Less about the world, more about me.

Month: January 2018

Weekly Links #27

Welcome to weekly links number 27. Only the five this week but most are reads that may take more than a just few minutes. I hope you enjoy. Also consider following this blog and looking up some of the stuff I have on offer at Amazon.

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“So many people are frightened by the wonder of their own presence. They are dying to tie themselves into a system, a role, or to an image, or to a predetermined identity that other people have actually settled on for them.” A Gentle Corrective for the Epidemic of Identity Politics Turning Us on Each Other and on Ourselves

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“The only surprising thing about this marriage of convenience between the most irritating rhetorical style and the dumbest possible ideology is that it took so long to come about. Whatever merits anti-theism may have with regard to social issues, humanism was never the prime mover for New Atheism’s most devout adherents.” New Atheism’s Idiot Heirs

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“What these findings show is that pride, gratitude and compassion, whether we consciously realize it or not, reduce the human mind’s tendency to discount the value of the future. In so doing, they push us not only to cooperate with other people but also to help our own future selves.” The Only Way to Keep Your Resolutions

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“Unfortunately, anti-abortion terrorism isn’t new. Those of us who provide abortion care have long faced cultural stigma, threats and violence.​ But the more they harass us, the more I want to do this work. Their determination to keep people from accessing abortion care reminds me how vitally important our work is.” Anti-Abortion Harassment Goes Way Beyond Picketing Clinics

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“It was this “civil society” strand that influenced the Irish constitution: a strand that attempted to stave off communist devaluing of the individual, corporatist flirtations with authoritarianism and fascism; and atomistic liberalism.” The Irish Constitution and the evolution of Human Rights

What Of The Fathers?

I’ve had a few conversations recently, about abortion, with men. Their objection to abortion was based (or part based) on the rights of the father. It’s a point of view I struggle to counter. Not because I see any merit in it, rather I see so little merit in it I struggle to explain my thoughts. Sometimes a value is so fundamental that one rarely has to examine and elucidate it.

I hold that a man has no rights over a woman’s body, regardless of what may or may not be going on inside that woman’s body or any connection he may have to that woman or what is going on inside her body. This is not a feminist conclusion, this is being a liberal. I believe, with every fibre of my being, that no one has a right to control or a right of access to anyone else’s body, ever. While the physical autonomy of Irish citizens is routinely violated, I tend to focus on the criminalisation of abortion as it is, by a long distance, the most egregious example.

But that all sounds a bit wordy and ideological.

I’m not a father. I’ve never been a father. And am intent on never being a father. I’ve never felt that connection to a life I have helped create and/or have chosen to call my child. I can, at best, imagine it based on the experiences of friends who are fathers or what is depicted in literature and television. My conclusion is that the connection is real, it is profound and it deserves respect. It is at once, base evolution and beautiful.

The question then is how does one give due cognisance to this true emotion in the creation of a right for the father that can be vindicated, but one that also vindicates the right of the pregnant woman to her physical autonomy?

I used the term ‘father’ deliberately. I could have used any number of terms, from ‘sperm donor’ to ‘potential father’ but am opting to focus on the cohort of men who are not MRA types or who only use the status of father to disempower women. What does one say to those men, who on learning that a woman is carrying their child, deems fatherhood to have begun at the point of revelation? What does one say to those men when the pregnant woman decides she does not want to continue with that pregnancy?

My head knows and says, there is nothing that need be said. Her body, her choice. This is not mere sloganeering, it is the most basic tenet of the pro-choice movement. All our efforts are based on that simple phrase, her body, her choice. But how does one translate this assertion, this assertion of autonomy into a message that can assuage the hurt and fear of the fathers who feel that connection to their child? Is it even a worthwhile endeavour?

In asking how we convey this message of autonomy, I am aware that I am wondering how a woman can ask ‘more nicely’ to not be a slavish incubator? My skin is crawling. I don’t even know if the question is necessary. Perhaps we have the numbers already, perhaps the few men I have spoken to represent a statistically insignificant cohort who need not be given our attention during the campaign to come. I do know the majority of men of my acquaintance get the difference between potential fatherhood and ownership.

And yet, I still long for a form of words to convey my understanding while also answering the question I posed about rights. How, with empathy, do I say; you have absolutely no rights concerning a woman’s body, regardless of what’s going on inside her body, regardless of your connection to her and your connection to what going on inside her body. None, absolutely none and you and anyone else should never have the power to dictate what another person does with their body. And unless you are prepared to contemplate strapping a pregnant woman to her bed for the duration of her pregnancy there is no practicable way of giving you any say on what happens inside her body beyond what she is prepared to grant you, and even then, she can grant you no more than to listen to your opinion. But I understand her decision may cause you pain.

I’m not sure it’s an argument that will way sway anyone, but it’s all I have. It just that it happens to be true.

