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Post by kisekileia on May 27, 2010 17:57:39 GMT -5
When I was dating a devout Catholic, I decided to do some research online about natural family planning, since that was what we would have been using if we had gotten married. Imagine my surprise when the site with the most thorough--and positive--information was Planned Parenthood's! I had previously thought, as I had been taught, that they were focused on abortion, which really isn't the case.
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Post by kalikat on May 27, 2010 18:34:04 GMT -5
When I was dating a devout Catholic, I decided to do some research online about natural family planning, since that was what we would have been using if we had gotten married. Imagine my surprise when the site with the most thorough--and positive--information was Planned Parenthood's! I had previously thought, as I had been taught, that they were focused on abortion, which really isn't the case. I had a similar experience, When I decided to get my IUD taken out (at my general practitioner's recommendation, I was experiencing a lot of undesirable side effects) I did some research and decided that FAM (NFP with barriers and/or withdrawal allowed...) was the best option for me. I had read "Taking Charge of your Fertility" but at that point not yet taken a class. I went to PP to have my IUD removed and the Nurse Practitioner was super helpful and supportive; she gave me charts and PP's FAM pamphlet (which is actually really, really good) talked to me about the common mistakes that people tend to make with this method and how to avoid them and strongly recommended that I take a class--the only ones anywhere near there being in Catholic Churches. So I did, the class was good and re-iterated a lot of the things I'd learned at PP and from my own reading, I embraced what was useful (the techniques and practices for temping, charting, and checking cervical fluid) and disregarded what wasn't (the abstaining on "unsafe days"--honestly, the only Christian anything was a quote from John Paul II on the overhead projector at some point and a copy of Humanae Vitae they stuck in our folders and said we could read it "at our leisure, if we wanted.") Seriously, if it weren't for PP I would have had no healthcare whatsoever for the past several years. I've never even gotten and inkling that anyone I've come across there was anything other than compassionate, kind, and helpful.
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Post by nikita on May 27, 2010 18:57:08 GMT -5
See, this is really helpful. The only time I ever hear anything at all from PP is when someone is asking their representative on the news to respond to something about abortion protests or violence or some such thing. They just weren't on my radar in any way otherwise. I have cradle to grave private insurance so I never needed to go there but if the situation comes up for me or for someone else in my life I now know that PP is really good at a broad range of services. I love this forum.
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jo
Junior Member
Posts: 73
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Post by jo on May 27, 2010 19:08:21 GMT -5
Well, for the sake of developing the actual resource, I can provide a little counter to seekingtruth's claims.
First, you have to address Onan. Its painful but a guaranteed argument that QFers always, always, always bring up. Thankfully, its the easiest of their arguments to counter as well.
Onan wasn't struck down for spilling his seed on the ground. Obviously, the mere fact that he knew to do it in the first place is conclusive evidence that it was done in his time without every man doing so being smitted by God. So, why was Onan different? Why not merely provide a rhetorical warning like so many other "Thou Shall Not"s? Because Onan wasn't struck down for the physical act of spilling his seed, nor even for the mast*rbation that led to the spillage.
Onan was struck down for direct disobedience to the Lord. Onan was specifically and explicitly instructed to impregnant his brother's wife. This pregnancy was vital to the continuation of the lineage which ultimately lead to David (and Christians would argue led to Christ). Onan was instructed to sleep with his brother's widow until she was pregnant, so that his brother would have an heir. Onan didn't want to provide an heir for his dead brother, so he spilled his seed instead.
Consequently, Onan was killed for disobedience. The disobedience wasn't attempting to use birth control. It was deliberately preventing a pregnancy that the Lord had directly told him was to occur. If Onan had spilled his seed under any other circumstances, the consequences wouldn't have made it into scripture. Onan disobied. She was to be impregnanted as the custom required and big guy wasn't having ANYTHING to do with that custom.
I can also give some feedback on the PP/Margaret Sanger argument. Only someone who truly doesn't know about Sanger and her life's work would think she was evil. Yes, she was into ebonics, so were most intellectuals of her day. But, what Sanger was most "into" as stopping the senseless and grotesque widespread epidemic of death, disease, poverty, starvation and abuse that she saw on a DAILY basis as she did her work in the tenements of New York. Lots of kids was an admirable goal for the middle class and the wealthy. They could afford hired help. They could also afford to secure handy-dandy diaphragms from Europe if they needed a break. They routinely cut their husbands off and controlled their feritlity through abstinence as well.
