Tag Archives: women’s rights

February 16, 2013 · 10:00 am

The North Carolina Nipple Police

North Carolina’s new GOP controlled legislature is living up to all my expectations….

With all the important issues like unemployment, education and infrastructure needs being ignored, they are focusing on ….

Nipples….

Maybe, after all,  we are safer if that’s where they keep their focus.  But sadly  they really are making themselves – and by default the state of North Carolina- a laughingstock to the rest of the country.

These Church Ladies seem intent on dragging us back to the days of Jesse Helms and the Andy Griffith Show.

But, I don’t think even Aunt Bea and Thelma would take too kindly to putting duct tape on their nipples…

Well, Aunt Bea might….

From RawStory.com:

North Carolina Republican state Rep. Tim Moore says that women can protect themselves from a new law that makes baring female breasts illegal by simply applying duct tape to their nipples.

On Wednesday, the state House Judiciary Committee C approved House Bill 34, which makes it a Class H felony to purposefully expose “private parts” for the “purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire.”

The bill expands the state’s definition of “private parts” to include a woman’s “nipple, or any portion of the areola.”

Republican state Rep. Rayne Brown told lawmakers that she was co-sponsoring the bill because activists had held a topless women’s rights rally in Asheville last summer, where as many as a dozen women bared their breasts

Although Brown’s district is 100 miles from Asheville, she felt it was important to act before women tried to assert their rights again by going topless at another rally.

“You’ve got local governments passing ordinances to protect themselves from just this thing,” she explained. “These folks don’t need to be doing that, but they do it because they’re not sure about the law.”

Under the proposed law, women could spend up to six months in jail for a first offense. “Incidental” nipple exposure by breastfeeding mothers would be exempt from the law.

Democratic state Rep. Annie Mobley said she worried that women wearing “questionable fashions” could be prosecuted under the new rules.

But Committee Chairwoman Rep. Sarah Steven (R) suggested that women could use pasties or nipple coverings just to be safe.

“They’d be good to go” with nipple coverings, Stevens said.

“You know what they say, duct tape fixes everything,” Republican state Rep. Tim Moore agreed.

via NC lawmaker: Women should ‘duct tape’ nipples to stay out of jail | The Raw Story.

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March 3, 2012 · 10:41 am

Republicans Do Remember That Women Vote, Right?

I’m not so sure they do remember that women vote….or they are planning to try to roll back that basic right next….

One of the reasons I’m blogging so seldom right now is that between the GOP Presidential Primary Campaign and the GOP War on Women, I am speechless at the stupidity of the GOP and really don’t see the point in commenting on a bunch of crazy old white men who think it is still 1952 and would obviously prefer to be having cocktails with Joe McCarthy and J Edgar Hoover…..

Then along comes a true rarity:  A good column from Dana Milbank in the Washington Post….

It really has become obvious the GOP is starting to lose its War on Women- and its collective mind- when even DC insiders like Milbank recognize it and feel free to state it publicly….

The Republicans have really alienated women over the last few weeks with their drive back to the 1950’s.  It’s becoming more and more obvious they are a bunch of rich, old, white men who want to keep their patriarchy alive- and feel threatened by uppity Gays, Blacks, Latinos, Asians and most especially Uppity, Slatternly Women- which to them seems to mean all women who aren’t their wives or, in some, but not all cases, their daughters…

They obviously seem to think women are all either sluts, who should have no rights, or Ladies, who should mindlessly support their husbands and do their bidding without question.

This is the 1950’s mindset they have and just assume everyone else has also….

Rush Limbaugh is justifiably catching hell right now for actually having the nerve- and stupidity- to concisely articulate the Republican position on women.  It’s so obvious, he must be surprised at the blow back directed at him instead of Congress….

My favorite quote is from the female Oklahoma Lawmaker who said:  “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d f*#k a Senator.”

The Republicans are driving women over to the Democratic Party in droves with   their intrusive anti-abortion legislation in Virginia-  among other states- their anti contraception amendments in the Senate and the assault on Planned Parenthood and Women’s healthcare.

Can anything be more indicative of how out of touch the Republican Party is than the fact that we are actually discussing anti-contraception legislation in the 21st Century????

I’m starting to think there must be a lot more retro-closet cases than Ken Mehlman in the GOP if they are this afraid of “lady parts”…..

From Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:

When will Republicans stop their vagina monologue?

March is federally recognized as Women’s History Month, and Republicans have been celebrating the occasion in a most unusual style: with a burst of interest in women’s private parts.

On Thursday, the Senate took up an amendment proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that would allow employers to deny women birth-control coverage if the employer found contraception morally objectionable.

