But they (some of them, in some places, #notallcatholics) are happy to quote the pope to justify these repressive actions. Since he, himself, doesn’t stop it is part of the problem.
@littlegirlblue
Yes, I know & agree w/ HItchens’ findings about her. Sadly, Hitchens himself let us all down by being a raging misogynist (“women don’t have a sense of humor because they can get as much sex as they want”), and along w/ Dawkins, a raging anti-Muslim based on (their view) the triumph of educated Englishmen over all the benighted heathens.
The two of them… well, OK, maybe with a couple of others… really destroyed the humanistic atheist movement.
EVERY Democrat should be pro-life in practice by supporting policies to improve the menu of pregnant women, such that adoption and motherhood become the two most appealing choices. I’ve yet to encounter anyone from either party, who calls himself “pro-life,” who measures up.
It’s tragic because I know dozens of natural Democrats on every economic and most other social issues, who nevertheless vote Republican because of abortion.
When does the conversation begin which includes that there’s a fertile man involved who does the impregnating? Why is there no call for him using birth control including vasectomies? Silly me. That would mean taking personal responsibility from the party of no responsibility for anything at all ever.
My mother fell ill while snowbirding in Orange Beach, AL. She died in a Pensacola, FL hospital. Every day that Dad and I drove to the hospital to visit her, we passed a “father’s rights” attorney billboard at the base of the bridge we crossed to get there. That billboard represents so much of what’s wrong with this issue; I doubt there’s a single “father’s responsibility” attorney in the whole damned confederacy. And I’m annoyed with my spell checker for trying to make me capitalize “confederacy” when those descendants of traitors don’t deserve a proper noun. It’s no accident that dixie is ground zero of denying women their personhood.
What a concept. The other half of why pregnancies happen gets to skate.
I’m sorry you lost your mom no matter how long ago it was. Losing mine 10 years ago made me feel like an orphan since my dad had already died. I also realized how fragile mortality is.
Yes, so-called father’s rights is yet another way to short circuit a woman’s agency. If we expect a guy to take responsibility, he should also be able to veto her decision, they say.
One thing we do is raise better men, and I do see the 40 year olds of my acquaintance doing a better job with that than we did. And they are doing better, because we at least tried to overcome our internalized misogyny and tried to do better ourselves.
I’m still amazed and horrified at finding myself using different words and phrases for praise and encouragement with boys and girls when teaching my 2nd graders to swim. I embarrass myself, using phrases I was raised with over 60 years ago…
Yes, we all do that. Men & women both are socialized to behave & react in certain ways. I really respect & support that you are thinking about it!!
In raising a kid (college now) I noticed how often even the most well-meaning of moms would observe “he did that thing, like all boys” vs. “she learned it from her brother”.
Those same moms would then assert how ‘natural’ it was that girls were different than boys…
… And for course they are. Yet not in in the cultural ways we tend to proclaim.
Sorry for your loss. We lost my mother 34 years ago. Didn’t feel like an orphan until we buried my dad last year. Doesn’t matter how old your are, losing the generation in front of you reminds you that you are next.
I was spoiled in many ways. My father, who as a Navy carrier pilot you would assume was a marionette at home, was the first feminist I ever knew. 3 boys, 3 girls. All of us did everything. Dishes, laundry, diapers, cooking, cleaning, mowing the lawn, all of it.
In August of 1955 he was washing diapers at the base laundry in Beeville, Texas. Mom was due any day with child number 2, number 1 was a year and a half. A guy walked by and said “Don’t you know that’s women’s work?” Dad’s reply? “I guess you have to know you’re a man in order to do it.”
All of us had to fix a flat, change the oil and tune the engine before we could get a drivers license. We can all cook for a family of 8 and did. None of us were treated differently due to gender by my father. Mom had some mixed messages, but dad, never. All of us were told we could do anything in the world we put our minds to.
My dad was a 20-yr Navy man. Just an enlisted man, so they didn’t hang out w/ pilots. As an only child, I held his tools when he fixed things. But he didn’t expect me to do the fixing. It was a great surprise as an adult when I realized I had technical skills.
