News of the Restless

Wankers of the Week: Crappy Thanksgiving!

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Sabina Becker

Crappy weekend, everyone…and crappy Canadian Thanksgiving! I feel like I’ve been eating turkey all week, even though I won’t be having any until tomorrow night. And is it any wonder? Just look at all the turkey turds I’ve had to wade through this week. And here they come, in no particular order:

1. Stephen Fucking Woodworth. Who knew turkeys could whine? Ever since WoodyWanks’ golden goose, M-312, was cooked, he’s been at it nonstop. His lame attempt to defend his lame motion appeared in the HuffyPo this week, to all due derision. After all, it wasn’t really about when life begins, much less freedom of speech. It WAS about abortion, and the fact that no one was fooled by all the phony baloney about slavery must have been galling. Well, Woody, get the fuck over it. You had your 15 minutes, and that’s all you deserve. You can’t talk about creationism one minute, and then try to drag science into it when it suits you. Back to the backbench with you, and STFU, already! PS: And don’t start praying away the gay, either, numbnuts.

2. Rob Fucking Anders. Sleepyhead decided to get into conspiracy theory this week, intimating that current NDP head Thomas Mulcair sent his predecessor, Jack Layton, into an early grave by urging him to lead the party in the last federal election. Or rather, to not step down and go die of cancer quietly. Anyone who ever met Jack knew that sort of thing would not have been his style. He didn’t need any pushing to run, much less a “knife in the back”. It’s just more proof, from where I sit, that even dead, Jack Layton scares the SupposiTories — and Tom Mulcair, living, does too. (Which, I must confess, makes me like Mulcair a lot better than I used to.)

PS: Bwahahaha. Total sexual unappealingness always goes down easier when you dress it up as a religious vow. Eh, Sleepyhead? PPS: Uh oh, looks like somebody needs a lesson in transgender identity and what it really means…and how UNlikely a transwoman is to assault little girls in the ladies’ room.

3. Katie Fucking Roiphe. Oh noes, feminists are suddenly FUNNY! Well, duh — we always HAVE been. Katie, on the other hand, is becoming more and more of a humorless bore. And downright petulant since she’s been the butt of a lot of our jokes. Speaking of which, here’s one:

Q. Why did Katie Roiphe cross the road?

A. So she could write stupid anecdotes about the other side.

Thanks, and don’t forget to tip your waitress. Ba-dump-bump.

4. Jack Fucking Wu. What’s the matter with Kansas? The Fucking Westboro Baptist Cult, among other things. And the fact that their members are now no longer content to picket funerals with their ugly homophobic placards, and are running for local political office. Please tell me this one is gonna lose. Please!

5. David Fucking Pickup. Meanwhile, in other homophobic news, this closet case — sorry, “ex-gay conversion therapist”, note the quotes — is trying to sue California for banning his racket. Good luck with that, eh?

6. Todd Fucking Akin. This item may be four years old, but it holds the key to all his stupidity. How the hell do you give an abortion to a woman who’s not pregnant? Would that not kind of defeat the purpose? No wonder this idiot thinks a woman can’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape”, whatever that is…he has absolutely no knowledge of female anatomy, or reproductive function, OR gynecological surgery, whatsofuckingever. PS: And…he doubled down on the dumbth this week. Hooooooboy.

7. Victoria Fucking Jackson. She chose to be straight? I don’t fucking believe that. If that were true, she could also have chosen to be smart, and she clearly isn’t.

8. Allen Fucking West. I’m sorry, but God and porn star are two thoughts that do not belong in the same paragraph, much less a letter to one’s spouse, demanding that she be one to him in the name of God. Ugh ugh ughitty ugh UGH.

9. Michele Fucking Bachmann. She may not be good for the Jews, but she sure is good for the other guy. When she patronized their synagogue and tried to kiss their collective tuchus for Yom Kippur, she pissed them off so badly that they’re now actually donating money to her opponent across state lines.

10. Dan Fucking Cathy. What’s that, Mr. Chick-Fil-Hate Guy? You support “Biblical families”? That’s nice. I had no idea you were so open to polygamy. Or concubinage. Or slave-rape. Or incest.

11. Kenneth Fucking Krause. Nice arms, dude. Shame about your face. Shame, too, about the shit that goes on behind those beady little eyes of yours. Now, if you’re as concerned about public health as you claim to be, why not hop on that fancy-ass bike of yours, and go chase down some ambulances? Or, better still, the limos of the guys who bag big government subsidies for sticking high-fructose corn syrup into everything? Because it’s they who are actually responsible for the so-called obesity epidemic you’re trying to pin on Jennifer Livingston — and she, incidentally, does not need your unkindly concern, or anyone else’s concern but her doctor’s. PS: I’m sorry if you thought your conditional apology was a real one. It isn’t. Apologize for real or just STFU, you narcissistic fucker.

12. Gerry Fucking Ritz. Last week, he was voting yes to a pointless and legally idiotic “debate” aimed at bringing new abortion laws. This week, though food safety is supposed to be his portfolio, he was nowhere to be found when the people had questions about a huge E. coli outbreak at a meat-packing plant. How “pro-life” is that? And how free-speechy, too. PS: This isn’t helping.

13. Barbara Fucking Kay. Now that Margaret Fucking Wente has gone temporarily quiet, another right-wing battle-axe has reared her yappy head. Too bad that everything coming out of her mouth is either lies, made-up bullshit, more lies, or more bullshit. Oh, and did we mention lies and bullshit? Yeah, Babs, that’s really got ME convinced that we poor stupid women need superior others to make our minds up for us when it comes to abortion. And now we can see who makes her son’s meagre mind up for him, too. Since they both write for the National Pest, and the anti-feminist party line is its editorial line, don’t expect any action against either of them. Even if they both get caught out for plagiarism, all you’ll hear from there is this:

14. William Fucking Bailey. What’s a crappy dad to do when he’s caught on camera mocking a ten-year-old girl with cerebral palsy — and teaching his own son to do the same? Why, just slam the car door and not talk to the media. Yeah, that’ll work!

