Showing posts with label Women's Rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Women's Rights. Show all posts

Emma Watson's U.N. Speech


When I heard this speech, back in September of this year, my first thoughts were to marvel at how optimistically powerful she was. You don't get that much -- powerful and optimistic. Most of the time powerful speeches are dramatic and hard hitting. Or they are on the other side, being funny and pointedly humorous. A commonality found in most powerful speeches is the direction of force -- toward you, the listener -- which doesn't hold the energy of optimism without discord and degradation. 
"Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."
...is a line from a powerful speech, which demonstrates what I'm talking about with the idea of Direction of Force. It's all on you. You can change the world. You can make this country great. You have the power. You rise up and face the challenges because you are what this country needs.
These claims might sound optimistic, but in fact they are closer to cheerleading. This is the rhetoric of building false structures. What is imbued feels powerful, but the power does not endure under stress. In our world examples of this abound. Face it, if all you need to be motivated to change our world is a "What you can do for your country" speech, then your problems are fairly shallow. Don't twist this, I'm not putting Kennedy's speech down. I like that speech. Unlike many of its kind, it has a brilliance which few have matched. But it has no optimism, only power and motivation.
So what is optimism, since I am wilfully calling out distinctions... 
You may disagree, but I understand confidence to be a quality, which can not be directed at you. Confidence can not be injected. Confidence is a quality, which is derived from experience. And experience is what you acquire roughly five seconds after you needed it. In other words, experience is acquired through the survival of failure, and the tenacity to solve afterward. The attribute of experience is formidable because of this -- not because of that sentiment given by Nietzsche, "whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger," but more from the confidence of "whatever doesn't kill me, had better start running..." Confidence is a quality, therefore, of realism. When someone cheerleads you into a sense of motivation and confidence, it never feels whole. That's because it never is.
This is actually the point of brilliance with Kennedy's speech. He's not bolstering his nation up, he's making them take stock, and to alter their perspective. He's putting the power in their hands, but not offering a false sense of ability. He's asking you to ask, "what can you do for your country?" He's directing his nation to take inventory. Times were rough, the problems were dire, and some didn't make it through to the otherside. But those who did, Kennedy points out, have the chance to return to the field, wiser, more cunning, and with a clarity unearned in any other fashion.
"Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out..."
Kennedy illuminates the uniqueness of their condition, and gracefully redirects their energy "With what you know now, what can you do?" It is an enlightened and effective alteration, which makes all the difference between his speech and the bolstering shams so many others bark out at crowds to rile and incite. 
Emma's speech is Powerfully Optimistic. There is no doubt in her words that this problem of inequality is real, nor any faltering regarding the existence of a solution. These two points are inalienable truths.in her speech, in spite  of the fact that no nation can claim the existence of social equality -- which she flatly admits. Despite the fact that all those who have gone before have been driven back and turned from their path of unity to a path of hate -- which she flatly admits. It is this admittance which calls attention to her experience. These are the failures, these are the flames from which she has come. And she has the solution. She was born in the solution. She was raised in the solution. The steel of her energy has met those flames, lived, and stepped forward to put them out. 
Her solution returns us to recognize and admit that this separation no longer works. Neither man or woman are moving forward any longer. We are stalemated and burdened so gravely, our inability to take action is becoming dire. We can not take the next step forward without the other. It is, as she says in more graceful terms, ours to do together or ours to wail at apart. This is not, and never has been a woman's problem, or a feminists problem. This is a human problem. Separation from each other is destroying the foundations of what we have always denied as being related to inequality. It is time to become human.
Her delivery is excellent as well, and the video is linked here.
TRANSCRIPT: Today we are launching a campaign called for HeForShe. I am reaching out to you because we need your help. We want to end gender inequality, and to do this, we need everyone involved.

Word of the Day -- Optimism

op·ti·mism

ˈäptəˌmizəm/
noun
  1. 1.
    hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something.
    "the talks had been amicable, and there were grounds for optimism"
    synonyms:hopefulness, hopeconfidencebuoyancy,cheer, cheerfulness, good cheer, sanguineness,positiveness, positive attitude
    "I wish I had your optimism"
  2. 2.
    PHILOSOPHY
    the doctrine, especially as set forth by Leibniz, that this world is the best of all possible worlds.

War on Women -- Is Not Forgotten


I just read several Republicans denying that there is a War on Women. 
They suggested that the term and the meme was completely Democrats going for headlines, and not a real agenda. Well, I don't really care about it being Democrat or Republican. What I care about is I was able to finds this list of actions with only a shallow search on the Internet. It took some time to verify all of this -- worth it though. It really seems to me, that this much cries out "Agenda" To what end I have no idea. But there is deliberateness to this, without doubt



112th Congress Republicans have proposed: 

44 bills on abortion 
99 bills on religion 
36 bills on marriage

I really don't understand how, with this level of assault, anyone could dream of throwing money into a campaign to decry it all -- though this one really fails on all levels. I mean, what are we trying to say here? Women make political decisions based on if they want to sleep with the candidate? And who is this woman who lounges around in the middle of the day wearing pears, on a white couch -- does she work? Is she a kept woman? And there is seriously something creepy about her when she tries to be 'sincerer'.  

