless?
Misogyny- comes from a belief in a fictional narrative
Homophobia- comes from a belief in a fictional narrative
Zenophobia- comes from a belief in a fictional narrative
Wars- etc…and on and on…
Make your own list—
You’ll find that ALL human violence and conflict almost certainly comes from a belief in a fictional human-contrived and invented narrative….
So, do you really want to address the source of the conflict you describe for women based on perceptions derived from fictional narratives? Or do you want to change the paradigm and attack the fictional narratives with Reason but not by weaving yet another fictional narrative of your own?
Like why the Old Testament narrates that women are first sourced from MAN, then caused HIS FALL.
If you play the fictional narrative game here, mind you, the other side’s narrative is 2500-3000 years older than yours.
So, again, what’s the harm in little irrational beliefs? In a little story?
Think this through and I assure you that you’ll be fairly disturbed halfway through your list.
And this is ony the beginning of what a lack of Reason and Rational thought does to humanity…there is so much more if you keep exploring the subject….the irrational mind is absolutely deadly; irrational beliefs no matter how innocent at first blush polinate and reinforce all others —certainly, this will be the cause of our extinction if not checked by Reason!
Stop believing. Have a hyposthesis. Have an idea. Stay open-minded for goodness sake. But don’t believe because it shuts and pins you down in a self-fabricated lie, called a fictional narrative. And you just spin in circles as you weave yet another story, another lie. This is what humanity has become quite excellent at…the reasons “why” fall like leaves if you think it through with REASON.
You can function far more effectively and efficently without knowing any TRUTHS.
Good luck.
Chris,
Do you ever come up for air?
I enjoy reading Orcas Issues and comments, but you seem be monopolizing every conversation with a lengthy dissertation..
Please consider the three “B”s; be brief, be brilliant and be gone.
Vicki- do you have anything to add or contribute to the topic raised by Cindy? I wouldn’t mind reading it. Presently, there are 15 articles in the Oi. This is the only one i’ve commented on of those 15. Again, I’d appreciate your perspective on the actual subject. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of reading any of your comments in the past. The more the merrier. Peace.
Ditto to Vicki’s comments !
Enough Already !!
Accept my apologies. “Reason” is a tough sell everywhere these days. But, it’s true— I have a bigger agenda and it’s not fair to force fit it into this platform. There’s a better format and means for what I’m trying to accomplish —so, on that note I’ll take Vicki’s door #3 and bid you all a farewell.
And why should Cindy Wolf and any woman who knows what this supreme court will potentially do to women’s rights, not feel emotional? I know I do.
What’s not said is that when Roe VS Wade is overturned, there will be nothing to protect women and girls who happen to have been RAPED. Many states have already overturned these protections for rape victims; blaming the victim. Rape is a fact that women and girls (and boys and young men) face every day. Of the REPORTED rapes, the stats stand at 6 out of 10 women/girls and 4 out of 10 boys/men – much of this is incest. Many rapes go unreported, since the victim is often grilled mercilessly and treated as the perpetrator, while rapists go free after a hand slap and light jail sentence (if that). In a planet groaning with overpopulation it would seem obvious that rape victims should absolutely be protected against unwanted pregnancies- that’s the least we can offer someone who has to live with the PTSD of rape for the rest of their lives. Overturning Roe V Wade will change all that- and this supreme court is poised to do that and so much more damage to civil rights.
Women didn’t even get the legal right to vote in this country until 1920 – it took 70 years and women getting jailed, beaten, even murdered for the right we throw away today. We seem to forget that women did not have ANY inherent rights that men did until, recently.
I know I am one of millions of women who will refuse to go back to those times. We are not chattel – we should not be raped or sexually harassed because we “asked for it” for whatever lame reason may be given. Our bodies are ours – not the church’s or the government’s.
The same ones who cry that abortion should be illegal are against birth control altogether. We can either educate our young people and provide them the means to have safe sex, including women saying NO to unwanted male advances – or have more unwanted babies. Notice as soon as the subject of male birth control pills is raised, there is a hue and cry from all those men that want to leave birth control up to women and girls but then call them “loose” for using it. Double Standard and misogyny are alive and well in the USA.
I’m sorry that this may seem off-topic; but it very much ties in with what is about to happen with this Supreme Court – and it’s a sad and horrifying time for women whose mothers and ancestors fought and died for our basic right to even vote.
Chris,
Reason boils it down to this:
If we hold ourselves equal under the law, there should be no more laws about my female body than there are about your male body. Why should pregnancy make my health decisions subject to government control? If life begins at conception, why do 1/3 of human embryos spontaneously abort in the first trimester, let alone those which do not implant in the first 48 hrs? Did you know the rate of abortion has dropped precipitously in places where sex education and easy access to birth control are available to girls as soon as they become fertile?
Restricting access to birth control and abortion is part and parcel of relegating women to second class citizenship the way the old laws about restricting our ability to sit in bars alone, hold property, vote or retain control of our own money upon marriage were. I think “emotional” and “religious” arguments are the old paradigm. Slut-shaming and glorification of motherhood are used to distract women from the hard fact that they need to insist on full equality politically and economically and this starts with the legal right to our own bodies.
Think deeply, for instance, about marriage. The sacred vows are optional. Marriage is a contract. Most often today in the United States it is a legal default code of fiscal and custodial obligations. It looks different in every American state and in every country. It is about property. In some places the bride/s are part of that property. Whether women are equal citizens has everything to do with whether they are property with no legal standing as individuals on one end of the spectrum, or whether,at the other end, they enjoy all the entitlements, access and legal protections available to men living under the same government.
