Oh, you’re in Econ (formerly Psych)? Let’s argue about the robustness of studies in developmental psychology, shall we? OR Why I don’t do Facebook debates

Daniel: It’s hard to know what to say to this. From within the statist paradigm I guess she makes some valid points; if the state is the overarching legal authority, it will have to have some idea of what a marriage contract is.
As for gay marriage, it doesn’t seem like her article rules it out. Since she takes marriage as the primary institution of parenting, you could just as easily say that gay marriage should be institutionalized for the sake of all children presently being raised by gays.

Tony: How children come into the world, how they are raised, how they grow up to affect everyone else in society and governance, these are all public issues which marriage addresses.
How is a history showing diversity more important than children’s actual positive rights? And what exactly does that history show us?
Children have a right to a relationship with their mother and father. They should not be deliberately manufactured like some consumer product by same-sex couples through IVF and a sperm donor or surrogate mother. Adoption should not be normative; it should be a last resort.
Moreover, children need a mother and father. Mothers and fathers are not interchangeable; men and women are not interchangeable. A married man and woman should be given preference in children up for adoption so that children can have a father and mother.

Michael: My point is that if we look at history, has the state always been involved in marriage? If not, were rights still upheld?
Imagine a society with no state. Must you start one in order to uphold marriage rights? I have a hard time seeing why you would, given the state is unnecessary for protecting property rights or providing security, food, shelter, etc.

Tony: Children cannot defend their own rights. Moreover, the damage done to children psychologically is often permanent or at least hard to reverse and heal. An anarchist “utopia” would not protect children.

Michael: How does it follow that:
1) Children cannot defend their own rights.
2) The State is necessary to do so.

Tony: Have you ever observed a child, Michael? Do I really have to state the obvious about the nature of childhood? Weak, dependent, helpless, no reason, etc.
If the state is going to defend anyone’s rights, it should be those less able to defend their own rights, no?
Children suffer psychological damage from absent mothers and/or fathers. That is necessarily the case with a same-sex couple.

Me: Children of same-sex couples do not exhibit any distinguishable differences from heterosexual couples, except a more equitable understanding of gender roles. This is robust research; anything else is opinion.
They also are less likely to be abused, by the way.
Another study specifically on lesbian parents,
“‘We simply expected to find no difference in psychological adjustment between adolescents reared in lesbian families and the normative sample of age-matched controls,’ says Gartrell. ‘I was surprised to find that on some measures we found higher levels of [psychological] competency and lower levels of behavioral problems. It wasn’t something I anticipated.’
In addition, children in same-sex-parent families whose mothers ended up separating did as well as children in lesbian families in which the moms stayed together.”
[http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1994480,00.html#ixzz1r62lfZBW]
And as a child of parents who did not love each other and had me as a complete accident, but loved me very much, I can attest that I am eternally grateful that they were never married and did not put on a ruse. When I was diagnosed with ADHD, the psychologist told me I scored exceedingly well on all metrics measuring emotional health and sense of self, even given being Type-A with ADHD, which tends to result in the failure to develop a self-concept *in most people (not just from ‘broken homes’, whatever that means)*.

Daniel: Tony, the stuff you are posting here is pure bigotry. Obviously, children need stable, loving relationships with the people who raise them. There is no logical reason that these people need to be related to them or have genitals of a particular shape.
And clearly, there are systematic reasons that the biological parents of a child tend to be more suited than other people to raise it. However, there will be exceptions in which alternative arrangements will be preferable. It is up to the actual people involved to decide upon those arrangements, not the state. Also, given that the state does such a terrible job protecting the rights of people who actually HAVE some means of defending themselves, I don’t think there is any expectation that it will do a passable job of protecting the rights of helpless infants.

Tony: Robust research? They’re filled with methodological flaws.
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=is01j3
“The deficiencies of studies on homosexual parenting include reliance upon an inadequate sample size, lack of random sampling, lack of anonymity of research participants, and self-presentation bias.”
Asking a bunch of same-sex couples with custody of children how good of parents they are is not “robust research.”
Did your parents lack of love for each other affect you in any way, Caitlyn?