They're just silly women right? Don't have a memory -- They really aren't into the issues you have been attacking? Got news for you. Google remembers everything... you're just making it worse by denying what is painful, painfully obvious -- and easily found.

My marketing training has noticed all of the Republican pundips running around the news and tweeting against Common Core, gay rights, abortion, women in the work force, God's place for women. Finally we get an Education program that is working, pushing our kids to break over nine years of stagnated growth, which costs less than any other proposed program, but because it is Obama's you have to bring it down. You care more about hating than you do about our kids and their future. Well.. screw you too.

Democrats didn’t make the GOP presidential field back “personhood” laws that would criminalize some forms of birth control. They didn’t force the newly elected House GOP to make defunding Planned Parenthood their first legislative goal. And they didn’t propose the Blunt Amendment that would have allowed employers to withhold health insurance coverage not only for contraception, but for any treatment they disapproved of…


The War on Women’s Reproductive Rights

Texas Senate Bill Five filibuster Reacting to abortion restrictions in Texas Senate Bill Five, Democratic State Senator Wendy Davis created a 13 hour filibuster to successfully block its passage before a legislative deadline in June 2013.It was estimated that up to 5,000 people came to the Texas capitol in order to stop the bill. Texas Governor Rick Perry called another session of the state senate in July and the bill passed by a vote of 19 to 11 and was signed into law by Perry.


Despite an electorate that is overwhelmingly pro-choice, there is no doubt that the GOP’s first goal is to deprive women of their reproductive rights and to frame that argument not as one of health but religion. It is in fact so important an issue to the GOP that out of some 40,000 laws of all types enacted in 2011, as R Muse wrote here recently, “there were nearly 1,000 bills in state legislatures to restrict a woman’s right to legal abortion services” (up from 950 in 2010).

A recent report from the Guttmacher Institute details the extent of 2011’s war on Women’s Reproductive Rights. The report states,

By almost any measure, issues related to reproductive health and rights at the state level received unprecedented attention in 2011. In the 50 states combined, legislators introduced more than 1,100 reproductive health and rights-related provisions, a sharp increase from the 950 introduced in 2010. By year’s end, 135 of these provisions had been enacted in 36 states, an increase from the 89 enacted in 2010 and the 77 enacted in 2009. (Note: This analysis refers to reproductive health and rights-related “provisions,” rather than bills or laws, since bills introduced and eventually enacted in the states contain multiple relevant provisions.)

Anti-abortion Laws

Republican legislators have introduced a wide array of laws designed to either outlaw abortion outright or to discourage it by making ridiculous and sometimes humiliating requirements of women who might consider having a pregnancy terminated. These include so-called TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) regulations.

Republicans in the House proposed a bill (HR 1179) called “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011.” The bill, introduced by Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb), allows health care providers and pharmacists to deny birth control to women if it conflicts with their religious or moral convictions. The Senate is expected to vote on its version of HR 1179 during the week of February 27 where it is known as S. 1467, whose primary sponsor is Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and has become an amendment to Transportation Authorization Bill S. 1813. The Blunt Amendment was defeated in the Senate on a narrow vote of 51 to 48 on March 1, 2012.

In Texas, Rep. George Lavender, R-Texarkana, has proposed a bill (House Bill 2988) that would prevent any abortion except in cases of rape, incest or the life of the mother.

In Georgia, a bill, the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” (SB 209) sponsored by Sen. Barry Loudermilk, R-Cassville, would close all abortion clinics in the state and require abortions to be performed in hospitals. This bill was tabled by the rules committee on March 11, 2011.

South Dakota wants to require “spiritual” counseling (House Bill 1217) at religious centers before allowing an abortion to take place. The bill was signed into law in March 2011 and challenged in court by Planned Parenthood and the ACLU in May. We still haven’t heard what the courts will decide in this case (though a federal judge has suspended most of the law in the interim) and Republicans aren’t waiting to find out. 

The South Dakota House of Representatives approved a bill on February 13 sponsored by Rep. Roger Hunt, R-Brandon that changes counseling requirements. Women seeking abortions will still have to wait 72 hours and endure spiritual counseling but now requires those counselors be licensed. The consulting doctor will now have to decide if it is likely the woman will develop mental health problems as a result of the abortion. As a side note, in both 2006 and 2008 voters rejected attempts to outlaw most abortions.

