Why "reducing abortions" is a problem

This is enough to give anyone chills (emphasis mine):

The Obama administration says they want to be inclusive and represent all Americans. The White House Faith Based Office is now tasked with reducing the number of abortions - something pro-life groups have very good experience in accomplishing. Pregnancy resources centers and restrictions on abortion have a terrific track record in helping women choose alternatives to abortion. Funding abortion or abortion providers is one of the worst things that can be done. What the government funds, we get more of. We hope to begin a dialogue that results in policies which actually work, not just financially benefit certain interest groups like abortion providers." --Wendy Wright, CWA

I'm not even going to touch the cognitive dissonance there. What's truly chilling is that these people very clearly are more interested in reducing abortions (however that has to be done) than reducing unplanned, unwanted pregnancies.

Obama has shown several times now that he likes to play the "bipartisan compromise" card until it's obvious the right wingers aren't interested. Whether this is a conscious strategy or not is moot; What Obama has given up in the name of compromise has had real consequences. He looks set to do the same here, as the quote from Kyle Right Wing Watch explains in the original post. What will Obama give up in the name of compromise with pro-life groups, only to have them continue pushing for the most extreme views? He has already given in to their framing (reduced abortions), and we see how that plays right into their hands in the quote above.

Dollhouse

I am done with Dollhouse. I have given it more chances than it deserves, and even though I hate to give up watching a show with Eliza Dushku and Amy Acker (and now I love Dichen Lachman), it is just pissing me of more than it's entertaining me. Maia has some good points about how sexual assault is treated on the show at Alas, a Blog. (Can't say I agree with her on the rest of her post, though. She's enjoying the show more than I am.)

I was relieved that we seemed to be free of the icky rape issues in Epsidode 5. Then we get, as Maia pointed out, rape as character development/plot point without actually dealing with rape as an issue. BOO!

And then we get the male active who gets hard in the showers when he is with Sierra. Of course it has to be about how a woman is ultimately responsible. Are we supposed to find it romantic that his attraction to one woman is so damn powerful that it overrides his programing and despite his childlike state he really really wants to fuck her. Barf.

A few big problems here.

1. The actives shower together because they are supposed to be in a completely innocent, blank state. There is no risk to them of assault or violence because none of them is capable. Now we have a man who is sexually aroused and women who may or may not be (so inscrutable, those wimmins without obvious arousal), but are definitely not supposed to be sexual. This is not interesting or cute or amusing to me. It is damn creepy. The women may not have the bodies of children, but they have no autonomy, no sexual desire, no way to understand or deal with sexuality. And we are shown a scene in which one of those women is in the shower with a man who is looking at her sexually.

2. This development perpetuates the framing of sexuality as actively sexual man and passively sexual woman.

3. The trope of the Asian woman who is beautiful and alluring and innocent, arousing men's sexuality without being sexual herself.

Local idiocy

I feel the need to share a lovely letter to the editor published in my local paper:

DON'T LET SIN RULE IN CHURCH

In response to Marlene Bomer (letter, March 4), let's see what God has to say about women in the church.

In 1 Timothy 2:12,14 it says "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence... And Adam was not deceived, but the women being deceived was in the transgression." It also says in Colossians 3:18, "Wives, submit yourself unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord."

A bishop refers to a man with and over one wife. There are to be no women clergy of any kind; this is unbiblical. It is nothing more than the feminist movement, the same movement that works to promote abortion, to rule over man in the church, our government and everywhere else that society will allow them to rule. They hate the fact that men were disciples and have gone so far as to try to say God is really a woman. What nonsense! These same women who want it all cry when they get it all.

Sin, whatever it is, must not be allowed to rule in the church. That includes things like rock and roll, to which some have put Christian lyrics and called it God honoring. Others, with greed, have tried with their prosperity gospel to turn God into a lottery. Neither Jesus himself nor his disciples were rich on earth.

Others do such things as "holy laughter" or "spiritual dancing" or even "spirit slaying," which Jesus himself never did, nor the apostles. Some have watered down the message of Jesus Christ and his gospel so "people could be at ease with Jesus." They apparently have forgotten that not everyone was comfortable with Jesus when he was on the earth the first time.

It is high time for the church to be the salt of the earth like it was meant to be. People will know when this happens, for the lost will come looking for Jesus Christ, and then they will be able to find Him.

You got that? Women are sin! Like rock and Roll and laughter.