Wow, Walt - Generalize Much?

If the latest utterances from Walt Heyer were the first you had ever heard from him, you could easily be forgiven for believing that the man had never had anything to do with the transgender community.  

Women—Simply Men with no Snoopy 

The real war on women today is being waged on the female gender by men who remove their tallywacker (Snoopy) and declare they are full-fledged women. 

These people, transgenders who are just men with no Snoopy, can use your restrooms and change the gender designation on their birth records and other ID to female. They’ll show you birth gender females a swinging thing or two by legally proving that you females are the same as men, just with no Snoopy. 

Transgender women, manufactured from men by surgery, have more protections under the law then you pesky women who were born female. 

Depending on what your view of female is, you may see transgender females (i.e., men who removed their tallywacker) as lovable little fuzzballs who need to be protected from the wacko, transphobic, homophobic, bigoted gender normals who were born male and female. 

Perhaps you see transgender women as men who enjoy what looks like childish play gone psycho with dress-up taken to extreme–copious amounts of makeup, flamboyant mannerisms, surgical breasts, facial work and yes, the removal of the old useless trouser snake known as "Snoopy." 

This post was prompted by talking with a woman I know who is outraged that birth gender women do not march by the thousands against lawmakers. She is appalled that a man without a dangling participle is made legally equivalent to a birth female. She feels that laws that protect surgically-produced replicas of women denigrate and ridicule real women and the female gender. 

In effect, the lawmakers are now saying that women are simply men with no Snoopy. Like it or not, it is the sign of our times.   

Walt Heyer

Apparently in Heyer's fevered mind, trans people are now part of the "war on women".  I'm not sure how he arrives at this, since it is conservative Republicans who are busily passing laws that disproportionately affect women for the worse, making reproductive health care all the harder to access, or forcing unwanted invasive procedures on women.

His characterization of transgender people as a whole sounds like something out of a couple of nights spent getting drunk in a drag bar, on par with the research that Bailey did for his book a few years ago.  It's funny how Heyer comes up with all sorts of generalizations about trans people, and yet I would wager he wouldn't be able to identify half of the trans people he interacts with on a daily basis.  

If recognizing women of transsexual history as women is somehow "denigrating" or "ridiculing" natal women, I'd love to hear just how that works.  I have yet to meet a transsexual whose life and experience could be argued as "denigrating" of women.  The only people that make such arguments are usually Radical Feminists and ultra-conservative religious demagogues who seem to think that womanhood (or manhood) are defined by chromosomes.  I have never seen a coherent argument which supports the contention that a MtF transsexual is somehow co-opting the female experience.

If Heyer was to actually think things through, what he would realize is that in many respects the places where law has engaged with the language of gender, it is no longer useful to do so.  Does it matter if your driver's license stipulates gender?  Probably not.  Last I checked, women can be just as lead-footed as men, and the speeding ticket is the same either way.  Outside of certain statistical applications, gender is utterly irrelevant.

Of course, in areas such as health care, women have specific needs that must be met that a male bodied person will never need.  I know of no transsexuals who stand in opposition to proper medical care for women.

Frankly, I'm beginning to suspect that Heyer is just jealous of the successful transitions that others have made simply because of his own failings.  

The Unstated Agenda Of The CPC

I've said it for years on this blog, and I'll say it again - Harper's base wants to impose their religiously driven morality on women and minorities in Canada.

They've been signalling this repeatedly with a series of ugly little bills like Jake Epp's Bill C-484, which attempted to create legal recognition of a Fetus as a person by the back door of our criminal laws or Rod Bruinooge's Bill C-510 which attempted to criminalize "coercion" with respect to an abortion. (and was so atrociously written that even providing a woman information about abortion could be construed as coercihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifon) and Vellacott's Bill C-537 which tried to establish bogus "conscience" rights so that

Make no mistake about it, Harper's enough of a control freak that if he didn't like something his backbenchers were doing, it would have long ago been stifled. Consider for a moment what happened to Dianne Ablonczy for daring to channel funding to Toronto's Pride Festival a couple of years ago. By allowing his backbenchers to table those bills, Harper is tacitly supporting them. (and I'd http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwager that he voted for each of them ... if he happened to be in the House the days that they were voted on ... he certainly voted against C-389 on its third reading)

So, when Brad Trost brags about defunding Planned Parenthood on the campaign trail, it comes as no big surprise. (In fact, it was Mr. Trost who seemed to act as party mouthpiece when Ablonczy was muzzled - interesting) For those of you not paying attention, Planned Parenthood is an organization focusing on reproductive health - including, but not exclusively, safe access to abortion. Trost is busy bragging about his petition campaign against Planned Parenthood in 2009. This because Planned Parenthood has the temerity to actually advocate that safe access to abortion is a legitimate part of women's reproductive health.

