Calm down, ladies. You’re being hysterical. There’s no war on women! What are you talking about? Are you on your period again?
May was a busy month for legislating against women’s interests at the state level. In that month alone 34 provisions were enacted in 16 states including [these]…
The War on Women is a lie. Pass the Midol.
Angry Black Lady Chronicles, June 13
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
In fact, there is no “War on Women.”
Women outlive men by several years.
Men are the majority of the homeless and the incarcerated. Men are the vast majority of the executed.
What “oppressor” group opens doors, pulls out chairs, and in other ways serves the “oppressed”? Yet men do all these things for women. In at least some major respects, women are the advantaged sex.
Seriously? A “must be that time of the month!” joke?
Stay classy, Angry Black Lady Chronicles.
Either they’re sluts, or they’re menstruating sluts. Make up your mind.
Apparently, ABLC believes that cheap-and-easy abortion and free-running contraceptives are good for women…. and any attempts to make these safer by regulation are bad for women.
She believes the regulation is a sort of “war,” and that this war is perpetrated by “Republicans.”
This notion is alien to ABLC: that real women – mothers, parents of families, survivors of the sexual revolution — are leading this effort to restore sense and dignity to our lives and sexual culture.
Black Lady — It ain’t the Republicans that you need to worry about!
Interesting what they consider “against women’s interests”:
“• Require reproductive health facilities to report statutory rape in Georgia and require statutory rape investigations for abortion patients under age 14 in Mississippi; and
• Mandate abstinence-until-marriage education in Tennessee.
One of the reason state legislatures have been emboldened to act so aggressively on the issue of choice is because of the explicit support from Republicans on the national level have made it clear that radical anti-woman policies are now mainstream in the right.”
So, pro-choicers are for statutory rape and premarital sex? Protecting young girls from older boys/men and educating about limited sex partners (preferably 1) is radical and anti-woman?
Crazy.
Hi Jill – Thanks for posting – reading this and related links, keeps me in tune to how much educating is still needed for our fallen sisters in the reproductive health wars……..Thanks again for helping the troops informed without all the rhetoric.
In case you missed it, she was being satirical about the whole PMS thing seeing as they listed abortion restriction victories and they’re very pro-choice. Also, I find the use of “Oh you’re just PMSing” in this context (and when men use it to demean their wives and girlfriends) to be condescending and misogynist.
@Rachel C.: It is pretty misogynist when it’s used seriously, since it’s invalidating a woman’s anger/sadness/whateverthepersonwantstodismiss as something that isn’t grounded in the real world, but in a hormonal response. Women don’t ever have legitimate reasons to be mad, they’re just PMSing.
But, on this ABLC blog, even the satire is still misogynist. The pro-life movement doesn’t say “There’s not a war on women. You’re just getting angry ’cause you’re PMSing/bitchy/insertothergenderedslur!” We say, “There’s not a war on women. You’re just getting angry ’cause your side is loosing ground!” The second may seem harsher, but it validates the ideological disagreement as the reason for the anger, rather than blaming it on female biology. But by assigning an anti-woman straw man to pro-lifers, the majority of which movement is women, she insults our intelligence and makes out like we can’t really be disagreeing with her about abortion, because that would be weird. We’re all really brainwashed tools of the patriarchy with massive amounts of internalized misogyny. Because, whatever happens, apparently abortion defenders can’t admit there is a genuine lack of agreement about abortion.
I know this is awfully nit-picky, but…well, anyway, the point is, I agree. It’s misogynist when used to dismiss what women say, as it usually is. But I think it’s fair to go a step further and say it’s misogynist in this context, too.
Alice,
Ok, I get what you’re saying & it makes since. I absolutely hated when my ex-husband would be dismissive towards me because “oh, you’re just bitchy because you’re PMSing” (despite my having a legitimate reason to be angry or frustrated with him). There is some biological truth in that hormones can have a powerful effect on our mood & affect, such as in the case of PMDD or PPD. But with that said, that doesn’t remove the legitimacy or validity of a person’s feelings. The ABL C’s blogger implying misogyny on our part doesn’t necessarily accurately represent our argument/point of view & is just another straw-man and ad honimen argument, misogynist/condescending (as you said, they act & talk like we’re mindless puppets of the patriarchy because we don’t susbscribe to their views) and dissmissive of our concerns and reasons for opposing abortion. Putting false words & implications into our mouths is something they do well.
This offends me a LOT. I am a vocal, opinionated female and have always been. And every time I dared to voice my opinion the males in my life, whether it be classmates, friends, boyfriends or my husband would always mock me with “You on your period?” It is so SEXIST and it makes me angry! And no I am not on my period!!!!
