The New York Times is happy to report that, even though most women in the country are now single, educated women are doing better than our less fortunate, or focused, or just plain academic counterparts.
College educated women do marry, but just two years later than everyone else. Men, no longer seem inclined to "marry down," as in the past. And for their part, no education gap exists in singles, they all fear commitment and divorce.
And why do women marry later now? "While marriage used to be something you did before launching a life or career, now it is seen as something you do after you’re financially stable — when you can buy a house, say. The same is true for all classes. But the less educated may not get there."
In the end, they claim, it all comes down to money, "What’s becoming more powerful is the idea that economic resources are conducive to stable marriages. Women who have more money or the potential for more money are married to men who have more stable income.” So very strange.
This article falls into the catagory of things I just don't know what to do with. It claims that the more oestrogen you (being female) had in your body during puberty, the prettier and healthier you will look as a woman. They did a study of 59 women and said there was a "very strong coorelation" with the 30 guys and gals who judged beauty.
But I just can't believe it! That one hormone would govern such a complicated affair as beauty. It's social! And political! And has a lot to do with diet! Just one hormone is far too simplistic. And scarey! What happens when New York socialites get their hads on this stuff for their pre teen daughters? I guess it was bound to happen....
This is a really interesting article from Salon on why and why not young women are chosing to abandon the label "feminist." I personally fell like they missed a few issues.
They lament, “How do you possibly think you're going to talk about gender equality if there's no acknowledgment of gender?"
But I think the real issue here is the “gender equality” part.
I have lived a beautiful life. Truly privileged and so thankful. But at the same time, I’ve dealt with many of the trials of my gender. Nothing I’m willing to discuss in blog form, but suffice to say, I have suffered at the limp dick of patriarchy.
HOW THE FUCK EVER, I do not feel like a second-class citizen.
When I was an undergrad Gender Studies major, I adhered to the term “feminist” as the badge of a warrior. It never bothered me that “feminist” was a term to describe the plight of the white middle class woman, because that was who I was. It felt silly to be all down with this non-white, lower class movement when I didn’t really live in that world. It was not until my senior year that I took a “masculinity in America” class and my professor brought up the point that, when you stop giving men (or the system) all this power of oppression, a hell of a lot of it disappears. Over the years since then, I’ve come to see the social and institution oppression of women as a problem oppressing men just as much.
Certain things, like that women get paid less, and corporate structures don’t account for child rearing, do need to be changed. But we need to see issues like those, even to some extent abortion, as issues that effect society as a whole. We need to understand that when we level the playing field, everyone progresses. The only realm where I really feel like we need to band together as women is domestic violence and sexual violence. Those are more often than not, women’s issues, although many many boys suffer from sexual abuse as well.
But I personally feel like the term “feminist” implies that women ARE the weaker sex. That we ARE underprivileged. And I just don’t see that. I can see how it was true decades ago, but not really any longer.
Again, my perspective is limited. And I’m currently living in the matriarchy of Victoria, BC. But I see a lot of the action taken by the feminists here as borderline fascist and unnecessary. There’s a rule on campus that construction workers can only look at a girl for 7 seconds. How lame is that? How weak are we that we can’t handle some dude looking at us? And we can’t tell him to piss off? I take offence.
The hard core feminist I see around me seem to be “living in the wound,” using this guilt on the part of sympathizers to further agendas long since outdated. Many young college kids link up to feminism because it feels really good to be part of an impassioned movement. To be oppressed. Especially when you are so privileged. But I know a lot of men, gay AND straight, who have suffered under patriarchy as well, and I’m no longer willing to say my, and all women’s, plights are greater.
Of course, this is all gonna change right quick if they try to fuck with Roe v. Wade. At that point, I want to see all my sisters and brothers on capital hill armed and ready.
Full article in "more"
The F word
"Feminism" turns off a lot of younger women. Is it time to retire the word -- or reclaim it?
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By Rebecca Traister
July 5, 2005 | A couple of years ago I interviewed a big-eyed activist-actress whose work and politics I have always admired. I asked her a question related to feminism. Her response? That she didn't like the word "feminist" and preferred "humanist."
What a crock, I thought, with the same disdain I once felt for a high-school classmate who memorably piped up that though she was "totally not a feminist," she wondered if Mr. Rochester's willingness to treat Jane Eyre badly and imprison Bertha in an attic might indicate a low-level misogyny. It was a fair observation, I thought at the time. Why did she have to preface it with personal disavowal? Did she think that the expression of such a sentiment brought her close enough to a militant conception of feminism that her lissome 10th-grade body might dramatically sprout armpit hair?
It's no great news that "feminism" -- the word and, by extension, the movement -- has an image problem. Women of all ages and colors have, at turns, bristled at the term, embraced it, lauded it and disdained it, practically since it was coined. However, after years of soldiering on under the burden of a heavily loaded word, a new crop of progressive and politically active women are finally addressing the problem. Some are looking to reinvigorate "feminist" by laying claim to the word -- a new magazine and a recent book are both cheekily titled "The F Word" -- while others are contemplating new words and phrases to employ in the fight for women's equality. After years of quiet debate, women are tackling their own labels with the energy of a movement anxious to make itself fresh again.
The debate acquired a new urgency with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's announcement on July 1 that she is retiring from the court. If Bush, as expected, nominates a judge opposed to Roe. v. Wade, women's issues will move to the center of the national stage.
It's almost remarkable that "feminism" has survived as long as it has, stigmatized as it's been by a sneering right, and criticized by groups on the left for its early lack of interest in the concerns of poor and minority women. Now, as second-wave feminists look to the future and see a generation of women with a very different set of battles than their own, the question becomes: What do we do about "feminism"? Does it have anything to do with younger female activism anymore, or is it simply an Achilles' heel? Do we replace it, phase it out? Or do we embrace it with renewed vigor and a spruced-up, all-inclusive definition?
When asked to consider what other terms besides "feminist" might be useful descriptors of the movement she helps to lead, National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy laughed and said, "Nothing has really swept anyone off their feet, but 'egalitarian' is one that always comes up. There's 'humanist.' Sometimes 'womanist.'"
Gandy isn't suggesting that anyone rub the word "feminism" off their bumper stickers or refrigerator magnets. But she did acknowledge that she has had informal conversations -- both with people who work at NOW and with those she meets on the road -- about agitation from some within the movement who believe it's time to retire "feminism's" number.
"There's nothing inherently wrong with the word," said Gandy, invoking Dame Rebecca West's famous assertion, "I ... have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."
But, she said, we cannot pretend that "feminism" has escaped the fate of "liberalism" before it. "This is what the right-wing has done to our language," she said. "'Liberal' is a proud term. But at a certain point, it became very difficult for people to call themselves liberal. If you asked them about issues they would say, 'I'm not liberal, I'm progressive.' Excuse me, you are a liberal! But the right made that a bad word. They've done the same thing with 'feminism.'"
Unsurprisingly, Gandy has had countless encounters with women and men who open up a conversation by saying, "I'm not a feminist," and then go on to espouse feminist ideals. "It's like, 'Do you have a belief in the political and social equality of women?' Yeah? Then you're a feminist," she said.
Language shifts have often transformed the struggle for women's equality. Gandy recalled the way that the term "suffragists" became the diminutive, mockingly feminine "suffragettes," as though those who devoted their lives to secure the vote for women were actually a backup group for Ray Charles. Then there was the time in 1993 when the National Abortion Rights Action League changed its name to "abortion"-lite NARAL Pro-Choice America. But language has strengthened the movement as well. Gandy said that when she started at NOW in 1973, "We didn't even have a word for sexual harassment. We knew how women were treated at work and on the street, but we didn't have language for it. Domestic violence? You didn't even whisper words for that in public. Now we have women's studies. Now we have a word for everything," said Gandy.
But she acknowledged, "I think that there's a new generation that's looking for a word or a term they can call their own. At some level they associate 'feminism' with their mothers. Not in a bad way, but just in a way that's not about them."
It might seem like a simple suggestion. But the hyper-sensitivity surrounding the "feminism" discussion makes it an ideological fire-starter. Weeks after my interview with Gandy, I called Feminist Majority leader Eleanor Smeal about this story. When I asked her to respond to some of the comments Gandy had made, I was apparently unclear, somehow leaving Smeal with the impression that I was reporting that Gandy wanted NOW to abandon the word "feminism." This was certainly not what I was reporting. But Smeal alerted Gandy to the possibility that my story might suggest that Gandy was rejecting the word just days before her reelection as NOW president. A very agitated Gandy called me to clarify that her comments were not reflective of any formal discussions within her organization. I assured her that I only planned to report what she had told me: that she had had discussions about the word with colleagues at NOW. She responded: "I hear people talk about it. But they don't talk about it that often. To say that 'there have been discussions within NOW' would convey a really inaccurate thing." Gandy emphasized that she can't imagine ever backing away from "feminism."
But some people didn't think the notion of ditching the word was such a crazy idea at all. "I think it's very smart," said Erica Jong, whose use of explicit language in "Fear of Flying' changed the nature of American women's fiction in 1973. "The problem hasn't gone away. Women are still second-class citizens; the problem of choice is still with us -- in fact it's gotten worse. So if we need to change the name to get people involved, we should."
