Hello, my name is Amanda, and I'm an erototoxin addict.
Apparently Dr. Judith Reisman (whose doctorate, by the way, is in communications) believes that the Virginia Tech murders were sparked off in part by the killer's erototoxin addiction.
Erototoxins... is that some kind of new drug? Or maybe it's some kind of chemical being washed into rivers and lakes, and humans get infected by eating too much fish? Damn those chemical companies!
Oh wait, now I remember: erototoxins are a certain kind of endorphin, produced in the brain in response to our "society drenched in sadosexual arousal as entertainment" and, um, porn. Oh, and they have no base in biological reality. According to Dr. Reisman, "erototoxins" "have a toxic effect on everyone and we all know that... We don't need billion-dollar studies to know that." That's right, folks: Dr. Reisman would have us believe that all that smut we've been exposing ourselves to is poisoning our brains.
Luckily we've been informed before our addictions had a chance to go too far. For Seung-Hui Cho, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech murders, the poison had already done it's job.
In an April 23rd editorial on World Net Daily, Reisman offers a list of contributing factors leading to the killer's actions, including the line about sadosexual arousal as entertainment and creating a mental image of him sitting "at the Internet every night, angrily lusting after naked young blondes who provoke his loins". Her analysis gives lengthy attention to his sexually explicit (and often disturbing) writing and the story that he took upskirt shots of classmates. In an interview with XFANZ, she asserts that "It's a distinct component in predators — frustrated that he can't get the girls he wants to get — and that builds up to a volcanic eruption."
What Reisman doesn't mention -- and this comes as no surprise -- is that all the porn in the world can't kill 33 people in ten minutes. It was a pair of guns that did that. To even insinuate that the cause of Cho's destructive rampage was an addiction to pornography is an insult to the victims of this complex tragedy. It disregards all of the other factors that allowed the killings to happen -- the medical treatment of people suffering from psychological disorders, the response of the University's administration to previous reports of his problems and problematic interactions with classmates, and above all the ease with which he managed to obtain the guns.
Way back in 1997 ('99? somewhere around there), Cheryl Wheeler recorded a song called "if it were up to me." I loved it in high school, but I had forgotten all about it until iTunes played it on random the other night. How incredibly timely. I'm guessing it's not the porn, judging by the number of people who use pornography and lead perfectly normal, healthy lives, but you know what? Even if porn did play some roll here, maybe there are other things we should look to first.
Lyrics reprinted below.
See also Alex Koppleman "Why Democrats Dumped Gun Control" (Salon.com)
# Maybe it's the movies, maybe it's the books
# Maybe it's the bullets, maybe it's the real crooks
# Maybe it's the drugs, maybe it's the parents
# Maybe it's the colors everybody's wearin
# Maybe it's the President, maybe it's the last one
# Maybe it's the one before that, what he done
# Maybe it's the high schools, maybe it's the teachers
# Maybe it's the tattooed children in the bleachers
# Maybe it's the Bible, maybe it's the lack
# Maybe it's the music, maybe it's the crack
# Maybe it's the hairdos, maybe it's the TV
# Maybe it's the cigarettes, maybe it's the family
# Maybe it's the fast food, maybe it's the news
# Maybe it's divorce, maybe it's abuse
# Maybe it's the lawyers, maybe it's the prisons
# Maybe it's the Senators, maybe it's the system
# Maybe it's the fathers, maybe it's the sons
# Maybe it's the sisters, maybe it's the moms
# Maybe it's the radio, maybe it's road rage
# Maybe El Nino, or UV rays
# Maybe it's the army, maybe it's the liquor
# Maybe it's the papers, maybe the militia
# Maybe it's the athletes, maybe it's the ads
# Maybe it's the sports fans, maybe it's a fad
# Maybe it's the magazines, maybe it's the internet
# Maybe it's the lottery, maybe it's the immigrants
# Maybe it's taxes, big business
# Maybe it's the KKK and the skinheads
# Maybe it's the communists, maybe it's the Catholics
# Maybe it's the hippies, maybe it's the addicts
# Maybe it's the art, maybe it's the sex
# Maybe it's the homeless, maybe it's the banks
# Maybe it's the clearcut, maybe it's the ozone
# Maybe it's the chemicals, maybe it's the car phones
# Maybe it's the fertilizer, maybe it's the nose rings
# Maybe it's the end, but I know one thing.
# If it were up to me, I'd take away the guns.
Showing posts with label rants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rants. Show all posts
Friday, April 27, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Gentleman's Quarterly? That's a laugh.
