Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
It's Not Rape Exactly...
I am really shocked at myself for having taken this long to write about the "Marital rape law" or "Shia Family Law" as it is formally known, (I laughed too) that has been in the press lately. The law states “is bound to preen for her husband as and when he desires”. Another passage sanctions marital rape. “As long as the husband is not travelling he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night . . . Unless the wife is ill or has any kind of illness that intercourse could aggravate, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband.” Mmmm, just makes a woman want to throw off her burka and make sweet love to her husband doesn't it? I know nothing melts my butter like a militant government order to get screwed - literally- by my husband. But wait! That's not all folks, here we have Article 133 that states “A wife cannot leave the house without the permission of the husband” unless in a medical or other emergency." Well, what's a girl to do?
After International pressure was applied to the Afghan Government, they clarified themselves, I am paraphrasing here but the explanation went something like, a wife can refuse sex and if she does her husband doesn't have to feed her. Oh well, when you put it that way! If they had said 'no sex, no Visa card' that's a choice, hey I can live without shoes for a while but no sex, no food? Umm, not really a choice there boys!
This 'law' clearly has its supporters, not surprising mostly comprised of men, and is likely a campaign boosting attempt to gain votes before the upcoming election for which the already unpopular president is campaigning to be re-elected. The law, however, only applies to the Shiite Muslims, 15% of the Afghan population! These people hate the West (I'm making a blanket statement I realize, but stay with me...), they think we are on our high horse so to speak, that we feel superior to other cultures. This is not untrue. We do, and this is both warranted and unwarranted depending on the context, but what we can hold our heads up and say is that while Germaine Greer's dream of total gender equality in its utopian presentation has yet to be realized (if ever), we still treat our women as humans. The Afghanis would say this is why we have a demoralized, areligious, and promiscuous society. Yep sure do, but I don't see the men holding their hands up and saying no. They are as much a part of women's promiscuity, women have the freedom to choose what they do and with whom. I feel our society, with its flaws, has flourished with the inclusion of women in active society. Imagine the workforce without women. Most of healthcare would be absent, for example. I work in healthcare and certainly the XX chromosome group far outweighs the XY.
One has to wonder, even with a cursory knowledge of the Qu'ran, when and why this abhorrent treatment of women became not only accepted and practiced, but also legislated? I am proud to see that the women fought back against this law in the face of treats of bodily harm and mobs of angry men. Imagine, dear sisters, what panic and widespread horror would be brought on your men if you enacted a Lysistrada-like protest on your men? They would be brought to their knees, which is the perfect height to step on their...rights.
After International pressure was applied to the Afghan Government, they clarified themselves, I am paraphrasing here but the explanation went something like, a wife can refuse sex and if she does her husband doesn't have to feed her. Oh well, when you put it that way! If they had said 'no sex, no Visa card' that's a choice, hey I can live without shoes for a while but no sex, no food? Umm, not really a choice there boys!
This 'law' clearly has its supporters, not surprising mostly comprised of men, and is likely a campaign boosting attempt to gain votes before the upcoming election for which the already unpopular president is campaigning to be re-elected. The law, however, only applies to the Shiite Muslims, 15% of the Afghan population! These people hate the West (I'm making a blanket statement I realize, but stay with me...), they think we are on our high horse so to speak, that we feel superior to other cultures. This is not untrue. We do, and this is both warranted and unwarranted depending on the context, but what we can hold our heads up and say is that while Germaine Greer's dream of total gender equality in its utopian presentation has yet to be realized (if ever), we still treat our women as humans. The Afghanis would say this is why we have a demoralized, areligious, and promiscuous society. Yep sure do, but I don't see the men holding their hands up and saying no. They are as much a part of women's promiscuity, women have the freedom to choose what they do and with whom. I feel our society, with its flaws, has flourished with the inclusion of women in active society. Imagine the workforce without women. Most of healthcare would be absent, for example. I work in healthcare and certainly the XX chromosome group far outweighs the XY.
One has to wonder, even with a cursory knowledge of the Qu'ran, when and why this abhorrent treatment of women became not only accepted and practiced, but also legislated? I am proud to see that the women fought back against this law in the face of treats of bodily harm and mobs of angry men. Imagine, dear sisters, what panic and widespread horror would be brought on your men if you enacted a Lysistrada-like protest on your men? They would be brought to their knees, which is the perfect height to step on their...rights.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Welcome to Canada
You left your home country and came to Canada to provide a better life for your family. The country you left, for any number of reasons, wasn't providing you with the opportunities that you needed and felt that Canada was a better bet. In some ways it is. You have children here, they go to school here and come of age here. You maintain your cultural values and traditions which is what makes Canada such a diverse place to live. Then your son or daughter brings home a white person or a person with differing traditions to your own. This makes you upset, scared and disappointed. There are two things to do; 1) deal with it 2) pitch a fit, tear apart the family and make everyone miserable in the quest to preserve tradition and conformity.
