Is it a War on Women?

Yeah, I'm doing it. I know I am not the first and I won't be the last to blog about this. But I feel like we need a bit of a record of all the things being debated about at the government level that has to do with women right now. Seeing as how Legislating/controlling women is so in vogue these days and all. As the photo I borrowed illustrates... WTF?! We, the last three generations that is, thought we had made a permanent foothold into equal rights. That we had forged a path that could not be easily done away with. We let down our guard I guess.

Current legal abortion as a hot women's topic is too easy, so I'll let that pass. And going after Planned Parenthood is nothing new, really, so I won't even go on and on about that. But... the bills coming up about uterus police for miscarriages, no abortion even when pregnant as a result of rape or incest, and no abortion even to save the life of the mother EVEN if the fate of the fetus is also death, make no sense. There are laws passed to criminalize doctors for doing any abortion; even life saving ones. Then there are states forcing women to pay for additional ultrasounds (some by wand) and receive a lecture (that goes against freedom of religion) before they can lawfully terminate a pregnancy . Oh, and there was that bill requiring women get permission of the father in writing before they are allowed to have an abortion (a little awkward, no? if the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest?). How about redefining rape to make abortions harder to get? The whole growing bias that women are not smart enough or, as they say, can't make an informed choice when it comes to their own health care, their own bodies or the decision to have, or not to have, an abortion, I find repulsive.

And so we move on to no insurance coverage for female contraceptives of any kind. Even when prescribed for a medical condition other than to keep from getting pregnant. Um, why aren't contraceptives considered medical? What's with no women experts allowed to speak about contraceptives? What's up with that? More of that, "women can't make an informed choice" crap? We are too stupid? Yet no debate on whether insurance should cover Viagra or penile implants. How about the bill that would make it legal to fire a woman for having contraceptives? And now there are religious leaders saying oral contraceptives cause homosexuality. WTF? the latest state bills signed into law allow pharmacists to refuse to fill out any prescription they feel could be used to induce an abortion and physicians are not allowed to legally withhold information from patients if they think that medical information may result in an abortion or other thing against their personal morals. These "Conscious Measures" are so broad and vague it can be applied to anything. So even if the birth control is prescribed for medical reasons, a pharmacist can block a woman from medicine her doctor has prescribed; medicine she may need for a medical condition. And what if that information the doctor decides to keep from their patient costs them their life? Will the law save them in a court of law? This is not how medical care should be practiced in a civilized country! The religious beliefs of a medical practitioner should not trump the religious and cultural beliefs of a patient, especially if it may result in the suffering and/or death of the patient.


Beyond contraceptives or abortion are bills redefining when life starts. I don't know when life started, but I do know that pregnancy is a continuation of life, not the start. The stupidest bill of them all is the one that passed saying conception or life starts two weeks before fertilization. Besides it being against most faiths (including those who follow the teachings of the bible), it negates contraceptives of ALL kinds, makes abortion illegal at any stage, makes every woman a murderer who has a period or a miscarriage, and makes every man a killer who masturbates. Complete idiocy.

And yet women are being punished for choosing to have their children, too. Another state legislature drafted a bill that would make single parenthood tantamount to child abuse (to try and keep poor, single women from keeping their babies).

Recently the money put into preventative healthcare, especially for women, has been given the label "slush" fund and is targeted to be cut. Their rational is that putting money into cancer screenings, child immunizations and quit smoking programs is a waste of money. I believe it has been proven, without a doubt, that such preventative healthcare GREATLY reduces the cost of healthcare overall for everyone. So this goes into the War on Women category because the preventative measures being funded and the target of cuts are mostly for women.

The Supreme Court said, just last year, women employees couldn't sue Walmart for low wages, low raises, low bonuses and little to no advancement in comparison to male employees because Walmart employs mostly women. ie, a majority aren't allowed to sue. Um, Walmart, like a lot of businesses these days, hire women to lower their bottom line because it is permissible to pay women less then men. You'd think men would be pissed about that. Several states have bills up for vote that would lower the minimum wage of tipped employees. Positions mostly held by women (over 80%). The coup de gras, Scott Walker, the much loved (sarcasm) governor or Wisconsin has repealed the state's Equal Pay law stating that men needed the money more than women.

