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You are viewing the most recent 18 entries December 1st, 200911:30 am: Because abortion rights are human rights
Abortion is illegal under most circumstances in Northern Ireland. Women in NI pay the same taxes for the NHS as people in the rest of the UK, but when they need to have an abortion, they have to travel to the mainland at their own expense, find a private clinic, and pay for their own abortion. They're not allowed to access NHS services, even though they're UK taxpayers. There's currently a petition to the Prime Minister (whoever that may be in October 2010) to demand redress for this injustice: regardless of regional law in Northern Ireland, a UK resident is justly entitled to the same NHS services as anyone else, no matter where she lives. If you're a UK citizen, you can sign it: whether or not you're a UK citizen, please consider linking to it at your journal or blog. Because abortion rights are human rights.  SPUC recently won a nasty victory in Northern Ireland: they claimed the guidelines on termination were "ambiguous" and needed to be redrafted. The guidelines say, with regard to women who need an abortion but won't be allowed to have one in Northern Ireland because they're not actually going to die if they don't get one: Health professionals should explore the woman’s concerns and expectations to establish what kind of support she is getting or may expect to receive from her partner, family, social services, work colleagues or school/college authorities. It is important to discuss any difficulties she foresees if she continues with the pregnancy as well as any concrete measures that can be taken to help her particular situation. A woman should be offered information about alternatives to termination such as continuing with the pregnancy, adoption, etc. She should also be offered information on organisations which can offer support and advice. You may wonder, what's ambiguous about that? Well, for SPUC: the guidelines do not say, unambiguously, that health professionals are not allowed to point out to a pregnant woman that it's totally legal for her to travel to the mainland, get an abortion there, and here are contact details for organisations that can offer support and advice when she does so. What SPUC wants is a gag rule for health professionals in Northern Ireland. And they won their court case.Tags: abortion rights are human rights, evil british politics, evil religious politics, i am an angry feminist
November 12th, 200908:59 pm: NHS in Northern Ireland petition
Okay. So, this is weird but you need to bear with me. Northern Ireland is part of the UK. It's not "mainland UK", but it is UK. If you live in Northern Ireland, you have the NHS like everyone else, and you pay taxes for the NHS like everyone else. ...except for abortion. The 1967 Act that made abortion legal in England, Scotland, and Wales with the signatures of two doctors (normally not a problem to get unless you live in the middle of nowhere with only one pro-life GP, or if you are young and don't have the nous to know that you can change your GP just like that if they won't refer you to have an abortion) did not absolutely mandate that abortions should be available on the NHS, and it's a bit of a postcode lottery as to whether they are: I am told that some doctors who perform abortions will just bluntly tell the woman that if she goes private, she can have the abortion right away, whereas if she insists on having it on the NHS, she will have to wait weeks at a point where every week may make it a more significant operation. I am told that some doctors will only agree to perform abortions on the NHS when it's their opinion the abortion was "necessary" - not when in their view the abortion is being asked for by a silly slut who foolishly had unprotected sex. Still. Though some things have not changed - politicians still think that they can get up and make silly noises about abortion and it will do them nothing but good: though the religious and tabloid enforcers are still powerful enough to ensure that the abortion rate in the UK is unacceptably high by discouraging contraceptive use: still, women no longer die of backstreet abortions, and more and more, over the decades, it has become easier for a woman who does not want to be pregnant to get an abortion, and to have it on the NHS. (And all female contraception is free on prescription, and condoms can be got free most towns and cities: it's education that's in general the problem, not so much access.) The big exception to this is Northern Ireland. A woman in Northern Ireland who needs an abortion cannot get one in Northern Ireland unless the doctor is willing to stake his career and his freedom on the belief that the woman will die if she doesn't terminate. Mere risk to her health, or to her mental health: that's shrugged off. They can afford to do this, of course, without the societal consequences other countries face, because a woman in Northern Ireland can travel to mainland UK, without even the potential difficulties that a woman from the Republic of Ireland might face. But a woman from Northern Ireland can't get an abortion on the NHS. NHS hospitals and doctors are required to turn her away and point her at a private clinic. She's required to pay the same taxes as anyone anywhere else in the UK: but she's not allowed the same benefits. Not where she lives, because the NI government at Stormont knows they can keep abortion illegal while women go to the mainland to have abortions there: not on the mainland, because the Westminister government draws its skirts aside and murmurs delicately that abortion is a devolved matter in Northern Ireland, it's not for them to interfere. If you are a UK citizen, please sign this petition: petitions.number10.gov.uk/AbortioninNI. It's a petition to the Prime Minister (whoever he may be by October 2010...) to ask for fair treatment for women from Northern Ireland. The Westminister government is not allowed to override Stormont and make abortion legal in Northern Ireland: all right. But by damn, a woman who already has to spend two days travelling to the mainland at her own expense, ought not to have to pay for an abortion in private clinic on top of that. It's not fair, quite apart from anything else - she pays for the NHS, she should get to use the NHS. If you are not a UK citizen, please pass the link on! The Family Planning Association have put the petition forward and have more information here.      Current Mood:  angry , i am an angry feminist