But, the POOR were different. These women had no control over their own lives. They had no right to say no, not even when drunken men raped them and their little girls nightly. They had no ability to hire help, they WERE the hired help. They were tying their babies to bedposts all day while they went and slaved over the laundry of the higher class. Their babies were in squalor. They didn't have enough food to eat, they didn't have access to any healthcare. And, these poor women were literally having their insides rotted out with each subsequent pregnancy. Seriously, childbirth fever was a common killer amongst poor women. Childbirth fever is nothing more than a practitioner (not a midwife but the doctors who were deliberately edging out the midwives) shoving their FILTHY hands inside women who just gave birth. They didn't know to wash their hands. They didn't know that immediately after childbirth the cervix is open and the uterus is suspectible to infection both in the uterus and spreading into the body itself. In hospital maternity wards, doctors would walk from patient to patient shoving their disgusting hands inside each of them in turn without bothering to even WIPE THEM OFF.
FOUL.
These women were desperate. Birth control was against the law. But, middle class and wealthy women had ready access to the knowledge. Sanger herself had a diaphragm. When you were done having babies, either you stopped having sex, or you talked to your friend Mrytle who contacted her sister who wrote a letter to an artist friend studying for Paris and viola you had birth control. The poor had no options, except arrest if they tried to find out about birth control.
Okay, probably most on *here* know Sanger's history. Most *here* probably understand that Sanger was the driving force to developing hormonal birth control. That she secured a reclusive, wealthy widow who donated approximately $3mil towards the research that developed The Pill. And, that Sanger did all of that because she wanted to make the lives of these desperate women better. She wanted to give them something they could obtain and control and at least regain their health and stop the hemmorraghic reproduction that was occurring.
Sanger didn't develop abortions. Midwives have held the knowledge of abortions for as long as there have been midwives. There is clear documentation that both Egyptian women and the Aristocracy of Elizabethean times made wild use of those very practices. Sanger didn't create abortions. She just didn't take a stance that they were off-limits. She couldn't. She saw too much and her heart was too broken by what she saw.
However, this is NOT what the QF knows about Sanger and PP. What they know is that Sanger was evil and against life. And, PP is the devil's organization. I don't have a CLUE how you counter that perception. Not once have I ever managed to infuse truth into that argument and convinced a single QF believer that Sanger was anything else.
What I do know is something my grandmother said once about QF/P. She said if these young women had ANY idea what things were like before Feminism, they would never be so arrogant as to consider giving back the rights and autonomy her generation gave them. She said it is only because they have these freedoms that they believe they want to turn back the clock to that nightmare.
Perhaps if you focused on what life was TRULY like for women under Victorian Patriarchy, then you might turn the focus from Sanger and the devil they believe her to be. Perhaps if you present the reality of women locked away, terrorized, tortured, unable to speak for themselve, seperated from their children and destitute in body and soul, then maybe at least they might concede the world where Sanger would emerge to fight for women (and all the traill blazers with her) and see a glimmer of something they don't REALLY want to experience.
I've had top-notch healthcare and after 6 pregnancies, I see the toll this condition has taken on my body and my heal and just want to KICK my younger self for squandering my health so badly. Like you, Vicki, unlimited pregnancies have robbed me of SOO much of my health and possibly my lifespan.
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ladyh
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Post by ladyh on May 27, 2010 20:38:13 GMT -5
It can be hard to reason with faith. I don't know that anyone can be persuaded not to believe. Out of curiosity, as you obviously came from a position of extreme belief, what was it that caused you to change your mind? Was it the reading of scripture differently (as KR suggests) or was it a more confrontational thing?
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Post by jadehawk on May 27, 2010 20:57:08 GMT -5
er, he didn't masturbate actually, he pulled out. the line goes: "when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground". Also, he disobeyed Judah's order, not gods.
I'm not trying to be counterproductive, but there's no point in refuting what isn't there :-(
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Post by jadehawk on May 27, 2010 21:02:01 GMT -5
I'm sorry to be so nitpicky today, but details are important, to not be confusing to anyone:
you meant eugenics, I think... Ebonics is African-American slang.