I have seen this first hand so many times that I wonder if we truly are as diverse and accepting as we think. So many marriages are entered into solely because each party is from the same part of the old country, the parents have applied so much pressure that to do otherwise would cause unbelievable hardship. So the kids conceed to a marriage of convenience.
Just a thought - why go to a country with such a diverse landscape of races and cultures and expect children raised within this diversity to ultimately marry only those with the same origins? Isn't love difficult enough to come by without the unnecessary criteria? Something to think about.
I have seen this first hand so many times that I wonder if we truly are as diverse and accepting as we think. So many marriages are entered into solely because each party is from the same part of the old country, the parents have applied so much pressure that to do otherwise would cause unbelievable hardship. So the kids conceed to a marriage of convenience.
Just a thought - why go to a country with such a diverse landscape of races and cultures and expect children raised within this diversity to ultimately marry only those with the same origins? Isn't love difficult enough to come by without the unnecessary criteria? Something to think about.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
And God Said...
Marriage, ah the final enpoint to feminine completeness! Oh what woman does not dream of her wedding day, to glide down the aisle toward her prince charming, smiling back at her awaiting her to become his wife. This, the very pinnacle of many dreams both for ladies and the commercial wedding machine alike, is an ancient safeguard bastardized into its current romantic incarnation. Any species primary goal is to survive, to eat, sleep and procreate to ensure its progeny survives to procreate yet another generation thus securing the species as a whole. Well that was supposed to be the whole goal of the game of life in its original design. Enter stage right birth control and the sexual revolution and that got all cocked up didn't it? But marriage, through it all has more or less survived such assaults on human evolution. But why?
Eons ago, when men finally realized the link between copulation and human regeneration, they got it - 'if I am to live on in a diluted form I must procreate with a female'. But hold the phone there padre, how do you ensure that it is infact your seed that has created the next generation to succeed yourself and carry your good name forth? Hmm, that's a pickle of a dilemma! 'Well,' man said, 'I simply must stake my claim on this vessel and make her swear fealty to me and me alone and protect (control) her so that I may be sure that the child is mine!' What a plan! Thus, dear ladies marriage was born.
I'm severely oversimplifying here but I'm sure my point is not lost. Once this dynamic was identified a fear crept into mankind as to the penultimate power of women as deceptive, manipulative creatures who held the very continuance of individual male geneaology in their panties or loin cloths - whatever. In order to control someone, as any successful dictator will tell you, you must make the object of your control feel inferior and weak. You must create a dependence in said person. Failing that, create abject fear, shit-your-pants, horrific fear! Enter Genesis 3:16 "...Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." Shit! They thought of everything in that granddaddy of a toilet reader didn't they?
Since men had the backing of the creator of heaven and earth women had very little choice but to obey. Would you step up to a being who created the earth just by thinking about it? Yeah I wouldn't either.
So here we are. Throughout the centuries, marriage has been a negotiation tool in business, a salve for loneliness and and means to ensure the continuance of the human race. But hang on a minute - if it takes nine months to bake a child, and one man did that with one woman only that means she can only give a man one child per year! Not great odds pre-modern medicine when infant death rates were any where from 30-50% (guesstimates given poor documentation of the age) that's a fairly crummy average for one couple. While a man had viable sperm from puberty until death, a woman has a finite number of viable eggs. That seems like a whole lotta wasted sperm! So while a man had his wife at home pregnant with what could only be his child, he was still trying to sow his wild oats around ust in case -whether society and the church considered the child a bastard was really immaterial. It was and is a very involved and complex way of a man writing 'I was here' on the world.
Ladies, we are cunning aren't we? I mean if we weren't Victoria's Secrect wouldn't have the business they do right? We hook 'em and cook 'em! For the first little while in the courtship process they never encounter an unshaved leg, a messy bikini line or a make-upless morning. We push our breasts up to gravity defying heights and make them pant for what may lurk for them beneath our carefully crafted outfits. Glamour and Cosmo magazine fill in the rest of the blanks. I'm not ashamed to admit that, while I don't hide my true inner self, my outer self is dramatically transformed from the puffy, hairy, almost androgenous train wreck it can be on a Saturday morning to near goddess perfection (well, I'd like to think so after all that work!) by Saturday night. Yes, we are temptresses. It's all about the game people!