November 7th, 200905:37 pm: Emma Thompson comes back from the dark side
...thanks to a 19-year-old student who talked to her face-to-face about what her support for letting a rapist get away with it looked like. (I wrote a letter to her agent: On striving to think the best of people, 1st November.) Caitlin Hayward-Tapp, a student at Exeter University: well done her. (I tried to post a comment at the Independent website re the shameful meiosis of referring to Polanski's rape of a 13-year-old girl as "unlawful sex", but it turns out they've signed on to Livejournal to process their comments, and as I'm suspended... I'm not allowed to comment there.) Current Mood: okay , lj abuse did what???
November 1st, 200909:39 am: On striving to think the best of people
I read on Shakesville that Emma Thompson had signed the petition supporting Roman Polanski's right not to be prosecuted for raping a 13-year-old girl - an act which the petition claims ( translate) is normally prescribed in Europe. Opinions may honestly vary on whether bringing Polanski to trial for raping an underage girl is the best thing for Polanski's victim (see Avedon on the Sideshow) but the idea that Polanski has some kind of right to go free because he committed the crime thirty years ago and he is a famous film director who ought not be treated like a "common terrorist", as the petition advocates, is beyond reprehensible. I wrote to Emma Thompson's UK agent: ( I'm striving to think the best of Emma Thompson )Yes, I admit, I'm politely lying through my teeth ("I'm sure you didn't MEAN to do that!") and I bet she did sign it, even if enough fan mail could get her to take her name off it. And there are other actors on the list I really also now hate for thinking that Polanski ought to be allowed to get away with rape because he's so famous and such a great film director that the law ought not to be applied to him as if he were just one of the terrorists kidnapped by the US. (Not that terrorists kidnapped by the US have a trial to look forward to, nor are they arrested on a warrant for which there is evidence that can be shown in court.) But as the petition makes clear, signing it affirms your support for the idea it's wrong for Polanski to be treated as if he was a common person, and the actors and other celebrities who have signed the petition have made clear their support for a two-tiered legal system, as well as for the principle that a famous rapist ought not to be forced to stand trial for his crime. Current Mood: angry , i am an angry feminist
July 29th, 200909:42 am: I know where my moral compass points
I've been having a discussion with someone over somewhere else about abortion, and we've been having the usual back-and-forth over details and such, and he (I'm fairly sure it's a he) added in passing to a much longer comment: But I seriously and sincerely believe that you are grievously in error, and I don't find that state of affairs to be good--not only because it leads you to empower and enable the culture of death in our nation/world (and enable the toleration of mass murder on a mind-boggling scale), but because it threatens your own immortal soul... and I really don't want to see you lost.As it happened, in 20 minutes from when I read that comment I was about to go out to my local pro-choice activist group where we were to discuss Alex Salmond's recent assertion that he's got a moral compass and he knows how to use it, and I didn't have time to follow my usual strategy of responding calmly point by point. I wanted to assert my moral compass, so I did, writing: I am an atheist, and normally I take "concern for my immortal soul" as a kindness - an expression of warmth, despite the fact that I don't believe in either an immortal God or immortal souls. But in this instance, you see, you are advocating support for a mass movement to treat women as slaves, animals, or incubators - to regard human beings as creatures to be bred by force, or machines that can be used to produce babies without regard for any harm done. This "pro-life" movement that advocates dehumanising women, that murders doctors, attacks clinics and health care - I would no more support it, ever, than I would support a pro-slavery movement, or a pro-death penalty movement, or a pro-war movement. Treating other human beings as lesser creatures, to be used and destroyed, is to me a sin. Cruelty and dehumanisation such as you advocate are, to me, the ugliest of sins - and I would fear for the best part of me, for whatever integrity and kindess I possess, if I were ever brought low enough not to opppose* such ugliness whenever I see it. To me, your advocacy of forcing women through pregnancy and childbirth, no matter what high-sounding excuses you make to yourself, is as ugly as slavery and rape. There is no excuse for it. I support a woman's right to safe, legal access to abortion, because I believe: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." And, so we include sisters in "brotherhood", I would never turn away from that to the horrors of the "pro-life" movement.     --- *Okay, given "oppose" may include anything from going to a demo to writing a brief to just a moment of sheer rage: but I'm always in the opposition to this. Current Mood: tired , feminism, i am an angry feminist
July 11th, 200810:04 am: NewWho: ( Why it's good that Donna's story ended the way it did )
It's not. Much has changed about the Doctor over the years but much has remained the same. Despite the superficial differences in appearance, at heart, or rather at hearts (the Doctor has two) his character is remarkably consistent.