But Jong was stumped as to what a replacement could be, and noted that "words always get degraded when associated with something progressive or something female. This is the way right-wingers capture the language, so we need to be smart." She noted the right wing's use of the term "pro-life" in the abortion debate. "If we had called ourselves pro-life -- as in we don't want women to die in illegal abortions -- we would have won on that one, but they got there first."
Jong thought that dusting off our lexicon was a natural generational progression. "It's all so cyclical," she said. "Mothers push forward, daughters pull back," she said. "We have been in a period of backlash and now we're ready to push forward again."
It's true that there is resistance to the feminist label from some young people. Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, a Seattle-area writer and author of "The F Word: Feminism in Jeopardy -- Women, Politics, and the Future," described a poll she'd done for her book. Noting that the 300 respondents were self-selected college-educated women between the ages of 18 and 34, Rowe-Finkbeiner said, "Sixty-eight percent of young women didn't want to be confined by labels, and the word 'feminism' chafed the worst."
But other national polls -- including a 1984 Wall Street Journal/Gallup poll, a 1986 Newsweek/Gallup poll, and a 2003 Ms. Magazine poll -- have shown that the younger the woman, the more willing she is to identify herself as a feminist. And, sure enough, many of the young women contacted for this piece were more vociferous in their defense of the word than their elders.
Melody Berger, a 25-year-old college student in Philadelphia, launched the new feminist magazine the F-Word in late May. She said she chose the name for her publication "because I was tired of tiptoeing around the word, of saying, 'Don't worry about us, we're not feminists, we're totally acceptable.'" Instead, Berger has proclaimed herself a full-blown "Howling Harpy."
Berger is not alone in her affection for the word. "If I hear one more person say, 'I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist,' I'm going to kill them," said 26-year-old Jessica Valenti, founder of Feministing.com. "How do you possibly think you're going to talk about gender equality if there's no acknowledgment of gender?"
When I told Valenti that there was even casual discussion about the future of the word, she snorted, frustrated with what she perceives as generational tension between second-wave feminists and her activist peers -- many of whom don't align themselves with feminist organizations. "When they say they're interested in pulling in young women, I understand where the sentiment is coming from because they feel like young women don't like the word, but come on. How much are we willing to give up?"
Valenti acknowledged that many young women are "afraid of the word." "Part of me gets so angry at younger women who are nervous about feminism because they're afraid that boys won't like them," said Valenti. One of the reasons she started Feministing is because she wanted to meet young women and tell them, "I'm a feminist. And despite what you may think, feminism is pretty fucking cool." In addition, Valenti added, "Part of me wants to say, 'Yeah, someone's going to call you a lesbian. Someone's going to say you're a fat, ugly dyke.' Suck it up."
Valenti did have a couple of non-linguistic suggestions about how to bring older and younger activists together, starting with how the older generation treats its daughters. She described meetings for young feminists where the young women talk "while famous feminists are sitting there taking notes and watching you like you're some National Geographic animals." She said that the very suggestion that "feminism" could be disposable in any way makes her feel like saying, "Hey! This is your word! You started this and I took it on. I have been working hard for you. And now you're going to just give up on it?"
Erin Matson, the 25-year-old NOW chapter president in Minnesota and a member of the Young Feminist Task Force, said, "I wear the feminist label with pride and I love it. It's hard for me to imagine leaving it behind or discarding it." But Matson did recently write an article questioning the notion that feminism is a word that can describe a single, cohesive group, "all of us with pierced lips and hairy legs and the same concerns. That's simply not true," she said. Instead of the plaintive 10th-grade cry, "I'm not a feminist, but..." Matson's piece suggested that the new disclaimer is "I am a feminist, but..."
"Crystal Plati, 32-year-old executive director of Choice USA, said that at her organization, “We use [the word feminism] but we don't belabor it. We are also open to other words.”
She continued, "More than looking at just one word, for me it's about doing some listening for what kinds of language young women are using to define their empowerment for themselves." She also pointed out that it's not just young women who are alienated by the term. "No matter what choice we make about language," said Plati, "we need to be building toward an inclusive movement, in particular a movement that has women of color and young women in leadership. Changing the word is not enough. We need to address why it's alienating."
It's an assertion familiar to women in the movement, who for years have been reminded that second-wave feminism of the 1970s did not address the concerns of women of color and women from lower economic strata.
It's a concern that activist and author Rebecca Walker -- whose mother, Alice Walker, coined the term "womanist" as an inclusive alternative to "feminist" -- said she's been anxious about for a long time. In an e-mail, she referred me to an interview she gave to Satya magazine in January. In the interview, Walker said that in 1992, when she co-founded Third Wave, an organization for young women activists, she worried that "the word feminist had become too divisive and culturally loaded." Walker also told Satya, "It seemed clear to me that the term had more of a repellent effect than a magnetizing one within my generation, and I did not feel the need to prove my allegiance and gratitude to the women that came before me by holding on to something that had meant so very much to them, but did not mean that much to me."
In the interview, Walker continued, "The left is getting our collective ass kicked because of just this kind of romantic, naïve attachment to movement narratives and aesthetics of 20 and 30 years ago." She also pointed out that "many women of color do not feel an affinity with the term because, among other things, we know firsthand that people who call themselves feminists are not always our friends," she said. "They have not de facto done their work around race ... though [they] would become appalled if we suggested that some 'feminists' were also racist."
The racial wound remains fresh for many women who spend their lives thinking about and working on issues of female empowerment. When Berger launched her F-Word site in May, she said she was surprised that some of the anti-"feminist" mail she got was from other women activists. Berger explained, "The word 'feminist' alienated a lot of political allies I wanted to be tied to," including women of color "who told me that traditionally this word is off-putting because of the predominantly white, middle-class vibe it had." Others, she said, told her, "I hope you don't make the same kinds of mistakes your foremothers did."
The result, said Berger, is that a month after her launch, "the word 'feminism' is on the site, but it's not the tag line anymore. I've toned it down a little bit."
When I asked her what words could possibly replace the pesky descriptor of the movement, Berger was stumped. "I'm not such a fan of the word 'humanist,'" she said in an e-mail. "I think it's one of those 'well, duh ... who ISN'T pro-human??' kind of concepts." As for "womanist," Berger wrote, "I like that it may be more appealing to women of color ... However, I don't think feminism is just about 'women' anymore." It's these qualms, Berger said, that keep her "pretty attached to the f-word." But she conceded, "Maybe it isn't worth fighting to reclaim a word. There are much bigger things we need to be fighting for."
But what if we don't need to fight to reclaim it? What if we've already begun to make it new?
"Feminism is just what we determine it is," said Mandy Van Deven, 25, founder of Altar magazine, a political magazine for young women, and the director of Community Organizing for Girls for Gender Equity in Brooklyn, N.Y. "So if we wear makeup and call ourselves feminists then we are feminists. I see it as just a part of the evolution of political movements and the evolution of language and how people are going to identify themselves as individuals and in the scope of larger political context."
Van Deven said she thinks that there are a lot of young women out there who -- while they may not like the word or embrace the entire exclusionary history of the movement, "are really anxious to grab the word and claim it and say, 'No, I don't care, I am going to make this word work for me.'"
Rowe-Finkbeiner, author of the book "The F Word," said that Van Deven's attitude is typical of broader political and linguistic patterns. "In the history of social movements, many of the people who are most impacted by negative connotations of a word are the ones who take that word back," she said. Rowe-Finkbeiner pointed out that women have already done this with "bitch" -- as in popular "stitch and bitch" knitting circles and "bitch-n-swap" clothing swaps. It's a phenomenon similar to a gay re-appropriation of "queer," or African-American usage of "nigger."
Third Wave co-founder Amy Richards said she isn't too worried about the women's movement agreeing on one word. In her work on campuses, she said the number of projects she sees young women taking on -- from prison reform to AIDS funding in Africa to living-wage fights for university staff -- is enough to satisfy her that there is tremendous life in the movement, even if no one knows what to call it. "The thing that's different from 30 years ago is that young women are moving beyond organizing around reproductive issues and violence against women. It's not that those issues aren't relevant to them, but I think they're just tired of them."
Gandy said that membership in her organization is bigger than ever. "Eighty percent of people in the United States, based on what they think now about pay equity and domestic violence, would have been considered total feminists had they felt that way 30 years ago. And the women's rights movement is living in our daughters every single day. Whether or not they consider themselves feminists."
Besides, said Richards, "Whatever we'd change 'feminism' to would become a bad word too."
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About the writer
Rebecca Traister is a staff writer for Salon Life.
This woman, Dr. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, has decided that, because the clitoris is made up of the same tissue as the penis in males, and because all women don't have G-spot based orgasms every single time they have sex, that the female orgasm is a left over remnant of male-based evolutionary biology and serves absolutely no evolutionary purpose, akin to the male nipple. (the full article is in "more")
I feel bad for her.
Let's figure out why she's wrong.