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Post by nikita on May 27, 2010 22:09:04 GMT -5
My particular religious group had no problem whatsoever with birth control as long as it wasn't also an abortifacient (sp). Which reminds me - there is a lot of misinformation out there in fundie circles about which birth control is actually preventing pregnancy versus stopping an initial pregnancy. When discussing methods of birth control with people who care about such things it would be helpful to understand and be clear about the difference. But yeah, Onan. Onan is very important. That particular scripture used to prohibit birth control never made any sense at all to my group (and me). He was ordered to have sex with his brother's widow for the specific purpose of providing heirs to his dead brother but he just wanted to sleep with her and not fulfill the essential part of the deal. Birth control in general had nothing to do with it. That's proof-texting for you.
I'm getting sick this week - I think it's a summer cold - so I don't have the strength of mind/body/spirit to go back and analyze all the arguments scripturally right now.
As for Sanger, yeah she was an amazing and important woman. I don't mentally associate Sanger's work with today's PP though. They aren't the same to me. PP obviously owes to her, but PP is just another medical provider to me while Sanger is part of my personal pantheon. I think a history of women's rights and past abuses would be very interesting and enlightening. What happens when women don't just decide to cede power within their marriage and church but actually have the decision making taken away from them and become in actual fact powerless over their own lives. I could choose to 'obey' my husband all I wanted to but if I decided I didn't want to do that anymore I could choose to do otherwise. I might be considered rebellious, lose my marriage or my church but it was still an option, I could choose to walk away. What happens to women when they simply do not have that choice by law? When all avenues of escape are closed to them? Does any woman really want to go back to that period of time?
There was a little blurb in my father's home town newspaper in 1903 that to me is a little window into the life of a woman unhappy in marriage but whose options were limited by not only her husband but every one else around her who simply did not conceive a world in which she had the right to expect to be able to leave him.
"A correspondent from Deland to the Decatur Review gave the following: "Last Saturday Wm. BAKER'S hired hand, Oliver KING, decided to return to his home in Kentucky and they loaded his trunk in the wagon and drove to Farmer City, where he was to take the train. Mr. BAKER'S wife accompanied them. After they had been in Farmer City sometime KING went to the livery barn and hired a rig and told the liveryman to meet them, KING and Mrs. BAKER, at a certain place. They drove to Mansfield, where they were to take a train for Kentucky together. When Mr. BAKER got ready to start home he could not find his wife any place; he kept inquiring of persons he knew and finally found out that she had eloped with the hired man, and they had started in the direction of Mansfield. He went to the depot and took the first train to Mansfield. As she was stepping off of the train he saw KING and his wife getting ready to board the same train. He grabbed his wife's arm and jerked her back and kept her from getting on, but KING managed to get on. BAKER had the agent telegraph ahead and catch KING and search his trunk and they found some of Mrs. BAKER'S clothes inside. After searching the trunk they let KING resume his journey. BAKER brought his wife back home. Monday morning she started out again on foot, but one of the neighbors persuaded her to return home." The Decatur Review/Jan 23, 1903
I for one do not want to live in that kind of a world again.
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Post by jadehawk on May 27, 2010 23:45:05 GMT -5
yeah, I did some research on this for someone else on here a while back, and it turns out that it's absolutely impossible for progestin-only hormonal birth control to be used as an abortifacient, because progestin actually aids implantation if there's already a fertilized egg floating about. This includes a number of BC pills, the Mirena coil, and Plan B. The only reason any of them ever had the stupid "might alter lining to prevent implantation" warning on them is because before the studies were done, someone squeaked that "well, it might!" and forced them to carry the warning without any evidence that this was the case.
and now there's evidence that it can't and doesn't.
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Post by nikita on May 28, 2010 0:22:37 GMT -5
See, for people who are concerned about that this is extremely important information. I for one appreciate you sharing that with us. The folks who have that issue are a much larger group than the folks who see any contraceptive usage as morally wrong. Thanks.
