Links for Your Enjoyment

Debbie says:

Three links, as different as they can be from one another.

The always-insightful Rivka, blogging at her must-read Respectful of Otters, re-examines the real issues with the HPV/cervical cancer vaccine and the Christian right. Her take is fresh and rings completely true to me.

‘Choice’ is a red herring. … Religious exemptions to mandatory vaccines are already available in every state but West Virginia and Mississippi. They will have the right to opt their daughters out of this health-, fertility-, and potentially life-saving vaccine, mandatory or not. What they’re really angling for is a way to deny it to other people’s daughters.


“If it’s easy to opt out, why the battle over mandatory? Because mandatory = affordable.”

A link found via keryx does an interesting job of exploring a common male defense mechanism when faced with feminist arguments: “The joking about man-bashing almost always works! Time and again, I’ve seen it work to silence women in the classroom, or at least cause them to worry about how to phrase things just right’ so as to protect the guys and their feelings. It’s a key anti-feminist strategy.”

And finally, entirely for your entertainment, in San Francisco we’ll protest anything in the nude, here are the naked bicycle riders. Photo by jette, brought to our attention by mactavish.

<br /> nudes<br /> bicycling<br /> HPV+vaccine<br /> cervical cancer vaccine<br /> Christian right<br /> vaccine<br /> feminism<br /> women<br /> men<br /> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Body+Impolitic" rel="tag nofollow">Body Impolitic</a><br />

5 thoughts on “Links for Your Enjoyment

  1. Thanks for the link from keryx, it’s a fascinating look at that environment, and save for a few quibbles (the use of the word strategy, by definiton, denotes a “plan” and therefore “intent”, which I don’t believe exists in the majority of cases.) That it has a chilling conversational effect when the defense mechanism is used to an extreme, however, I have no argument with.

    I almost contributed to thread drift over there, being a bit angered by the omission of prepubesencent children during the discussion of the exceptions to the rule of women being the overwhelming majority of sexual assault and rape. However, the combination of one
    particular participant in the comments in that thread, the fact that it would be thread drift, and my own disinterest in taking a lot of backlash left me uninterested in posting that amplification, even though I do believe it’s socially important. Ironic, I know.

  2. Color me naive, I guess, but I am a bit confused as to why ANYONE would not want someone to have access to a vaccine which could possibly prevent her from developing cancer. What the HELL does that have to do with religion? My younger son’s girlfriend has had cancer on at least two different occasions, has lost half her uterus & one ovary, & is going in tomorrow to learn the results of a biopsy on a cyst she now has. She has an 11-year-old son & she & my son also have a beautiful one-year-old daughter. Kate is a wonderful young woman, like a daughter to me, & if someone could give her a vaccine to guarantee her good health & freedom from cancer, I would not only not object, I would rise up & call that person blessed. What kind of person doesn’t want people to be protected from life-threatening disease if it is possible? And people wonder why I want nothing to do with organized religions!

  3. Joe, you might want to look at what lj user = pleonastic said about feminism’s overlooking the oppression and mistreatment of certain sets of people.

  4. Patsy, your comment and Stef’s comment to Joe about “certain sets of people” seem to me to point to the challenge of our current culture wars–the struggle to avoid dehumanizing or devaluing those we seriously disagree with, in matters of belief, and not necessarily (but usually) religious belief.

    Why would anyone prevent access to a vaccine that would prevent cancer? Because they have decided that only “sinners” will be protected by the vaccine(much as they have about HIV and the “Plan B” contraceptive pill that’s languishing in limbo with the FDA too cowed by the religious right to approve over- the-counter use). As I understand this view, by protecting sinners, society would be getting in the way of their punishment from on high.

    Speaking as a former religious fanatic, let me say that it is possible to twist one’s mind into such a pretzel that one actually thinks one is doing the person involved a favor by allowing them to suffer! (My fellow Buddhists in our fanatical days would never have withheld medical aid or vaccination, but we did some pretty dumb things in the non-thinking grip of self-righteousness.)

    Frankly, I believe that folding one’s arms and refusing to offer help because “it’s not my problem” will invite karmic retribution, but that’s MY religious view.

    I weep to see this attitude in some women my own age who don’t bother to fight for reproductive freedom anymore because they are past menopause, in long-term relationships and it no longer affects them directly.

  5. Joe,

    I think that’s a really important topic that I’d like to talk more about on the blog.

    Lynne and Patsy,

    I couldn’t agree with you more

    And Stef,

    Thanks for the link.

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