* Women who have more orgasms want to have sex more and would have more kids. Plane and simple.
* Just because the cervix has contractions during the day does not mean that those a woman has after an orgasm and during sex could not serve to pump sperm towards the egg and, as I've heard, alter the Ph of the acidic vagina, which can be toxic to sperm.
* I don't get what she means by saying the clitoris was "left over" from male evolution. Is she assuming males evolved, hung out for a while, and then females evolved from them, out of a rib perhaps? No. I've heard also that all fetuses are first female, and then morph into males if hormones/chromosomes dictate it.
* This is a perfect example of why evolutionary biologists are so absurd. You simply CANNOT take such a complex thing as the female orgasm, and its absense in the lives of many unfortunate women, and look at it from a physical and evolutionary aspect alone. You must consider the social context. MAYBE there is a lot of bad sex out there? Huh? Dr. Lloyd? Know anything about that? Maybe there are a lot of women who have been trained by our culture to think of their sexuality as scary and sort of bad and simply do not have the comfort levels necessary to have an orgasm.
* If anything female orgams have *driven* a massive amount of evolution. As they alluded to in the article, it does seem that it is far easier to orgams from partners one has a relative level of comfort around. If we're going to look at sociobiological evolution, then we must assume that emotions are also the cause and result of a lot of evolution as well. And emotions play a huge role in whether or not that orgasm occures. Which can tell a women a lot (consciousoly or subconsciously) about compatability and reliability of a partner.
* Women also relased tons of endorphens when they orgasm. Some scientists have even gone so far as to speculate that they are one of the driving hormonal factors behind love.
* As women get older, they have more and more orgasms. This could be behind a drive to have sex as the ideal repruduction time dims.
* Think of your own and post it in the comment section!
May 17, 2005
A Critic Takes On the Logic of Female Orgasm
By DINITIA SMITH
Evolutionary scientists have never had difficulty explaining the male orgasm, closely tied as it is to reproduction.
But the Darwinian logic behind the female orgasm has remained elusive. Women can have sexual intercourse and even become pregnant - doing their part for the perpetuation of the species - without experiencing orgasm. So what is its evolutionary purpose?
Over the last four decades, scientists have come up with a variety of theories, arguing, for example, that orgasm encourages women to have sex and, therefore, reproduce or that it leads women to favor stronger and healthier men, maximizing their offspring's chances of survival.
But in a new book, Dr. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, a philosopher of science and professor of biology at Indiana University, takes on 20 leading theories and finds them wanting. The female orgasm, she argues in the book, "The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution," has no evolutionary function at all.
Rather, Dr. Lloyd says the most convincing theory is one put forward in 1979 by Dr. Donald Symons, an anthropologist.
That theory holds that female orgasms are simply artifacts - a byproduct of the parallel development of male and female embryos in the first eight or nine weeks of life.
In that early period, the nerve and tissue pathways are laid down for various reflexes, including the orgasm, Dr. Lloyd said. As development progresses, male hormones saturate the embryo, and sexuality is defined.
In boys, the penis develops, along with the potential to have orgasms and ejaculate, while "females get the nerve pathways for orgasm by initially having the same body plan."
Nipples in men are similarly vestigial, Dr. Lloyd pointed out.
While nipples in woman serve a purpose, male nipples appear to be simply left over from the initial stage of embryonic development.
The female orgasm, she said, "is for fun."
Dr. Lloyd said scientists had insisted on finding an evolutionary function for female orgasm in humans either because they were invested in believing that women's sexuality must exactly parallel that of men or because they were convinced that all traits had to be "adaptations," that is, serve an evolutionary function.
Theories of female orgasm are significant, she added, because "men's expectations about women's normal sexuality, about how women should perform, are built around these notions."
"And men are the ones who reflect back immediately to the woman whether or not she is adequate sexually," Dr. Lloyd continued.
Central to her thesis is the fact that women do not routinely have orgasms during sexual intercourse.
She analyzed 32 studies, conducted over 74 years, of the frequency of female orgasm during intercourse.
When intercourse was "unassisted," that is not accompanied by stimulation of the clitoris, just a quarter of the women studied experienced orgasms often or very often during intercourse, she found.
Five to 10 percent never had orgasms. Yet many of the women became pregnant.
Dr. Lloyd's figures are lower than those of Dr. Alfred A. Kinsey, who in his 1953 book "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" found that 39 to 47 percent of women reported that they always, or almost always, had orgasm during intercourse.
But Kinsey, Dr. Lloyd said, included orgasms assisted by clitoral stimulation.
Dr. Lloyd said there was no doubt in her mind that the clitoris was an evolutionary adaptation, selected to create excitement, leading to sexual intercourse and then reproduction.
But, "without a link to fertility or reproduction," Dr. Lloyd said, "orgasm cannot be an adaptation."
Not everyone agrees. For example, Dr. John Alcock, a professor of biology at Arizona State University, criticized an earlier version of Dr. Lloyd's thesis, discussed in in a 1987 article by Stephen Jay Gould in the magazine Natural History.
In a phone interview, Dr. Alcock said that he had not read her new book, but that he still maintained the hypothesis that the fact that "orgasm doesn't occur every time a woman has intercourse is not evidence that it's not adaptive."
"I'm flabbergasted by the notion that orgasm has to happen every time to be adaptive," he added.
Dr. Alcock theorized that a woman might use orgasm "as an unconscious way to evaluate the quality of the male," his genetic fitness and, thus, how suitable he would be as a father for her offspring.
"Under those circumstances, you wouldn't expect her to have it every time," Dr. Alcock said.
Among the theories that Dr. Lloyd addresses in her book is one proposed in 1993, by Dr. R. Robin Baker and Dr. Mark A. Bellis, at Manchester University in England. In two papers published in the journal Animal Behaviour, they argued that female orgasm was a way of manipulating the retention of sperm by creating suction in the uterus. When a woman has an orgasm from one minute before the man ejaculates to 45 minutes after, she retains more sperm, they said.
Furthermore, they asserted, when a woman has intercourse with a man other than her regular sexual partner, she is more likely to have an orgasm in that prime time span and thus retain more sperm, presumably making conception more likely. They postulated that women seek other partners in an effort to obtain better genes for their offspring.
Dr. Lloyd said the Baker-Bellis argument was "fatally flawed because their sample size is too small."
"In one table," she said, "73 percent of the data is based on the experience of one person."
In an e-mail message recently, Dr. Baker wrote that his and Dr. Bellis's manuscript had "received intense peer review appraisal" before publication. Statisticians were among the reviewers, he said, and they noted that some sample sizes were small, "but considered that none of these were fatal to our paper."
Dr. Lloyd said that studies called into question the logic of such theories. Research by Dr. Ludwig Wildt and his colleagues at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany in 1998, for example, found that in a healthy woman the uterus undergoes peristaltic contractions throughout the day in the absence of sexual intercourse or orgasm. This casts doubt, Dr. Lloyd argues, on the idea that the contractions of orgasm somehow affect sperm retention.
Another hypothesis, proposed in 1995 by Dr. Randy Thornhill, a professor of biology at the University of New Mexico and two colleagues, held that women were more likely to have orgasms during intercourse with men with symmetrical physical features. On the basis of earlier studies of physical attraction, Dr. Thornhill argued that symmetry might be an indicator of genetic fitness.
Dr. Lloyd, however, said those conclusions were not viable because "they only cover a minority of women, 45 percent, who say they sometimes do, and sometimes don't, have orgasm during intercourse."
"It excludes women on either end of the spectrum," she said. "The 25 percent who say they almost always have orgasm in intercourse and the 30 percent who say they rarely or never do. And that last 30 percent includes the 10 percent who say they never have orgasm under any circumstances."
In a phone interview, Dr. Thornhill said that he had not read Dr. Lloyd's book but the fact that not all women have orgasms during intercourse supports his theory.
"There will be patterns in orgasm with preferred and not preferred men," he said.
Dr. Lloyd also criticized work by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, who studies primate behavior and female reproductive strategies.
Scientists have documented that orgasm occurs in some female primates; for other mammals, whether orgasm occurs remains an open question.
In the 1981 book "The Woman That Never Evolved" and in her other work, Dr. Hrdy argues that orgasm evolved in nonhuman primates as a way for the female to protect her offspring from the depredation of males.
She points out that langur monkeys have a high infant mortality rate, with 30 percent of deaths a result of babies' being killed by males who are not the fathers. Male langurs, she says, will not kill the babies of females they have mated with.
In macaques and chimpanzees, she said, females are conditioned by the pleasurable sensations of clitoral stimulation to keep copulating with multiple partners until they have an orgasm. Thus, males do not know which infants are theirs and which are not and do not attack them.
Dr. Hrdy also argues against the idea that female orgasm is an artifact of the early parallel development of male and female embryos.
"I'm convinced," she said, "that the selection of the clitoris is quite separate from that of the penis in males."
In critiquing Dr. Hrdy's view, Dr. Lloyd disputes the idea that longer periods of sexual intercourse lead to a higher incidence of orgasm, something that if it is true, may provide an evolutionary rationale for female orgasm.