About 100 miles south of Washington on that same day, Virginia legislators passed a measure requiring a woman to be offered an ultrasound image of her fetus before aborting it. The legislation, which opponents say could also require some women who have miscarriages to be offered ultrasonic images of their dead fetuses, is the successor of a bill that would have required women to undergo an invasive “transvaginal ultrasound.”

Still on Thursday, the industrious Virginia House of Delegates also approved legislation bestowing rights on people, including a father, to bring a lawsuit over the death of the fetus.

On Wednesday, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, a powerful influence among Republican lawmakers, described as a “slut” the law-school student invited by House Democrats to testify in support of birth control. “It makes her a prostitute,” Limbaugh said of the woman, blocked last month by House Republicans from testifying on what became an all-male panel. “She wants to be paid to have sex.”

On Tuesday, Oklahomans held a protest at the state capitol to oppose a bill, passed by the state Senate and now being taken up by the House, that would bestow “personhood” on fetuses — one of many such efforts across the nation. Democrat Judy McIntyre, one of just four women in the 48-member state Senate, was so upset that, according to the Oklahoman newspaper, she held a protest sign proclaiming: “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d [expletive] a senator.”

via Republicans do remember that women vote, right? – The Washington Post.

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February 16, 2012 · 9:30 pm

How The GOP Went Back To The 1950s In Just One Day

Talking Points Memo sums it all up very well…

I’m going to post an excerpt from them and a link to the full story without comment- as it says it all so well…

Well, I will emphasize the last paragraph….

Very neatly, and on three separate fronts, conservatives in America turned the clock back to the 1950s with their rhetoric about women’s rights Thursday, according to women in politics on both sides of the aisle. This could be a big problem for the GOP when the calendar reaches November.

Let’s take a look at Thursday, February 16, 2012, the day Washington fell into a time-warp.

• On Capitol Hill, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) held hearings on contraception and religious freedom that produced the now-famous picture of a table full of men called to weigh in on access to contraceptives. Democrats wanted a woman — a Georgetown law student with a friend who lost an ovary because the university doesn’t cover birth control — to say her piece at the hearing, but Issa wouldn’t let her on the panel. He said she wasn’t “appropriate or qualified” to discuss the topic at hand.

Jaws dropped in the women’s rights community.

“She didn’t have the right credentials?” NOW President Terry O’Neill scoffed. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘Buddy, you and your little panel over there don’t have the right anatomy to talk about birth control.’”

• Politico published a story about a right wing firestorm that had been burning for days: Did the young women who attended this year’s CPAC wear skirts that were too short? The days following the massive conservative conference, which closed Saturday, were filled with tweets and blog posts weighing in on what conservative pundit Melissa Clouthier called outfits that made the college-age women at CPAC look either “frumpish” or “like two-bit whores.” CPAC needs these women to survive — 55% of attendees at the 2011 conference were under 25 — but apparently conservatives want to make sure they don’t show too much of their legs lest they detract from the solemnity of the proceedings. The general agreement among conservatives after days of debate: a CPAC dress code would go too far — but ladies, please.

• Foster Friess, the billionaire backer of Rick Santorum’s campaign, became an instant celebrity when he went on Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC show and said, “Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.” Here’s what that looked like:

Friess’ comment was astonishing in two ways. First, it derailed the entire contraception debate that Republicans have been desperate to keep about “religious freedom” rather than make it about, well, who does or does not keep her knees together. Second, there wasn’t a woman around who didn’t have a guttural reaction.

“I want to punch that guy in the face,” said one female operative who called me on an entirely unrelated matter. Phone calls and IM conversations for the rest of the day included similar appraisals of Santorum’s biggest financial backer.

So there you have it: modern women being told by Republicans that they’re not qualified to talk about their own sexual health, are dressed like “whores” and probably need birth control because they’re so slutty. And this is just in one day.

via How The GOP Went Back To The 1950s In Just One Day | TPM2012.

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March 16, 2011 · 8:11 am

Boehner, Where Is, “Where Are the Jobs?”? | Mother Jones

More coverage on the changing poll numbers…

The GOP campaigned on jobs, jobs, jobs and hasn’t done a thing about creating jobs since they took over the House.  Instead, they are pursuing radical budget cuts and tax cuts for Corporations and the Rich that will kill jobs and the recovery.

And going after policies and institutions that either a) dare to question them and hold them accountable or b) don’t fit their 19th Century notions of the role of women and minorities.

But the public is getting wise to the Republicans-again.

Let’s hope the Electorate retains the information better this time….