In their April issue, GQ is running an article titled Where to Find Her, 2007. The caption beneath the title reads, “A whole world of smart, beautiful women are out there, from the beaches of
The article, which if full of pictures of women who are indeed beautiful (in the most current sense), contains a sidebar which describes where not to find her. The list is meant as a joke; for example, men are instructed not to look for her at the family reunion, in high school, or while on vacation with the wife and kids. They’re also instructed not to look in Hooters or a Red Light District window, since of course women who use their bodies to make money cannot be both smart and beautiful (nor would they be fit company for a gentleman – for more than a night, that is).
According to the article, men should also avoid looking for her at a goat show in
I suppose I don’t even need to tell you that Smithies are pissed. Well, some Smithies at least. The Facebook group “F*ck You, GQ: Smithies are Beautiful” has 487 members as of 1pm today, and that number has grown by more than a hundred since I looked last night. The group constitutes a call to action to Smithies to send photos of themselves showing off their inner beauty and confidence to the editor of GQ to demonstrate their beauty. From the website:
…while this list offends all different types of nationalities, sexualities, religions, hobbies, and age groups in addition to ALL WOMEN EVERYWHERE, I feel that it is our JOB to stand up for our college. Smith does not get enough positive publicity. This article appears in a well-known, well-read magazine. It offends our school, our intelligence, our beauty, and our beliefs. It lowers us to a worthless thing. According to GQ, we are merely a place where smart and beautiful women cannot be found…
I am damn proud of my Alma Mater, and make a point of loudly declaring myself a Smithie whenever possible. Smithies are beautiful on many different levels, and it’s really hard to be at Smith if you’re not smart. But there’s another thing Smithies are, and it’s the thing that got the college landed in this article.
Smithies are Queer.
Okay, wait, don’t get mad at me yet. I know that not all Smithies like the ladies or identify with the queer community in any way. After all, some of my best friends are straight. But Smith has a reputation for being The Big Gay. Now, that reputation doesn’t go as far as you might think – in fact, it’s primarily known by people who went to other Small Liberal Arts Colleges in the Northeast. Students at SLACs like
Although there are debates about how Smith got its gay reputation, I am proud of the atmosphere at the college that allows that reputation to thrive. Smithies are open-minded, tolerant, willing to learn from each other and politically and ideologically minded. It’s a tough place to be conservative, and I’d like to see both students and faculty make a more concerted effort to have those kinds of political discourses, but in general I think that Smith is a good place to learn how to be who you are. If that means that the “gentlemen” who read GQ don’t want to date us, so be it – we can do better than them, anyway. You know, like by having partners who respect us.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Quick, gag her, before she says too much!
Oh yes, good: expose the Madam, freeze her assets and lock her up, but heaven forbid her high-profile Johns should be embarrassed!
(Feds Seek to Gag DC Madam, @ The Smoking Gun)
(Feds Seek to Gag DC Madam, @ The Smoking Gun)
Medical Procedures Should Not Be Political Issues
I’m feeling really angry today. I suppose “if you’re not angry then you’re just stupid or you don’t care,” right? But lord, my body is tired of being political. It wants to just be a body for once.
A friend recently brought to my attention a series of news stories about a clinic in Northern New Jersey that was closed by health officials last week, following a review of the facilities. The review found that Metropolitan Medical Associates’ Englewood clinic posed a risk of "immediate and serious risk of harm to patients,” with violations particularly concerning infection control and proper care of instruments and equipment. It was prompted by a report from Newark Beth Israel Hospital, who admitted a patient a month ago soon after she underwent a procedure. The patient, Dinkins suffered from a stroke and a collapsed lung, probably due to blood loss, and was in a coma for a month. She also had to undergo a hysterectomy.