And so to my point. Marriage, once an arena for business ventures and basic human propagation has been tranformed into romantic love worthy of every crappy Hallmark card on offer for a mere $6.95. It's a total bait and switch tactic, start with the flowers and candles and end up with an extra 30 pounds and baby vomit down your now saggy boobs. Then, the man that sat rapt with attention for every word that spilled from your perfectly glossed pout, can barely muster enough attention when you bellow at him to take out the trash (and secretly hopes he saddles up on the curb with it). To my mind, centuries have transformed a straight forward business contract into an impossible romantic coupling. Can you imagine transforming your boss into your life partner? Eww! These days divorce is at an all time high. Why? In my not-so-humble opinion, it's because we now have this Cinderella bullshit romance to measure up to and we end up feeling like utter failures when we can't get it up for the man who we just finished scrubbing shit stains out of his underwear for! Did Cinderella do THAT!? Doubt it.
When a relationship is forced into a mold that it was never supposed to fit into in the first place, that's when fractures occur. Try it with a piece of pottery next time. You'll see.
Eons ago, when men finally realized the link between copulation and human regeneration, they got it - 'if I am to live on in a diluted form I must procreate with a female'. But hold the phone there padre, how do you ensure that it is infact your seed that has created the next generation to succeed yourself and carry your good name forth? Hmm, that's a pickle of a dilemma! 'Well,' man said, 'I simply must stake my claim on this vessel and make her swear fealty to me and me alone and protect (control) her so that I may be sure that the child is mine!' What a plan! Thus, dear ladies marriage was born.
I'm severely oversimplifying here but I'm sure my point is not lost. Once this dynamic was identified a fear crept into mankind as to the penultimate power of women as deceptive, manipulative creatures who held the very continuance of individual male geneaology in their panties or loin cloths - whatever. In order to control someone, as any successful dictator will tell you, you must make the object of your control feel inferior and weak. You must create a dependence in said person. Failing that, create abject fear, shit-your-pants, horrific fear! Enter Genesis 3:16 "...Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." Shit! They thought of everything in that granddaddy of a toilet reader didn't they?
Since men had the backing of the creator of heaven and earth women had very little choice but to obey. Would you step up to a being who created the earth just by thinking about it? Yeah I wouldn't either.
So here we are. Throughout the centuries, marriage has been a negotiation tool in business, a salve for loneliness and and means to ensure the continuance of the human race. But hang on a minute - if it takes nine months to bake a child, and one man did that with one woman only that means she can only give a man one child per year! Not great odds pre-modern medicine when infant death rates were any where from 30-50% (guesstimates given poor documentation of the age) that's a fairly crummy average for one couple. While a man had viable sperm from puberty until death, a woman has a finite number of viable eggs. That seems like a whole lotta wasted sperm! So while a man had his wife at home pregnant with what could only be his child, he was still trying to sow his wild oats around ust in case -whether society and the church considered the child a bastard was really immaterial. It was and is a very involved and complex way of a man writing 'I was here' on the world.
Ladies, we are cunning aren't we? I mean if we weren't Victoria's Secrect wouldn't have the business they do right? We hook 'em and cook 'em! For the first little while in the courtship process they never encounter an unshaved leg, a messy bikini line or a make-upless morning. We push our breasts up to gravity defying heights and make them pant for what may lurk for them beneath our carefully crafted outfits. Glamour and Cosmo magazine fill in the rest of the blanks. I'm not ashamed to admit that, while I don't hide my true inner self, my outer self is dramatically transformed from the puffy, hairy, almost androgenous train wreck it can be on a Saturday morning to near goddess perfection (well, I'd like to think so after all that work!) by Saturday night. Yes, we are temptresses. It's all about the game people!
And so to my point. Marriage, once an arena for business ventures and basic human propagation has been tranformed into romantic love worthy of every crappy Hallmark card on offer for a mere $6.95. It's a total bait and switch tactic, start with the flowers and candles and end up with an extra 30 pounds and baby vomit down your now saggy boobs. Then, the man that sat rapt with attention for every word that spilled from your perfectly glossed pout, can barely muster enough attention when you bellow at him to take out the trash (and secretly hopes he saddles up on the curb with it). To my mind, centuries have transformed a straight forward business contract into an impossible romantic coupling. Can you imagine transforming your boss into your life partner? Eww! These days divorce is at an all time high. Why? In my not-so-humble opinion, it's because we now have this Cinderella bullshit romance to measure up to and we end up feeling like utter failures when we can't get it up for the man who we just finished scrubbing shit stains out of his underwear for! Did Cinderella do THAT!? Doubt it.