The war on women is obviously being waged by both feminists and opportunistic men. Fertility is treated like a disease. THAT is more offensive than a PMS joke, but the point of the author’s ignorance, as stated above, is that she’s completely unwilling to admit that the war is a leftist straw-person. If the elephant in the room gets any bigger, there won’t be any room left.
So, what about refusing to pass the Violence Against Women Act? And equal pay? Those don’t constitute enough of a war on women for you?
Not if the original measures were/are a war on the Constitution or our nation’s budget. 9_9
You mean the Violence Against Women Act that was passed by the House that Obama is now threatening to veto if it manages to get past the Dems in the Senate, which is skating on such thin ice because the icky Republicans wrote it? That VAWA? Considering I find video after video on youtube of Republicans supporting the VAWA in the House and Democrats opposing it, and that it was largely Democrats who voted against the VAWA, I have to agree that you may have a point. Apparently, if Republicans sponsor a bill to protect women from violence, it’s just the most horrible thing in the universe to actually approve of it. Maybe we should agree there is a war on women. Democrats seem to support violence against women whether they are born or not. And if we want to talk about what’s in the bill, and whether it’s good legislation, let me suggest that we do it based on the primary source of…the actual text of the bill as per the Library of Congress (the most current version will be at the bottom).
I have a link-heavy comment that got caught by the spam filter. *bats lashes at mods*
It’s already illegal to pay women less than men for equal work. The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963. The recent bill has a broader definition of equal. I don’t want people to think twice about hiring me because I could easily sue according to this law. Fundamentally different views of the role of government are at war.
Anonymous says:
June 16, 2012 at 11:43 pm
So, what about refusing to pass the Violence Against Women Act?
(Denise) The majority of murder victims are men. The majority of physical assault victims are men.
The majority of rape victims are women. However, many men are raped in prison and little is done to address this horror.
The fact is: women live longer than men.
Men are the vast majority of the homeless.
Men are the majority of the incarcerated.
The “war on women” is a myth.
Women may have legitimate grievances but there is no plot to harm us.
Well said, Denise!
I’ve been actively pro-life (as opposed to couch potato pro-life like I used to be) for about 4 years, and I’m no dummy. If there was some Vast Right Wing Conspiracy against women, I’d have seen some real evidence of by now. And believe me, I’m not so loyal to fellow pro-lifers that I’d let them get away with such a thing. I’d be the first one to kick up a fuss about it. No, the war on women is actually the war on reproduction and it’s not us that’s wagin’ it.
Now, to be sure there are some wacko people that want to oppress women, like the creeps the kidnapped Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Lee Dugard. And we try to keep those creeps locked up.
“…legislating against women’s interests…” Interests? Really? If all you’re “interested” in is free birth control and “abortion on demand, and without apology”, you need to get a LIFE….AND a hobby.
I’m glad we’ve gotten so many women to join the anti-woman conspiracy!!! :)
Women may have legitimate grievances but there is no plot to harm us.
Other than in the womb.
Courtenay, you’re the only person here who mentioned “sluts.”
…alright, this might seriously anger some of the ladies here (and possibly some of the guys), but I figured this would be a good place to get the opinions of a bunch of other people on this, while we’re somewhat on this topic. I will try to be as … diplomatic as possible, and I apologize for my nearly inevitable failure in that regard.
Okay, I’ve been told by a number of women that there are times when their period affects them so strongly that their rationality is impaired. Naturally, the degrees of this would vary immensely from one person to the next (and, from what they said, even from one period to the next).
Something I’ve noticed – and they and their spouses (where applicable) agreed – is that when that happens, it nearly always manifests in manners aside from their outlook on things, including but not limited to: wild/violent mood swings, unusually ferocious appetite (for food, specifically; I remember one in particular didn’t just want a burger, she wanted COW!), and excessive temperature variation (a-la hot flashes type of thing). More importantly, this side-manifestation is very visible and recognizable.
Does this seem like a fair assessment to you, or have I been grossly misinterpreting this whole thing? While I am understandably reluctant to ever act on this perspective, I’d rather have its accuracy either confirmed or shot to pieces and left in the ditch to wither and die; better it than me.
This whole notion of women becoming mindless children once a month … everyone ought to know that this is more likely to happen during happy hour than during their period.
@Maestro: Okay, here’s where this conclusion you’re asking about goes wrong: no matter how many women have told you this, they are a minuscule fraction of the number of women in the world. Even if you have a sample size of a million (and I’m guessing that’s not the case ;) ).