But Dr. Hrdy said her work did not speak one way or another to the issue of female orgasm in humans. "My hypothesis is silent," she said.
One possibility, Dr. Hrdy said, is that orgasm in women may have been an adaptive trait in our prehuman ancestors.
"But we separated from our common primate ancestors about seven million years ago," she said.
"Perhaps the reason orgasm is so erratic is that it's phasing out," Dr. Hrdy said. "Our descendants on the starships may well wonder what all the fuss was about."
Western culture is suffused with images of women's sexuality, of women in the throes of orgasm during intercourse and seeming to reach heights of pleasure that are rare, if not impossible, for most women in everyday life.
"Accounts of our evolutionary past tell us how the various parts of our body should function," Dr. Lloyd said.
If women, she said, are told that it is "natural" to have orgasms every time they have intercourse and that orgasms will help make them pregnant, then they feel inadequate or inferior or abnormal when they do not achieve it.
"Getting the evolutionary story straight has potentially very large social and personal consequences for all women," Dr. Lloyd said. "And indirectly for men, as well."
Apparently the fashion world is in a tizzy because all of the women who can afford the cutour styles runway models model, can also afford to insert tons of plastic into their not-so-runway bussoms. And, as we all know, gay men run the fashion industry and don't really design boobie-oriented clothes that often.
"Brian Bolke, the owner of a boutique in Dallas called 4510 for its address on McKinney Avenue, said, "For women who love fashion, breast enlargements and designer dresses do not go together." He estimated more than half his customers have had cosmetic surgery. "
"Surgery for breast enlargement (including breast lifts) has grown by 257 percent since 1997, reaching 432,403 patients last year, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery"
That is, HALF A MILLION breasts are implanted each year. Or, I guess, a million actual breasts, half a million pairs. Amazing.
So great: ""I gave up my wardrobe to show off my breasts," said Tara Fierstatt, a national merchandiser for Buffalo Jeans in New York."
Article from NYT.
Mother's Day is not a hallmark Holliday. It's not even really that much about loving out mothers (although that's a great use of it.)
In 1870, Julia Ward Howe called for women to rise up and oppose War.
It's really really beautiful.
Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
Crazy article on the unrealistic expectations of love promoted in fairy tales. Which is interesting, if you think of stories and myths as ways of promoting and passing on social values and certain bahaviours through time.
"Young girls who enjoy classic romantic fairy tales like "Cinderella" and "Beauty and the Beast" are at greater risk of becoming victims of violent relationships in later life, a British researcher says.
A study of both parents of primary school children and women who have been involved in domestic abuse claims than those who grew up reading fairy tales are likely to be more submissive as adults.
"They believe if their love is strong enough they can change their partner's behaviour," Darker-Smith said. "Girls who have listened to such stories as children tend to become more submissive in their future relationships."
This article from the NYT reports on a study claiming men are attracted to women who are less powerful, smart, and gainfully employed. They keep falling for their secretaries and maids and such.
"The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise. "
The study likes to imagine it's all biological. They say it's because evolution has selected for men who like lesser females so that there's less of a risk of infidelity and they won't have to raise other men's children. Which is dubious at best. I seriously doubt we could find a correlation between powerful women and infidelity. Although it would be an interesting study.
I think a better sociobiological hypothesis would be male's subconscious desires to marry women who would raise offspring well rather than be their partner in crime. I consider this tragic but it seems to be a complete trend in my life that my smart male friends go out with hot dumb girls who don't make them think and might even suck in bed. I call this the "pet girl" scenario. And do the men care? no. Why? because they suck. And they also might be inclined that way biologically.
But that is only part of the picture. To deny there are social influences on a dynamic like this in a society like this would be absurd. American society was/is patriarchal, or at least there are impressions of it still floating around. And feminism was a huge ball buster for so many men. You could totally read this as a backlash. A retreat into cozier times and paradigms. You can see it on TV with all the fat ass dumb ass guys married to hot women who treat them like babies - the Homer scenario.
Also no one mentions that perhaps smarter women are choosing themselves not to marry. Maybe they consider their carreers before having kids. This seems like an obvious omition.
Although in reality, I totally understand it. I just don’t think a pet boy would entertain me for long enough to sustain a long term relationship. I guess it just means I have to date brilliant men....sigh....
Full article in "more"
January 13, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Men Just Want Mommy
By MAUREEN DOWD
ASHINGTON
A few years ago at a White House Correspondents' dinner, I met a very beautiful actress. Within moments, she blurted out: "I can't believe I'm 46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women."
I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took up with the young women whose job it was to tend to them and care for them in some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight attendants, researchers and fact-checkers.
Women in staff support are the new sirens because, as a guy I know put it, they look upon the men they work for as "the moon, the sun and the stars." It's all about orbiting, serving and salaaming their Sun Gods.
In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was the snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting. Moviemakers these days seem far more interested in the soothing aura of romances between unequals.
In James Brooks's "Spanglish," Adam Sandler, as a Los Angeles chef, falls for his hot Mexican maid. The maid, who cleans up after Mr. Sandler without being able to speak English, is presented as the ideal woman. The wife, played by Téa Leoni, is repellent: a jangly, yakking, overachieving, overexercised, unfaithful, shallow she-monster who has just lost her job with a commercial design firm. Picture Faye Dunaway in "Network" if she'd had to stay home, or Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" without the charm.
The same attraction of unequals animated Richard Curtis's "Love Actually," a 2003 holiday hit. The witty and sophisticated British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, falls for the chubby girl who wheels the tea and scones into his office. A businessman married to the substantial Emma Thompson falls for his sultry secretary. A writer falls for his maid, who speaks only Portuguese.
(I wonder if the trend in making maids who don't speak English heroines is related to the trend of guys who like to watch Kelly Ripa in the morning with the sound turned off?)
Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into selfish narcissists and objects of rejection, rather than affection.
As John Schwartz of The New York Times wrote recently, "Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame."
A new study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggests that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors.
As Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study, summed it up for reporters: "Powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less-accomplished women." Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them.
"The hypothesis," Dr. Brown said, "is that there are evolutionary pressures on males to take steps to minimize the risk of raising offspring that are not their own." Women, by contrast, did not show a marked difference in their attraction to men who might work above or below them. And men did not show a preference when it came to one-night stands.
A second study, which was by researchers at four British universities and reported last week, suggested that smart men with demanding jobs would rather have old-fashioned wives, like their mums, than equals. The study found that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to get married, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise.
So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? The more women achieve, the less desirable they are? Women want to be in a relationship with guys they can seriously talk to - unfortunately, a lot of those guys want to be in relationships with women they don't have to talk to.
I asked the actress and writer Carrie Fisher, on the East Coast to promote her novel "The Best Awful," who confirmed that women who challenge men are in trouble.
"I haven't dated in 12 million years," she said drily. "I gave up on dating powerful men because they wanted to date women in the service professions. So I decided to date guys in the service professions. But then I found out that kings want to be treated like kings, and consorts want to be treated like kings, too."
CVS now has "conscience" or "refusal" clauses for their pharmacists that allow health care providers to refuse to provide certain services or information against their own narrow belief system. Most often, pharmacists use refusal clauses to justify refusing to fill women's birth-control pill prescriptions. But a new federal version is working its way toward a House-Senate conference committee, and it would allow all health care entitities to refuse to even provide information about abortion to women who ask.
During the past legislative session, 13 states introduced or considered refusal clauses that would allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense certain prescriptions based on personal “moral” objections. The majority of those bills would permit a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription for simple contraception. South Dakota, Arkansas and Mississippi already have refusal clauses on the books. The South Dakota law goes so far as to specify that pharmacists may refuse to fill prescriptions for any medication they think will cause an abortion, regardless of the scientific facts.
This is CRAZY! It's all about the technologies available for you to be able to choose the gender of your baby. They weed out the X-chromosome sperm from the Y-chromosome sperm. Apparently in the West 77% of request have been for female babies.
They also talk about how in China, the ratio of males to females born is 121:100 for reasons I'm sure you are familiar with. But a new book predicts that this will have grave consequences for the future because it "will create a hoodlum army of 30 million single men that by 2020 will be a menace to world peace." They're effectively breeding an army.... I would not want to be a woman in China in 15 years... I wonder if they will resort to polygamy... or just mass rape... or tons of gayness? The book is from MIT press so you know it's legit.
This is the article specifically about the future of tilted sex ratios. It getting worse becuase of ultrasound and selective abortion. You don't even have to deal with messy infanticide anymore! It's messed up world, man.
Interesting quote: "Anthropological studies have found, for example, that female infanticide and son-worship sometimes emerge in warring nomadic communities that frequently lose many men in battle, or that are vulnerable to having their women and children kidnapped by a rival group. In such situations, the theory goes, a group can preserve its integrity by tightly controlling the number of women within it."
Sweet Jesus! Men and Women are DIFFERENT!
When it comes to sickness and death....