15. Antonio Fucking Piazza. Looks like Da Berluscoglioni isn’t the the only major dickhead in his party. And, like #14, this one seems to have a hate-on for disabled people. Maybe because they keep taking all those choice parking spots, specifically marked with wheelchair signs, that he himself thinks he has an exclusive right to, even though he’s not the least bit disabled — by anything other than a massive penis growing out the top of his neck, that is.

16. Salvatore Fucking Cordileone. Is he saying that God set him drunk and then told him to get behind the wheel and get his sanctimonious ass arrested? Because that’s sure what it sounds like to me. The Lord may work in mysterious ways, but I’m pretty sure that’s NOT one of them. Ever hear of personal responsibility, Mr. Archbishop, sir? Or is that something you only preach to the sinful peons?

17. Stephen Fucking Taylor. Why?

That’s why. Someone, I guess, is jealous of some rather good genes. PS: Oh yeah, and this, too.

18. Paul Fucking Broun. A liar from the pit of hell? Yeah, sure sounds like. What the fuck is he doing in the House Committee on Science? Oh yeah: trying to turn it gay for Jesus and the Young Earth Bullshit Theory. And the Talking Snake Theory of Evolution. Silly me.

19. Paul Fucking Singer. Uh, no, Argentina doesn’t owe you a single peso. You tried to scalp a struggling country in the crash of ’01? Your fucking loss. Eat it like the rest of your vulture ilk. If I only knew how to say “fuck you” in Argentino…but I’m sure Cristina Fernández does, in any case. Now give back that school ship and eat shit, pelotudo.

20. Antonin Fucking Scalia. Abortion and gay sex aren’t even IN the US constitution; therefore they must be unconstitutional! Makes a hell of a lot of sense, except maybe that the whole “pursuit of Happiness” thing has that covered, meaning they are SO constitutional. Nyah, nyah.

21. Rick Fucking Santorum. Anyone who would kill Big Bird is not pro-life. And anyone who would cop to being someone who would do it, is an obvious wanker.

22. Mitt Fucking Romney. The Pentagon wastes more in one day than PBS gets in a whole year. Like the little one says: Find something else to cut off. (I can think of a few salient body parts.) PS: Ha, ha.

23. and 24. Michael Fucking Coren and Faith Fucking Goldy. If transgender people using bathrooms offend you so much, I suggest you both go do your business outside this winter. And try not to offend any unsuspecting passersby whilst removing your heads from your arses before you relieve yourselves, eh?

25. Vic Fucking Toews. Considering what a negligible expense non-Christian prison chaplains are (serving, as they do, such a small portion of the prison population), I don’t for one minute buy the idea that they’re a waste of public money. The salary of Icky Vic the Intolerant Adulterer, however, is quite another story.

26. Patrick Fucking Plumb. His name rhyme with dumb, and that’s no coincidence. After all, he’s a conservatard who’d rather slaughter Big Bird than see kids get educational TV…as opposed to the mentally-retarding crap that dominates the commercial airwaves, which is aimed mainly at making people buy things they don’t really want — and in the case of kids, is aimed at making them want toys their parents don’t want to buy. So of course, he’s a Romneyite. PS: And he’s a fucking liar, too. Imagine that, claiming his Twitter account was hacked when it plainly wasn’t. And then suddenly taking it down when his game was exposed. There’s a word for people like that: Fucktard!

27. Jeremy Fucking Hunt. His name rhymes with cunt, and that’s no coincidence. After all, he’s a conservatard who’d like only too well to destroy abortion rights in tiny little increments — or in the case of British women, by half the currently allowed limit of 24 weeks’ pregnancy. And some people here in Canada wonder why we want no new laws, and no limits at all? THAT’s why. As soon as you set a bar, some smirky asshole (whom it will never affect personally, of course) wants to set it lower. (Or higher, as the case may be.) Best thing to do is not have any fucking bars at all.

28. Jon Fucking Hubbard. No, slavery was NOT a “blessing in disguise” for blacks. Unless there is something blessed about being forced onto a ship in shackles, dragged across the sea, possibly thrown overboard, housed in subhuman conditions before, during and after, and being beaten, whipped, raped, forced to work, and oh yeah, LYNCHED. And then being accorded only 3/5 “citizenship”, and no votes. And even to this day, their descendants are STILL being taken advantage of and disenfranchised. Somehow, I can’t see a single blessing in there. Can you? If you can, you’ve got something in your eye. And it smells a lot like bovine feces.

And finally, to the two trolls who pooped on my obitchery for the late unlamented racist perfesser, Philippe Fucking Rushton. No names, no addies, not even an IP this time (although, as usual, I am sorely tempted to post those). I just wanted you to see these nuggets for yourselves and understand why I refuse to approve them. I don’t want to feed these trolls by debating with them as if their ideas merited taking seriously; I just want this shit to dry out and bleach and crumble away in the sun, like their boy’s “research”. Here’s the first:

Guess that’s why Rushton sat on the board of Intelligence––the most prestigious journal in the field of, yes, intelligence––for eight years, up until his death. Or why Personality and Individual Differences, the second most prestigious journal in said field, devoted an entire issue to his work.

And, yes, he was beaten up. From a book I own on the topic: “One evening [in 1991], while walking across campus, [Rushton] was physically assualted…and admitted to a hospital suffering from chest pains.”

I do not agree with all of Rushton’s theories, but he was a brilliant man, and he made major contributions to his field.

Ah yes, such major contributions that his own university president denounced them, peer reviewers panned them, and real geneticists like David Suzuki picked them mercilessly apart, and in the end they were only taken seriously by the creepy followers of a handful of racist websites. As for the unreferenced citation, what book was that from? I googled for it in vain. One published in the vicinity of Uranus, no doubt.