Me: That is an incredibly biased source which fails to cite reputable sources or present any studies (not anecdotes or otherwise contrived claims) which disprove my claims. The Pope is not a reputable source.
It’s called a pseudo-experiment for a reason. Sample size isn’t as large as would be ideal (though still large enough for the mean value theorem to apply; the article you cite is a strawman claim against studies of less than 10 participants, whereas mine is much larger) because the government makes is extremely difficult for same-sex couples to have children. Random sampling is literally impossible, if you’ve ever conducted a psychological experiment, where the experimental conditions are inherently pseudo-independent variables). Self-presentation bias isn’t unique to the lesbian ‘condition’, nor is this an interview of the parents themselves; it’s of the children. Anonymity is irrelevant. ‘Robustness’ has to do with statistical analysis, which is not really up for debate.
I got to fly as an unaccompanied minor a lot, which was fun. I assure you that my personal experience isn’t any more relevant than any other anecdote, but even if it were, I don’t see how else it could have affected me. I knew a lot of kids in extremely unhappy ‘traditional’ families, many of which were young girls whom I mentored; I had a much happier childhood than they did and I really felt terrible that they had to endure that. Their parents wouldn’t even show up to family nights. The one girl we had who had two dads? BOTH fathers showed up. Early.
I’m an Economics major (formerly a Psych double major); if nothing else, I know my statistics and research methods.

Tony: Do the same-sex “parenting” studies have those methodological flaws or not?
Flying as an unaccompanied minor is the only way it affected you?
Because I make claims about children and their rights, that makes me a bigot?
“Obviously, children need stable, loving relationships with the people who raise them. There is no logical reason that these people need to be related to them or have genitals of a particular shape.”
Children don’t need “people”; they need a mother and a father. They need a relationship with their origins. This is a basic psychological need.
Children are not mere animals that merely need their material needs met.
Yall should read the follow up article by Dr. Morse:

Privatizing Marriage Is Unjust to Children

Me: Those aren’t methodological flaws; you literally can’t assign people’s sex or sexual orientation.
I never had to deal with my parents fighting. They really don’t like each other, so I’m positive that would have happened, had they been forced to interact more than the bare minimum. I have been able to appreciate my mother’s self-sufficiency and my father’s long-term relationship with a woman who makes him happy. It’s definitely taught me that I should never settle for someone who doesn’t make me happy and that love makes relationships work–regardless of the sex either member is.
Is that what we tell kids who are sexually abused by their biological fathers and mothers? That they need ‘their roots’? My parents’ genitalia is absolutely irrelevant to me as a human being; if it were, I would be gravely concerned.
If you can give me empirical data about how having a penis and vagina for parents satisfies some ‘basic psychological need’, I would at least consider it. But insofar as this remains weirdly Freudian, I can’t take it seriously. Look, I’ve taken coursework in developmental psychology from the leading psychologists in the field; you’re going to have to give me some solid science.

Daniel: If we’re talking about ‘gay’ meaning ‘lame’ rather than ‘homosexual’ I can see how having gay parents might pose a problem.

Me: I love you, Daniel.

Tony: You know, I could easily say Time Magazine is “incredibly biased source” but would that get us anywhere? No.
The FRC link cites David Cramer and his review of twenty studies on homosexual parenting that appeared in the Journal of Counseling and Development.
Are you saying that Cramer and that journal are not “reputable sources”? If so, why?
Here is a link from Mercator that addresses the specific study you cited: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/same_sex_adoption_is_not_a_game
“Not surprisingly, there are scholars who oppose this weighty evidence. Two major studies published in 2010 are often cited by homosexual activists and the media. Nanette Gartrell and Henry Bos (10) and Timothy Biblarz and Judith Stacey (11) claim that children who were deliberately deprived of the benefits of gender complementarity in a home with a father and a mother suffer no psychological damage.
However, all data in the Gartell and Bos article are self-reports by the mother and the child. The mothers were aware of the political agenda of the research and this must have skewed the results. This defect in methodology severely weakens the report.
In the meta-study by Biblarz and Stacey, in 31 of the 33 studies of two parent families, it was the parents who provided the data, which consisted of subjective judgments. Once again, this created a social desirability bias because the homosexual parents knew the political agenda behind the study. Furthermore, of the 33 studies in two-person families, only two studies included men, although the title, “How does the gender of parents matter?” suggests that both men and women were fully represented.
Much of the research on same-sex couples tends to have serious methodological flaws.”
“Those aren’t methodological flaws”
Yes, they are. Inadequate sample size, lack of random sampling, lack of anonymity of research participants, and self-presentation bias are all obvious, serious, and commonly acknowledged methodological flaws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization
http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/random.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression_management
“you literally can’t assign people’s sex or sexual orientation.”
So what? That doesn’t make the study sound and robust research.