Recent discoveries suggest that genes, hormones and lifestyle may be behind many of the differences. For example:
_Lung cancer, not breast cancer, is the No. 1 cancer killer among women
_Heart attacks in women frequently don't involve chest pain and may involve more vague, flu-like symptoms.
_Women who don't smoke appear to be more susceptible to lung cancer than nonsmoking men. Women also tend to get lung cancer at younger ages than men, and they appear to metabolize cancer-causing substances differently than men.
_Women are less likely than men to get oral cancer.
_Women are more prone to autoimmune diseases, including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, in which disease-fighting mechanisms mistakenly attack the body's own tissues.
_Some AIDS-fighting medicines appear to metabolize more quickly in men than in women, who may require gender-specific doses.
_Women's symptoms for ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease - debilitating intestinal diseases that affect men and women - vary considerably each month, requiring frequent medication adjustments.
An interesting article on an interesting book about modern marriage and parenting problems. I heard this woman speak on the radio a while ago and she really fascinated me. I think she went too far in her anger but many of the things she said seemed like they needed to be recognized. She claimed that women don't want to have sex after having a baby for at least a year. Minimum. Which means men with children have to deal with A) no sex for a YEAR, or B) sex with a woman without desire and this can lead to so many complex emotional problems. She also said that the element of sexuality in breast feeding needs to be addrssed because women feel like perves all the time. I don't have a lot of experience breast feeding, but it seems to make sense...
This is terrifying. It's an article on how chemical pollutants are altering hormones so that embryos become females. This is actually a huge problem. My friend at school here is studying how estrogens in waste make insects and fish all female as well. The body only typically absorbs 10% of medications, and the rest gets flushed into the sewer system and out into the environment. People really need to start thinking about what they put in their toilets. These estrogens are also produced when you microwave plastic, and then they seep into your food. So only microwave glass, ok? The full article is in "more."
Where the boys aren't
Living with constant pollutants emanating from a dense concentration of chemical plants, a native band struggles to understand why women are giving birth to a disproportionate number of girls
By MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
Saturday, July 31, 2004 - Page A3
SARNIA -- Over the past five years, the Aamjiwnaang First Nation on the outskirts of Sarnia has had nearly two girls born for every boy, an unusual run of female births.
Last year, it was nine boys to 19 girls. The year before it was 10 boys to 21 girls. And the year before that, only six boys to 15 girls. In the band's registry, baby girls began dominating around 1993, but the trend to female births has become most pronounced in recent years.
After a decade of a girl-baby boom, boys often complain of not having friends nearby to play with, and it's never a problem to fill a girls sports team.
But the long string of female births is starting to cause deep unease. Many women have also reported multiple miscarriages, and in local elementary schools, a large number of children have been identified as having developmental delays.
"We're in almost a period of denial right now. This can't be. There are too many things wrong, it can't be true," Darren Henry, a band member, says.
His wife, Kim Henry, who works as a native counsellor at one of the schools, fears that living so close to many chemical plants is affecting the reserve's children. "Are our kids going through all of this because of all the chemicals here and the leaks that are happening?" she asked.
At the reserve, there usually isn't much doubt about what sex a child will be these days. Lisa Joseph has had four girls and one boy, all under 10.
"I have the one and only boy in my part of the family," she says.
Two of her sisters have had six girls between them and a third sister is now pregnant. "She is probably going to have a girl," Ms. Joseph says.
In Canada, and in most industrialized countries where sex ratios have been studied, the percentage of boys born has been in a slight, long-term decline for reasons that are not entirely clear. This trend began in Canada around the start of the 1970s.
Some researchers suspect that environmental pollutants, many of which act like female hormones, could be a factor. Several chemicals, including dioxin, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and hexachlorobenzene, a chemical used in rubber manufacturing, have been associated with excess female births.
Samples taken from around a creek that winds through the reserve have been found to be contaminated with both PCBs and hexachlorobenzene, among other chemicals.
"There is certainly growing evidence that environmental chemicals, even at fairly low levels, can alter sex ratios," says Shanna Swan, a professor in the department of family and community medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who has conducted research linking poor sperm quality to pesticide exposure.
Fertility drugs, such as clomiphene citrate, also lead to more girls being born.
The normal state of affairs in the human sex ratio has been for a slight surfeit of males, with about 106 born for every 100 females. At the time of conception, the ratio is even more dramatic, with about 120 males for every 100 females.
That more boys generally are conceived and born is thought to be the way humans evolved to compensate for the higher fragility of male fetuses and the higher mortality rates among males once they are born.
"It's a feedback mechanism that protects against excess male attrition," says John Jarrell, a gynecologist at the University of Calgary, who helped compile the study showing the decline in the ratio of male births in Canada.
At Aamjiwnaang, the expected situation -- slightly more male births than female -- prevailed among the band's approximately 1,500 members from 1984 to 1993.
It is not clear why the ratio suddenly tipped the other way.
Ada Lockridge, one of the band's councillors, suspects chemical exposure and says one major incident occurred around the time of the change. She shows visitors an article from the local paper about an evacuation that took place at the reserve in December of 1993, after a fire and chemical release at the nearby Suncor plant.
Sarnia's chemical valley has been built literally to the edge of the reserve, with a who's who of major companies often just across the road or around the corner. Besides Suncor Energy Inc., the neighbours include Imperial Oil Ltd., Shell Canada Ltd., Dupont Canada Inc., and Dow Chemical Canada Inc. Residents say they have watched workers protected by space suits go about their jobs, while they stand watching from the reserve.
The native community was granted its land at the southern edge of Sarnia in 1827. Much of the 14-square-kilometre reserve remains forested and is dotted with suburban-style homes, an incongruous sight in the middle of a sprawling industrial complex that has 20 per cent of Canada's refineries and produces about 40 per cent of its petrochemicals.
The reserve is also located just downriver from where the so-called Sarnia blob of dangerous chemicals was found on the bottom of the St. Clair River in the 1980s.
Residents complain there is almost always some sort of stink in the air. Sometimes it's like rotten turnips. Other times it's like rotting eggs. Each corner of the reserve has a slightly different stench.
Being hemmed in by big chemical complexes means any exposure to harmful compounds is likely to be far greater than in Sarnia itself, where most residents live kilometres away from the plants.
There are about 20 chemical plants or refineries in the area whose emissions are large enough that they must be reported to Environment Canada's national registry of pollution releases.
Earlier this year, Ontario sent its environmental SWAT team to Sarnia because of the high number of chemical spills. The St. Clair River near Sarnia is also one of the sites where federal environmental scientists have found male wildlife species with blurred sexual characteristics.
Finding explanations to the puzzling birth trend will require a major study comparing the reserve to other similar native communities that don't have such high chemical exposure, according to Dr. Jarrell.
On the ground in the reserve, Mr. Henry, who helped coach teams, says girl squads were easier to assemble. "I know it was a lot, lot easier to raise a team of girls to play sports than it was for boys. It just seemed like there was a whole lot of girls here."
Edna Cottrelle, who lives about 10 houses down from the Suncor plant, says her son Nodin, 11, finds the shortage of boys acute. "There are no boys his age along the river," she says. "He's always complaining."
This is crazy! I found it by mistake. When I was looking for some tribal clothing company on google. It's pretty much for people to create thir own realistic pornography digitally. There's a whole program for various stockings. Lip colors. Shoes. The native guy is hilarious. The little girls are troublesome. Does that count as child pornography if you draw it yourself? I wonder. I think it's odd too how much the women look like they've had plastic surgery. I mean, plastic surgery used to be in the name of making women look like cartoon versions of themselves, now the cartoons look like what real fake women actually look like.
The fantasy became the reality, then that reality was idealized back to fantasy. How convienente...
According to this article, the birth control pill Provera has been shown to inhibit sexual desire and increse anxiety and aggression in female macaques.
--> So fake estrogen makes women angry, anxious and not want sex.
According to this article, progesterone, the "female" hormone promts male mice to be excessively aggressive and threaton their pups. In a natural setting, male mice generally committ infanticide, but when progesterone receptors were blocked, they started acting like "good dads."
--> So real progesterone can make men want to kill their offspring.
Give me a break, woman. Does she honestly think she is saying anything new with the rant about girls on film being way too porn? Is this news to anyone? And the whole part at the end about Uma being lame in Kill Bill because of her desire to be with her daughter is complete hypocrisy and totally anti-woman. I feel like the feminist movement has evolved beyond opinions like this and if people don't stop giving them air space, it's going to make the rest of us look bad.
This is a press release about this study a woman is doing at my school:
HARDER, FASTER, STRONGER: FEMALE ATHLETE PERFORMANCE MAY BE LINKED TO MENSTRUAL CYCLE: Women in the second half of their menstrual cycle may have a better chance of sinking a basket or beating a competitor to the finish line, according to research by UVic masters of science graduate Laura Middleton. The sport and exercise major conducted a three-month sprint-based study with six active women between the ages of 20 and 30 and found a significant difference in the average speed the women were able to achieve over a series of sprints. "The sprints simulated the accelerated bursts of speed that athletes perform during game-based sports like soccer, field hockey, ice hockey or basketball," says Middleton. "In a series of six second sprints, I found that the women could cover an average of a metre further during the second half of their cycle. That's a huge difference if you're going for a ball or a puck." Middleton's research led to her thesis, Effects of menstrual phase on performance and recovery in intense intermittent activity. She hopes her study will help women understand the effects of their menstrual cycle and potentially tailor their training schedules to achieve more powerful performances.