Here’s the second:

If they were fraudulent it’s curious he continued to be published in leading journals up until his death. eg. (2009). Whole-brain size and general mental ability: A review. International Journal of Neuroscience, 119, 691-731.

The reality is his data was pretty solid. You could challenge why those patterns (Rushton’s Rule of 3 for example) arose, but the data was replicable.

I repeat: Rushton was not a neuroscientist, and he was not a geneticist. He was a quack. A quack full of fraudulent ideas of how brain size related to IQ and racist ideas of how brain and penis size were inversely correlated. His profile fell shortly after his racist book was published, and his reputation never recovered, regardless of the apologists’ contentions above. Sure, his data was “replicable”, if your idea of data is the sort of stuff you glean from paying people to fill out prurient questionnaires. I prefer not to dignify it as “brilliant”, “major” or a “contribution” to any field but that of quackery. One could come to similar conclusions, or better, by use of phrenology.

Good night, and get fucked!

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Posted in Wankers of the Week | 1 Comment

Festive Left Friday Blogging: What’s a little rain?

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Sabina Becker

To this guy, nothing:

And not to these people, either:

As you can see, the streets of Caracas were flooded. Not with rain, but with Chavecito’s supporters. So don’t be too surprised if, come Monday morning, you awake to the news that the presidential elections of Venezuela were swept by the incumbent. Despite all the anglo whore media hype, Capriles has no support. He’s double digits behind, and he will NOT be the “fresh new face” of a neoliberal-again Venezuela. Not ever. That giant fizzle you hear is his campaign, dissolving.

In the rain, as it were.

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Posted in Festive Left Friday Blogging, Huguito Chavecito | Comments Off

Philippe Rushton is dead

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Sabina Becker

Ding, dong.

Controversial social psychologist J. Philippe Rushton, whose name was indelibly linked with his theories of race and brain size, has died at the age of 68.

Rushton, who was a professor at the University of Western Ontario from 1977, died Tuesday at the London Health Sciences Centre palliative care ward of Addison’s disease.

The British-born Rushton published more than 200 academic papers and five books during his long career but was best known for “Race, evolution and behavior: A Life history perspective” (see a review here).

The uproar caused by his 1989 paper that led to the book provoked then-Ontario premier David Peterson to say he should be fired. Rushton and environmentalist David Suzuki argued the theories in a highly publicized 1989 debate.

[…]

Rushton presented his notorious findings to the American Association for Advance of Science convention in mid-January, 1989, where he was “hit with a hailstorm of hostile questions,” the Star reported at the time.

He contended that the three races ranked in 1-2-3 order, were Asians, first in brain size, intelligence, family stability, sexual restraint and mental stability, followed by whites and then blacks.

[…]

Right-wing commentator Greg Johnson, commemorating Rushton on the website North American New Right, said the social scientist “endured decades of social ostracism, professional discrimination, grotesque smears, mentally unhinged stalkers, attempts to have him fired from his job and even physical assaults at the hands of Canada’s egalitarian peace and love mongers.”

Rushton also promoted his theories on the website he founded in 1989, Charles Darwin Research.

He wrote on the Darwin site: “Why the attempt to trash or suppress this book? Because there is no stronger taboo today than talking about race.”

Actually, there is no taboo against “talking about race”, unless it’s the kind of talk that goes “nigger, nigger, nigger”. And even that’s not taboo; it’s just grounds for a well-deserved thrashing. Which the book got, but Rushton himself did not. Despite his right-wing defenders’ assertions, there was not one reported incident in which Rushton ever got beaten up by anyone, he was never removed from his tenured office at Western, he was never in physical danger from evil liberals, and his death is due to natural causes. He led a life of privilege and often unearned distinction. (White privilege: something you won’t see a racist “scientist” ferreting out any “rational” explanations for, EVER.)

Rushton was a sociologist, not a geneticist, and his methods were widely condemned as unscientific. In one instance, they consisted of paying shoppers in Toronto’s Eaton Centre to fill out a survey about their sexual proclivities. In another, he asked similar questions of his students. The whole business was, in the words of his own university president, George Pederson, “a serious breach of scholarly procedure”.

Rushton was not a sexologist either, so one can only wonder what his motives for asking about penis size, number of sex partners, and ejaculation might have been. (Also, the exclusion of females from these surveys is strange. Why no questions about their sex partners, or the size of their vulvae, or how often they had multiple orgasms?) It sure smells as though Rushton was looking for “scientific evidence” to defend the outmoded (but still persistent, even to this day) image of the black man as “thug rapist”, with a huge penis to match his sexual appetite, and a correspondingly small brain (no doubt sapped of vital strength by those huge and rapacious testicles). I doubt very much whether the eminent professor considered the rape of black slave women by white male plantation owners to be a factor in all of this.

One thing that’s not in doubt is that Rushton himself was a racist. Despite all his denials and equivocations, the company he kept gave the game away. According to his own Wikipedia entry,

Since 2002, Rushton has been the president of the Pioneer Fund. Tax records from 2000 show in that year that his Charles Darwin Research Institute was awarded $473,835, or 73% of the fund’s total grants that year. The Southern Poverty Law Center, an American civil rights organization, characterizes the Pioneer Fund as a hate group. Rushton has spoken on eugenics several times at conferences of the American Renaissance magazine, a monthly racialist magazine, in which he has also published a number of general articles.

Rushton has published articles on the website VDARE, which advocates reduced immigration into the United States. Stefan Kühl wrote in his book, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (2002), that Rushton was part of the revival in the 1980s of public interest in scientific racism.