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Post by krwordgazer on May 28, 2010 0:42:42 GMT -5
My little boy is better now-- thanks for the good wishes!-- though he'll have to stay on antibiotics for a while. I really appreciate all the input on this thread. The details about Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood are very interesting indeed. I knew some of this, but not in this much detail. I still don't have time to go into specifics on Seekingtruth's arguments point by point tonight-- but I did want to ask one thing. I thought I made it very clear in my FAQ why I thought the Onan passage was not about birth control being a sin-- and I specifically compared it to the passage in Deuteronomy she uses in defense, and explained why the Deuteronomy passage does NOT show that Onan's sin had to have been "wasting his seed." Was I just not clear enough? Did other people also not get the point I was making about Onan? Do I need to reword it so that my point comes across better? Because it seemed odd to me that Seekingtruth raised a point I thought I had already addressed, as if I had not addressed it. Seekingtruth, I'd appreciate your input on this, too. Was my point not clear-- or did you just disagree with it, and if so, why? Thanks in advance for your help.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 7:59:56 GMT -5
I do not understand how taking birth control allies a person with PP. Well, yeah... Further, I didn't realize that the prescriptions doctors write for me in private made a political statement of any kind. I mean, I have no problems with Planned Parenthood as such, but I deeply resent the politicization of my body implied in the statement about "aligning myself with an evil organization." No.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 8:17:45 GMT -5
Thank you, jadehawk, for distinguishing between Ebonics and eugenics. Details are important indeed. Also, "Ebonics" is kind of an outmoded term that was popularized when African-American dialect became politicized during the 1980's. I would add that I think it's disingenuous to associate today's Planned Parenthood with Margaret Sanger's beliefs. Like many early feminists, she was a proponent of eugenics. I live in North Carolina, which has a history of forcibly sterilizing people of color and the disabled. I can understand why marginalized groups remain suspicious of Planned Parenthood. As a person who is physically disabled, I sometimes have cause for questioning them, though I would point out that they have made important progress in distancing themselves from the dark side of early feminism. Even so... When the racist history of early feminism is rehashed by white, middle class people with a fundamentalist background for the purpose of discrediting Planned Parenthood... I rarely find that these people are motivated by actual concerns about racial equality. Usually, they are merely evoking a dog whistle meant to discredit reproductive rights without making a substantive argument.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 8:31:22 GMT -5
jo: It's simply not true that most intellectuals of Sanger's day were "into eugenics." An uncanny number of American intellectuals were, as well as an uncanny number of scientists worldwide. This had a lot to do with the popularization of biological determinism in the sciences--which mostly provided a scientific veneer of "respectability" to racist ideologies. I don't think the right answer to this question is simply to point out that Sanger was a product of her time. Of course she was, but this doesn't provide a "free pass" for her racism, ableism, and otherwise wrong-headed ideology.
But as I mentioned before, I do find it problematic when anti-choice people bring up these beliefs as a quick and easy way of discrediting reproductive rights--without engaging in any argumentation about reproduction rights as such. I think it's more useful to provide evidence that today's PP is not the same PP that was Sanger's baby. Not only that, but the whole "Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist!" talking point is a disingenuous claim to concerns about racial justice and equality when it comes from Religious Right folks who are merely trying to restrict reproductive rights. That is, the concern is about restricting reproductive rights and not about racial equality.
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Post by Ex-Adriel on May 28, 2010 10:30:34 GMT -5
It can be hard to reason with faith. I don't know that anyone can be persuaded not to believe. Out of curiosity, as you obviously came from a position of extreme belief, what was it that caused you to change your mind? Was it the reading of scripture differently (as KR suggests) or was it a more confrontational thing? There were two seperate processes - In the first part, my family, and I specifically, had a very traumatic experience with the health-and-wealth gospel fundie church movements that my mother bounced around in. That experience made it impossible for me to attend any services or be around christian speech or music anymore, due to triggering. So emotionally I was cut off from christianity - I wasn't able to deal with it due to the trauma, so I was all alone. Separately, there was the intellectual part of it - I went off to college and was exposed to reading material that wasn't from Bob Jones et al for the first time. I'm very logical, so (unfortunately for my peace of spirit) what I read over the course of several years convinced me that what I had been taught as a child wasn't valid. It was a very very very hard "conversion" and I fought myself every step of the way, but I couldn't keep it up with the dissonance from what I had learned. Ignorance truly was bliss for me. I might have come to the same place without the emotional trauma, but I'll never know. If I had been able to have a healthy church relationship in another denomination or congregation, and balance that with what I was learning in school for the first time, I may have hit a happy balance instead and still be christian. I just don't know.
