My head’s in a bit of a muddle at the moment, so excuse me if I am not blessing you with my usual finely crafted sentences on important things. I have an exam tomorrow and I can’t even find my lecture notes. That was enough to put me into a huff and make me - that’s right force me - to spend the morning reading a fantasy novel.
One thing I have noticed that has been happening in my absence (perhaps because of my absence, oh what heavy responsibility it is to blog!) is all this furore over the Washington Post’s report that science now says that women’s health is only important in light of the fact that they can bear children. But as Amanda at Pandagon writes (she’s not the only one, but she is the most eloquent), this may be what the Washington Post believes, but it is not in what the CDC actually said in their report.
The report is far from perfect - it was after all conceived in this messed up world of ours, and in a country which is, to use a technical term, nutzoid conservative. But the recommendations in the report are sound - including an emphasis on planned pregnancy and contraception provision. As American feminists are reporting downright scary assaults on basic sexual healthcare in the US (see Amanda’s article on Crisis Pregnancy Centers for an example), it seems that this report is something that should be embraced as a positive blow for the contra-contra-contraception lobby.
Regarding that, though, Amanda has the following to say:
And for those who are fixing to smugly say that feminists should have read the report before getting angry, think about what you’re saying. It’s sad that we’ve come to a point where even a medical article has to be assumed to be 90% propaganda, 10% information. Instead of clucking and condescending, get mad!I got mad at an American newspaper once. I had in my hands a copy of the New York Times that could seriously have been something from this lovely book I got from Disillusioned Kid many moons ago. The headline was basically, “Backwards Europeans Fail to Embrace Religious Fundamentalism, Risk World’s Ire!” I don’t like being mad all the time, so I’m only going to pass Amanda’s recommendation on to the Americans among you. The rest I urge to get angry at the Daily Mail.
2 comments:
And the NYT is considered to be liberal...!
Nice piece, although I'd disagree with your characterisation of the States as "nutzoid conservative." Not so much because it's obviously a diverse country (witness the recent immigrant solidarity demos which drew millions), but because the prevailing ideology on the nutjob right has nothing to do with conservatism.
Conservatives believe that change is inherently bad and should be avoided unless absolutely neccesary. The current way of doing things has developed over generations and to suggest we can simply invent something new and bring it about tomorrow is at best naive and at worst dangerous.
The American right don't believe in that. They want to abolish every major social reform of the last hundred years, transform the world in their image and they're not afraid to use military might to achieve it. Edmund Burke would not approve.
I told you it was a technical term. For the most part I think you're right, but...
Aren't these people arguing that they have opposed every social reform of the past hundred years, that these reforms have occurred against the will of the majority of Americans and that changing the world in their image is the only way to conserve the American way of life as they see it should be? Couldn't that be argued to be a form of conservativism, albeit a rather nutzoid one?
Obviously opinions in the US are diverse, but that's true of any country. For the most part it is conservative. Obviously I realise the nutjobs are in the minority, but they have greatly disproportionate power.
I think I should, perhaps, have described it as "nutzoid and conservative".
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