He is still impulsive, idealistic, ready to risk his life for a worthy cause. He still hates tyranny and oppression and anything that is anti-life. He never gives in and he never gives up, however overwhelming the odds against him.
The Doctor believes in good and fights evil. Though often caught up in violent situations, he is a man of peace. He is never cruel or cowardly.
In fact, to put it simply, the Doctor is a hero. Having the Doctor ( spoiler for NewWho S4 finale ) just give up. For anyone coming here who doesn't usually read my journal, I wrote about this at more length on feministsf the blog. Current Mood: angry , fannishness, i am an angry feminist
March 11th, 200806:23 pm: Remembering Kaija Seifert
Today I went to a seminar for employers and service providers to discuss how best to oppose transphobia and anti-trans discrimination. It was a good day, and I hope a productive one. It ended with two people, Jo Clifford, whose name used to be John Clifford, a Scottish playwright, who got up and talked passionately about the wonderful changes since she was a 15-year-old who knew she was a boy who wanted to be a girl and didn't have a name for what that was: and Nick Laird, who works for Fair for All NHS, talking about his experience as a trans man - Nick is younger than Jo, and came out/grew up/transitioned in a more supportive environment, but still had those moments. I was thinking, as you do, about gender identity: Nick told a story about a small boy - an utterly innocent small boy - asking him, back when he was living as an uncomfortable teenage girl who knew she wanted to transition - "Are you a boy or a girl?" and Nick not knowing what to answer, and finally answering with what his birth certificate said then, and how he was living then: "I'm a girl." And the wee boy asking, in all innocence "Are you sure?" ( Read more... )Tags: being queer, feminism, hair hair hair, i am an angry feminist, kaija seifert
January 20th, 200807:51 pm: In the 16th century, it was white lead
And arsenic. And mercury. Women smeared poison on their faces in order to be beautiful. It has been long-established that being overweight is less of a risk to your health, so long as you maintain a steady weight and eat healthily, than the constant gain-lose pattern of yo-yo dieters. (And most commercial diets are yo-yo: they're not intended to be diets that anyone can follow for a lifetime without killing themselves.) It has been further established - in the kind of well, duh! science that proves what anyone might have thought for themselves - that being underweight, even slightly, is more of a health risk than being overweight. (Again, presuming that you eat healthy and do reasonable amounts of exercise.) It is one of those givens - human metabolism being what it is - that if you "go on a diet", and restrict what you eat to starvation levels or below, that while you will lose weight, once you come off the diet, you will promptly and rapidly gain it all back again and then some. So what kind of programmes do we see on TV? (In a commerical break, I just got hit by one, but they swing by at regular intervals). A program on encouraging underweight people to gain, and focussing on healthy eating and exercise? No. "Fighting fat". Well, screw that. This isn't about getting people to be healthier. This is about selling white lead.o Current Mood: angry , fight the diet merchants, i am an angry feminist, you live longer overweight
September 22nd, 200711:39 pm: "Catholics refuse abortions with anguish"
When I read in the Guardian about Catholic schools in Northern Ireland shutting down Amnesty International letter-writing groups, I wrote a long-ish response (too long to be a letter) and thought about trying to reduce it to the 50-100 words or so that would have stood a chance of being published. But, I thought, probably I'm too late, there will be several such letters already in (in my experience of letter-writing to the Guardian, it's best to have composed and sent your letter by lunchtime the day of publication) and besides, reducing that spluttering wordage to publishable length felt too exhausting. Someone did respond, though, and not briefly. His letter is entitled Catholics refuse abortions with anguish. There are two ways that could be intended, and given that this argument is all about Amnesty's decision to support the victims of rape and incest, developed with reference to the mass violations in war zones such as Darfur and Congo, you might think that it's by a Catholic woman explaining that as a Catholic she refused an abortion with anguish. No, of course not. (Catholic women are, according to statistics from the US, as likely to abort an unwanted pregnancy as women of other Christian denominations: more likely to need an abortion, given their religion's rigid opposition to birth control: and are, doctrinally speaking, actually sinning less if they avoid contraception and just have an abortion whenever they need one.) Nor is this from a Northern Ireland Catholic who is actually affected by the decision to ban Amnesty International from NI schools. Nor from someone living