William H. Tucker, a professor of psychology who writes histories of scientific racism, noted in 2002:

Rushton has not only contributed to American Renaissance publications and graced their conferences with his presence but also offered praise and support for the “scholarly” work on racial differences of Henry Garrett, who spent the last two decades of his life opposing the extension of the Constitution to blacks on the basis that the “normal” black resembled a European after frontal lobotomy. Informed of Garrett’s assertion that blacks were not entitled to equality because their “ancestors were … savages in an African jungle,” Rushton dismissed the observation as quoted “selectively from Garrett’s writing”, finding nothing opprobrious in such sentiments because the leader of the scientific opposition to civil rights had made other statements about black inferiority that were, according to Rushton, “quite objective in tone and backed by standard social science evidence.” Quite apart from the questionable logic in defending a blatant call to deprive citizens of their rights by citing Garrett’s less offensive writing—as if it were evidence of Ted Bundy’s innocence that there were some women he had met and not killed—there was no sense on Rushton’s part that all of Garrett’s assertions, whether or not “objective,” were utterly irrelevant to constitutional guarantees, which are not predicated on scientific demonstrations of intellectual equality.

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles and shits green like a duck, what do you suppose it could be?

Let’s call Rushton’s racism by its proper name, and put it in its proper perspective.

As the London Free Press reports today, Rushton’s theories “died with him.” They were intellectually fraudulent, and so was he.

May they all rot in disgrace.

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Posted in Isn't That Racist?, Karma 1, Dogma 0, Obits and 'bobs, She Blinded Me With Science, Sick Frickin' Bastards | 1 Comment

Quotable: Sussan Tahmasebi on women’s rights and democracy

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Sabina Becker

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Posted in Quotable Notables, Uppity Wimmin | 1 Comment

Rob Anders: Gender Idiot

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Sabina Becker

Just in case the SupposiTory MP from Calgary West decides to scrub his site of this particularly harebrained piece of boneheadedness, I saved it so you can see just how dumb he is about transgender issues. Here’s the story, from CBC:

Anders wants to stop Bill C279, a private members bill that would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code to include “gender identity” and “gender expression” as grounds for discrimination.

He says the bill’s goal is to give transgendered men access to women’s washrooms. He says it’s the duty of the House of Commons to protect children from any exposure or harm that will come from giving men this kind of access.

But transgender advocate Jan Buterman says she can’t believe what Calgary MP Rob Anders is implying with his petition.

“The suggestion that this is somehow some … conspiracy of trans people to sneak into bathrooms deliberately to harm people it’s ludicrous,” Buterman says. “Trans people have been using bathrooms all over Canada for decades with, as far as I know, zero evidence of any incidents whatsoever.”

And the best comment, from “ZenJos”:

“Anders says the goal of the bill is to give transgendered men access to women’s washrooms.”

Not that I’m acknowledging that this is The Purpose of the bill, but the goal would actually be to give transgender men access to men’s washrooms. And transgender women access to women’s washrooms.

If you’re going to oppose something with any political authority, you ought to at least get your terminology straight.

Bingo. Transgender men are men who were born with female bodies, so they’d be using the men’s room. I think Sleepyhead is thinking of trans-women, who are women born with male bodies.

There has never been an incident, to my knowledge, of any trans-person ever molesting a child in a public washroom. That is the furthest thing from their minds. When they go in, their only intent is to do their business, wash their hands, and get out again without anyone else making a stink about their gender. In other words: They want to be regarded no differently from anyone else using that loo. Which is why there’s a bill trying to eliminate that form of discrimination here in Canada.

If Sleepyhead is really concerned about sexual inappropriateness in public washrooms, perhaps he should start a petition against conservative men with wide stances.

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Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Isn't It Ironic?, Law-Law Land, Men Who Just Don't Get It, Teh Heterostoopid | Comments Off

Dear Jonathan Kay: Define “reasonable”. And “humane”.

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Sabina Becker

Dear Jonathan Kay:

So, today you penned this charming little screed for the National Pest, in which you castigated pro-choicers for being all “hysterical” and demanding that Rona Fucking Ambrose resign from a post for which she is obviously no more fitted than a neo-Nazi would be as minister for the Status of Jews (if such a thing existed in Canada), or a racist would be as head of the Department of Indian Affairs (which does exist in Canada, and under this wonderful government, is indeed the case).

Well, Mr. Kay, aren’t you the brave little man, peeking out from under your mommy’s apron like that? You even referenced her by name, as if she were just any other National Pesterer, and not related to you at all. It’s like no nepotism exists there, and no right-wing hive mind, either.

But I digress.

The reason I’m writing this open letter to you today, Mr. Kay — may I call you Jonathan? — is because you’re trying to frame me and the vast majority of other Canadians as some kind of baby-killing extremists. And all because we don’t want a new law that would bring back all the repression of the old laws we demonstrated against 25 years ago. And then some.

Oh, you think I exaggerate? Exactly what do you think would happen under a law that declares a fetus, embryo or zygote to be a separate person, with all the legal protections any person would have, from the moment a sperm breaches the outer barrier of an egg? Because that is the fetal personhood law that Stephen Fucking Woodworth is trying to push under the aegis of his bogus “debate”, and that is what Rona Fucking Ambrose voted for. It is also, by sheerest malign coincidence, the same fetal personhood a small coterie of right-wing extremists keeps trying to push as a constitutional amendment in one US state after another.

Well, Jonathan — may I call you Jono? — I don’t know what you think would happen if such a “debate” resulted in such a law, but I have a pretty fair idea myself. In fact, I know exactly what would happen even if there were some small exceptions, designed to limit and discourage abortion while still trying to appear “reasonable and humane”, to use your words. And the reason I know is because it happened to one of my own relatives. My mother’s cousin, to be precise.

My aunt — we Germans call our parents’ cousins aunt and uncle, to distinguish them from cousins of our own generation — was the mother of a daughter, born the same year as I. She wanted more children, and she was in her first trimester of her second pregnancy, when disaster struck. She fell ill with rubella.

Now, rubella — which used to be called German measles, although the Germans didn’t invent it and the virus was different from the measles virus — isn’t such a big deal if you get it after you’re born. It causes fever and a rash on the skin, like chickenpox. Most people who get it make a full recovery, unless they are very young, very old, or their immune systems are severely compromised. And if a pregnant woman gets it, she recovers fully, with no permanent ill effects. But her fetus, especially if it is in the critical first trimester of development, never does. Severe deformities and disabilities are inevitable for any first-trimester fetus infected with rubella. (Click here to read about them.)