Stephen Harper himself refused to include abortion - or even contraception - in the so-called Maternal Health Initiative he put before the G8 in 2010. So, when MPs like Trost start flapping their gums about something, chances are pretty darn good that there's more unwritten policy being executed than it appears on the surface. I shudder to think what will happen if Harper gets anywhere near majority territory in the House Of Commons.

The Inherent Misogyny of the Anti Abortion Protestors

One of the biggest problems that women have faced over the centuries has been getting beyond being treated as mere objects ... or even outright property.

After reading some of Cardinal Marc Ouellet's comments at the "Fetus Festivus" event recently held on Parliament Hill. (and if that name doesn't creep you out, I don't know what will - the implications of it with respect to women's autonomy over their own bodies are staggering)

Cardinal Ouellet thanked the attendees at the march for defending the unborn and called on all to speak out also “in defense of life until the end.”

“I thank you for standing up in defense of the unborn – those who cannot come to life, those who cannot develop and enrich our country because their right to be born is negated,” he said. “The battle for life, the right for life, is a spiritual battle, so we pray. It is also a cultural battle, and it is a juridical battle, so that’s why we come together and we ask for justice.”

Uh huh ... no - it's a battle to control women's bodies. Let's call it what it is - anything else - whether you use the language of 'fetal rights', or 'right to life' is window dressing.

The fundamental issue underlying the anti-abortion movement is misogyny - and it is the misogyny that has been used against women for centuries - rooted in a masculinized worldview, and a long-held misunderstanding of female fertility and sexuality.

Referring to Dictionary.com, the term Misogyny is defined as follows:

mi·sog·y·ny
   /mɪˈsɒdʒəni, maɪ-/ Show Spelled[mi-soj-uh-nee, mahy-] Show IPA
–noun
hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women.

This isn't outright hatred at play here, it's more like mistrust. Fundamentally, the fetus fetishists don't trust women to make sensible, intelligent decisions about their own bodies - and in particular the biological process commonly called pregnancy.

The anti-abortion arguments reduce the pregnant woman to an object - a mere vessel whose role it is to produce a baby at the end of gestation.

Consider Cardinal Ouellet's comments the other day:

Asked by a reporter about the Church’s teaching on abortion in cases of rape, the cardinal said: “the child is not responsible for how he was conceived, it is the aggressor who is responsible. We can see him (the child) as another victim.”

"I understand very well that a woman who's been raped is dealing with trauma and that she needs to be helped,” he added later. “But she needs to do so with respect for the being that is in her womb. It is not responsible for what happened. It's the rapist who is responsible. But there's already a victim. Do we need to have another one?"

There are some key observations that I want to raise here - and it is the assumptions in the Cardinal's statements:

1) Note that the Cardinal is talking about a rape victim as "needing help", but he is unwilling to allow that same rape victim the freedom to decide for themselves whether they should bear the child that some violent asshole has spawned in them.

2) The fetus as supreme over her needs as a human being. The Cardinal talks about "respect for the being that is in her womb", implying that the fetus has a status that overrides the woman's right to control over her own body.

3) The Cardinal's language treats the fetus as distinct from the woman, and in doing so disregards entirely the enormous biological - and emotional - price that pregnancy exacts for the woman.

Not only has the Cardinal repeated the oft-heard lines of the so-called "pro-life" movement, but he has shown us a window into the blatant and utter misogyny of this line of reasoning.

In the Cardinal's world, the woman is reduced to a mere biological vessel the moment she becomes pregnant. The reason she became pregnant doesn't matter, nor does her circumstances or desire to be a parent. In fact, her decision making with respect to the pregnancy ends at that point. In essence, a pregnant woman is seen as unable to make rational decisions about the progress of her pregnancy. In short, the woman is not trustworthy once she's pregnant. This shows a clear, and unmistakable mistrust of women - simply based on whether they are pregnant or not.

The "pro-life" types go a step or two beyond this and argue that even when the woman's life is at risk, that abortion is unacceptable:

The Bishop of Phoenix has announced that a Catholic nun and administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix has automatically excommunicated herself by approving an abortion on a woman who was 11-weeks pregnant, and whose life hospital officials allege they were trying to save.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted said the excommunications apply to all involved, and lambasted the hospital’s defense of their decision by comparing the ill woman’s unborn child to a disease that needed to be removed.

The Arizona Republic reports that in late 2009, Sister Margaret McBride, then vice president of mission integration at St. Joseph’s, joined the hospital’s ethics committee in determining that doctors and the hospital would be morally justified in performing a direct abortion in the first trimester, because they felt that the mother’s life was at risk.

