Feminists who are Scared of Babies

Google loves to feed you ads when you use their products based on the words that they think you're interested in. So while checking my "frum feminist" email account, Google fed me an ad for, "Feminist T-Shirts" on Cafe Press, and I decided to check it out. Those T-shirts reminded me why people have such an aversion to feminists. 

There were the okay ones that read things like, "Feminism: The Radical notion that women are PEOPLE," and great ones that say, "Violence against women will not be tolerated". 

Then there were the obnoxious ones like, "I'll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy," and, "FEMINIST and not afraid to say it!"

And then there were the abortion ones. The ones that make it sound like only evil, selfish, biggotted, racist men could possibly be anti-abortion. The, "Against abortion? Get a vasectomy" one. The, "Hell hath no fury like a woman denied her right to choose by a handful of greedy, self-important, white men." And the horrifying, "If I want a baby inside me, I'LL EAT IT!" one, which I can't even begin to understand.

Why must someone who is anti-abortion be evil? Can't a woman, or a man, be pro-life without being woman-haters?  

If a woman doesn't want to have a baby - fine. That's her choice, and in that case, I am pro-choice. But abortion just because a woman doesn't want a child takes a woman from, "I don't want a baby," to, "I care more about myself than about the life inside of me." 

It sounds to me like these women have a problem with people who are anti-abortion because when they hear, "Abortion is murder!" they hear, "You care more about yourself than about your baby and that makes you selfish and uncaring."  Not wanting to be the bad "guy," they go and find someone else to blame for their "choice". 

If a woman wants to care more about herself than about her baby, she should just admit that she doesn't want a baby instead of blaming the people who care about the life inside of her. She needs to get over that complex that tells her, "They're out to get me because I don't want a baby and they say that I have to have one!" and realize that no one wants her to have a baby. They just don't want her destroying any. 

How about this T-shirt logo: "Against abortion? DON'T GET PREGNANT!"

If you don't want a baby, crazy-feminists, just don't get pregnant. Then the pro-lifers won't bother you and you can live your life in peace without fear of evil monsters who are "out to get you." 

Rock the Women's Right to Vote

This is an email going around and I thought it very appropriate that I post it here. It is especially important for women voters to vote this coming election in California with initiatives important to women on the ballot such as requiring parental notification before giving a minor an abortion.

Register to vote at http://www.rockthevote.com/

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WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE.

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.

Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because -- why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry.

She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'

HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think
a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.

The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.

We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so
hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.

History is being made.