Senate Let's Talk: Feminism

The problem here is you're a well-adjusted person with a reasonable, moderate approach to stuff, but the way this area gets reported is nothing of the kind and I suspect this is a backlash against certain types of reporting, with lots of sensible people caught in the cross fire, with the lines being:

• The judgmental fit person: Variations on the theme of - I'm fit because I work hard and am great, you're a lazy fattie. These tend to be those who were good at sport at school and never had any real difficulty in doing anything.
• The perfect mum image: You've seen 'em - How X Lost Her Baby Flab In 2 Weeks! The implicit message being if you don't do this, you're crap.
• The timeless image: Women are not supposed to age, men? We get distinguished with age and are allowed beer bellies!

Probably a few others that could be thrown in too, all of which are the likely triggers for this new stuff which is a rejection of trying to attain this perfect image that's bombarded onto women from a hostile media.

The problem is extreme positions - and I'd see what the media are pushing to be one - tends to trigger equally strong reactions and counters, which looks to be the case here.

(What mystifies me is why so many women clearly buy the mags that push this crap in the first place - if all those women stopped buying, the merry-go-round would come to a squealing, grinding halt.)

 

But it's not just the magazines - it's often movies and TV shows and the culture itself. It's a self feeding loop. It's the examples of what kind of women are, for lack of a better word, exalted. It's models on the covers, mainly good looking women in the media (and the less so are usually the fat or clumsy, can't get a man role - at least until they pretty up by ridding themselves of the bad haircut, glasses, whatever).

The positive portrayals are of the "ideal" and if you're less ideal, you're less positively portrayed.

 

True, but save for the covers, the mags do require a person to actively buy them whereas TV is more a passive background source of the same crap which is why I saw them as having that extra edge as it were.

As to it not being helpful, of course it isn't but those who write the articles that comprise that position likely see no benefit in being smarter - controversy gets you attention and page clicks in a way being smart, moderate and positive doesn't.

I suppose, in the end, the only option is to say: Screw it all, a plague on both your houses! I'll work it out myself.

(But that does require a certain level of bloody-mindedness!)

 

Let's face it, one heck of a lot of Americans are technically overweight (notice I'm not saying fit or unfit). We're a huge part of the population. I hike and backpack often so I'd call myself quite fit, but recently I technically was "obese" not just overweight.

My sis-in-law, a RN, sent me a fitbit recently and suggested I check into Myfitnesspal.com. I tracked - really tracked - my food for a few weeks and found out that even careful me was eating a way low amount of sodium and more sugar - sugar conscious me- was even aware of. Just a few craisins on my salad lunch blew that stat.

So stories can have some use. Shaming doesn't.

 

Add to the fact that those videos were done by an arm of Operation Rescue...

 

This trying to defund Planned Parenthood thing infuriates me.
Someone on my Facebook posted a picture with one of WV's senators saying that he planned on voting to defund Planned Parenthood and there were a ton of likes and positive comments on the picture. (And he's a democrat... though in name only.)

If anyone needs Planned Parenthood, it's West Virginia with their HUGE teenage pregnancy rates and the amount of poverty, so I don't know how anyone from there could be for defunding it, though it didn't shock me. But it once again reminded me why I left and am glad I did.

 

Ya know, it's stuff like this that is starting to make me irrationally despise all Republicans.

 

They don't even get federal funding for abortions except in special cases. (http://www.factcheck.org/2011/04/planned-parenthood/).

It's unbelievable. Either these elected officials are dangerously ignorant or they're being irresponsibly manipulative of their constituency. It's sickening.

 

I dunno. It's not good to hate a faction of people? But then again, most if not all of them are loopy.

 

Oh, just maybe that a hatred of an entire group of people acting in good faith based on their personal beliefs is pretty much the textbook definition of bigotry, intolerance and close mindedness?

You will never find a more hateful group of closed-minded, intolerant bigots than you will by looking at the American left, as evidenced above. Any diversity of thought and diversity of opinion must be shouted down, bullied and silenced. HItler would be proud.

 

They're acting on hearsay and fear mongering. In good faith? They want to defund an entire program because they don't want people to get abortions? Planned Parenthood prevents abortions. What part of this whole crazy idea is acting as part of their beliefs?

This is the same argument people make about welfare. "well but a tiny percentage of people are defrauding it so we should cut funding even though thousands and thousands of people are counting on it and it is doing a world of good".

Okay. Some people were unlawfully selling baby parts illegally. This is not cause to cut funding for a program which does not even receive funding for the thing that people are upset about.

 

Ah yes. The whole "I'm not sexist...but" BS.

 

You know that if you lived in Germany int he 30s, you'd be a proud National Socialist right?

Not because you give off an impression of rabid Jew-hatred, but because that's what conservatives did at the time. Joined the conservative party, swallowed the nationalist pill, and went nuts.

I know you wanted to use your limited prose to illustrate how you feel your right to protect future Republicans from being born is being stripped away from you, it's just a shame you chose to do this by using a ham-fisted historical allegory that actually does more harm than good for your post. I also applaud your efforts to make sure unwanted children have the best shot at life by adopting kids born to single parents who have been denied an abortion. Your hypocrisy is commendably absent - how many adoptions this year? 20? 30?

Hard work makes you free.

 

That's very similar to my religious upbringing. We were a family of Catholics until switching to the Episcopalian church in 2008. Now everyone in my family is an atheist except for me.

 

I wish the media would refer to it as the debunked story about Planned Parenthood.

Well, they say that some denominations train people to be atheists and feminists, and Methodists are among them. Great article. Thanks for sharing.

 

Looks like I missed a lot. W-what did cause this response? *reads*