Under the new Unborn Victims of Violence Act, there is a high potential for the law to be used against women who unintentionally harm their own baby even when they have full intentions of having the baby. North Carolina already has a feticide law on the books and, according to a *great* article by Lynn M. Paltrow on TomPain.com, "scores" of women who are addicted to drugs have been charged with child abuse when they do the blood test after delivery. Some have been dragged to jail while still bleeding. Get excited, this law is coming to the whole country. One woman is serving a 12 year sentence for the death of her child and she would have gotten a 2 year sentence for having a late term abortion. In essence this makes getting pregnant illegal if you are a junkie or alcoholic. And then of course, this will make abortions more prevalent.
My friend Francis sent me this press release about female suicide bombers and wondered:
"what the hell do women suicide bombers get in that grand islamic heaven? the men get 40 black eyed virgins, and the women get.. 40 more layers over their faces? 40 more levels demoted from men? or do they get to walk outside without their face covered for 40 minutes? i'm going to read the koran to find out."
Suicide Bomber Kills Man in Uzbek City of Bukhara, AP Reports 2004-04-01 10:28 (New York)
By Heather Langan
April 1 (Bloomberg) -- A female suicide bomber killed a man today in the Uzbek city of Bukhara, the U.K.'s Sky News cited the Associated Press as saying.
The bomber survived the explosion, Sky said, citing AP.
Attacks this week in the central Asian nation are directly linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network, AP cited Ilya Pyagay, deputy anti-terrorism chief at the Uzbek Interior Ministry, as saying earlier today.
A series of attacks killed at least 43 people in the country, including 19 who died in bomb blasts and shootings on Monday in the capital, Tashkent, and Bukhara, an ancient desert city that is one of Uzbekistan's prime tourist attractions. The attacks were the worst in the former Soviet republic since 1999.
My friend David's response to Bush's recent anti-female legislation.
***************
FETII MANIFESTO
republicans do not go far enough. they should give fetuses the right to vote as well as simple fetal rights "to life". in fact, our electoral system simply excludes the right for fetii to organize into collective political units (for instance, political parties, nonprofits). also, what about fetal access to institutions like university and the workforce?
fetii, you have nothing to lose but your chains! leave behind your sheltered uterine oppressed existence and LEAVE THE WOMB!
come on, its time to grow up and move on.
WE'RE ALL INDIVIDUALS! if we want our rights as fetuses, we have to organize that way across the board.
signed,
george w. bush
(president and founder, Grown-Up Fetii For A Better America, GUFFABA)
The Senate just passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (S.1019) last Thursday. The act is a poorly disguised attempt to give fetuses the legal status of persons. The act will allow harsher punishment to people who injure a pregnant woman in such a way to damage or kill the baby inside her, which is great, but it's only a means to an end. From the article below: "Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) proposed a substitute amendment that had the same structure and similar penalties as the bill that passed, but did not undermine Roe v. Wade by recognizing an embryo or fetus as a separate legal "person." This amendment failed by a very close vote of 50-49." Bush is gonna sign it. We need to get these men out of office.
Prenatal Politics
by Kate Michelman
Why pregnant women are not helped by a Senate bill passed to allegedly protect them.
The "Healthy Mother and Healthy Babies Access to Care" Act (S. 2061) is still being considered by the Senate. The language is typical, "The bill protects women's access to quality and affordable obstetric and gynecological services by reducing the effects of excessive liability costs for such providers." Basically, it's saying women can only sue for $250,000 maximum even if a doctor does something horrible like blind their child in the process of delivering it. It also says that the current administration is in bed with insurance companies. And it's also quite telling that they would go after ob/gyn services and the women who use them specifically, and not medical patients in general.
A typically alarmist and information-lacking article from NOW.
This is less offensive than just plain interesting. How the cultural divide can result in things like this. Why on earth would they waste their time with an amendment like this? I bet some disgruntled politician found out his daughter had one...
Authorities in Salt Lake City have now charged 28-year-old Melissa Ann Rowland with the murder of one of her twins, who was stillborn in January. Rowland was advised by doctors to have a cesarean section, but Rowland refused, having experienced the invasive procedure in two prior deliveries where she had been cut "breast bone to pubic bone."
This article documents the tragic ability of the state in the US to force women to have operations and even claim custody of the fetus and baby if they refuse.
I'm going to start the discussion group for the article I ranted about on
Friday night tomorrow.
I really do find it fascinating. I reread it and you've got to wonder if
it's a communiqué directly from the propaganda desk of The Man himself. The
study they did to determine if women were sexually responsive to the pill is
hysterical.
Picture it:
A white lab in a basement of some hospital.
Five women sitting in chairs with their legs in stirrups, spread eagle, with gauges stuck to their vaginas to keep track of blood flow.
Most likely, if their are Pfizer's target group, they are married, middle age women, possibly slightly overweight, have trouble feeling sexy, and maybe need a little extra cash seeing as they did sign consent forms to do this. Their husbands no doubt complain about their lack of desire and possibly wetness. Maybe they worry the men will leave. Maybe they're sick of sex being boring, and don‚t have the option not to have it. But maybe they just want to feel young and vital again, who knows. All the women feel like there is something wrong with them. All of them think it could be solved with a pill.
So they find themselves, again, in a lab, in a chair, with things strapped on to that very organ that's been giving them all this trouble and most likely remains a source of mystery to them.
The very nice female nurse leaves the room and switches off the light.
The TV in front of them clicks on to begin the romance of some hulking man and a woman who is no doubt blond. I'm guessing Pfizer has allowed the women to choose their own type of pornography, "Now, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, would you prefer the 70's classic Deep Throat‚ or something with a little more anal play?"
The scientists could not allow one of those female-friendly new releases with a plot line and no silicon, lest this induce feelings of intimacy that would complicate that raw "desire" aroused in all healthy people at the sight of waxed, tanned, taught, white flesh getting banged by the cheerleading coach, someone else in a position of authority, or her twin sister.
Mrs. Fitzpatrick sits back and tries to relax like the nurse told her to.
She watches the woman moaning while getting it from behind and thinks to herself that she doesn‚t look like she's enjoying it that much. She thinks about her husband taking her from behind and how she doesn't like it much either. And all that moaning, is that really necessary? She thinks about the wires attached to her vagina. She's glad she shaved before coming in. She wonders if she should take yoga. She wonders if the Stevensons are coming for dinner tonight. She returns to the wires attached to her vagina. Now the guy is going down on the girl in the movie. That type of thing has never appealed to her. It would just make her uncomfortable. Plus it would be really messy. And who would want to stick their face there anyway? She thinks about the wires...
The nurse returns.
"Hi there Mrs. Fitzpatrick, did everything go OK? Good. Now, can you tell me, how much do you want to engage in intercourse right now, on a scale of 1 to 10?"
OBVIOUSLY, there must be something wrong with Mrs. Fitzpatrick. How could she possibly not want to jump into bed after that sultry scenario? What she needs is security, intimacy, and yes, some well-timed coaxing.
Not that I'm implying that there are no differences between men and women. There are. But Pfizer has no idea what they are. So yeah--if you want to discuss the ins and outs of male and female sexuality, let me know and you can be in the club.
I find this particular piece of bullshit so very fascinating.
the things i find so intriguing about this bullshit are that:
1) they get all excited about saying once again that women's sexual arousal is totally complicated and back up all these stereotypes about how it's not really "sexual" but more emotional and possibly has something to do with security. THEN they're like "but really it's hormones." Which is what it really is in everyone and i dont see how this is any less physical than blood inhibiting enzymes.
2) This is really just a wonderful example of complete bullshit:
"Dr. Marianne Legato, professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University and director of the Partnership for Gender Specific Medicine, said that the disconnection between arousal and desire in many women was so profound that they "often don't have any desire for sex until they are physically in the act of lovemaking."
Indeed, getting a woman to connect arousal and desire, Dr. Legato said, requires exquisite timing on a man's part and a fair amount of coaxing. "What we need to do is find a pill for engendering the perception of intimacy," she said."
NEVER HAS SUCH EGREGIOUS BLASPHEMY FALLEN UPON MY EARS! Ok, first of all, the definition of "arousal" is "to stimulate sexual desire in" so right there they're completly wrong. what they should say is that there is a dissconnection between "the lack of enzymes that inhibit blood flow" and desire. FUCKING BASTARDS MAN! And the *next* paragraph, I will just let that speak for itself because my response will be far too laced with profanity to be deemed literate. but I would just like to point out the use of the words "man," "COAXING," and "intimacy."
and 3) I am SO sick of this empty headed men who are only driven to have sex myth. it's just not true. believe me, sometimes i think it woudl be nice if it were true, but it isnt. i can say i've known a few of these men in my life - they do exist. but the cast majority of men are not like this and only uphold the stereotype out of insecurities. Listen to this:
"Men consistently get erections in the presence of naked women and want to have sex. With women, things depend on a myriad of factors."