The procedure that Dinkins underwent was an abortion, and the Englewood clinic is one of only a handful of clinics in the state which performs second-trimester abortions. Since the media began reporting about the temporary shutdown of the clinic, at least two more women have come forward to talk about complications they experienced at the clinic. It seems likely that the temporary closing of the clinic, as well as the requirement that they hire medial safety and administrative consultants, are well founded.
Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists have gathered outside the locked doors of the clinic to demand that it stay closed, and North Jersey’s papers are reporting on the subject with all of the sensationalism that is typical of an “abortion clinic” story, describing the reactions of protesters and including a photo of two white middle-aged men holding anti-abortion placards. Articles like these continue to allow abortion to be viewed as a political issue.
Abortion is a medical procedure. It is so safe that it’s generally considered safer than childbirth. IT SHOULD NOT BE A POLITICAL ISSUE. It shouldn’t be any more political than lasik eye surgery, or hysterectomies, or a heart bypass. Why should anyone’s medical history be political?
Most articles have referenced the 1993 closing of the clinic following the death of a 20 year old woman who had an abortion there, although only one was kind enough to mention that the death was determined to have been caused by predetermined factors; the clinic was cleared of all charges in that instance. The Englewood clinic has been a focus of anti-abortion protesting over the years, and was at the center of a couple of important trials regarding safe perimeters and the required legal distance of anti-abortion protesters from clinic entrances.
In a letter to the editor of one of North Jersey’s papers, one man writes: “Legalized abortion was justified on the grounds that it would end dirty illegal abortions. So now we have dirty legal abortions. And given the number performed every year, there may be more women maimed by them than was ever the case before Roe v. Wade.”
Let’s see… this clinic performs TEN THOUSAND abortions a year, many of them of the riskier second-trimester variety. I can’t seem to find statistics for abortion complication rates, but my guess is that there are bound to be a handful in any clinical setting, and to actually come out and SAY that the back-alley might have been a safer option is an insult to abortion providers. Can you imagine someone saying that men would be better off having vasectomies done by unlicensed providers in unclean facilities with unsterile instruments? Somehow I doubt that the women who obtained those (TEN THOUSAND) abortions would have preferred a back-alley provider to a clinic setting.
I don’t mean to diminish, at all, what happened to Dinkins. It’s an incredibly sad story, and I’m glad the state is doing something to clean up the Englewood clinic. But the politicized way in which the media is handling the case, and the political maelstrom of “abortion politics” in which this case exists, only makes abortion harder to provide and harder to obtain. This should have been a story about a clinic being temporarily shut down, not a political war over whether or not it should reopen.
A friend recently brought to my attention a series of news stories about a clinic in Northern New Jersey that was closed by health officials last week, following a review of the facilities. The review found that Metropolitan Medical Associates’ Englewood clinic posed a risk of "immediate and serious risk of harm to patients,” with violations particularly concerning infection control and proper care of instruments and equipment. It was prompted by a report from Newark Beth Israel Hospital, who admitted a patient a month ago soon after she underwent a procedure. The patient, Dinkins suffered from a stroke and a collapsed lung, probably due to blood loss, and was in a coma for a month. She also had to undergo a hysterectomy.
The procedure that Dinkins underwent was an abortion, and the Englewood clinic is one of only a handful of clinics in the state which performs second-trimester abortions. Since the media began reporting about the temporary shutdown of the clinic, at least two more women have come forward to talk about complications they experienced at the clinic. It seems likely that the temporary closing of the clinic, as well as the requirement that they hire medial safety and administrative consultants, are well founded.
Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists have gathered outside the locked doors of the clinic to demand that it stay closed, and North Jersey’s papers are reporting on the subject with all of the sensationalism that is typical of an “abortion clinic” story, describing the reactions of protesters and including a photo of two white middle-aged men holding anti-abortion placards. Articles like these continue to allow abortion to be viewed as a political issue.