My aunt was in her first trimester when she contracted rubella. And her fetus was found to be infected, too. Her doctor recommended her for a therapeutic abortion. But here’s where she hit a snag: West German law was designed to protect the fetus, with only half-hearted regard for the health and well-being of the woman. My aunt had to go before a committee of physicians to explain why she needed an abortion.

Eventually, she managed to convince all of them. But by the time she was done jumping through all the medico-legal hoops that German law deemed “reasonable and humane”, she was in her second trimester. That meant a much more difficult, and dangerous, operation to remove the diseased fetus from her womb. She developed complications — infection, scarring — that left her unable to become pregnant again.

Thanks to the lovely “pro-life” laws of 1970s West Germany, my beloved aunt wound up raising an only child, instead of the larger family she had wanted. And had she not been allowed to abort at all, her second child would have been blind, deaf, with heart disease and a host of other incurable conditions, all linked to congenital rubella syndrome. In all likelihood, she would not have had a third; her hands would have been full to overflowing caring for the needs of that severely disabled one. This gets to me every time I think of it, especially considering that my aunt later developed (hereditary) kidney problems requiring dialysis and eventually, a transplant. Imagine her trying to care for her now-adult, still-severely-disabled child under those circumstances. It would have sent her to the grave!

Is this your idea of “reasonable and humane”, Jono? Condemning a child to incurable disease, and a mother to incurable heartache? Because that’s what we’d get if fetal personhood were given even partial consideration under the law.

And if that’s just partial, I don’t want to see what the whole hog looks like. Because then, we’d be right back in the Bad Old Days when all abortion was illegal, and women who couldn’t afford a proper abortion would head to shady back-alley operations. There would be entire maternity wards full of not joyful new mothers, but young women near death from infection and hemorrhage. And there would be more pictures like the one above (the lady’s name is Gerri Santoro, in case you wonder), in which we see to just what lengths desperation from an unwanted pregnancy will drive a woman. We’ll be hearing more cases like that of Becky Bell, who died of a botched illegal abortion because a “humane and reasonable” law demanded that she either notify her parents, or go before a judge, before getting a legal abortion. We’ll also be hearing more stories like this one, in which a 14-year-old girl killed her newborn rather than face her mother’s disappointment in her for having sex in middle school. We will hear so many awful stories that someone will have to build a vast library just to house them all.

So yeah, Jono, tell me all about how “hysterical” I am, and how “humane and reasonable” you are by comparison. I can’t wait to hear your exact definition of those lovely words. But you’ll have to excuse me if I get a sudden urge to plug my ears and go la-la-la-la-la. I’ve already seen what happens when ignorant conservative men define “humane and reasonable”, and I think it’s a vast crock of shit.

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Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Confessions of a Bad German, Fascism Without Swastikas, Fetus Fetishists, Law-Law Land, Men Who Just Don't Get It, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, She Blinded Me With Science, The United States of Amnesia, Uppity Wimmin | 4 Comments

A few random thoughts on cops, rape, and murder

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Sabina Becker

Sampat Pal Devi leads a procession of the Gulabi Gang in India. Photo by Sanjit Das.

Couple of quick questions, everyone: Remember Russell Williams? And the Balcony Rapist?

The reason I ask is because this horrible rape/murder, which happened in Australia, is germane:

This weekend, authorities in Australia announced they’d recovered the body of 29-year-old Irish expat Jill Meagher after the woman disappeared while walking home from a bar blocks away from her suburban Melbourne apartment. As the case captivated and horrified the country, more details emerged. Turns out, the man who has been arrested for Meagher’s rape and murder wasn’t a stranger to women along the busy strip of road from which the woman disappeared. He’d been creeping women out for months, and in at least one incident, threatened to strangle one of Meagher’s neighbors. So why was nothing done? Because the police, once again, did not take threats of violence against women seriously.

Meagher seemed to vanish into thin air from a busy strip of road during the early morning hours of September 22nd, and authorities were stymied until Closed Circuit TV cameras from a clothing store caught footage of a hoodie-wearing blonde man pacing back and forth in front of the store and engaging Meagher in conversation. Buses, a tram, and several passersby would have seen the man, or Meagher, but none of them have spoken to police. The last footage of Meagher alive is the woman taking her cell phone out of her purse and making a call, ostensibly to disengage from the man in the hoodie.

During the ensuing search for her, authorities and the media weighed in on how what happened to Meagher could have been prevented. She shouldn’t have been walking home alone from a bar! (Because the number one cause of getting murdered is walking home from a bar without a chaperone at night!) The country needs more Closed Circuit TV’s! Why didn’t her coworkers who were still out drinking insist on accompanying her to her doorstep?!

But the reason Meagher was killed wasn’t that she was walking home alone or that there weren’t enough cameras recording her every move; it was pure police incompetence and an unwillingness to take other women’s reports of feeling threatened seriously.

Meagher murder suspect Adrian Bayley, it seems, has been prowling the area for months. According to one 23-year-old New Zealand woman, 9 months ago, Bayley confronted her along the same stretch of road from which Meagher disappeared, threatening her. The next time she saw Bayley, he whispered that he would strangle her. The woman reported the incident to police and asked where she could purchase pepper spray to defend herself, but nothing was done. According to some news sources, other women have been attacked in the area recently as well.

There’s more, but I think you can see how this relates now, right? Cops don’t take women’s reports of suspicious male behavior seriously. Not even when all signs are pointing in the direction of physical violence, and it’s only a matter of time before the perp gets down to it.

And when the terrible inevitable happens, and a female body turns up at the morgue, who gets blamed?

The woman. Of course.

After all, the police are largely a boys’ club. And boys will be boys, and boys can do no wrong. Until, of course, a boy DOES wrong, grievous wrong, and a lovely lady turns up dead. And then, even then, it is still her fault.