This is DEMEANING. You need to shed the sexual insecurities and stand up for yourselves. and NO, it does not count to be thinking about sex all the time because, I've got news for you, just about everyone thinks about sex all the time.
This is also a great reply by CAKE NYC
"The success of Viagra for men is based on isolating and treating a very specific "dysfunction." By increasing physical arousal, Viagra allows men to physically act on their mental sexual desires when their bodies would otherwise not be able to rise to the occasion. But the desire to have sex is directly linked to how pleasurable it is for you when you do. If "sex" - intercourse between a man and a woman - does not reliably equal orgasm and pleasure for women, then of course simply achieving physical arousal would not drive us girls to grab a partner and get laid. We bet that if you guarantee each woman in a study a mind-blowing orgasm with her partner (or by herself), then maybe you'd see a more direct link between women's physical arousal and the desire to get it on.
Perhaps women are always labeled as needing more of a mental context for sex than men because our cultural context ALREADY encourages and caters to men's mental desire.
Next up for Pfizer? Drugs that affect brain chemistry "could be an extremely interesting area of investigation," according to one researcher. Um - that's scary. Maybe we should condone drugging women into being turned on by the current cultural state of sexuality, rather than CHANGE the current state???"
CASE IN POINT:
98% of health insurance companies in the States cover Viagra.
33.3% cover the pill
how the hell am I supposed to get off to that?
replies would be most welcome and anyone who wants to turn this into a
discussion, let's do it.
a great article regarding ms jackson's wardrobe malfunction.
Frank Rich: My Hero, Janet Jackson
February 15, 2004
It may be a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. Two weeks after the bustier bust, almost no one has come to the defense of Janet Jackson. I do so with a full heart. By baring a single breast in a slam-dunk publicity stunt of two seconds' duration, this singer also exposed just how many boobs we have in this country. We owe her thanks for a genuine public service.
You can argue that Ms. Jackson is the only honest figure in this Super Bowl of hypocrisy. She was out to accomplish a naked agenda - the resuscitation of her fading career on the eve of her new album's release - and so she did. She's not faking much remorse, either. Last Sunday she refused to appear on the Grammys rather than accede to CBS's demand that she perform a disingenuous, misty-eyed ritual "apology" to the nation for her crime of a week earlier. By contrast, Justin Timberlake, the wimp who gave the English language the lasting gift of "wardrobe malfunction," did as he was told, a would-be pop rebel in a jacket and a tie, looking like a schoolboy reporting to the principal's office. Ms. Jackson, one suspects, is laughing all the way to the bank.
There are plenty of Americans to laugh at, starting with the public itself. If we are to believe the general outcry, the nation's families were utterly blindsided by the Janet-Justin pas de deux while watching an entertainment akin to "Little Women." As Laura Bush put it, "Parents wouldn't know to turn their television off before that happened." They wouldn't? In the two-plus hours "before that happened," parents saw not only the commercials featuring a crotch-biting dog, a flatulent horse and a potty-mouthed child but also the number in which the crotch-grabbing Nelly successfully commanded a gaggle of cheerleaders to rip off their skirts. What signal were these poor, helpless adults waiting for before pulling their children away from the set? Apparently nothing short of a simulated rape would do.
Once the deed was done, the audience couldn't stop watching it. TV viewers with TiVo set an instant-replay record as they slowed down the offending imagery with a clinical alacrity heretofore reserved for the Zapruder film. Lycos, the Internet search engine, reported that the number of searches for Janet Jackson tied the record set by 9/11-related searches on and just after 9/11.
"That a single breast received as much attention as the first attack on United States soil in 60 years is beyond belief," wrote Aaron Schatz, the columnist on the Lycos Top 50 site. (Though not, perhaps, to the fundamentalist zealots who attacked us.)
For those who still couldn't get enough, the cable news channels giddily played the video over and over to remind us of just how deplorable it was. Even though by this point the networks were blurring the breast with electronic pasties, there was still an erotic kick to be milked: the act of a man tearing off a woman's clothes was as thrilling to the audience as whatever flesh was revealed therein, perhaps more so. But to say that aloud is to travel down a road that our moral watchdogs do not want to take. It's the unwritten rule of our culture that the public is always right. The "folks," as Bill O'Reilly is fond of condescending to them, are always the innocent victims of the big, bad cultural villains. They're never complicit in the crime. The idea that the folks might have the free will to tune out tasteless TV programming or do without TV altogether - or that they might eat up the sleaze, with or without young 'uns in the room - is almost never stated on television, for obvious reasons of fiscal self-interest. You don't insult your customers.
Since the public is blameless for its role in creating a market for displays like the Super Bowl's, who should be the scapegoat instead? If you peruse Mr. O'Reilly's admonitions in his first three programs dealing with the topic, or the tirades of The Wall Street Journal editorial page and right-wing direct-mail mills like the Parents Television Council and Concerned Women for America, you'll find a revealing pattern: MTV, CBS and their parent corporation, Viacom, are the exclusive targets of the invective. The National Football League is barely mentioned, if at all. To blame the country's highest-rated sports operation, after all, might risk insulting the football-watching folks to whom these moral watchdogs pander for fun and profit.
But the N.F.L. is in the sex business as assiduously as CBS and MTV, and for the same reason: it wants those prurient eyeballs. It's now been more than a quarter-century since Super Bowl X, when the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders first caught the attention of the nation. "The audience deserves a little sex with its violence," Chuck Milton, a CBS sports producer, said back then.
The N.F.L. has since worked tirelessly to fill that need. This year was not the first MTV halftime show that the league has ordered to try to expand its aging audience beyond the Levitra demographic. The first such collaboration, Super Bowl XXXV three years ago, featured Britney Spears all but falling out of a halter top and numbers in which both Mr. Timberlake (then appearing with 'NSync) and Nelly grabbed their crotches. There was, to my eye, twice as much crotch-grabbing then as there was this year, but that show generated no outrage whatsoever.
It did, however, attract two million more viewers than the game itself. The N.F.L. wanted more of the same for 2004, which is why the league's commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, released a statement saying, "We're pleased to work again with MTV" when announcing the encore. Or pleased up to a point. When MTV proposed that part of the show be devoted to a performance of the song "An American Prayer" by Bono to increase awareness of the horrific AIDS epidemic in Africa, the N.F.L. said no - even though Bono had done the league the favor of giving the 2002 Super Bowl halftime show a dignified musical tribute to the victims of the 9/11 attacks.
The mention of a sexually transmitted disease might dampen the libido of the salacious MTV show that the N.F.L. wanted this year and wanted so badly that the league remained silent even when MTV's pregame publicity promised that the performance would contain "some shocking moments." As one participant in the production told me, the N.F.L. saw "every camera angle" at the show's rehearsals and thus was no less aware of its general tone than CBS and MTV were. You don't hire Ms. Jackson, who's been steadily exposing more of her breasts for over a decade on magazine covers, to sing "Rock Your Body" if you have a G-rated game plan. Nonetheless, Joe Browne, the league's flak, pleaded total innocence after the event, releasing a hilarious statement that the N.F.L., like the public, was the unwitting victim of a show that it had both commissioned and helped supervise: "We applaud the F.C.C.'s investigation into the MTV-produced halftime. We and our fans were embarrassed by the entire show."
That investigation, piggybacked by last week's Congressional hearings, is an election-year stunt as full of hot air as the Bud Light horse flatulence ad. "Like millions of Americans, my family and I gathered around the television for a celebration," declared Michael Powell, the F.C.C. chairman, upon announcing that the entire halftime would be examined. A celebration of what, exactly? Didn't Mr. Powell, the nation's chief television regulator, watch the previous MTV halftime show?
He promises to conduct the investigation himself - a meaningless gesture, though it may gain him an audience and perhaps a photo op with Ms. Jackson. Mr. Powell's real agenda here is to conduct a show trial that might counter his well-earned reputation as a wholly owned subsidiary of our media giants. Viacom has been a particularly happy beneficiary of the deregulatory push of his reign, buying up every slice of the media pie that's not nailed down. Should CBS be found guilty of "indecency" by the feds, the total penalty would amount to some $5 million, roughly the price of two 30-second Super Bowl commercials. Congress's new push to increase those fines tenfold is just as laughable. Viacom took in $26.6 billion last year.
Not for nothing did the company's stock actually go up the day after the Super Bowl. The halftime show was great merchandising for both MTV and CBS, the go-to network for "Victoria's Secret Fashion Show." Not to be left without a piece of the action, even NBC got into the act. Citing the Jackson flap, it decreed that two split-second shots of an 80-year-old woman's breast in an emergency room sequence in "E.R." be excised. But the "E.R." star Noah Wyle then went on NBC's "Today" show the morning of the broadcast to joke about the decision, and the network-owned NBC affiliate in New York used the banned breast as a promo for its post-"E.R." news broadcast: "What you won't see on tonight's episode of `E.R.' - at 11!" Thus did NBC successfully transform its decision not to bare geriatric flesh into a sexual tease to hype ratings. This is true marketing genius, American-style.