And here I add yet another bill introduced to make all divorce illegal. Which, even though I think people often get married with little intent to stay the minute things get rough, is wrong on many levels including separation of church and state, freedom of religion, and personal freedoms of course. But the main problem is the lawmaker introducing the bill has it as ALL divorce illegal regardless of abuse. He literally said Women need to remember why they got married in the first place. That takes it to the war on women level. But let's take it even further. Yet another state has DECRIMINALIZED Domestic Violence altogether. Why? Because the police have better things to do than keep husbands from raping and killing their wives or live in girl friends. Even though men abuse much more so than women, this law also does a disservice to men who are abused. What next? Decriminalize child abuse?

A friend of mine hypothesized that Republican lawmakers ARE working on creating jobs... they are trying to get women out of the work place so there will be more jobs for men. I'm starting to believe that is true; certainly the new proposed laws seem to support it.

I found out the other day that in all areas of power, from our state and federal legislators to corporate CEOs to governors to boards of directors to mayors to ambassadors and world leaders, et al, the one area where women, by the numbers, are the closest in equality to men is in our own United States Supreme Court. And they are not equal, just the closest. Women make up just over 50% of the population, but even though we are equal in numbers here, we are not anywhere close to equal numbers in positions of power, and therefore, representation.
 
I also was made aware that Obamacare would require all persons pay the same amount for healthcare regardless of gender or adult age. Did you know that, right now, women pay, on average, 20% more than men for healthcare, sometimes as much as 70% depending on which state they live in?

ALL of that mentioned above has happened in the LAST THREE-PLUS YEARS. I'm not even talking about how historically women are treated... just the last three-plus years and only at the U.S. state and federal government level. Sorry, but that really is a war on women at the top levels. I can't see excusing most or any of that. You can't go, "Oh, you can't pay attention to the extremists." We are talking about representatives here. Lawmakers. People voted in by us!


Seems obvious what we need to do to stop this idiocy and work towards a better representative government... VOTE.

Christian Pressure

A few years ago I was watching a documentary on the Amazon and its Indigenous Peoples. Towards the end of the documentary they talked of missionaries coming to convert the natives and I was struck at what conversion did to the natives. Before, they were naked, happy, playful people who worked hard, played hard and generally enjoyed their place in life. After, they were clothed, unhappy, sour people who only worked hard and generally worried about their place in the after life.

It seemed to me that Christianity had become the apple.

The Amazon people before were much like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But then Eve went against God and took a bite from the forbidden fruit. Doing so opened her up to sin and the realization of evil in the world. Not that I think the Amazon people were naive about evil in the world, and I'm sure their own religion had some aspect of sin and afterlife in it. What the indigenous people lacked was pressure.

I was in a religious chat room back when Yahoo used to have those kind of things (I miss them), and there was a rabidly religious person in there who talked about this dream he had. He was pressuring his sister-in-law to accept Jesus as her Savior and she resisted. She said she had no intention of believing (he made her out to be an Atheist) in the Christian God and would he just leave her alone about it. So he said he would until the dream. In the dream he saw his sister-in-law burning in hell and screaming, "Why didn't you try harder to save me?" Needless to say he was more gung ho about converting her, and everyone, than ever.

Pressure, pressure, pressure. We all know stress and frustration brings out the worst in people, so is it any wonder that folks under so much pressure to "save" everyone aren't people you like to be around so much? Once in a while you come across a happy person who basks in the glory of their God and what not. Yet I only count them as truly happy if they continue to be happy even after you say you don't believe. It never ceases to puzzle me how my not believing in their God will turn an otherwise happy person to concerned, then offended, and quickly to a mean spirited one. And that is before I go to the trouble of pointing out what the specific issues I have with Christianity are and why it is not the religion for me. It is hard not to offend them then, but I totally get it if part of your not believing goes with shooting holes in their faith.

Now part of me is like, well, if they truly believed (regardless of what their faith is), than my issues with their religion and how it doesn't work for me, should not rile them, but that is ignoring a lot of human nature there and doing them a disservice. So unless they trot out the bible quotes first, I don't start off with trying to pick a part their argument at all. I simply chose not to convert. I have faith and love for my own religion and Gods. All I ask is that they respect that. But, in large part, the religion itself does not allow them to do that. Pressure.