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jo
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Post by jo on May 28, 2010 17:42:24 GMT -5
Normally, I would be mortified that I mistyped Ebonics when I clearly meant Eugenics. All I can say is that I have 8 kids and an INSANE class schedule this month and wasn't fully away as I was typing. Had I proof-read that would have been caught.
As for her Eugenics explained as a part of Sanger's times not being an acceptable explanation for her racism, I disagree.
Look, I have a great-grandmother who was a totally amazing woman. She was left to raise 7 children by herself in the Great Depression while her worthless husband ran away with a 20-something blond bimbo and stuck around town to flaunt his comfort and his new wife in front of her and her children. She became a laundress to support her 7 children, worked her fingers to the BONE for her kids.
I knew this woman. She was the matriarch of my father's family and the entire reason that feminism was the one concept my mother could never talk him out of. This woman raised 7 children. She raised a large portion of her grandchildren. She was a strong Christian, the first in her family. Her own father emerged from the N. Carolina mountains into VA. She came from Mountain people, from uneducated background. She made sure all of her children graduated High School and several went to college.
Simply put, this woman was AMAZING. My second daughter is name for this woman, as are about half the girls born into my family. But, she was as racist as the day was long. Long beyond the point of when the -n- word was considered acceptable, she would use it. She was racist in the old Southern, this is simply how life is, way.
Even so, I have minority brothers and sisters and minority sons. I have no doubt in my mind that if my grandmother had lived to see the 90s and had met her own grandchildren and great-grandchildren with darker skin tones, she would have embraced them, faced her racism and accepted the challenge to become greater than what she was.
Her racism was wrong. It was still very much a part of her past and her culture. It was not so strong that she could not overcome it. But, she never faced the challenges that prompted such growth.
Margaret Sanger was an intellectual of her day. Like a great many inellectuals of her time, she embraced Eugenics. In her case, she was more classist than racist. She sought to explain what she saw before her and concluded it was poor genetics. It was a comon conclusion of her time. Like many others, it was also a position she was fully capable of re-examining,just like anyone else.
The problem for me is that the Patriachial and QF camps present Sanger that her racism and Eugenics were her motivation for seeking to provide birth control and improved health care for women. That is not the case. It was reverse. Her work with the poor is what led her to Eugenics and her primary motivation was to improve women's lives, especially the poor of all races.
The greatest irony about the QF attack on Sanger and her racism is their own racism. By and far, most QF and Patriarchy groups are themselves racist. Bill Gothard, Vision Forum, Liberty University, Bob Jones University, etc, etc, etc--they all have racism involved. Some are extremely blatant, others more subtle. But, the leaders of this movement are far worse in their own racism than Margaret Sanger was. So, their motivation in discrediting her over Eugenics and racism is extremely comical from the outside. They are convicting her for a character flaw which they hold far worse than she did. Hers, at least, has some basis in her time and culture. Theirs has no justification in a time and age when its well known that there is no scientific nor religious excuse for that racism.
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Post by jemand on May 28, 2010 18:06:28 GMT -5
on... racism and eugenics and such...
There is a difference between an *explanation* and an *excuse.* The line is hard to draw, but pointing out that someone is progressive for their time but can't do everything is much closer to the explanation side of the spectrum.
Saying that to be racist was ok then, because most people were, would be on the excuse side and I don't see how that is helpful.
But we can say that it wasn't ok to be racist, but people are complicated, and nobody is perfect, and people doing very good things may do a few bad things, and people doing very bad things might also do a few good things-- we can learn from them but we shouldn't try to unthinkingly emulate everything anyone did without reflection.
