March 24, 2012

Because every woman and girl deserves freedom

Here's a bit of a different charity program, but one which is SO essential. My sister recently got involved in a charity program to provide completely recyclable and reusable hygiene products to girls (and, I suppose women) in extremely poor countries around the globe, women who cannot afford hygiene products.

It might seem stupid to focus on this, but the result of not having this availability causes girls and women to have to remain in their homes, jobless, unable to leave the home, unable to go to school, confined, during the days of their menstruation.

This is a program which frees girls and women to pursue their education and work, and it doesn't require a million dollars to participate.

You can participate if you sew just a little bit, or if you have a little bit to donate. No matter how little. $10 would free 1 girl from confinement during the days of her menstruation.

Please see this link. Thank you.

http://www.daysforgirls.org/their-stories#!__results

March 23, 2012

You’d like to kill somebody and you’d prefer to do it legally. No problem — move to Florida.

You’d like to kill somebody and you’d prefer to do it legally. No problem — it’s easy.

Move to somewhere like Florida. Hunt your target down and make sure there are no witnesses. Shoot that person dead. Then say you feared for your life.

Chances are, you’ll never be charged. Thanks to National Rifle Association lobbyists, nearly half of all states have a law just like Florida’s, which makes it difficult to prosecute the neighborhood vigilante who stalked and fatally shot a black teen last month. (New Jersey isn’t one of the states.)

http://blog.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2012/03/travyon_martins_shooting_by_ge.html

March 23, 2012

The NRA is a Republican ancillary organization.

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre is a right wing extremist Republican.

http://www.washingtonspectator.org/index.php/Blog/entry/the-nra-big-badass-and-flush-with-cash.html

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington in February, LaPierre promised that his organization will help make Barack Obama a one-term president.


As the NRA is a Republican Party ancillary organization, it should be no surprise that a Republican state rep, Dennis Baxley, who is a lifetime member of the organization sponsored the stand-and-shoot bill seven years ago in Florida.

March 3, 2012

Rush is merely the voice of what Republicans think of women

All about Eve: The Christian roots of the GOP war on women

By Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite

The Senate has defeated the “Blunt amendment,” the controversial bill named for Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that would have that would allowed even non-religious employers to opt out of health care coverage they disagreed with on “moral grounds.” This defeat is not an end to the GOP’s war on women, however. It is merely a skirmish in what looks to be a protracted struggle for women’s freedom and dignity in this country. This attack on women is, and I am grieved to say it, driven by a particular Christian theological perspective that denigrates women and holds them responsible for sin, particularly sexual sin. GOP politics today is, in fact, all about Eve.

The GOP war on women will continue precisely because of the conservative Christian theology that drives wedge politics in a campaign season has a fundamental contempt for women and their equal dignity and worth. The real underbelly of these views of women as the sexual temptress “Eve” was on display in a recent Rush Limbaugh statement. Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University student whom House Republicans would not let testify at the Issa hearings, a “slut” and a “prostitute” for wanting to testify of the need for birth control to be covered by insurance. It is clarifying for the intensity of this denigration of women to remember that Fluke’s testimony for birth control was about a friend who is a lesbian and needs the pill for medical reasons.

But mark my words, the GOP’s war on women will not end because the Republican party has shackled themselves to a theology that sees women as ‘all about Eve.’

The entire article is here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/all-about-eve-the-christian-roots-of-the-gop-war-on-women/2012/03/01/gIQAymq0kR_blog.html

March 1, 2012

An article about why men don't open up (written by a man), critiqued by another man

This is an old opinion article (2007), but it was so interesting, I decided to post it here for discussion.

It's a critique by Jeff Fecque of an article written by Dave Zinczenko, in which Dave Zinczenko explains to women why men don't open up. The critique is rather humorous. I wonder which one is correct, Jeff or Dave?

Are men and women very different genetically with regard to communication skills and communication behavior? Or are there bigger differences between individuals than between men and women?

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2007/12/men-want-to-talk-they-just-dont-want-to.html

Here's an excerpt:

Dave:

Further up on his want-to-do list after arriving home: 14 percent of men want to check email, 12 percent are looking for a little private time in the bathroom, and 10 percent simply want to eat dinner. The common theme here: After they’ve spent a day serving the needs of others, they want to take care of themselves a little.

Jeff:

You know, not for nothing, but there are quite a few women coming home at the end of a ten-hour day of serving others, and they may want some private time of their own. Or they may want to decompress by talking to, I don’t know, their life partner or something. Similarly, men may actually want to tell their significant others about their day, or they may need some quiet time to think about it. This may vary, incidentally, from day to day, and from person to person.

Dave:

Rather than talking about how he “feels,” often a man would rather express his love by changing her oil, or bringing home a flower, or relinquishing control of the remote. And when men do talk, they’d prefer to talk about actions rather than emotions. For instance, a lot of guys would choose to express their long-range faith in a relationship by talking about next summer’s vacation plans, not by launching into a soliloquy about undying love.

Jeff:

Unga unga, me Jeff. Me no want talk about my life. Me go kill mastadon now. Shut up, woman! Me no want talk! Seriously, can we just, please, once and for all stuff the “Men are all about action” motif? Please? Because for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if men are uncomfortable talking about their feelings, the answer isn’t just to say, “Well, that’s how men are! He bought you a diamond ring, that means he loves you!” Some men are more comfortable with action than words. Some women, too. And the opposite is true.