The woman, whose identity is anonymous, was reportedly seriously ill with pulmonary hypertension.

Just consider the moral and ethical stance that this represents. The woman's life was endangered by being pregnant, and the Bishop (who has how much medical training?) dares to condemn the decision providing her with an abortion.

To me, this just reinforces the rather offensive idea that women exist solely as vessels to produce babies. Everything else a woman may do or accomplish is secondary - the moment she is known to be pregnant, these people want to take away her right to make her own decisions about her body.

To reduce women to non-sentient vessels for bearing children the moment that they become pregnant is not just misogyny - it is the worst kind of misogyny because it perpetuates myths about women that have been used to hold them down to second class citizen status for centuries.

... and make no mistake about it - the so-called "pro-lifers" in Canada would happily legislate away a woman's right to decide her own destiny.

Ah - So Women's Health Only Matters When You're Pregnant

Birth control won't be in G8 plan to protect mothers, Tories say

In no uncertain terms, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon yesterday ruled out any kind of family-planning programs being included in Canada's "signature" initiative at June's G8 summit - a strategy to improve the health of mothers and young children in poor countries.

"It does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning. Indeed, the purpose of this is to be able to save lives," Mr. Cannon told the Foreign Affairs committee.

So, in short, the HarperCon connection to the ultra-conservative "base" of religious fanatics has surfaced once again - this time with respect to women's health.

I'm sorry, Mr. Cannon, but you are doing nothing for women's health if you are taking out of their hands the ability to control their fertility. (and telling women to 'keep their legs crossed' doesn't work - especially in many of the third world countries where women are more chattel than equal members of society)

Women's health must include all dimensions - not just when they are pregnant, but also family planning, contraception and other forms of birth control. To do anything less is political dogma, not good government or policy.

Of course, this comes as little or no surprise to those who have been paying attention to the Harper government. There's been more 'dog whistles' put out in their policy in the last few months than I care to count. Whether we talk about Jason Kenney's lying deceit about his role in the content of this country's new citizenship book, the 2006 "cuts" that targetted women and minorities, or this issue, they are intended to signal to the squirming mass of extremism that had control over the Reform/Alliance party policy that they have not been forgotten.

25 Years Ago

Marc Lepine murdered 14 women at École Polytechnique in Montreal. (Antonia Z. @ the Star has a great piece on this)

Twenty five years later, the Conservative government is trying to dismantle the long gun registry in this country. Completely ignoring the fact that legal guns in the home are among the most common tools of domestic homicide, and denying law enforcement personnel access to the best possible knowledge as to whether a gun may be in the home when answering a domestic violence call.

On page 33 (Pdf Pg 39) of this StatsCan report, it's quite clear that women are disproportionately at risk of being murdered by their partners or former partners.

Hardly surprising - this is a government which has been hostile to women needs from day one; has a very vocal and active group of MPs who are hostile to women's health issues and so on. Do you want to go back to the 1950s (or earlier)?

Think about it...

Michael Coren: The Misogynist Chronicles Ctd

I really should know better than to read Coren's rantings - they are inevitably so full of idiocy it's amazing that he continues to be publishable.

His latest piece is another "get back in the kitchen, woman" column, in which he not only tries to claim that women shouldn't be working, but that the world's problems with parenting are entirely the fault of feminism.

There is more to this case and judgment than just this one passage of Cunningham's ruling, but at first sight it does seem rather strange.

Truth is truth, lies are lies and unless MacLeod's lifestyle goes directly to character it has no influence on the credibility of her evidence. It does, however, say something about her decisions and choices and about how the contemporary world regards motherhood.

We're not supposed to say it anymore but motherhood is pretty important. There are, of course, many women who are forced by economic circumstances to work outside of the home. But there are others who seem to believe that raising a child is less significant than alleged self-fulfilment or even political ambition. Ms. MacLeod, do you seriously believe you can be both an exemplary mother and a full-time politician?

The arrogance of Coren's close to that last paragraph is beyond words. In that one sentence, he has belittled the efforts of every working mother and father in this nation. I know far too many couples who struggle daily with keeping work, finances and raising their families in balance to accept Coren's blithe inference that you can't be both a good mother and a career woman. (or for that matter, a successful career man and single father)

Yes, I know people will say the father can do the job just as well and that it's all about quality time but this is nonsense and denial. Real parenting is about the time that isn't quality.

The quality stuff, the fun stuff, is easy. It's the driving to soccer yet again, the sitting with them when life is awful, the meetings with the teachers, the helping with the homework, the being there stuff that makes you a good parent.

