Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

Ms. Magazine | Between A Woman And Her Doctor.

I don’t care if doctors don’t expect to have to use these procedures – they need to be trained in them. There is absolutely NO excuse for what this woman went through.

Suspect claims ‘victory’ in closing of slain doctor’s clinic – CNN.com.

Great. Watch for the murder of an abortion doctor near you.

I thought this movement was supposed to be “pro-LIFE”??? Nope. Pro-fetus, yes. Once it’s an actual person… meh. Not so much.

In Memory of Dr. George Tiller: A Tireless Supporter of Women’s Dignity | RHRealityCheck.org.

Commentary: Ridiculous items in stimulus plan – CNN.com.

Quote of the day:

There is nothing more private — that is, none of the government's business — than the personal decision that a family makes about how many children to have.

Whoa ho ho! That’s a hefty statement coming from a conservative… should I take this hissy fit about the sanctity of familial privacy to imply that Republicans are now going to back out of couples’ private childbearing decisions?

Eh?

Yeah. I didn’t think so.

Hullabaloo is reporting on the Christian Coalition’s latest tirade. Sayeth the CC:

Our political leaders should do all within their power to protect, support and encourage America’s children, not crush and destroy them.

This policy would lay the foundation for racism and eugenics because it would seek to reduce the number of children to the nation’s poorest economic groups, which tend to be persons of color and other minorities.

WOW. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this sudden outpouring of support for our nation’s impoverished children. After all, everybody knows that social conservatives are ALL about supporting the nation’s poorest and most underprivileged little ones.

Until they’re, you know, BORN. After that, you’re on your own, kids! Have fun storming the castle!

Yeah. Slashing funding for public education, TANF, arts and music programs, and children’s healthcare, on the other hand, has NOTHING to do with crushing and destroying our nation’s children, right? Oh, wait.

I take it back. THIS is the best comment on that post…

I wish I knew about "provider conscience rules" when I was a teller.

"You want to withdraw how much? And what are you going to be buying? TruckNutz? Billy The Singing Bass? Sorry, pal. But I can't give you the three hundred you asked for, my conscience won't allow it. Here's twenty. That should cover your needs for today."

Pharyngula: They have a conscientious need to control your ovaries.

Great argument from the comments:

The most important reason to keep government out of the abortion business is that, if government has the power to ban abortions, it also has the power to compel them.

Oops, I accidentally pulled out your IUD! – Broadsheet – Salon.com.

Great. Next, wingnut pharmacists will start filling people’s birth control prescriptions with sugar pills… damn, people? Do you want to reduce the occurrence of abortions or not?!

That was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Thank god it finally did.

‘Pregnant man’ and wife: We’re a normal couple – CNN.com.

I have been reading people’s comments on the various blogs discussing this story. I will *never* understand how people can be so ignorant that they do not understand the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity. So let’s try to spell it out in an easy way.

Some people who are born as women identify as men. Some people who were born as men identify as women. Some people identify with neither gender, and some people identify with both. People who don’t identify with one particular gender sometimes call themselves “genderqueer.” People who identify with an opposite gender sometimes call themselves “transgender.”

Sometimes this dissonance is because their brains are hard-wired to identify with one gender, while their bodies reflect another gender. Many trans people will tell you that they always felt that their bodies were not right, that their bodies did not belong to them. This is called gender dysphoric disorder, and has led many a trans kid to suicide out of sheer confusion and helplessness. *Many* trans people know that they are transgender even from childhood – in fact there are many transgender children even now who are living their lives as a gender different from the one they were born with. You think this is a sexual deviancy thing, but if you could see these children who are *so much* happier being able to live as they *are*, you would understand.

You cannot “fix” a person’s gender identity. You identify with the gender you are, regardless of what your body says. We have known for years that there are really more than two genders – some societies have known it for generations. We are a society that loves its dichotomies, though, so we try to force people into boxes. This doesn’t always work. Most of us are born with a physical body that reflects our genetic and spiritual gender. Some people are not.

Now, sometimes people identify with an opposite gender because genetically and chromosomally, they ARE that opposite gender, but physically, something went wrong. In more cases than most of us actually realize, babies are born with ambiguous genitalia, and the doctors decide it will be easier to just do reconstructive surgery and make the baby a girl or boy and hope they made the right guess. Sometimes they are right – and sometimes they are not. This is called “intersex,” and is an absolute abomination on the part of the doctors, who make a life-changing decision for a child based on what is most convenient for themselves.