Abortion is a medical procedure. It is so safe that it’s generally considered safer than childbirth. IT SHOULD NOT BE A POLITICAL ISSUE. It shouldn’t be any more political than lasik eye surgery, or hysterectomies, or a heart bypass. Why should anyone’s medical history be political?
Most articles have referenced the 1993 closing of the clinic following the death of a 20 year old woman who had an abortion there, although only one was kind enough to mention that the death was determined to have been caused by predetermined factors; the clinic was cleared of all charges in that instance. The Englewood clinic has been a focus of anti-abortion protesting over the years, and was at the center of a couple of important trials regarding safe perimeters and the required legal distance of anti-abortion protesters from clinic entrances.
In a letter to the editor of one of North Jersey’s papers, one man writes: “Legalized abortion was justified on the grounds that it would end dirty illegal abortions. So now we have dirty legal abortions. And given the number performed every year, there may be more women maimed by them than was ever the case before Roe v. Wade.”
Let’s see… this clinic performs TEN THOUSAND abortions a year, many of them of the riskier second-trimester variety. I can’t seem to find statistics for abortion complication rates, but my guess is that there are bound to be a handful in any clinical setting, and to actually come out and SAY that the back-alley might have been a safer option is an insult to abortion providers. Can you imagine someone saying that men would be better off having vasectomies done by unlicensed providers in unclean facilities with unsterile instruments? Somehow I doubt that the women who obtained those (TEN THOUSAND) abortions would have preferred a back-alley provider to a clinic setting.
I don’t mean to diminish, at all, what happened to Dinkins. It’s an incredibly sad story, and I’m glad the state is doing something to clean up the Englewood clinic. But the politicized way in which the media is handling the case, and the political maelstrom of “abortion politics” in which this case exists, only makes abortion harder to provide and harder to obtain. This should have been a story about a clinic being temporarily shut down, not a political war over whether or not it should reopen.
Bastards.
Today is International Women's Day. It's also Blog Against Sexism Day, but unfortunately I haven't had the time to plan a long, scathing post about the patriarchy (I've been too busy working my ass off trying to survive the patriarchy, which believes that the kind of work I want to do isn't worth as much since, y'know, only women are interested in health education).
I would like to draw your attention to the following three news stories, though:
A proposed resolution in the United States Congress would demand that the Japanese government publicly apologize to WWII's "comfort women," mostly Chinese and Korean women abducted or lured to serve as prostitutes to Japanese soldiers on the front lines. China has recently issued a similar resolution. Japan is resisting.
Two Sunni women were allegedly gang-raped by US trained Iraqi Security Forces last month. This comes on the heels of a guilty plea from a second US soldier in the rape and murder of a 14 year old Iraqi girl and her family. I'd just like to point out: These are just the women who have been able to come forward.
According to a recent study of female military veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, 90% of the women studied had experienced sexual assault -- and 70% of that was from other US soldiers. Salon.com has much more on the subject.
Maybe the US government should get its head out of its ass and stop demanding apologies from other countries for things that happened 60 years ago when its own military is still having the same kinds of problems. Fucking self-righteous hypocritical bullshit.
I would like to draw your attention to the following three news stories, though:
A proposed resolution in the United States Congress would demand that the Japanese government publicly apologize to WWII's "comfort women," mostly Chinese and Korean women abducted or lured to serve as prostitutes to Japanese soldiers on the front lines. China has recently issued a similar resolution. Japan is resisting.
Two Sunni women were allegedly gang-raped by US trained Iraqi Security Forces last month. This comes on the heels of a guilty plea from a second US soldier in the rape and murder of a 14 year old Iraqi girl and her family. I'd just like to point out: These are just the women who have been able to come forward.
According to a recent study of female military veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, 90% of the women studied had experienced sexual assault -- and 70% of that was from other US soldiers. Salon.com has much more on the subject.
Maybe the US government should get its head out of its ass and stop demanding apologies from other countries for things that happened 60 years ago when its own military is still having the same kinds of problems. Fucking self-righteous hypocritical bullshit.
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