Oh yes, so it's only the maternal parent that can ride out the rough patches, the difficult times? Right. I'll keep that in mind - in the same place that I keep my belief in Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.

Mr. Coren's attitudes don't even begin to recognize the realities that most families live with today. Perhaps, because of his semi-celebrity status, Mr. Coren has gathered enough wealth that he can afford this idealized stay-at-home world where his wife does all of the hard work raising the children, and he just has to do the "quality time" routine - that isn't real for most parents in urban Canada these days.

Believe me Lisa, sitting in committee rooms with political hacks mouthing the party line is not the same as seeing your child, to and for whom you are responsible, grow by the day into a unique human being.

Perhaps, Mr. Coren, you might want to write that same sentence with yourself as the subject of it? I think a lot of us can think of more pleasant ways to pass the day than in meetings with political hacks.

For Mr. Coren to place the burden of raising children primarily on the female parent, and then complain that "men are treated unfairly" is ridiculous, stupid and infuriating. It is, in fact, the very social structures that he idealizes that resulted in those court rulings he bemoans, not feminism. It has only been in the last 25-30 years that the burden of parenting has become more evenly shared by mother and father - and that has been a product of economic necessity for many.

I will agree that the family courts still make rulings which do not reflect the realities that many single fathers experience on a daily basis, but that will only change when the laws of the land change, and the courts are convinced of the realities. Ironically, those are the very realities that the Status of Women ministry used to fund research into tracking - until the HarperCon$ came along and slashed funding.

[Update 18/08/09]:
Mindelle Jacobs hands Mr. Coren his ass on a plate
[/Update]

More Harper Hypocrisy

Earlier this week, we found out that Canadian troops in Afghanistan are backing a regime that is moving, quite explicitly, to subjugate women instead of treating them as equal partners.

It used to be a mission to give a future to little girls. Now the government is scrambling to explain why Canadian troops are fighting for an Afghanistan that legalizes rape within marriage.

The new Afghan law, apparently approved by President Hamid Karzai, led Western diplomats in Kabul to call an emergency meeting and hammer out a concerted response, pressuring the Karzai administration to back down.

Canadian officials insisted that Mr. Karzai still has some "wiggle room" before the law is implemented, and waited impatiently for the President's first public comments on the law.

The Conservative government expressed outrage, and opposition politicians said Canadian soldiers did not fight and die for an Afghanistan that would pass such a law.

Anyone else remember all the right wingers in this country bragging about how our troops were "over there liberating people"?

But that isn't the hypocrisy at all. Only the completely clueless would believe that little lie.

No. The hypocrisy is in the actions of the Harper government themselves. Think back to 2006. Remember the spending cuts they did back then? Kind of focused on Women's and minority programs, didn't they? Then there is Harper's personal support for Bill C-484, which would essentially strip a woman of the right to control her reproductive destiny and Bill C-537, the so-called "medical practitioner's conscience" act - another piece of moralizing garbage legislation which fundamentally affects women disproportionately.

In this light, the government's "outrage" over Afghanistan's law suddenly seems just a trifle contrived.

Fundamentalist Misogynist

There's good reason to watch the so-called "family values" crowd carefully. Every so often, one of them opens their yap and lets the truth of their "values" spew forth.

In this case, it's a SBC theologian/leader speaking at a "Family Conference". If you didn't listen too closely to him, you'd think he was just spouting the usual "family values" line so often spouted by right wingnut religionists.

It's the little gem came spewing forth in the midst of his tirade that tells us so much:

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary president Paige Patterson says families need to be concerned that in America, 60% of college students are female. He predicts that in a few years, men will be increasingly underrepresented among "the intelligentsia" and will gradually cede leadership in many areas to women.

Patterson laments that most of the women ascending to these new roles will maintain a major focus on a career, not on the family and on children.

Ummm ... wow. In short - women should not be as educated as men? More importantly, this guy feels that women shouldn't have active careers outside the home?

The undercurrent of this is obscene. Starting with the assertion that educated women is a bad thing (especially if there are more educated women than men, it would seem), and moving into the blatant assault on the very idea that a woman might want to work outside of the home. I know quite a few ladies who have careers and family...and they work amazingly hard to make sure that they look after the kids and their careers. In at least two cases, they have told me to my face that they need their career for perfectly valid human needs.

I won't even go into the utterly vapid comments that are attached to the article. The assumption that there is a "perfect" family model out there is horrifying - especially in light of just how horribly dysfunctional the "ideal" families of so many of my friends grew up in turned out to be in reality. Thanks - I'll take a dozen slightly unusual families that are basically happy over one dysfunctional disaster.

Frankly, it appalls me to no end that these people keep fetishizing a social structure that never really existed - largely to create a pretext for making second class citizens out of women.