Often when a woman’s arguments make other people uncomfortable she is addressed as emotional and irrational. Fortunately, my letter was meant for other women feeling the same despair over the backsliding erosion of the legal status
we have worked for hundreds of years to achieve in this country.
Cindy/Sadie-
I’m coming back to this post only because I care about your words and feelings. I agree with you both in terms of your descriptions of society and its deep structural inequalities.
My point is that the causes of what you describe are deeply imbedded into the psyche of the irrational male (and female) mind throughout the world, not just here. We’ve been telling stories about women (and many others too but let’s stay on topic) that defy “reason” and we’ve been doing it for millennia.
My point goes to the core and focuses on the deep mind-job that lays the basis still today for hate, misogyny, war, violence, etc. It also lays the basis for everything you say above–IT, is what makes it possible to happen. That foundation is and will remain intact as long as “rational” human beings do not challenge the “irrational” archetypes directly. The only way to deeply rid ourselves of racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and all forms of violence is to attack the “irrational” mindset that supports the absolutely untenable “beliefs” giving rise to a direct assault on women, among so many others.
This will never change until you go to the source. When you do it for women, you do it for everyone–more than you know. We all benefit hugely from challenging the irrational mind. I can’t even imagine thinking of anyone, including a woman, as innately “less than.” Only an irrational mind following irrational belief systems on a daily basis can tolerate this wholly inconsistent lifestyle– as between words and actions.
Yes, do “damage control” and take preventive measures via politics, voting and campaigning against anything that might reverse Roe v Wade; but realize that if you want to truly be free, you need to be possessed by reason not fiction.
The majority of your friends, your neighbors and the world at large are deeply irrational at the core and they’re unaware of it or, if casually aware, they think it’s harmless. You want to talk about what’s uncomfortable? Most don’t; most won’t or don’t grasp what’s happening. Most will only go so far so as not to alienate their friends and family. What kind of search for reality is that? That’s fear and frustration cause by the most obvious reasons. Deep down you “should” know better–do you?. Look at the world. It’s a mess and ALWAYS has been. Our failure to protect our habitat by people so “apparently” reasonable and relatively educated with all kinds of liberal sounding causes…yet they sacrifice “water” for abstract thought-based social programs; look at the many wars at all levels throughout society and between them– the list is quite long–how on earth can you imagine a society as irrational as ours ever dealing realistically with the issues you raise in a substantive way. It will never happen until you face up to what the real impediments are. It’s not just one political party that you’re up against….and it never was.
Not to belabor the point, but really let what I said above in my last two comments (above Vicki’s) seep in. Clearly, it upsets many people…the majority in fact–if they really comprehended its meaning. To the extent it’s unassailable is the extent to which it relies on “reason” for its strength, not brute power. If you want, contact me directly (ask Margie or Lin for my email) and challenge any part of it so that we don’t abuse this platform. I’d be happy to explore it with you at the deepest levels. It’s counter-intutive and contrary to how we’re raised and educated to think because we’re not raised institutionally to be rational human beings. That’s a fact!
I’m not alone in understanding and highlighting the much deeper reasons for why YOU are treated the way you are in society due only to your sex.
My larger agenda is in search of the rational mind as tomorrow’s template for society. It most certainly makes what you describe above an impossibility.
You want to be real? Then be real and don’t stop with just the law, that is, just the bandaids.
Abuse of Platform? Your word count is more than the whole issue today. To bad your content is not as cler as the rest of todays issue.
It’s more helpful to address the content rather than its author. Otherwise, nothing is contributed. Ad hominem attacks are irrational.
Stan (et al)
In all sincerity, you obviously read my comments based on your remarks. It appears that you don’t like, agree or understand the content. So why not speak to it, the content, instead of lobbing a not so subtle slight against its author? I knew when making the comments in this post that they might be uncomfortable for many. I even knew thst inserting the word “homophobia” in my laundry list might ruffle some feathers…But how else will progress be made if we can’t deal with the many taboos in society? As a human being, who happens to also be gay, I’ve experienced much hate directed towards me solely due to that one aspect of my much broader self…. and fortunately the “hate” part hasn’t defined me but, instead, has offered me greater insights into empathy for others. We really need to move forward and be the larger family we truly are.
Chris – thank you for sharing the extensive thought you have given to gender-based oppression and it’s links to all kinds of other exploitation and violence. Thirty years ago when I was studying Revolution Theology and ancient Hebrew history and founding an on-campus women’s center, I had many of the same epiphanies. The work I do is exactly about shifting women’s internal narrative and expectations of power in the world through political dialogue and action. The results so far have been good. Profound changes are occurring in the oikos and polis here on the island and all over the world. The interesting part is that women begin to hear themselves and trust their own expertise most quickly in a goal oriented all-female setting. I think it has to do with being insulated from the constant assumption they are unqualified, uninformed and inexperienced.
You’re most welcome, Cindy. Your efforts have and will continue to pay off. It feels good knowing you’re out there and that you know what the challenge entails. Actions based on Reason will free us from “stories” based on fear and want for power over others. That was the paradigm that worked 2 million years ago when Homo Erectus left Africa, but fortunately there’s this thing called Evolution. It’s time for the rational mind to fully replace our fear-based “survival” weapons of violence and control. “Reason” is evolution’s gift and reward— revealing itself to us over time, trial and error. It’s now our only hope if we’re to contine.