After so many of the “Democrats” threw us under the bus this past weekend with the Stupak amendment, I am more disheartened than ever about the status of women in this country, and have been feeling very much like my namesake. Thank you all for a great boost this morning.

So, the question is, how do we start? What is the platform? I am here, and ready to help.

Pace
Cassandra

As I heard the story related, the CU students who fled back to San Luis after the bombing were becoming militant themselves. There were a series of confrontations with the guards at the Taylor Ranch.

Finally the town elders (who were mostly women as the story was related) told the students: Wait, give the courts a chance. Let’s have our case heard before we pick up arms.

So they did. They waited and waited and waited. It took them 21 years of waiting for the courts to try the case and give them a favorable ruling, but they finally prevailed.

Of course, a lot of damage had been done to the mountain for which they were fighting. One might argue this wasn’t a civil rights struggle at all, but I see it that way. The people of San Luis had the rights to hunt, fish, graze and otherwise enjoy that mountain for generations. Then a wealthy white man came and bought it and used his friendship with a judge to have the courts strip those rights. Since they were originally guaranteed by a treaty that Congress signed with Mexico at the end of that war, I believe that original court action itself was unconstitutional.

And as I grow older, I consider non-violence to be a mistake, in the face of genocide and PR regimes that will excuse any murder, anytime. The 50s and 60s movement was just at the cusp where such action would be rendered ineffective — that’s why any efforts toward peace generally are discredited as special pleading from the weak.

Quickly changing topic, in the UK, there are feminists against stem cell research due to the fact that most stem cell research comes from the harvesting of women’s eggs, which involves pumping women full of hormones and then putting them through quite invasive medical procedures to collect eggs. This is especially in light of recent discussions to pay women to provide eggs, which some people think will discriminate against poor women, encouraging them to partake in potentially harmful procedures for money. So, I guess there is an ethical debate about women’s bodies here, as well as one about the feotus.

And finally changing topic again, in Scotland (not sure about the rest of the UK), if using the NHS most doctors will not tell you the sex of your child during ultrasounds. Clinics often have signs telling you they won’t and not to ask. If you pay for private ultrasounds, you can get this info- and presumably if you are good at reading the ultrasound image, you might figure it out.

Paul–agreed. But, if what you’re looking for is results, the pro-life extremists have got them.

Well, having disproportionate control of the conversation isn’t necessarily a good thing – not if all the attention repels more people than it attracts.

That incident caused a number of the other Hispanic students at CU to return to their homes down south in the San Luis valley. There they ran into John Taylor who had his ankle shattered by a stray bullet in a confrontation reminiscent of the Milagro Beanfield War.

I’m probably asking for it with this statement, but I wonder if the reason there are no militant armed violent feminists is because core feminist values tend to prefer consensus and compromise over violence for resolving conflict? I know I’m stereotyping a bit here, preferring to focus on the more nurturing aspects of the feminine over the destructive Kali manifestations. Obviously individual women can and do commit violent acts every day. But when you get together as a group, that isn’t usually where it goes.

The Panthers and Malcolm X were necessary reminders that blacks were human, not angels, not abstractions — and they had the right to kill those who threatened them and their families with violence, just like any other American with the right to bear arms. Sorta like SALT or START talks backed by nuclear throwweight, innit?