Everything that happens to women is their own fault. Didn’t you know that yet? Just look at all the victim-blaming that happened here: She shouldn’t have been out drinking. She shouldn’t have been there alone. She shouldn’t have walked.

She this, she that. What about HIM?

Does it never occur to anyone to tell guys not to stalk women, not to accost them anywhere, not to utter threats, not to rape, not to fucking kill?

No. Of course not. Boys will be boys. Boys can do no wrong. It was she who did wrong, she “provoked” him. How? Oh, just by being there. Women should be neither seen nor heard. And if they are, they deserve whatever they get. Even if that means death.

I remember, during one Take Back the Night march I was on in Kingston, when I was a student at Queen’s University, they arrested a mother and her 14-year-old daughter. For what? For chanting “No more patriarchy, no more shit!”

Apparently, blue language is only for the boys. As for the girls, they’re not supposed to say shit, even when they have a mouthful. Or a bellyful of patriarchy.

Never mind that the cops have surely heard worse. Never mind that we all chanted that. Every one of the hundreds of women on that march said the same things, yet they only arrested those two. What for? For using language no worse than cops themselves do every day and night of the week?

What a fucking crock.

The move was plain, pure intimidation. They picked on those two because mothers are vulnerable through their daughters, and daughters are vulnerable through their youth and inexperience. The cops busted the girl to send a message to her mom: We could drag her off to an interrogation room and do to her whatever we want. And you, you would be forced to sit in the next room, hearing her screams through a cardboard-thin wall. Would you like that, bitch? No? Then don’t protest our law and order. Don’t tell us cops that we owe you safe streets so your precious little girls can walk alone at night, unmolested. Just do as we say, and no one will get hurt.

And through that vulnerable mother and daughter, the message was supposed to reverberate throughout the crowd: This could happen to any of you, so shut the fuck up and go home and don’t tell us what our job is. Our job is not to protect you, our job is to protect law and order. And law and order are pure patriarchy. How dare you call that shit?

It’s the same thing in Kingston as it is in all of Canada, and in Canada it’s the same as in Cairo. Gangs of men surrounded female protesters and beat and sexually molested them; the police and army did the same, under the pretext of “virginity testing”. What they were all really doing was sending a message: Don’t protest, or bad things will happen to you.

And you will be the one who takes all the blame.

It’s never the guy who rapes you; it’s never the cops who menace you. It’s all your fault, bitch, because you were out in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Didn’t you know enough to stay home and be a good girl?

(We won’t go into how good home-girls also get raped and killed; after all, it’s never their fathers’, brothers’, uncles’, cousins’, or husbands’ fault, either. Anyway, that’s just “domestic” violence, and it doesn’t count.)

And then there are the female Mounties, who were impeded from the job of “getting their man”, in the collaring-a-crook sense, because the male-dominated force is no better place for a woman than any dark alley behind any seedy bar. Just ask those who worked on the missing-women cases in BC how many female bodies were scattered along the Highway of Tears, or piled up at Robert Fucking Pickton‘s hog farm. And all because the male cops didn’t take their disappearances seriously, and the female cops, who DID care, were impeded from doing more by the hostile work environment those same old boys imposed on them.

The cops won’t protect women as long as the boys-will-be-boys mentality prevails. It’s a stupid mentality; no boy is born aggressive, rapey or murderous. The idea that it’s “natural” for boys to fight and attack is bullshit; boys LEARN that behavior. It’s often dinned into their dear little heads by dear old Dad: Whatsamatter, son, you a sissy? You some kind of girl, or somethin’? You gotta fight ’cause it’s a man’s world, and only real men get ahead.

And the way you get ahead is by bulldozing anyone and anything that gets in your way. Or by using and abusing them.

I remember the Balcony Rapist case in Toronto, when the cops wouldn’t protect or warn the women downtown that there was a sex predator on the loose. Instead, they just let that guy do whatever he would to whomever, until they got an opportunity to catch him. They used the women as bait, and even threatened to arrest one of them for “mischief” when she and a group of others put up posters warning of a rapist on their block. They were lazy as shit until they got the chance to play hero. And they would have gotten away with it too, if not for Jane Doe — the same woman who put up the posters and was threatened with arrest. She was raped. She ended up suing them for their intransigence.

Meanwhile, the Russell Williams case went nowhere until a female chief — herself physically abused by a husband who was also a cop — got on the case. She was the one who connected the dots: the clusters of women who reported break-ins in their homes, theft of underwear from their dresser drawers, and even, in one case, the removal of some sex toys from their hiding place, only to be laid out in plain sight. The message, in all cases, was: I know where you live. I know you’re alone. I have your most intimate possessions. I know your sexual secrets. I can take you just as easily as I took your panties. I can control you, hurt you, kill you. And there is nothing you can do about it, because I’m on the same side as the men in charge. In fact, I’m one of them. Better not do anything to provoke me, bitch, because I’m fucking dangerous.

Does it take an abused woman to help an abused woman? Do we need to have all-female police forces to deal with this problem? Because when the police are not part of the solution, they ARE the problem.

Maybe we need what they have in India: a Gulabi Gang of women armed with bamboo canes and righteous anger, striking some terror into the hearts of those who deserve it.

And if some of those to get whacked with the stick turn out to be old-boy cops, well, so be it.

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Posted in A Passage to India, Canadian Counterpunch, Cops Behaving Badly, Fascism Without Swastikas, If You REALLY Care, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Law-Law Land, Men Who Just Don't Get It, Oceania, Rivers in Egypt, Sick Frickin' Bastards, Spooks, The Bold and the Badass, Uppity Wimmin | 1 Comment

Music for a Sunday: With the cold wind in my eyes

Posted on September 30, 2012 by Sabina Becker

Some sad news today: Raylene Rankin has died of cancer, aged 52. She and four of her siblings formed The Rankin Family over 20 years ago, and are widely credited with popularizing the Keltic-tinged folk/country music of Cape Breton for a wider audience. The above is the most famous song of theirs that I could think of; it was a great radio staple during the early 1990s. And it takes me right back to the other “north country” of my childhood, Northern Ontario, every time I hear it.