in Darfur and the Congo. No, this is from a man living in Congleton, Cheshire. He writes: I just cannot express the anger I feel at the unfair diatribe by Zoe Williams against Catholics who are taking a stand against Amnesty International (Faith schools should not be tax-funded, and here's why, September 19). Nevertheless, he's going to try. It was a Catholic who founded Amnesty True. However, had he had any interest in the historical roots of Amnesty, he would know it had its roots in the Communist Party and in Quakerism as much, if not more so, than Catholicism. it has been supported throughout its whole existence by the Catholic church worldwide, down to every local parish Actually, the Catholic Church has always opposed Amnesty when Amnesty supports a woman's right to choose. and only now that Amnesty has decided to support abortion has the church withdrawn its support. Amnesty has decided that in certain limited circumstances - which fall well short of the legal status of abortion in this country - the denial of abortion to women who have been raped will be regarded as a human rights issue which Amnesty International will support. For example:
- In Guanajuato, Mexico, Human Rights Watch interviewed a woman who had been sexually abused by her father at least since the age of six – and who also faced criminal charges for “incest.” She had two children as the result of these rapes. The official legal record from her complaint against her father in 2002 reads: Then my father took me to a hostel.... He penetrated me, and it hurt a lot when he penetrated me. I cried and I said to my father that it hurt a lot.... I want to declare that I don’t want to have the child that I am expecting, because I will not be able to love it. Because it is my father’s, I will not be able to love it. (The authorities did not authorize a legal abortion.) (cite)
- 24-year-old Marija, an ethnic Croat virgin living in northern Bosnia ..... For two months she was held in a Serb brothel-camp and raped daily by five or six men. Captured during an afternoon walk near her village in northern Bosnia last autumn, Marija was imprisoned in a small room in a house in Obudovac and abused each evening by Serb irregulars. From other rooms she could hear the screams of other women, but never saw them. When she was released in a prisoner exchange earlier this month, she was pregnant. cite (She was able to get an abortion.)
- [Congo] Later the man [who raped me] came to my house. He found my parents there and he threatened them. So, my parents sent me to live with other family members. Then I realised that I was pregnant. When my parents found out, they chased me away. They told me that they couldn't take care of the baby as they were already having difficulties. I was very worried. Now I live with a neighbour who has a distant relationship with my mother. It is a life of suffering there. We eat with difficulty, even to find soap is difficult. It is hard. I regret I will have a baby soon. I have nothing to eat and to clothe it with. I was raped against my will. It is terrible because it isn't just me affected by this. There are many girls who visit me who also say that they are suffering. cite
</ul> Amnesty International decided formally, in April this year, that from now on the denial of abortion to women made pregnant through rape/incest, and especially when rape is made use of as a war crime, would be treated as a human rights issue. The response of the Catholic Church was immediate and definite: they withdrew support from AI, and - as we see in NI - this decision is even trickling down to kids in Catholic schools who form Amnesty letter-writing groups to support prisoners of conscience. The writer of this letter to Guardian claims: And why? Not because it is indifferent to the awful sufferings of women made pregnant through rape or lack of birth-control facilities, but because it faces an almighty dilemma. Is the child in the womb a human being or not? Does it become one at some stage in the pregnancy or is it one from the moment of conception? And as we do not know the answer, can abortion be justifiable? The assertion that if a fetus is to be regarded as a human being from conception that means abortion is not justifiable is rank illogic. My rights as a human being do not include the right to make use of another human being against their will. Termination of pregnancy remains justifable, if the pregnant woman can justify it, at any point during pregnancy: there is no point during pregnancy when a woman ceases to be human or loses her human rights. To claim that the Catholic church is "not indifferent" to the sufferings of a 16-year-old girl, raped by her father for ten years, desperate for an abortion because "I will not be able to love it", or "not indifferent" to a girl rejected by her family because she is unmarried and pregnant from rape, is about as believable as their claim that they oppose equal human rights for LGBT people because they "love the sinner". (Cardinal O'Brien celebrated the New Year in 2006 with a sermon preached about the awful moral degeneration of permitting