See, that is why if a retailer, smartly, markets to everyone, and not just Christians during the winter holidays, it is seen as a war on Christmas. Just the idea that there may be people who worship different Gods or none, and still have a celebration during the winter holidays is considered an affront. I get it, kinda. It is the pressure.

The pressure to convert everyone. The pressure to save everyone from hell. The overwhelming belief that Jesus died for EVERYONE, regardless of ethnicity, ancestry or belief, and it is up to every good Christian to make them believe it. Force them to "see the light."

Make. Force. Pressure. I don't know how many Christians can stand it.

Now I have met many wonderful Christians who subscribe to the point of view that conversion should be done by example and not talk. And I have met others who believe religion should be a mostly private, family, church oriented belief. I have met happy, open-minded Christians who don't prescribe to the pressure side of the religion. They are no accident. They had good, happy, open-minded Christian parents for the most part. Some choose to drop the shackles of pressure that comes with forcing conversion on those who don't want it. The hardest part with the later is to not drop out of the religion altogether because they failed the religion.

For many Christian sects, conversion is part of earning their way into heaven. THAT is a LOT of pressure! Belief is not enough. Good deeds aren't enough. Living a good life is not enough. Nope, they have to convert/save others. For every person they try to convert and don't, is a failure. So much pressure! So much happiness dependent upon the weak will of others. Yeah, it is one of the issues I have with Christianity.

The reason it is an issue for me is because Christianity is a religion not in any way endangered. In the popularity contest that is religion on this world, right now Christianity is first place. And maybe that is why all the pressure. They didn't work hard to get to where they are for no reason. I mean look at where they came from. I suppose it makes marketing sense to keep the pressure on. Snooze you lose. And they do have a couple of religions breathing down their necks, so to speak. Islam and Judaism aren't slackers. Buddhism may be laid back in comparison, but its no young pup to be ignored. Not that Christians ignore other religions. No. They don't ignore. They assimilate.

See I'm Native American so my religious beliefs are those of my ancestors. We don't convert. We do adopt on occasion, but we don't convert. It is not even in our lexicon. But Native American religions have been assimilated into Christian sects whether they wanted to be or not. Missionaries come in, find some similarities between the natives' beliefs and Christianity, no matter how obscure, claim Jesus already came to the new world and "saved" the natives, or natives are one of the lost tribes of Israel, and, bam, see, you've been Christians all this time and just didn't know it! It is wildly patronizing and condescending, but there it is.

With all the pressure to convert, is it any surprise Christians sometimes cheat? Like taking over Pagan rituals, ceremonies and celebrations as their own. Then denying the Pagan version ever existed. Kinda like when a big city annexes a smaller one. The smaller city goes on for a while as its own self, but, eventually, largely, it gets sucked into the larger city in thought as well as deed.

It is funny to me how some New Age Christians point at Catholicism and say it is not a Christian religion/church. Um, really? If you don't count the Coptics (which many don't), Catholicism is the oldest Christian organized church on the planet. The bible, sins, saints, missionaries, churches, Christmas, CONVERSION, etc. all exist because of Catholicism.

Let me point out something, however, that existed before Christians and churches: marriage. Yeah, not a Christian construct. The family, in all its different varieties, also existed before Christianity. And, believe it or not, morals did, too.

Part of me feels sorry for Christians who NEED to convert/save others. As explained above, that is a lot of pressure to live with. But, being the focus of most Christians attempts at conversion, I also hate them. Yes, I know it is a strong word, but I've been the subject of conversion for a very long time. I've suffered through the condescension, ridicule, judgement, and PRESSURE of being the target of good Christians. And, as explained above, I will always be a target because I have no intention of ever converting, and, in my and my children's lifetimes, there will always be a majority of good Christians who HAVE to convert/save others.

One great thing I never take for granted is that I and my family live in the United States. Probably the first country to ever make Freedom of Religion a part of its government. Or, er, religion as NOT a part of its government. :) I think about that first part of the first amendment every day. I do not take it for granted. The sudden insistence of incorporating Christianity into government lately scares the hell out of me. No lie. If that were to come to pass, what would happen to my family? Oh, the pressure!

Well, until that comes to pass, we chose to believe and worship as we wish. And our family, in the privacy of our home, will continue to be naked, happy, playful, joyful, content people for as long as we are allowed to be so.

May it always be so.