From my perspective, what I've read here in this thread is on the explanation side, but I don't think reminders that excuses aren't acceptable are out of place either.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 19:05:56 GMT -5
on... racism and eugenics and such... There is a difference between an *explanation* and an *excuse.* The line is hard to draw, but pointing out that someone is progressive for their time but can't do everything is much closer to the explanation side of the spectrum. Saying that to be racist was ok then, because most people were, would be on the excuse side and I don't see how that is helpful. But we can say that it wasn't ok to be racist, but people are complicated, and nobody is perfect, and people doing very good things may do a few bad things, and people doing very bad things might also do a few good things-- we can learn from them but we shouldn't try to unthinkingly emulate everything anyone did without reflection. From my perspective, what I've read here in this thread is on the explanation side, but I don't think reminders that excuses aren't acceptable are out of place either. Yes, this is more or less what I was trying to say. Also, too... I just saw Jo's response, and I'm a little speechless, but I will just say... You all know that I'm from the South, and so is my family. One side consists of a poor tobacco-farming family from North Carolina. The other side made a living by bartending in Virginia. I'd say I have plenty of, um, "creds" when it comes to talking to other white people about how racism works in the South. The story that Jo provides is part of the story, but not the whole one. A white sheet was found in my great-grandfather's closet when he died in Virginia (I never met him, but yeah, I've heard racial slurs before too. Mostly from my family in VA. And from people I heard say them in central Pennsylvania. Not often in urban North Carolina.). I do not think that speaking out against racism in intellectual movements--or within my own cultural heritage--is tantamount to telling anyone they have to hate their family. Or saying that I hate mine. I am always a little speechless when this kind of argument comes up. I simply don't have language to respond. I don't talk about race this way, and neither does anyone else I have ever met in the South. I don't think talking about race means that I have to apologize on my family's behalf or feel white guilt or whatever. I just think it's...something that white people should feel outraged about. And, no, I don't bloody hate my family either, but I *am* feeling quite frustrated that I seem to keep being misunderstood.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 19:16:54 GMT -5
Furthermore, I have already stated that I think Gothard and company are being disingenuous when they claim to care about racial inequality. But this doesn't mean that Sanger's history is pure and unblemished either. And I've never gotten anywhere by reading anyone as my feminist fairy godmother who must not be critiqued (But, sure, I can be kind of an asshole, I guess, and I certainly resist hero/ine worship of any kind... And I'm not accusing Jo of promoting hero worship, but I've seen quite a bit of it among US-based feminists. So, that's where my resistance is coming from. Early feminism privileged white upper middle class well-educated heterosexual women, and it had not a lot to offer me and mine. I am grateful for the changes that Planned Parenthood effected, truly. But I am not going to walk around on eggshells about this. I've been there, and I've read this stuff, and I've been reading it for quite some time, and no matter how important much of it has been... It has also been deeply flawed. Often.).
I just completed a second MA... This one in Philosophy with a concentration in Women's Studies. And, yeah, I have read quite a lot of deeply flawed theory that I have nevertheless managed to find something useful in. T.W. Adorno and Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzsche come to mind. You won't see me providing facile critiques of important intellectuals, but good god... I'm not about to whitewash them either.
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Post by nikita on May 28, 2010 19:26:57 GMT -5
Hey! The quote worked!! Thanks Tapati!! I hate to do this but KM - I'm confused about what you are saying here. What part of Jo's response rendered you speechless? She said a lot of things. As for racism, I think it's one of those things that happens in most families at some point and although we love our relatives (or try to anyway) we can reject any racism that might show up in the same people. I mean, I loved my dad dearly but he had some viewpoints that made my head hurt. I don't expect others to feel all lovey toward him with his objectionable attitudes, but I loved him. I argued the points with him, but I loved him. I think that the Sanger issue is a problem that comes up all the time when studying people historically. We can judge everyone by the standards of either their time or our time and decide whether we admire them or not. One person will choose to make current sensibilities the ultimate judgement and another will allow for historical differences of the time. Personally, I judge people by the standards of their own time as far as whether I think they were to be admired for whatever else they did or not. And I judge them by the standards of my own time when I decide whether I agree with them now about anything in particular. And that reasoning can get rather fluid depending on the person being analyzed and the sensibility in question. I think it's a very personal decision we each make. I don't think one way is 'wrong' and the other 'right'. Both seem valid to me.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 19:32:46 GMT -5
Most of you also know that I'm disabled. This whitewashing and rationalization of the history of eugenics happens to be pissing me right the f*** off. Maybe I should have a rational discussion with someone whose experiences with other PWD led them to support eugenics? You know, people like the Princeton philosopher, Peter Singer, who *still* promote eugenics when it comes to dealing with disability. Maybe I should just calm down and think about how important the history of eugenics has been when it comes to furthering white able-bodied women's reproductive rights and just be appropriately appreciative of my feminist forebears? Yeah, eugenics is personal to me. Yeah, people with my health condition often got sterilized in the past, and yeah, it's only in the past fifteen years that many of us lived to adulthood. So, no, I'm not really capable of calmly disengaging in order to sound like a good enough feminist or the right kind of feminist. I'm not. I was never the right kind of Christian either, and I'm sure that lots of feminists are just as anxious to disown me as so many QF-ers always were (Of course, they always said it very nicely: "She's a nice person, but, well... She's very liberal and outspoken.").