two men to imitate marriage by having a civil partnership: I never liked The Herald so well as when they responded with an editorial inquiring of the Cardinal exactly what moral degeneration he thought was being imposed on society by giving a man the legal right to be with his dying partner in hospital, and what business it was of the Cardinal when these were civil partnerships, not religious? Since then the Cardinal has continued to demonstrate his "love" for LGBT people by accusing same-sex parents of being morally equivalent to child molestors. I am not joking or exaggerating. And this is what Catholics call "loving the sinner".) It is a frightful problem not even addressed, let alone resolved, by Ms Williams blithely stating she is "happy ... to defend the right to abortion to all women everywhere at any time". If the foetus or child in the womb is a human being, has it no rights, not even that most basic right, to life? Again, see above. If I am dying of liver failure, and it turns out this man is a perfect match, do I then have the right to have him tied down on an operating table and half his liver cut out - to his possible death - because I have the "right to life"? I used to be a blood donor: I stopped after ten years because the vein in one arm had collapsed and no donation was possible, and the other one would (apparently) go too after a while. I have B- blood, and no infections: I was a useful blood donor. Nevertheless, I had the right to decide for myself when to start being a blood donor, and I had the right to decide for myself when to stop. The notion that it's a "frightful problem" whether or not to deny that right to a woman (far from ignoring that problem, Zoe Williams noted the difference in the death rates between countries where abortion is legal, and countries where abortion is not). Oh, wait: this man wasn't interested in whether or not women die when legal abortion is denied... There isn't a single Catholic doctor or nurse anywhere who refuses to assist in an abortion in the circumstances Zoe Williams describes without intense pain and anguish. You know, when you read of teachers (in the bad old days when teachers were allowed to beat schoolchildren) claiming that "this hurts me more than it hurts you" as they prepared to beat the crap out of some small kid with a length of rattan cane, it really is, in a mordant and nasty kind of way, sort of funny. Not if you were the kid who was about to be beaten, but at a distance in time... well, yeah. It's sort of funny. I looked up a number of sites to find examples to quote for this journal post. The more I read, and thought of this man claiming that what the doctor or the nurse feels is intense pain and anguish, when they refuse to help one of these women - I feel sick. I feel incredulous and sick and angry that this man thinks that it's the trained medical personnel who are willing to let a woman die or suffer horribly, a woman who has already suffered intense pain and anguish - but it's the doctor or the nurse who deserves our compassion, says this man: it's the Catholics who are refusing for the sake of a doctrinal belief that a pregnant woman is an incubator and only the fetus has human rights who deserve our compassion? I may vomit. I won't, because my keyboard will seize up. But wait, there's more. And that is because they - Catholic doctors, nurses, nuns, brothers, paramedics and priests - have been devoting their lives for centuries to founding hospitals and clinics for the poor of this world. Their history is absolutely heroic, their contribution indescribable, their dedication unsurpassed. Actually, in the specific area he's talking about: I do not consider it "heroic" to decide that you would rather let a woman suffer and die than oppose the Church to which you belong; I find the Catholic church's contribution perfectly describable, and so did Zoe Williams, and so have many AIDS activists combating the anti-condom propaganda spread by priests: and the "dedication" of a doctor or a nurse who put their religion above the needs of their patients is easily surpassed by any doctor or nurse who would, professionally, put the health and wellbeing of their patients first. I would love to see Zoe Williams spend a few months in their company - in the dangerous war-torn jungles of the Congo, or the dry and bitter plains of the Sudan, or the jobless impoverished townships of Mugabe's Zimbabwe - and come back and tell us then what she thinks of the Catholics she writes about with such contempt. I doubt that he would change his mind merely faced with the actual victims of rape whom he dismisses with such indifference for their sufferings and such concern for their doctors, any more than I think Zoe Williams would suddenly discover that it's the Catholic medical personnel who deny these women abortions who really deserve her compassion and respect, as this man seems to think she would. So I would like to transform this man into a woman, and put him into a hotel room in Mexico, or rape cell in Croatia, or an undefended village in the Congo, and have him raped and made pregnant, and let him consider whether he himself has no right to human life, but is only an incubator for the fetus conceived of rape. Current Mood: angry , howls of rage, i am an angry feminist, powerful speech vs. powerless silence, war