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Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Music for a Sunday | 1 Comment

Wankers of the Week: Aborting the idiocy

Posted on September 29, 2012 by Sabina Becker

Crappy weekend, everyone! Well, how about that M-312 fiasco? Wasn’t it fun when the House of Commons voted by more than 2 to 1 to NOT to waste time and taxpayers’ money on a “debate” about what is, in fact, settled law? I know that several of my friends, both on the Internets and out in the Real World, were on tenterhooks about that. While THAT pile of shit has been mucked out, there’s another one aborning. It’s almost enough to make one wish for post-partum abortions. And here are this week’s collection of people who made ME wish that, in no particular order:

1. Sylvia Fucking Stead. It’s bad enough that Margaret Fucking Wente has been getting away with plagiarism (and lazy dreck-writing) for years; it’s absolutely inexcusable that her editors, of which Stead is one, should (a) let it slide, and (b) go on the attack against a not-exactly-nameless critic who’s been doing yeoman’s work in reading Wente’s drivel and pointing out just how much of it isn’t actually her own words. Stead has done both. I can hardly wait to hear her excuses. (I am not, however, holding my breath for Wente to be fired, even if she does richly deserve it. It’s pretty obvious that the Grope & Flail is keeping her on for the sake of ad revenues and eyeballs on her page, even if they DO come largely from hate-readers.)

2. and 3. Rob and Doug Fucking Ford. Yeah, Robbo and Dougie, alienating one of your increasingly few sympathetic outlets in the media is a great strategy! Heck, why not alienate them all? What could possibly go wrong, other than the next election — in which, I presume, you WILL be participating?

4. Ann Fucking Romney. Actually, dear, your horse has more class in its hindquarters than you do in your entire carcass. (Better teeth, too.)

5. Mitt Fucking Romney. There’s a reason why airplane windows never open. Actually, there are several. Just be thankful that defenestration isn’t an option on your private jet, ‘kay?

6. Mary Fucking Franson. Bigotry is “normal behavior”, but homosexuality is not. And she doesn’t want kids being taught any differently than her own prejudices dictate. Therefore, Minnesota MUST have a totally unnecessary constitutional amendment enshrining bigotry, to preserve the sanctity of marriage! I’m guessing she was once one of those schoolyard bullies that I’m still itching to pound the living shit out of.

7. Margaret Fucking Wente. Congratulations, Mags, your scandal’s gone international! Couldn’t have happened to a nicer fucking plagiarist. Or a more brazen issuer of non-apology apologies and bemoaner of faux victimhood. PS: And if you think Monsanto’s “Golden” rice is such a great nutritional panacea, YOU can eat it.

8. Park Fucking Geun-Hye. I’m sorry, but to hear a dictator’s daughter, now the head of Korea’s conservative party, talking about the virtues of democracy, just about made me lose my kimchi. The greatest virtue of democracy, from where I sit, is that the common people don’t have to fall for such lines. Or elect the people who utter them.

9. Jason Fucking Kenney. Riddle me this: What does a guy who’s never had sex (so he says) and with whom no self-respecting person would ever WANT to have sex (so we know) vote for when it comes down to abortion rights? Naturally, he’s gonna vote against the personhood of all the women (and gay men) who will never, EVER have sex with him. PS: Your e-mail. It is a wet fart of crapaganda. Do NOT want! PPS: Shame on the Grauniad for publishing this disingenuous drivel. If we live in the greatest country in the world, it’s not because of YOU, Jason, you fucking turd. It is a great country in SPITE of you, as the failure of M312 proves. But hey, you go right on spluttering that wet smelly stuff, and we’ll go right on laughing in your piggy little face. Crapaganda is free! PPPS: Care to explain this, Jason? No? I’m shocked. SHOCKED, I tellz ya.

10. Rob Fucking Anders. Looks like Sleepyhead is also voting against women. Guess he’s not gettin’ any. Doesn’t surprise me; I hear that impotence is a common side effect of narcolepsy.

11. Mark Fucking Warawa. Never heard of him before, but he’s apparently with #s 9 and 10. Another one whose sex life you seriously have to question, in other words. PS: Well, looky here. Fucking motherfucker is looking to make a name for himself now! He wants a medal from the Queen, ha, ha. And he’s using the good ol’ bogus sex selection canard to sneak anti-choice legislation in through the back alley. FAIL, motherfucker, FAIL!

12. Dean Fucking Del Mastro. Ditto #s 9 through 11, with a side order of “wanker’s wanker”.

13. Rona Fucking Ambrose. What the fuck is she still doing as minister for Status of Women? Oh yeah…foisting the covert Harper Government™ agenda on women. Sadly, she’s likely to get promoted, not resign or be fired. SupposiTories only fall UP, don’tcha know? PS: Ha, ha. PPS: And now we know why she voted the way she did. She’s setting the stage for the next SupposiTory anti-choice grab: sex-selective abortion!

14. Rick Fucking Santorum. Moving south of the border for a moment: Icky Ricky thinks rape victims should just make lemonade. Meaning BABIES. Of course. See, people, this is what we’re up against up here, too: religiously motivated insanity trying to make our laws. And trying to make those laws stick like crazy glue to the walls of women’s uteri.

15. Pamela Fucking Hall. Congratulations! You’ve been schooled by no less than Mona Eltahawy on the meaning of free speech. Looks good on ya. (As does a smidgen of that pink spray paint Mona was wielding.)

16. Stephen Fucking Harper. All righty then. Moving back up here, ShitHead has been given a “Statesman of the Year” award by some organization that obviously has no fucking clue who it’s dealing with. But all is not total gloom ‘n’ doom; he’s also a recipient of the first-ever Richard Nixon Prize. I’ll leave it to you to click the link and find out what that entails.

