Culture Warriors category archive

By Katie Heim. Follow the link for the backstory:

If my vagina was a gun, you would stand for its rights,
You would ride on buses and fight all the fights.
If my vagina was a gun, you would treat it with care,
You wouldn’t spill all its secrets because, well, why go there.
If my vagina was a gun, you’d say what it holds is private
From cold dead hands we could pry, you surely would riot.
If my vagina was a gun, its rights would all be protected,
no matter the body count or the children affected.
If my vagina was a gun, I could bypass security,
concealed carry laws would ensure I’d have impunity.
If my vagina was a gun, I wouldn’t have to beg you,
I could hunt this great land and do all the things men do.
But my vagina is not a gun, it is a mightier thing,
With a voice that rings true making lawmakers’ ears ring.
Vaginas are not delicate, they are muscular and magic,
So stop messing with mine, with legislation that’s tragic.
My vagina’s here to demand from the source,
Listen to the voices of thousands or feel their full force.

Read more »

How to deal with Republicans: An illustrated guide for women.

Big government, Republican style.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Via C&L.

Republicans continue to stick it up to women.

Gov. Scott Walker quietly signed a contentious Republican bill Friday that would require women seeking abortions to undergo an ultrasound and ban doctors who lack admitting privileges at nearby hospitals from performing the procedures.

I have long thought–and I have actually mentioned in these electrons–that I think more attention should be paid to the perviness of the Republican fascination with lady parts, mandatory examinations, ultrasounds, and the like.

I think Chauncey Devega has put his finger on it: It’s a manifestation of a fascination with “gyno-porn.” (Yes, there is such a thing. It’s the same old stuff, but set in doctors’ offices with medical equipment for props.)

Follow the link for more.

The ability of some to take offense and perceive non-existent malice can astound.

A California judge has bounced a case by a few parents claiming that yoga, offered in some San Diego schools as an alternative to traditional phys. ed., is inherently religious.

Meyer sided instead in the Monday ruling with administrators from the Encinitas Union School District who argued the practice while often religious is taught in a secular way to promote strength, flexibility and balance.

The judge said parents who objected relied on personal opinions, some culled from Internet searches.

“It’s almost like a trial by Wikipedia, which isn’t what this court does,” said Meyer, who took nearly two hours to explain a decision that explored yoga’s Indian roots and philosophy.

The lawyer for the parents, knowing prospects for long-term employment when he sees them, is promising to appeal.

Full Disclosure:

I know persons who practice yoga as a form of exercise. Not one of them has become Hindu.

There is only one possible response to someone who thinks that the “downward dog” is ipso facto proselytizing its practitioners for (shiver) “Eastern Religions”:

Oh, ye of little faith!

Republicans in North Carolina are moving to use teachers to teach anti-abortion lies in school, and other news.

The relevant part starts at the 3:41 mark.

What’s with the Republicans’ pervy fascination with lady parts?

The Rude One shares his take on the Paula Deen situation.

It’s not what you’d expect (warning: rudeness).

Like Chauncey Devega, he is able to look beyond an instance of a specific racist slur and see larger issues.

Connie Schultz:

Meanwhile, down here on earth, every time I hear someone talk about how God hates homosexuality — that whole “love the sinner, hate the sin” malarkey — I think of my late mother, whose faith survived countless trials in her 62 years.

“Being a Christian means fixing yourself and helping others,” she used to say, “not the other way around.” That’s a lifetime of work summed up right there.

Sally Kalson comments on the Republican Party’s pervy preoccupation with lady parts. A nugget:

Unfortunately, religious conservatives have been allowed to assume a disproportionate influence over women’s health care, intruding on private decisions where they have no business and punishing women who don’t conform to their narrow, parochial views.

These Republican men, and they are mostly men, have spearheaded all manner of intrusions into women’s wombs, passing restrictions on the state level that gag doctors, shut down clinics, obstruct access to health care, harass those seeking legal abortions and even block coverage for contraceptives, which are used by almost every woman in the country at some point.

Read the whole thing.

More stuff you can’t make up.

I really don’t know what to make of this, other than it’s really creepy.

The townsfolk seem to be circling the wagons, but they are circling them in the wrong direction.

Anal rape with foreign objects of a teammate seems to me to go beyond simple hazing or schoolyard bullying.

A Christian school in Georgia is using the Bible to back up their decision that an 12-year-old girl should no longer be able to play football because the boys on the team could have “impure thoughts.”

Maddy Blythe had at least four sacks playing for Strong Rock Christian School’s team last year, but just this week, the school’s CEO told her that she would no longer be able to play.

I suspect that the boys are going to have all the impure thoughts they want, whether or not this little girl is playing football with them.

But, frankly, the more I see, the more I am convinced that the persons with the mostest impurest thoughts of all are those persons who loudly proclaim how Christian they are.

What was old is new again.

Connie Schultz remembers:

During this week’s library talk, a woman in the audience asked why Republicans continue to spew nonsense about abortion. “They don’t really believe this stuff, do they?” another woman said.

I responded by sharing a story from 1979, when I was editor of my college newspaper, the Daily Kent Stater. Shortly before the fall semester began, we found out that an administrator had derailed plans to distribute a brochure about birth control methods during freshman orientation.

We decided on several front pages to the topic. . . .

Thirty-four years later, I still recall one particular father’s call. “You listen here, young lady,” he shouted into the phone. “I will never let my daughter stick an IUD up her rectum.”

“Good for you,” I said, “’cause that’s not where it goes.”

In 1979, that father sounded like an uninformed loon.

Today, he could be a Republican member of Congress.

Elsewhere, Chauncey Devega rominates on the topic. Follow the link to read the rest; you’ll be glad you did:

Paula Deen’s fantasy of black and brown compliance, surrender, and subordination has connections to some of the country’s most ugly moments since the election of Barack Obama.

Birtherism, and Republican Joe Wilson’s unprecedented heckling of President Barack Obama during his State of the Union Address in 2009 is a parallel to Paula Deen’s fantasy.

Conspiranoid fantasies of Secession and a second Civil War are also part of this national derangement on the part of the White Right and Tea Party GOP. The murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, and how Republicans have rallied to Zimmerman’s defense, is a reflection of a foundational assumption that black people must always be subservient, and surrender to White authority–as well as those overly identified and enamored with it–in any circumstance.

Projecting forward, at the end of her saga Paula Deen will be forced to publicly apologize for her racism. In that moment, and keeping with script, she will also channel some tears in order to get back into the good graces of her fans.

Image via Contradict Me.

Mark Frauenfelder reports:

Here’s what happened, as my daughter described it in text messages to us: she was at the station where the TSA checks IDs. She said the officer was “glaring” at her and mumbling. She said, “Excuse me?” and he said, “You’re only 15, COVER YOURSELF!” in a hostile tone. She said she was shaken up by his abusive manner.

Frauenfelder says that he is pursuing this incident with TSA management.

There’s a picture at the link. I can be as much a dirty old man as the next guy, but I can’t see anything improper about the young lady’s outfit.

I have quoted my Freshman roommate before and it’s still true:

Give some people a flat hat and they think they rule the world.

Also, too.

Via AmericaBlog.

Republicans getting skeevier and skeevier.