What's next? Some are predicting that all the tape delays being injected into TV events to pre-empt future wardrobe malfunctions will be the death of spontaneous, live TV. But the moment an awards show takes a ratings hit, this new electronic prophylactic will be quietly abandoned by the networks even faster than the N.F.L.'s vague threat not to collaborate with MTV next year.
Ms. Jackson, the biggest winner in this whole escapade, is already back on the air. Her official rehabilitation began right after the Super Bowl, when BET started broadcasting a 10-part series of "special Black History Month" spots in which she profiles historical luminaries like Harriet Tubman, Paul Robeson and Sidney Poitier.
"Her tone is serious and focused, with the air and diction of a seasoned lecturer," says the network's news release, which also notes that "the spots feature Ms. Jackson clad in classic black." Wasn't her Super Bowl dominatrix costume classic black as well? Well, never underestimate the power of synergy. BET is another wholly owned subsidiary of Viacom.
This is just an outrage.
The Justice Department is demanding the records of dozens of women who have had abortions in 6 hospitals to make sure they were medically necessary. Apparently a bunch of government lawyers in Washington feel that their medical opinion is superior to these women's doctors. The really tragic things are:
These records could be made public, even thought their names will be deleted, there is still identifying information.
The doctors in question are the doctors suing the government over the partial birth abortion ban. so this seems to be a retaliation of sorts.
The judge in question has said that unless they provide the records, he will lift the ban currently in place on the "partial birth abortion" law and allow the government to enforce it.
The Justice Department also said, "individuals no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential."
And let's not forget who is in charge of the Justice Department and will be pouring over the documents in question: our favorite bastard seraphim, Attorney General John Ashcroft.
two fun new, ways to indoctrinate your daughters into the sheer joy that is
religious extremism.
or alternately, ways that spirituality is being co-opted by capitalist
bastards:
discuss.
this is absolutely terrible. you have to read the whole thing to really see
what's happening.
It's a beautiful day for Nigerian women.
don't worry, it gets uplifting at the end...
"The tradition dates back centuries and is rooted in a belief that a woman is haunted by spirits after her husband dies. She is also thought to be unholy and "disturbed" if she is unmarried and abstains from sex. She must be cleansed, therefore, to attend funerals or remarry. "
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 18, 2003; Page A12
GANGRE, Kenya -- The women of this village call Francise Akacha "the terrorist." His breath fumes with the local alcoholic brew. Greasy food droppings hang off his mustache and stain his oily pants and torn shirt.
He's always the first one in line for the village feast, tucking into a buffet carefully prepared by the women of the village like he's diving into the ocean, no restraint. He's too skinny and has, as the women point out, terrible taste in clothes. His latest hat is a visor styled from shabby paper stolen off a local cigarette billboard.
But for all of his undesirable traits, Akacha has a surprisingly desirable
job: He's paid to have sexual relations with the widows and unmarried women of this village. He's known as "the cleanser," one of hundreds of thousands of men in rural villages across Africa who sleep with women after their husbands die to dispel what villagers believe are evil spirits.
As tradition holds, they must sleep with the cleanser to be allowed to attend their husbands' funerals or be inherited by their husbands' brother or relative, another controversial custom that aid workers said is causing the spread of HIV-AIDS. Unmarried women who lose a parent or child must also sleep with the ritual cleanser.
The custom has always been unpopular among women. But in midst of an AIDS pandemic, which has led to the deaths of 19.6 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, having relations with the cleanser has become more than just a painful ritual that women must endure. Cleansers are now spreading HIV at explosive rates in such villages as Gangre, where one in every three people is infected.
Areas that still practice the tradition have the highest rates of the disease, and health workers say the custom must be stopped. It's a striking example of how HIV-AIDS is forcing Africans to question and change traditions as the disease ravages the continent.
"We don't want it and we won't accept it anymore," chanted Margaret Auma Odhiambo, as women ululated in agreement in her village, a lush rural farming community about a nine-hour drive northwest of the capital, Nairobi. "I refused it once and I will keep refusing it."
Twenty years ago, women -- even when they formed social clubs that frequently started projects to sell goods -- often could not question customs like cleansing, for fear of being beaten or having their property stolen.
But as HIV-AIDS started killing husbands in greater numbers, these women's groups, which were mainly social alliances and a way to make extra money, began to turn into powerful and political widows' groups. As their husbands perished, the widows were largely left to make money for the village and help care for the swelling number of orphans left without food or financial support.
In Odhiambo's village, the women said 30 percent of them were telling the cleanser to go away. They have formed a group called Standing Idle Does Not Pay, or Chungni Kimiyi in Swahili, a phrase that has become a mantra among women in the surrounding villages. They want the cleanser to go.
A cleanser is typically the village drunkard or someone considered not very bright. The job is seen as low class but essential to "purifying" women. Village elders say the custom must be carried out or the entire community will be cursed with bad crops. The cleansers are paid in cows and crops, as well as cash.
Odhiambo, a friendly woman with curly black hair and shiny black skin, recently stood with her group discussing the issue as the warm smells of a feast of fish, vegetables and maize meal they had made wafted through the village.
As predictable as the rising sun, the cleanser, Akacha, popped by, his bottle of local brew in hand.
Odhiambo watched as the cleanser served himself some of the food. Then she started talking to him about finding another job.
"Your services are not required any longer," she said, as her friends gathered to cheer.
"How many women have you slept with?" she asked, smiling and trying to prod the information out of him.
"I can't know," he sniffed. "I don't want to know."
"Do you know your HIV status?" she asked.
"That one I don't want to know," he said.
"Today, you sleep with this one, the next day another, the next day someone else," Odhiambo said, sitting next to him and trying to convince him of the danger. "Do you use a condom?"
"Never," he responded. "They won't be really cleansed if the condom was there."
Akacha has been forced to discuss the issue because more and more villagers are dying. Still, Akacha said he believes he provides a valuable service.
"It's not bad for me since I get to be with the beautiful ladies," he said, chuckling over his plate of food. "The women like it 'cause who else would be with them? They can't stay alone with the spirits. They need me."
The issue has become so tantalizing that village elders are currently debating what to do about the custom. Meanwhile, health care workers and human rights agencies argue that they actually have no need for such services in the world of HIV.
"It's a custom that must be stopped," said Janet Walsh, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, which released a report on the issue in March. "Condoms are never used; they say it has to be skin-to-skin to work."
In Africa, women are six times as likely to contract HIV as men, mostly because of rape and customs like cleansing, in which one man can spread the disease to hundreds of women.
Cleansers can be found in some rural parts of Uganda and Tanzania as well as the Congo, where traditional religions exist next to fluid versions of Christianity and Islam. They are also a staple in Angola and in villages across West Africa, specifically in Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, according to African aid workers who have been trying to talk to people in these countries about the HIV risk that cleansers present.
The tradition dates back centuries and is rooted in a belief that a woman is haunted by spirits after her husband dies. She is also thought to be unholy and "disturbed" if she is unmarried and abstains from sex. She must be cleansed, therefore, to attend funerals or remarry.
"The older generations need to change," said Nancy Oundda, a nurse with the African Medical Research Foundation, which works with the widows' groups and children orphaned by AIDS in this region. "Their attitude will change with education, and if they realize what this tradition is doing."
The foundation has donated a donkey, hoes, a cart and materials to the women
so they can transport their bricks to market and make money to support themselves, a key to being able to refuse the cleanser and also avoid being inherited, along with their property. The group also provides seminars on HIV to the widows and village elders and prods leaders to abandon traditions such as cleansing. It also pays school fees for 300 orphans to take the burden off of the widows.
So far, the widows said, the education is working, and they reported being far less worried just knowing they could say no.
"I am so fat and happy without these men harassing me!" said Tabitha Anyango Odero, a widow who was pressured to be cleansed and inherited until she fought back and said she did not want to die because of AIDS. "Look how clean my house is now. Look how healthy I am now. I love my widow group."
On a recent afternoon, Odhiambo gathered with a group of women putting on a short drama about refusing to be cleansed or inherited. Polygamy was also questioned in the skit, because men spread HIV-AIDS to their wives at alarming rates.
In the skit, a woman's husband dies from complications of AIDS and she refuses to be cleansed or inherited until the men take an HIV test.
"I am clean like water," says the cleanser.
The audience exploded in laughter.
"Then take the test," replied the woman.
But in the end, a village elder forces her to be cleansed and inherited, and she too dies from complications of AIDS.
"HIV is shaking the whole world," a character says, as the play concludes.
Men in the audience -- sitting in some chairs set up under a large tree -- laughed and clapped and shook their heads in agreement.
"Slowly, by slowly, we must change," said Dalmas Ongan, 62, who wore a three-piece gray suit and a straw hat and said he loved the play. "We used to say we would die for our traditions. Even me, I used to say cleansing was good. But I think this attitude helps nothing. We all may die if we don't stop this one."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company