Weekly Links #26

It’s been too long since I did anything on my blog. One of my New Year resolutions is to put something up here every week. Even if only this Weekly Links thingy. This ties in with another resolution, which is to actually read the hundreds of articles cluttering up my Liked folder in Twitter. Today’s articles include topics such as sex, Timbuktu and gerrymandering. I hope you find them interesting.

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“As Bradley will discover, Brexit has unsettled one of the most intangible but important features of the fraying Northern Ireland settlement: the ability of its citizens to imagine themselves into different nationalities.” It’s not just the Brexit border question that divides Ireland. It’s imagination

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“North Carolina Republicans have gotten quite good at this, as evidenced by the state’s 2016 election returns. Republican House members representing North Carolina won 53 percent of the statewide popular vote, but took 10 out of 13, or 77 percent, of the state’s congressional seats. If their seat haul had matched their popular vote total, they would have taken just seven out of 13 House seats.” Still unclear about gerrymandering? See exactly how it worked in North Carolina.

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“I once lost a friend (a really close friend) because my sex life is good. How weird is that?” No Sex Thanks, we’re Irish

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“The headlining of only one line of inquiry, coupled with the unnecessary identification of the arrested man’s nationality has resulted in a toxic discourse about migration, border security, and racism.” Sometimes less is more

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“The discussion reveals how differently we imagine white and non-white populations. Whites are seen as divided by class, non-whites as belonging to classless communities. It’s a perspective that ignores social divisions within minority groups while also racialising class distinctions.” In British education, the central issue is class, not ethnicity

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“The rhetoric of the abortion debate can trigger a range of feelings in women who have had terminations.”  Anti-choice language ‘deliberately stigmatising’

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“His humble description of Timbuktu may have disappointed some in the learned societies of 19th-century Paris and London, but modern archaeological research throughout West Africa is uncovering evidence of large urban centers, unique social and political institutions, long-distance trade networks, and powerful empires.” Digging Into the Myth of Timbuktu

Purity

Do you ever worry that the Eighth Amendment won’t be repealed because of the purity of the campaigners’ message? Yeah, me neither. Do I worry that the media lacks the energy and interest to accurately describe the Repeal Movement? You betcha. When a journalist, or a politician or anyone for that matter describes Repealers as extremist, you know you’re in the presence of a lazy person or an anti-choicer.

Understanding Repealers is not that difficult. We are the 80% plus, of the population, who think there are circumstances where forcing a woman to remain pregnant is not a good thing. We are the more than 80% who understand that to address this, the Eighth Amendment has to go for there is no other way to allow, some women, in certain circumstances, have abortions. Labelling over 80% of the population as extremist is some next level bullshit. Repealers are the mainstream.

Are all Repealers the same? No. Repealers can be broadly divided into two groups. One group regards every abortion as a tragedy, but sometimes a necessary one. The second group regards some abortions as tragic and some as a positive choice.

The only thing keeping these very different perspectives in the same camp, is the Eighth Amendment. In a civilised country, this difference would be the only debate being had. But with thousands of Irish women being forced to flee the country every year for health care, we find ourselves on the same side.

Those in the former group will be asked to make their peace with ‘abortion on request’ up to twelve weeks because it’s the only practicable way to ensure victims of rape can access the health care they want. The latter will have to accept that women who are thirteen weeks pregnant will have to continue to leave the country because in the current environment it is the only way to ensure some women get health care closer to home.

It’s an uncomfortable alliance, but a necessary one. It is a recognition that the status quo is unsustainable. A recognition that the current regime pertaining to reproductive rights is at best hypocritical, and at worst cruel and dangerous. But while we are in the nowhere land of no referendum yet called, we are all free to still opine on abortion. We are still free to say there are good abortions and there are bad abortions or that there are no good and bad abortions, only abortion. We are still free to say that the decision to have an abortion should, in every circumstance, be the woman’s. We are still free to imagine and to plan what we’ll have to do after the (hopefully) successful conclusion of this alliance.

Once the referendum is called though. Once we have a date. Then it’s the dirty and cynical world of politics and winning a vote. Then and only then will this alliance come truly alive. Its disparate parts, some admittedly holding their noses, will have one purpose, one message and one goal. It won’t exactly be easy, but it will at least be straightforward. It will be an alliance of the over 80% trying to convince that 80% to come out to vote. It will be a campaign of explaining the logic of twelve weeks on request. It will be a campaign of assuaging the fears of those who think it goes too far and reassuring those who think it does not go far enough.

Time will of course be wasted arguing with anti-choicers. Unfortunately, that will be our only way to access the media who are already gearing up to make this a straight up fight between extremists. But away from the media, not a breath will be wasted on anti-choicers. We already know what way they will vote. It’s about the over 80% who are, already to some degree pro-choice. It’s all about them. But until the date is set and the proposed legislation indicated then please expect us to be at least be honest in our views.

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