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Post by nikita on May 28, 2010 19:33:41 GMT -5
I throw my figurative arms about your entire post, KM. Yes. Way too much hero/ine worship going about. Let's see everyone for who they are, good and bad, warts and all. It doesn't take away from whatever else they did or taught that was admirable and worthwhile.
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
Alexander Solzhenitsyn /The Gulag Archipelago
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 19:38:04 GMT -5
Hey! The quote worked!! Thanks Tapati!! I hate to do this but KM - I'm confused about what you are saying here. What part of Jo's response rendered you speechless? She said a lot of things. As for racism, I think it's one of those things that happens in most families at some point and although we love our relatives (or try to anyway) we can reject any racism that might show up in the same people. I mean, I loved my dad dearly but he had some viewpoints that made my head hurt. I don't expect others to feel all lovey toward him with his objectionable attitudes, but I loved him. I argued the points with him, but I loved him. I think that the Sanger issue is a problem that comes up all the time when studying people historically. We can judge everyone by the standards of either their time or our time and decide whether we admire them or not. One person will choose to make current sensibilities the ultimate judgement and another will allow for historical differences of the time. Personally, I judge people by the standards of their own time as far as whether I think they were to be admired for whatever else they did or not. And I judge them by the standards of my own time when I decide whether I agree with them now about anything in particular. And that reasoning can get rather fluid depending on the person being analyzed and the sensibility in question. I think it's a very personal decision we each make. I don't think one way is 'wrong' and the other 'right'. Both seem valid to me. Fair enough. It was this part: "I knew this woman. She was the matriarch of my father's family and the entire reason that feminism was the one concept my mother could never talk him out of. This woman raised 7 children. She raised a large portion of her grandchildren. She was a strong Christian, the first in her family. Her own father emerged from the N. Carolina mountains into VA. She came from Mountain people, from uneducated background. She made sure all of her children graduated High School and several went to college. Simply put, this woman was AMAZING. My second daughter is name for this woman, as are about half the girls born into my family. But, she was as racist as the day was long. Long beyond the point of when the -n- word was considered acceptable, she would use it. She was racist in the old Southern, this is simply how life is, way.:" I don't know what to do when other white people suggest that my critique of a prominent racist (in history) is somehow related to their family. And that I'm somehow suggesting that their family members are bad, or were bad or something... I did this by pointing out that, uh, that's my family history too. I'm not telling anyone to have bad feelings about their family. I don't see why this even enters into the discussion, and I don't think we as privileged white folks get to make the history of racism about ourselves or how we feel about our families... My point was, good lord, I love my family too, and okay, many things about them were amazing. But they took part in a fucked up period in history, some more actively and insidiously than others (like the grandfather with the white sheet). But it's not about us... That's all.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 19:39:23 GMT -5
I throw my figurative arms about your entire post, KM. Yes. Way too much hero/ine worship going about. Let's see everyone for who they are, good and bad, warts and all. It doesn't take away from whatever else they did or taught that was admirable and worthwhile. "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
Alexander Solzhenitsyn /The Gulag Archipelago
Thanks. Once again, you understand. It's much appreciated.
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Post by Ex-Adriel on May 28, 2010 20:51:48 GMT -5
There needs to be a secular version of AMEN, SISTER!
;D
(and on other threadly topics - I do think that it's important to see eugenics as the really nasty philosophy that it is. QF is essentially about the same thing - it's just reversed. Instead of preventing the "undesirables" (I really hate people sometimes for thinking up awful things) from breeding, they're just going at it from the other angle and planning to out-breed them. Doesn't that nasty Bokins man have like a 200 year plan for all his potential descendants taking over the nation or something? Truly, maddeningly evil.)
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