From David Corn at MotherJones:

Before the 2010 congressional elections, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his fellow GOPers developed and implemented a simple campaign strategy: say “where are the jobs?” over and over and over. Even though the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had declared thst President Barack Obama’s stimulus package had created or saved about 3 million jobs and a recovery (albeit weak) was under way, the Republicans blamed Obama for screwing up the economy (not Wall Street or the Bush-Cheney administration). In politics, an attack doesn’t have to be fair or accurate to work—and this one did.

Since then, have you heard Boehner screaming about jobs? No. He and his comrades have focused on one thing: cutting government spending, which will undoubtedly lead to job loss in the short run (if not the long run). Wait—that’s not fair. They’ve also focused on abortion (with legislation that would make it harder for a woman who was raped to obtain federal assistance for an abortion), Planned Parenthood (with legislation that would defund the outfit), NPR (ditto), and American Muslims (with today’s hearings on radicalization among Muslim Americans). There’s not been much talk of jobs.

Consequently, this new poll from Bloomberg is hardly a surprise:

Americans say President Barack Obama lacks an effective strategy for improving the U.S. economy. They have much less confidence in the Republican vision for success.

By a margin of 51 percent to 40 percent, a Bloomberg National Poll shows Americans say Obama lacks the right formula for long-term growth, a goal he presented in his State of the Union address with the phrase “win the future.”

The Democratic president still does better than Republicans: When asked who has a better vision for the years ahead, 45 percent of poll respondents chose Obama and 33 percent picked the Republicans.

Four months ago, the GOPers shellacked the Democrats. They became the new kids on the block and claimed they were eager to refurnish their image with the American public. Yet once in power, they have reverted to their old ways—culture war and spending cuts.

via Boehner, Where Is, “Where Are the Jobs?”? | Mother Jones.

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March 9, 2011 · 9:42 pm

Female Sexuality Still Terrifying to Conservative Lawmakers | | AlterNet

Amazing…

But not really…

The Republicans screamed about jobs and deficits  before the elections, then focused on enforcing their social agenda and personal morals once the election was over…

These folks seem to now be really focusing in on controlling women and their behavior.

I guess they really are getting back to the basics.

They temporarily gave up on the Gays and decided to go back to the beginning to try to drive women back to 1962….

They can come back to the Gays and other minorities once they have women safely back in their place prior to the Women’s  Liberation Movement….

 

The Republican attack on Planned Parenthood, in the form of the House zeroing out funding for the organization in the continuing resolution on the federal budget, seemingly came out of nowhere. For decades, the kinds of services provided with federal dollars by Planned Parenthood—contraception, STD testing and treatment, cancer screening—had been assumed non-controversial by the Beltway media. The reproductive rights debate was framed mainly as a fight over bodily autonomy versus fetal life, between secular humanists and religious folks who believed fertilized eggs had souls.

So why then an attack funding STD treatment and contraception? Why, all of a sudden, do you have politicians like Rep. Steve King railing against Planned Parenthood not because of fetal life—after all, depriving women of contraception access will likely increase the abortion rate—but because Planned Parenthood is “invested in promiscuity”? Why do you have a conservative figurehead like Sean Hannity arguing not that abortion is wrong because it’s taking a life, but because teenage girls shouldn’t be making out in the back seats of cars in the first place? Why is Gov. Scott Walker not only attacking collective bargaining rights in the state of Wisconsin, but trying to eliminate contraception coverage (but not erectile dysfunction medication) on the grounds of “morality”?

The dusty old argument that female sexuality is a subversive force that needs to be strictly controlled isn’t as dead as we thought.

via Female Sexuality Still Terrifying to Conservative Lawmakers | | AlterNet.

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June 9, 2010 · 11:44 pm

Yesterday, Once More

I’ll take us back to the 1960’s one more time…

I just came across a few snapshots in time.  Some  “time capsule” moments on YouTube.

I keep looking back because I keep wondering where the energy for change has gone.

It’s hard to believe how much times have changed…for the better– since the early 1960’s.  But I never realized how depressing the 1960’s–which I always thought of a as a decade of hope and change– could be…It’s remarkable, given the restrictive society at the time, how much hope was alive then.

I wonder if it still is…

There were so many people afraid of change then– just like now.

Today, the Afghanistan war has just surpassed Vietnam as our longest war.  Bush’s personal vendetta/ war or choice in Iraq is still going on.  Ghetto’s still exist.  The Tea Baggers prove racism is still alive .  The old “Silent Majority”, which isn’t either, is still around.  Post-feminism wants to return women to the kitchen and subservience, while the Men of the Religious Right still try to take away their right to control their own bodies.  I’m almost relieved we haven’t come far enough on Gay Rights to start dismantling them…

I think we need to look back to see “the way we were” to see how far we have come.

Then, maybe, we can gain the courage and the energy to keep moving forward.

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