Will someone please explain to me why anyone would think that this is a good idea??

Basically, the story is this:Colorado Right to Life and Personhood USA, two prolife groups, had an amendment voted down last year that would give fertilized eggs rights as people, thusly making abortion illegal. From the article: "The new amendment is even farther reaching, moving the initial marker for the beginning of life from “fertilization” to “the beginning of the biological development of a human being.”

This means that, ladies? Your eggs? You know, those things that have been living in your ovaries since they developed? Yeah, they would be considered people with full rights thereof. On a ridiculous note, it would make it so that you would commit murder every time you menstruate. On a serious note, it would have major impact on laws regarding birth control, artificial insemination, fertility research, stem cell research, etc, as well as, of course, making abortion illegal no matter what impact it would have on the life of the mother, or under what circumstances she conceived.

Oh, and "surprisingly enough" (read: not at all) sperm doesn't seem to have the same importance (meaning, none at all). Interesting.

Why the hell would anyone vote for this??

Please tell me this guy's blog is just satire? Please?

http://mikeeusa.pressword.com

A snippit:

Some Men’s Rights Movement (if there exists such a thing) commentators have, at diffrent times, tried to come up with a nice declaration of what the “movement” is all about, or what it should be all about, or what they would like it to be all about. They’ve drafted rather long documents containing points that they think men should agree with, stand by, and together fight for implementation, etc. These documents containined both “rights” and “responsibilities”; they were rather constraining, and really didn’t object much to the current pro-women’s rights culture nor say anything that was very benificial to men’s wishes at all (well, how benificial can words ever be?). Here’s my contribution to the haystack:

The prerogative of a Man is to find for himself a mate. So much as he avoids taking another man’s mate, no barrier (legal or customary) should be placed to obstruct him.
Females should be married off to men once said females are able to have children (usually at age 12, 13, or 14.)
The “penalty” for the rape of a young unmarried female should be that she is awarded to the man as a permanent wife of his (As stated in Deuteronomy 22)
Men should rape their wives at will.
Females should obey their husbands in all things, as if they were domestic servants.
If a nation seeks to opress its men by denying them these liberties, than it should be destroyed.

Death To women’s Rights
Viva Men’s Liberty
Liberty (for Men). Equality (amongst Men). Fraternity

–MikeeUSA–


He also thinks that men should be allowed to own whatever heavy weaponry they wish (such as tanks and machine guns), that any woman who dares speak up against or seek to imprison men should be killed and that the "fight" for "men's rights" should be one of violence and blood as "talking" isn't the same as "fighting", that arresting a man is the same as kidnapping and therefore the man has the right to beat a female officer unconcious, etc.

Please, please tell me it's not real?


In other news: I just got the following text from Evan:
I am currently wearing your pants that say "BADGIRL" on the ass.


Heeheeheehee

So this may just be the best thing ever:

It seems that the week of Oct 9th is NATIONAL PRO LIFE CUPCAKE WEEK!!

The idea is: bake some cupcakes, hand them out to people, and let them know that poor aborted fetus' will never know the wonderful deliciousness that is a cupcake (or have a birthday, which I guess they think cupcakes were originally designed for? (at least according to their site). Wiki doesn't tell me why cupcakes were created, but I'm pretty sure birthdays weren't specifically in mind...).

From the site:

Bring in a tray of cupcakes for any group of people and you will find that they will flock to get them. As soon as they take a bite they will probably ask, "Who's birthday is it?"

Then you answer. "It's no ones birthday. These cupcakes represent the 50,000,000 children who weren't allowed to be born, who never had a birthday." The cake in their mouth will become dry and the moment will hopefully become quite somber. Then you say, "If you and I were aborted we wouldn't have a birthday party either."



:( Seriously? What a waste of perfectly good cupcakes. Give them here, I will put them to better use. In my belly.

Also:

Imagine ten students from every school in the US baking 50 cupcakes and bringing them to school in the name of "LIFE" on the same day! Imagine that every one of these students is on a mission to promote the idea that every person should have the right to be born and have a birthday. Imagine the impact of students telling other students the facts about abortion.


Imagine a world where you use your children to push your political agenda and views before they're old enough to decide if they hold those views themselves! Win!

The FAQ may just be my favourite part:

Q.) What if I run into a pro-choicer and they smash the cupcakes in my face?
A.) Wipe the cake off your face and share the rest of them with someone less angry inside. Go with courage and go with love, the unborn need you to be their voice.