Some women are severely affected by their periods. Sometimes mood-wise, sometimes in other ways, and sometimes severe enough to interrupt their life. When it’s severe enough to require medical treatment (and I don’t just mean severe cramps, but dangerously heavy bleeding, vomiting, migraines, and major depression kind of thing, which not only can happen, but can happen all at once), it’s called Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder. Most women aren’t affected that seriously. In fact, with the vast majority of women you encounter, you will not notice any outward signs of whether they are having a period or not. (We do this every month. It starts being normal really quickly.)
That doesn’t mean that the women you talked to were making up their experiences. Or wrong. It means that women are individuals. There is no magic explanation to apply to all women so that we all make perfect sense, any more than there is one to apply to all men so that they can be explained. So while the women you spoke to told you the truth, they told you the truth about their own experiences. What can’t be done is to take that (“These women go through X.”) and generalize it (“So…all women go through X, right?”). You can’t do that. Each woman you meet is a totally different person from the last one. If you want to know her experiences, you have to get to know her. That’s the only way to do it.
Thank you for your response, Lady Alice.
My sample size was maybe .. two dozen or so (as you can probably imagine, women’s periods are not a common conversation topic), so no, not quite a million, but getting there. :-P
I agree with most of what you said; the rest I didn’t know, so I neither agreed nor disagreed.
” There is no magic explanation to apply to all women so that we all make perfect sense”
…normally I would argue about that, but in the context of periods, it’s pretty much true.
“any more than there is one to apply to all men so that they can be explained”
That’s another matter altogether, but again, not relevant to this topic. :-P
Overall though, I may have given the wrong impression in my post, as suggested by the inclusion of this statement in your response:
“In fact, with the vast majority of women you encounter, you will not notice any outward signs of whether they are having a period or not.”
I fully agree with that and did not intend to suggest otherwise; rather, I was asking if, during those times when a woman’s period is severe enough to affect her rationality (however rare that may be), are there consistently more visible effects like the ones that I listed (and the ones you listed as well, now that you mention them)?
I was under the impression that the answer was a cautious yes, and the only reason I’m asking is so that I might be better able to tell if this is indeed something a woman is experiencing. The simplest example of where I’d hope to use that knowledge is to make it easier to not take something personally if a friend of mine is having a severe period and gets a bit snappy.
No, if it were common for women to suffer severe effects during their period, I don’t imagine that I would have to ask this question. :-)
Actually, not every woman does have periods, though–leaving out normal menopause as a factor–that’s usually because of a medical condition of some kind. Or with some women (me, frex, she said in a TMI moment), we can skip one or two if we’re under heavy stress (moving to another country being a trigger for me). So, no, even when talking about the subset “women having periods,” you’re still not going to be able to use any given piece of information that’s true for any one woman and apply it across the board. Every human being is slightly different, even when undergoing a normal event like menstruation.
So, no, there’s not going to be some kind of sign you can look for to know if any given woman has any given symptom of menstruation, be that mood swings or anything else.
Pamela says:
June 17, 2012 at 1:12 pm
“…legislating against women’s interests…” Interests? Really? If all you’re “interested” in is free birth control and “abortion on demand, and without apology”, you need to get a LIFE….AND a hobby.
(Denise) I was 18 before my first kiss. I attended school and church but spent the rest of my time holed up in my room specifically to avoid a pregnancy and the abortion that might follow it. During summers, I watched soap opera after soap opera. In a lot of ways, I didn’t have much of a life but I’ve NEVER had an abortion.
Hey Maestro – Well, if you’re asking about if there’s a visible sign if a friend gives you a snappy comment… I mean, women go through stress just like men do. Sometimes my husband/brother/dad/male colleagues will snap at me because they’re tired/stressed/hungry/whatever. With women, it’s just easier to back away slowly, eyes wide and say knowingly, “oooohhh you’re on your period.” ;) (but I don’t recommend trying that because it just pisses women off more, especially if we’re *not* on our periods. and if we are, we already feel pretty miserable without others rubbing it in our faces). :)
<engage satirical tongue-in-cheek mode>
Geez, some of us men try to understand you women, how you think and operate, so we can better serve you! We try to bridge the gap between our understandings so we can better accommodate who you really are!
BUT NO! No no no no no, we can’t have that! No, women MUST be difficult at all costs! There can be no effective inter-gender comprehension!
<disengage satirical tongue-in-cheek mode>
:-P
Thank you muchly for the feedback, Ladies Alice and Belle! Your answers, interestingly enough, confirmed both my fears and my hopes.
When suffering a severe period, while some women exhibit external signs and might have their thinking impaired (much like extreme stress does for anyone), other women weather it just fine.
The downside is that one cannot make any assumptions about any given woman’s experiences during her period.
Probably for the best, though; one should only have that knowledge of a particular woman after making the effort to gain it legitimately.
It’s just one more thing I’ll have to learn about my future beloved to make her feel like the queen that she’ll be. :-)