17. Francisco Fucking Toro. Hark! What’s that I hear from the Grauniad? A bleat of desperation as the October 7 presidential election nears in Venezuela, and Chavecito is all set to win again? Why yes, it is. And it’s some fool who thinks he’s predicting a huge victory for an oppo candidate who may have slick slogans, but who literally has no base. Awwwww, my heart just went smashy-smashy!

18. Ann Fucking Coulter. Oh look, the Coultergeist has a new toilet roll out. Does anyone care? No, but Whoopi Goldberg just called a spade a fucking shovel, so good for her.

19. Charles Fucking McVety. Woop woop woop! Sorry, that was my gaydar. It goes off every time I hear him prattle his homophobic hypocrisy. Chuckles, bitch, PLEASE…no one is fooled. If you want to stick zucchini up your bum, or have some other dude to it to you, go right ahead. But stop projecting, for the love of God.

20. Josef Fucking Ratzinger. Pope Palpatine has decided that same-sex marriage must not happen in France because gays are “not fully developed” human beings. Does this mean it’s okay to abort a gay fetus, then? (Or, horrifically: that it’s okay to kill gays, because like fetuses, they’re “not fully developed”?) And if it’s really about “protecting marriage and the family” (from WHAT?), then what on earth would His Unholiness say to the recent news that Jesus was married? Isn’t the papacy kind of anti-marriage (for reasons of wealth), come to think of it? Anyhow, good luck trying to stop in France what you couldn’t stop in Canada. Someone recently joked that the only real Catholics left there were the priests and bishops, and that sounds about right. PS: Oh look…the Vatican denies Jesus’ marriage. Surprise, surprise.

21. Terence Fucking Corcoran. Another apologist for plagiarism? Who thinks media ethics aren’t important? Well, gee. What do we have a press for, if they no longer believe in accurate and unplagiarized reporting? Toilet paper? That might work if we all still shat in outhouses.

22, 23, 24 and 25. Jim Fucking Karygiannis, Kevin Fucking Lamoureux, Lawrence Fucking MacAulay, and John Fucking McKay. The four craven so-called Liberals who voted for M-312 did what we only expect of rabid conservatives. Perhaps someone needs to remind them of what the word “liberal” means. Perhaps that someone will be their own constituents, in the next federal election.

26. Margaret Fucking Somerville. Funny how these pious arch-Catholics are forever expressing their “concern” for women’s rights. And that said “concern” always and invariably takes the form of stripping said rights away. Female feticide is a non-issue in Canada, since ultrasound technicians normally don’t reveal a fetus’s sex until around 20 weeks, by which time it’s too late and dangerous to abort for non-medical reasons. Most abortions, meanwhile, take place before the 12th week, when fetal sex is still unknown, and therefore cannot be the reason for the abortion. So, girl babies are not a dying breed in this country. The real problem is misogyny, and specifically, violence against pregnant women. And the other real problem is private, for-profit medicine, where practitioners are less ethical for more money. But while Maggie & Co. throw out red herrings and bleat about how much better for ladies it is to let the Pope rule their uteri, they’re keeping devoutly mum on the fact that all those girl babies they’re only pretending to care about could grow up with fewer rights than their own mothers. After all, institutional misogyny is one thing the Vatican will never do shit about. Because that would mean it would have to ordain women, allow priests to marry (like Jesus!), accept LGBT people as normal, and just generally clean all the skeletal remains of sexually abused children out of its own damn closet.

27. Bryan Fucking Craig. You may recall this girls’ b-ball coach and guidance counsellor, and his icky book on how to yoink guys around by their penises by cunningly letting those guys just have their way with ya? Well, he is now suing the school board for firing his creepy, pervy ass and thus violating his so-called freedom of speech. He has to make up for his book’s bombing sales somehow, I guess.

28. Todd Fucking Akin. Oh look, Mr. Legitimate Rape is still wanking. This time, about how “unladylike” his opponent is. Probably to throw her off balance, because she’s now poised to whup his ungentlemanly ass.

29. Vic Fucking Toews. Dude, when are you going to admit that your so-called government fucked up when it comes to Omar Khadr…and probably ended up fucking him up worse than his own batshit crazy family did? If he ever gets out in one piece and still sane, it probably will be no thanks to the likes of you. Spare us the statements and just go hang your head in shame, ‘kay?

30. Michael David Fucking Turley. If anyone could make a perverted uncle look almost okay, it’s this dude. He dressed his teenage nephew up as a fake terrorist and sent him out in broad daylight with a fake grenade launcher. Why? To test the terror threat preparedness of the local police. Or so he says. Dude is lucky the kid didn’t get killed. Dude will be lucky if the kid ever wants to speak to him again.

And finally, to all the con-tard wankers who voted for M-312, and those who supported it. Save your collective breath; we don’t want to hear your pious blatting about “freedom of speech”, or your idiotic argument about how women can abort with impunity even if there’s a baby’s toe still lodged in the birth canal. Spare us, too, the “sex-selective abortion” canard. You know that’s all bullshit, and so do we. What I really want to hear, if any of you have the guts to talk about it, is this “pro-life” murderer who killed his girlfriend because she was about to break up with him and was planning to have an abortion if she found out she was pregnant by him (turns out she wasn’t). Care to explain HIM? Care to tell me what’s so pro-life about a man killing a woman? Or for that matter, about women who can’t get abortions any other way turning to increasingly desperate and dangerous means, like ordering ulcer drugs from Mexico? Or how about frightened teens who conceal their pregnancies and then deliver babies in a toilet? Because that’s the way your legal machinations are heading. If you care about life, and you care about women as much as you claim, shut the fuck up about abortion unless you plan to support a woman’s right to it regardless of your personal feelings. Admit that safe, legal, freely available abortions save women’s and girls’ lives. And make room in those lives, often, for children they want and can care for in the future.

Good night, and get fucked!

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