Heehee. Hand those cupcakes over to this pro-choicer, then! The only face icing will be on is this one. Nom nom nom.


Now I want cupcakes. Oh prolifers....? Can I have one? Pweeese? Yum!

So I'm not allowed to be on the internet, anymore. All I do is read things that piss me off, ha.

Kind of like this:

So, for my sociology class, we have these discussion board assignments where the professor posts a video and we respond as to how we feel about the issues/opinions raised. Because the board is organized weird, I accidentally responded to one that's not due until Nov. The video is this:



It is a 20/20 segment "exposing the myth of the women's wage gap".

*insert rage here*

The video has a tag in it for a website called Antimisandry.com. Now I don't know if that is where my professor found the video or if that was the best quality/only one on Youtube, so that's irrelevent. What is relevent is that I made the mistake of going to that site. And oh what a mistake it was.

The main page states that:
Once upon a time, respect was a two-way street. These days it is more a one-way street where men are demanded to be respectful to women (even those who do not earn, or even try to earn it) while simultaneously disrespect of men is expected, condoned, perpetuated and even taught.

It also has links to popular articles within the site, such as

Discrimination Against Men, Why modern, Western marraige is a bad business decision for men, and Feminist Lies Exposed.

On another page it states that:
Campus feminism is a kind of cult: as early as freshman orientation, professors begin spinning theories about how American women are oppressed under "patriarchy." as well as a list of "feminist myths". It says that "If you believe two or more of these untruths, you may need deprogramming."

The 'myths' are as follows:

1. Myth: One in four women in college has been the victim of rape or attempted rape.
Fact: This mother of all factoids is based on a fallacious feminist study commissioned by Ms. magazine. The researcher, Mary Koss, hand-picked by hard-line feminist Gloria Steinem, acknowledges that 73 percent of the young women she counted as rape victims were not aware they had been raped. Forty-three percent of them were dating their "attacker" again.
Rape is a uniquely horrible crime. That is why we need sober and responsible research. Women will not be helped by hyperbole and hysteria. Truth is no enemy of compassion, and falsehood is no friend.
(Nara Schoenberg and Sam Roe, "The Making of an Epidemic," Toledo Blade, October 10, 1993; and Neil Gilbert, "Examining the Facts: Advocacy Research Overstates the Incidence of Data and Acquaintance Rape," Current Controversies in Family Violence eds. Richard Gelles and Donileen Loseke, Newbury Park, CA.: Sage Publications, 1993, pp.120-132; and Campus Crime and Security, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1997. *According to this study, campus police reported 1,310 forcible sex offenses on U.S. campuses in one year. That works out to an average of fewer than one rape per campus.)

2. Myth: Women earn 75 cents for every dollar a man earns.
Fact: The 75 cent figure is terribly misleading. This statistic is a snapshot of all current full-time workers. It does not consider relevant factors like length of time in the workplace, education, occupation, and number of hours worked per week. (The experience gap is particularly large between older men and women in the workplace.) When economists do the proper controls, the so-called gender wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.
(Essential reading: Women's Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba, published by the Independent Women's Forum and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. 2000.)

3. Myth: 30 percent of emergency room visits by women each year are the result of injuries from domestic violence.
Fact: This incendiary statistic is promoted by gender feminists whose primary goal seems to be to impugn men. Two responsible government studies report that the nationwide figure is closer to one percent. While these studies may have missed some cases of domestic violence, the 30% figure is a wild exaggeration.
(National Center for Health Statistics, National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 1992 Emergency Department Summary , Hyattsville, Maryland, March 1997; and U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Violence-Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments: Washington, D.C., August 1997.)

4. Myth: The phrase "rule of thumb" originated in a man's right to beat his wife provided the stick was no wider than his thumb.
Fact: This is an urban legend that is still taken seriously by activist law professors and harassment workshoppers. The Oxford English Dictionary has more than twenty citations for phrase "rule of thumb" (the earliest from 1692), but not a single mention of beatings, sticks, or husbands and wives.
(For a definitive debunking of the hoax see Henry Ansgar Kelly, "Rule of Thumb and the Folklaw of the Husband's Stick," The Journal of Legal Education, September 1994.)