When a relationship is forced into a mold that it was never supposed to fit into in the first place, that's when fractures occur. Try it with a piece of pottery next time. You'll see.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Hey ladies! Dante Moore wants us to be Re-Educated!
Dante Moore's recently released tome "The Re-education of Women" has attracted a lot of ire from women. He says that his book will teach women to get and keep a man. That's fair. His advice is shit but fair. It's his point of view, and maybe those of a select group of men that can't figure women out and have given up trying. So, Mr. Moore, here's the straight goods from me (my resume DOES contain marriage by the way). Women love to please their men especially in the early days of a new relationship. We'll try almost anything to entice you and perform a near flawless mating dance for you that will keep you entranced. If you notice us wearing sweats more and more, gaining weight at an unbelieveable pace and storing the make-up, well friend, we're losing interest. You've stopped making an effort and now so have we. Show me a woman (barring any hormonal influence) who would curl up in ugly sweats and sneakers when her man turns up proffering a nice dinner out and a great bottle of wine. She doesn't exist.
Let's turn this around a bit. The following is not fiction. A woman makes sure she always looks fabulous on the arm of her man. She makes sure she looks decent even when she's ill. Not because she feels she has to in order to keep her man but because she enjoys it. He, on the other hand has quickly declined from a fit, adventurous man to sitting in front of the tube, swilling booze and watching T.V. Gentlemen, according to Mr. Moore, if you won't take us out and appreciate our efforts, some bro around the corner will (to turn Mr. Moores colloquialism around from 'broad').
So the moral of the story, dear reader, is that while pandering to your man (or woman) will keep them around for a while, it won't keep them indefinitely. What makes it work is the meeting of two people more or less in the middle. Feed off of each other. Monkey see monkey do. You see him making an effort to be fit and look good, you make the same effort. If she suggests a new, fun thing to do, try it and then she will try to come up with the next fun thing to do. This is idealistic but a good recipe to try to follow. Its really kind of simple if you think about it.
There you have it and I didn't charge $14 for it.
Let's turn this around a bit. The following is not fiction. A woman makes sure she always looks fabulous on the arm of her man. She makes sure she looks decent even when she's ill. Not because she feels she has to in order to keep her man but because she enjoys it. He, on the other hand has quickly declined from a fit, adventurous man to sitting in front of the tube, swilling booze and watching T.V. Gentlemen, according to Mr. Moore, if you won't take us out and appreciate our efforts, some bro around the corner will (to turn Mr. Moores colloquialism around from 'broad').
So the moral of the story, dear reader, is that while pandering to your man (or woman) will keep them around for a while, it won't keep them indefinitely. What makes it work is the meeting of two people more or less in the middle. Feed off of each other. Monkey see monkey do. You see him making an effort to be fit and look good, you make the same effort. If she suggests a new, fun thing to do, try it and then she will try to come up with the next fun thing to do. This is idealistic but a good recipe to try to follow. Its really kind of simple if you think about it.
There you have it and I didn't charge $14 for it.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Aborted Politics
In both Canadian and American politics within the campaigns of conservative/republican candidates it seems that women's right to choose has once again become the religious vote lock in. Roe vs Wade took place 35 years ago and still this is a major topic on the political agenda. Conservative men seem to be uncomfortable with women being given the ultimate decision-to continue their line or prevent its propagation. For 35 years, this has stuck in the sides of men. Nothing bothers me that much to attempt an overturn for over a quarter century.
Abortion is a touchy subject even among women in living rooms and cafes. We too are divided. I don't hide my views, I am steadfastly pro-choice. This automatically paints a picture in conservative minds of a child hating, promiscuous whore baby killer. Not true. I adore children, and using abortion as a form of birth control is irresponsible to say the least. What seems to escape the general populace is that the decision to have an abortion is not one akin to having ones nails done. 'to do today, get mani-pedi, buy bread, abort fetus', not so simple and casual. This decision comes fraught with anxiety, fear, regret, remorse and sadness, in varying combinations and severity of emotion. I know women who have had an abortion for whatever reason and they all wish they didn't have to but all admit that they are glad they made that decision. Pro-lifers would have them painted as hussy's that wanted to shirk responsibility and the inconvenience of child bearing and rearing. I fully disagree, as I have witnessed as many no doubt do daily, clear examples of shit parents. These children of said shit parents are treated like the unwanted beings they are. Their parents aren't resigned to loving them and caring for them now that their here but simply deign to have them around. Harsh but true.