October 8th, 200612:20 am: I hate the "pro-life" movement
The woman whose experience trying to get emergency contraception I linked to here and wrote about here has announced on her blog that - unsurprisingly, with the delay forced on her by various misogynistic doctors who think pregnancy is punishment for sex - Plan B didn't work, and she's going to have to get an abortion. Which her health insurance will not cover, because in the US, health insurance companies are permitted to refuse women full health care coverage by misogynistic legislators who think pregnancy is punishment for sex. Remember, this is what the movement that calls itself "pro-life" is all about. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise, at best, they're deluding themselves. (Oh, and she's right: this is funny.) And... remember the waffles. Tags: ***** this fir a kerry oan, howls of rage, i am an angry feminist
November 26th, 200506:57 pm: Rape
There is a very specific technical definition of rape in Scottish law (and a slightly different definition of rape in English law). Both definitions focus on sexual intercourse without consent as rape: my definition of rape is broader, and would include incidents that did not involve sexual intercourse, that would be defined under either English or Scottish law as sexual assault, rather than rape. That out of the way: Rape is when one person has, or tries to have, some form of sex with another person who does not want it - a person who does not consent. The state of mind of the person trying to have sex is not relevant when determining if a sexual encounter is rape. ( cut for length )Tags: Rúairi Dougal, i am an angry feminist
November 24th, 200503:14 pm: Ruairi Dougal
Ryairi Dougal*, 20, from County Donegal, works as a part-time security guard at Aberystwyth University. He was asked to escort a student safely home because she'd become extremely drunk at a party. It was two days later when she complained to a university counsellor that something had happened and police were called in.
Mr Dougal denied rape when questioned and said they had consensual sex in the corridor near her flat. When told this, it was the first time she became aware they had had sex.
The alleged victim told the court that there was "no way" she would have agreed to have sex in a corridor.
But when questioned by the defence, she acknowledged that she could not remember anything and therefore could not definitively say if she consented to sex or not. BBC Judge Mr Justice Roderick Evans agreed with the prosecution who said that "drunken consent is still consent".
The jury at Swansea Crown Court was subsequently directed to return a not guilty verdict. -The Independent Pass the story on. After all, Ryairi Dougal, according to the courts, did nothing wrong - so why should he be ashamed of having his name splashed all over the Internet as a "security guard" who thinks nothing of having "consensual sex" with a woman too drunk to remember what happened, to whom he had a duty of care? As ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) dmsherwood53 says, it amounts to the judge classing being raped while drunk as a "self-imposed injury". Amnesty International report on rape*Ruairi? BBC Wales spells it differently. Update: Rúairi. Current Mood: angry , i am an angry feminist
August 4th, 200412:07 pm: "No Pity. No Shame. No Silence."
pickled_ginger's post got me to post mine. "It's about breaking the rules that make sexual violence and other abuse unthinkable, so many people refuse to think; that make it unspeakable, so many people refuse to hear or to speak; that make abuse unstoppable." I agree. And yet I have not wanted to take part in this meme, not because the story is so bad, but because it's not. Look, my story is not some deep-hidden tale of unspeakable violence. It's almost silly, and it wasn't especially traumatic, but this is what happened to me when I was about 14-15: ( cut for length )Tags: i am an angry feminist, just my life really, powerful speech vs. powerless silence
April 4th, 200411:59 am: WTF?
I've been invited to join matriarchy, whose userinfo consists of quotes from S.C.U.M.I'd put up a poll about this, but my paid user time has expired and Livejournal is suffering a bout of sulkiness and won't talk to the Paypal server. So I can only repeat: WTF? Tags: i am an angry feminist
May 29th, 200309:31 pm: On nostalgia
I understand the concept "I wish I could visit the past." I wish I could see the old Imperial Summer Palace near Beijing before the British army destroyed it. I wish I could visit Stonehenge before the National Trust put up barbed wire round all the stones. I wish I could see a living dodo. I don't understand the kind of nostalgia that believes the past was better. ( anti-nostalgia links and rant )Tags: angry queer, asimov, history, i am an angry feminist
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