5. Myth: Women have been shortchanged in medical research.
Fact: The National Institutes of Health and drug companies routinely include women in clinical trials that test for effectiveness of medications. By 1979, over 90% of all NIH-funded trials included women. Beginning in 1985, when the NIH's National Cancer Center began keeping track of specific cancer funding, it has annually spent more money on breast cancer than any other type of cancer. Currently, women represent over 60% of all subjects in NIH-funded clinical trails.
(Essential reading: Cathy Young and Sally Satel, "The Myth of Gender Bias in Medicine," Washington, D.C.: The Women's Freedom Network, 1997.)

6.Myth: Girls have been shortchanged in our gender-biased schools
Fact: No fair-minded person can review the education data and conclude that girls are the have-nots in our schools. Boys are slightly ahead of girls in math and science; girls are dramatically ahead in reading and writing. (The writing skills of 17-year-old boys are at the same level as 14-year- old girls.) Girls get better grades, they have higher aspirations, and they are more likely to go to college.
(See: Trends in Educational Equity of Girls & Women, Washington, D. C.: U.S. Department of Education, June 2000.)

7. Myth: "Our schools are training grounds for sexual harassment... boys are rarely punished, while girls are taught that it is their role to tolerate this humiliating conduct."
(National Organization of Women, "Issue Report: Sexual Harassment," April 1998.)
Fact: "Hostile Hallways," is the best-known study of harassment in grades 8-11. It was commissioned by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in 1993, and is a favorite of many harassment experts. But this survey revealed that girls are doing almost as much harassing as the boys. According to the study, "85 percent of girls and 76 percent of boys surveyed say they have experienced unwanted and unwelcome sexual behavior that interferes with their lives."
(Four scholars at the University of Michigan did a careful follow-up study of the AAUW data and concluded: "The majority of both genders (53%) described themselves as having been both victim and perpetrator of harassment -- that is most students had been harassed and had harassed others." And these researchers draw the right conclusion: "Our results led us to question the simple perpetrator-victim model...")(See: American Education Research Journal, Summer 1996.)

8. Myth: Girls suffer a dramatic loss of self-esteem during adolescence.
Fact: This myth of the incredible shrinking girls was started by Carol Gilligan, professor of gender studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Gilligan has always enjoyed higher standing among feminist activists and journalists than among academic research psychologists. Scholars who follow the protocols of social science do not accept the reality of an adolescent "crisis" of confidence and "loss of voice." In 1993, American Psychologist reported the new consensus among researchers in adolescent development: "It is now known that the majority of adolescents of both genders successfully negotiate this developmental period without any major psychological or emotional disorder [and] develop a positive sense of personal identity."
(Anne C. Petersen et al. "Depression in Adolescence," American Psychologist February 1993; see also, Daniel Offer, and Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, "Debunking the Myths of Adolescence: Findings from Recent Research," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, November 1992.)

9. Myth: Gender is a social construction.
Fact: While environment and socialization do play a significant role in human life, a growing body of research in neuroscience, endocrinology, and psychology over the past 40 years suggests there is a biological basis for many sex differences in aptitudes and preferences. In general, males have better spatial reasoning skills; females better verbal skills. Males are greater risk takers; females are more nurturing.
Of course, this does not mean that women should be prevented from pursuing their goals in any field they choose; what it does suggest is that we should not expect parity in all fields. More women than men will continue to want to stay at home with small children and pursue careers in fields like early childhood education or psychology; men will continue to be over-represented in fields like helicopter mechanics and hydraulic engineering.

Warning: Most gender scholars in our universities have degrees in fields like English or comparative literature--not biology or neuroscience. These self-appointed experts on sexuality are scientifically illiterate. They substitute dogma and propaganda for reasoned scholarship.
(For a review of recent findings on sex differences see a special issue of The Scientific American "Men: The Scientific Truth," Fall 2000.)


10. Myth: Women's Studies Departments empowered women and gave them a voice in the academy.

Fact: Women's Studies empowered a small group of like-minded careerists. They have created an old-girl network that is far more elitist, narrow and closed than any of the old-boy networks they rail against. Vast numbers of moderate or dissident women scholars have been marginalized, excluded and silenced.
(Essential reading: everything by Camille Paglia; Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge--Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies; and Christina Hoff Sommers--Who Stole Feminism? How Women have Betrayed Women)


( Some 'points' from the three links from the main page. Cut because this is long, but really, it's worth the read as long as you don't mind being filled with rage. )