Also in South Dakota, H.B. 1166, which was enacted in 2005, was, says RHRealityCheck.org, billed as an “informed consent law,” but what it really mandated was misinformation, requiring doctors “to tell a woman seeking an abortion that she faces an ‘increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide,’ a claim for which there is absolutely no scientific or medical evidence.” On September 2, 2011, “Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out important provisions of a South Dakota law that literally forced doctors to lie to their patients.”

Again South Dakota, House Bill 1171, which made it out of committee by a 9 to 3 party-line vote, is sponsored by South Dakota state Rep. Phil Jensen, a long-time opponent of abortion rights. His stated intention with the bill is to bring “consistency” to South Dakota’s criminal code, which allows prosecutors to charge people with manslaughter or murder in crimes that cause the death of unborn fetuses.


However, such crimes involve the murder of pregnant women, too, which is rather different than what House Bill 1171 proposes. By changing the definition of justifiable homicide, making it acceptable to kill so long as the act of killing is performed in order to protect a fetus, Jensen is suggesting that even if the woman wanted an abortion, any person who aided her in obtaining abortion services could end up in the cross hairs.

The Texas State House of Representatives has passed the Sonogram Bill (HB 15), a measure requiring women to get a sonogram before ending a pregnancy, forcing even victims of rape to have a sonogram at least 24 hours before the procedure. Gov. Rick Perry has signed the bill into law, which takes effect September 1, 2011. There are exceptions in cases of rape and incest. As Planned Parenthood reports: “While a woman can opt-out of seeing the sonogram image and hearing the heart tone, she cannot opt-out of a medically unnecessary sonogram, nor can she opt-out of the fetal description except within very narrow parameters for situations of rape, incest, judicial bypasses, and fetal anomalies.”

Also from Texas, the passage of SB 257, passed by House and Senate on May 5, 2011 and signed by the governor on May 17, 2011 provides for “Choose Life” license plates. As explained by Planned Parenthood: “The state will now produce “Choose Life” license plates and distribute revenue from the sale of the plates to anti-choice groups such as crisis pregnancy centers (CPC). The “Alternative to Abortion” program currently receives $4 million dollars a year in taxpayer money through the Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) that is distributed to CPCs. CPC are unregulated anti-choice organizations that do not provide any medical services and are known to spend nearly half of the tax dollars they receive on advertising and administrative costs, not client services.”

Georgia State Representative Bobby Franklin has introduced a bill that would not only make abortion illegal but would make miscarriages illegal.

Indiana (House Bill 1210) wants to force doctors to lie to women about abortion causing breast cancer despite medical evidence to the contrary in order to discourage women from having abortions

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” (HR 3) that would limit the rape exemption for abortion to “forcible rape” which would have defined many rapes, for example, statutory rape of a minor, as non-forcible and therefore not covered by federal assistance. Mother Jones has reported another aspect of this legislation, that the IRS would be turned into abortion-cops: “Were this to become law, people could end up in an audit, the subject of which could be abortion, rape, and incest,” says Christopher Bergin, the head of Tax Analysts, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit tax policy group. “If you pass the law like this, the IRS would be required to enforce it.”

Representative Joe Pitts (R-PA) introduced a bill (HR 358 – the “Protect Life Act”) would allow states to deny insurance coverage for birth control meaning hospitals could deny abortion procedures and transport to a facility that would provide a woman with an abortion even if failure to provide an abortion would mean the death of the woman. The “Let Women Die Act” passed the House on 10/13/11.

Louisiana State Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, in what he calls a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, wants to make both women and doctors who have and perform abortions guilty of the crime of “feticide”. This “personhood amendment” (House Bill 587)would make no exceptions for cases of danger to the health of the mother, incest or rape but would for “medically necessary” abortions. Feticide is currently punishable by 5 to 15 years in prison. LaBruzzo once wanted to pay poor women $1,000 to have their tubes tied because he was afraid they were “reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more tax revenue to the government,” says Nola.com.--: HB 587 became HB 645 on May 25, 2011 and to the relief of sane people everywhere eventually derailed in the state House.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed (by a 234-182 vote) an amendment sponsored by Virginia Foxx (R-NC) prohibiting teaching hospitals from receiving federal funding if they teach doctors how to perform abortions. Unfortunately, as a result of this legislation new physicians will not receive the training needed to save women’s lives. As Correntewire.com puts it, “234 members of the House voted to ban the teaching of medical procedures that are vital in saving the lives of women who have miscarried, or have complications that endanger their health, or who aren’t even pregnant.”

In Ohio, Janet Porter’s “Heartbeat Bill” criminalizing abortion and which was backed by Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann, passed the Ohio State House on June 28, 2011. “It prohibits abortions after only about six weeks, a time when many women do not yet even know they are pregnant,” said Armond Budish, leader of the Democratic caucus in the House. The bill is currently being held up in the Senate. .

Also in Ohio, The state budget, approved June 28, 2011 by the Senate, bars state hospitals from performing abortions.

Where the Wild Things Are...

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