In Levitt and Dubner's "Freakonomics" released in hardback in 2005, they link the reduction in violence in major cities not to the increased police presence but to abortion. Those who would have had children in less that ideal circumstances, were not. What about birth control? the pro-lifers say. How could you be so irresponsible? Life is so rarely that black and white. There are many circumstances in which birth control fails. Abstinence is a farcical 'solution' to the problem of an unwanted pregnancy. We are sexual beings. The husband and wife take comfort in sex during a difficult financial time or period of illness and end up pregnant despite their best efforts to prevent it. The time is not just inconvenient, it is unacceptable to bring a child into. The couple dating who experience an unwanted pregnancy who aren't ready for marriage, etc. I could give a novel of a list of reasons for abortion to be sought, and to each one an equally good argument could be had. Why don't they just suck it up and have the child? why not give it up for adoption? etc. All very easy to say, completely different to do. Why not get married? Have the child, the marriage isn't working and the money isn't coming in, no for the cute outfit at Baby Gap but for the 25 cent jar of baby food. Then the husband, in such despair over his situation begins drinking. At the same time so too begins the beatings. Fighting and divorce ensue. The child is now five years old and her first exposure to a "loving couple" has been the nightly beatings her mother got. True story folks.
Whatever the reasons (I beg the reader's pardon for my lengthy tirade) for abortion, it needs to stay legal and available to women. We will find a way, legal or no, as our fore-mothers did. Abortion as a politic agenda should be forever put to bed and left alone. Women must have the right to choose, and will exercise that right like it or lump it. If the conservatives are so very bothered by it, close the door to your walnut panelled study and pour yourself a brandy. Ivory towers rarely see far enough to witness suffering anyway.
Abortion is a touchy subject even among women in living rooms and cafes. We too are divided. I don't hide my views, I am steadfastly pro-choice. This automatically paints a picture in conservative minds of a child hating, promiscuous whore baby killer. Not true. I adore children, and using abortion as a form of birth control is irresponsible to say the least. What seems to escape the general populace is that the decision to have an abortion is not one akin to having ones nails done. 'to do today, get mani-pedi, buy bread, abort fetus', not so simple and casual. This decision comes fraught with anxiety, fear, regret, remorse and sadness, in varying combinations and severity of emotion. I know women who have had an abortion for whatever reason and they all wish they didn't have to but all admit that they are glad they made that decision. Pro-lifers would have them painted as hussy's that wanted to shirk responsibility and the inconvenience of child bearing and rearing. I fully disagree, as I have witnessed as many no doubt do daily, clear examples of shit parents. These children of said shit parents are treated like the unwanted beings they are. Their parents aren't resigned to loving them and caring for them now that their here but simply deign to have them around. Harsh but true.
In Levitt and Dubner's "Freakonomics" released in hardback in 2005, they link the reduction in violence in major cities not to the increased police presence but to abortion. Those who would have had children in less that ideal circumstances, were not. What about birth control? the pro-lifers say. How could you be so irresponsible? Life is so rarely that black and white. There are many circumstances in which birth control fails. Abstinence is a farcical 'solution' to the problem of an unwanted pregnancy. We are sexual beings. The husband and wife take comfort in sex during a difficult financial time or period of illness and end up pregnant despite their best efforts to prevent it. The time is not just inconvenient, it is unacceptable to bring a child into. The couple dating who experience an unwanted pregnancy who aren't ready for marriage, etc. I could give a novel of a list of reasons for abortion to be sought, and to each one an equally good argument could be had. Why don't they just suck it up and have the child? why not give it up for adoption? etc. All very easy to say, completely different to do. Why not get married? Have the child, the marriage isn't working and the money isn't coming in, no for the cute outfit at Baby Gap but for the 25 cent jar of baby food. Then the husband, in such despair over his situation begins drinking. At the same time so too begins the beatings. Fighting and divorce ensue. The child is now five years old and her first exposure to a "loving couple" has been the nightly beatings her mother got. True story folks.
Whatever the reasons (I beg the reader's pardon for my lengthy tirade) for abortion, it needs to stay legal and available to women. We will find a way, legal or no, as our fore-mothers did. Abortion as a politic agenda should be forever put to bed and left alone. Women must have the right to choose, and will exercise that right like it or lump it. If the conservatives are so very bothered by it, close the door to your walnut panelled study and pour yourself a brandy. Ivory towers rarely see far enough to witness suffering anyway.
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