None of this has ANYTHING to do with sexual orientation. Gender identity is about the gender you *are*. Sexual orientation is about the gender you *love.* Many trans people are heterosexual. They share their lives with their partners in a heterosexual relationship. Some trans people are gay. Some trans people are bi. Gender identity and sexual orientation are not the same thing so quit trying to tell this man that he is a gay woman. Believe me – if you knew trans people, you would know that this approach is ridiculous and unnatural. A straight man is not a gay woman just because he happened to be born with the wrong genital parts. So he chose not to have a full hysterectomy – that is a dangerous procedure that not all trans people choose to have. And if he has the opportunity to have biological children when his wife is infertile, why shouldn’t he take it? Wouldn’t it be nice if more women with difficulty conceiving could pass that particular duty on to their husbands?

Frankly I just wish people could get the hell over themselves and realize that just because they can’t relate to something, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong or morally corrupt.

This pretty much speaks for itself:

A graduate of Wasilla High School comments on lack of sex education:

Abstinence-only education is great in theory, but it is not practical. For every emergency drill I went through to protect myself from an intruder or bomb threat, I think of the condom wrapped in foil and how unprotected I could have been. (Read more)

For all of you out there, including Barack Obama, who allege that Sarah Palin’s family life is private and off limits: Can I just remind you that it was SARAH PALIN who fed this piece of information to the public in the first place? Nobody spied on her; nobody got hold of secret medical records or hacked into her computer. Sarah Palin CHOSE to release this information to the American people, and now it is our inalienable right to talk about it, react to it, and decide how we feel about a woman who supports abstinence-only education when it’s clear from her own family situation that abstinence-only education DOES NOT WORK.

Can we call her a hypocrite? Absolutely. She doesn’t support same-sex marriage (or domestic partnership rights, even) because marriage is soooo sacred, but she’s willing to let a CHILD enter into this sacred union as punishment for having premarital sex. So is marriage a sacrament, or a punishment? Make up your mind!

She comes from a party that cracks down on access to birth control and yet doesn’t want abortions to be legal – but STILL doesn’t support education about how not to get pregnant in the first place. This is the woman we want thisclose to inheriting the presidency from ancient, ailing John McCain?

So is her daughter’s pregnancy private? It was, until she made it public. And is it relevant? HELL. YES.

I know that many people will claim that the Palins were forced to make this announcement in order to quell rumors going around that Palin’s youngest “son” Trig is actually her grandson. There are a few points to address here. I think the people who made these speculations in the first place were just having a hard time reconciling Palin’s uber-family-values stances with the fact that she endangered her child’s life multiple times the evening she gave birth by flying even after her water broke, the fact that she simply did not look pregnant and her staff was shocked to find out she was seven months along, the fact that no picture exists that demonstrates the woman was ever pregnant in 2008, and the fact that she returned to work three days after giving birth to a baby with Down’s Syndrome. It just doesn’t add up to the Family Woman that Palin claims to be.

Much more likely (and logical, for that matter) is that she found out her daughter was in labor and THAT is why she rushed back to Alaska. Much more likely is that she thought her daughter’s pregnancy might undermine her image as uber-family-lady, while her own pregnancy might garner her some sympathy. Much more likely is that if she didn’t look pregnant, she WASN’T pregnant, especially given the photos circulating of her when she actually WAS pregnant – because let me tell you, when Sarah Palin is pregnant, she LOOKS it.

So now we’re left with this situation where the Palin family has announced their daughter’s pregnancy in order to cover their own asses as far as Trig’s parentage. This announcement proves nothing. Palin could have protected her daughter AND her image by simply providing a dated photograph of herself visibly pregnant at the time she was supposed to be pregnant (although I suppose once you’ve decided you’re going to lie to millions of people, you might as well go all the way and stuff something under your shirt). She could have provided hospital records showing that she was admitted and in labor – after all, John McCain had to provide the media with his own medical records, so why shouldn’t Palin? She could have done a lot of things that didn’t involve exposing her family and her children to further controversy and ridicule.

Instead, Palin “outed” her own daughter, thrusting her into the limelight of her OWN accord. But again, the news itself proves nothing except that the rumor-mongers weren’t so far off – the teenage daughter of this abstinence-only-education proponent IS having sex, and she IS being irresponsible about it. It actually makes the case stronger, not weaker, that Trig is her son.

But of course the real brilliance of Palin’s feeding Bristol to the lions instead of stepping up to the plate herself is that by the time the truth comes out, it will be too late. It’s entirely possible that Bristol Palin is more like three months pregnant, which means she could easily be Trig’s mother as well; we all know that teen mothers frequently make the same mistake twice (or three times, or four times…). But by the time we know for sure, either Obama will have won and nobody will care, or Palin will already be VP and it will just be another “White House Scandal”: Vice President Palin’s daughter is miraculously eleven months pregnant. Gee. Who saw that coming?

There IS a way to settle all of this without throwing your pregnant teenage daughter under the train. But I guess Palin’s choice pretty much shows us what kind of parent she is, and what kind of candidate she is, and what kind of VP she will be – a person willing to sell out those who depend on her in order to cover up her own dishonesty.