Michael: Blah blah blah
The state is still the last group I’d ask to take care of children. Unless I hated children.

Tony: “love makes relationships work”
What is love? Using someone to make you happy?
“If you can give me empirical data about how having a penis and vagina for parents satisfies some ‘basic psychological need’, I would at least consider it.”
Yall keep misrepresenting what I’m saying.
There is a well-established and growing body of evidence showing that both mothers and fathers provide unique and irreplaceable contributions to the raising of children.
And one’s biology determines whether one can be a mother or a father. So it is NOT genitalia that directly determines the well being of the child, but the entire sexual nature of the person, their parents being male and female.
Motherhood and fatherhood cannot be reduced to genitalia. That is a terrible and disgraceful way to view people who are mothers and fathers. But motherhood and fatherhood are dependent on sexual biology, and sexual biology cannot be reduced to genitalia either.

Me: I’m saying the *sources* it cites aren’t reputable. I never claimed Time was reputable; I’m claiming the study is legitimate.
You claim that the children being surveyed is biased. How else do you propose we study this?
Under your paradigm, literally NO psychological studies are valid. I’m sorry, but you’ve ignored basic statistical methodology, like the MVT, which I cited in response to the sample size argument. You are reiterating your talking points in a totally unresponsive way, which indicates very little understanding or respect for widely accepted research methods, because they inconvenience your position. I don’t have the time or patience to read through the Cramer studies, but you haven’t given me specific examples of areas of development which suffer in children raised in same-sex households and I’m not going to root around looking for any positive claims–rather than attempts to discredit other researchers’ findings–which you don’t even claim are there.
Are you questioning whether I have a mature concept of ‘love’? Whether this is a petty attempt to imply that I have an inferior understanding of what ‘love’ means (which is absolutely offensive) or is a valid philosophical question, it’s totally irrelevant to this discussion.
Totally missed the post above mine, somehow.
No, I’m stripping down the flowery language to the core argument. You fail to build/elaborate/explain how I’ve misrepresented this argumentation (again).
[sources for well-established and growing body of evidence?]
Anyway, there was a sexual revolution in the 70’s which seems to call into question your total assumption of the presence/role of gender roles in parenting. You also assume the absence of gender duality in same-sex couples. If the differences are determined by biology and those biological differences are expressed only in genitalia, I am obviously going to infer that that’s how to interpret what you’re saying. You failed to provide a concrete example of inherent differences in sex which are not sexual organs. The concepts of ‘fatherhood’ and ‘motherhood’ are cultural. Just look at some Native American and South American tribes, in which men take on traditional Western notions of femininity (including taking on the role of the primary caregiver) and women behave more ‘masculine’.
If objectifying people based on their genitalia is a ‘terrible and disgraceful way to view people who are mothers and fathers [what about those who aren’t?]’, then labeling same-sex couples as inherently bad parents based on THE EXACT SAME CRITERIA is wrong. You’re in a double-bind: either objectification is bad and we should treat all people, even homosexual people, as equals or objectification is okay and there are substantial reasons why people’s genitalia dictate their parenting skills.

For their new study, published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics, researchers Nanette Gartrell, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco (and a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles), and Henry Bos, a behavioral scientist at the University of Amsterdam, focused on what they call planned lesbian families — households in which the mothers identified themselves as lesbian at the time of artificial insemination. Data on such families are sparse, but they are important for establishing whether a child’s environment in a home with same-sex parents would be any more or less nurturing than one with a heterosexual couple. (See a gay-rights timeline.) The authors found that children raised by lesbian mothers — whether the mother was partnered or single — scored very similarly to children raised by heterosexual parents on measures of development and social behavior. These findings were expected, the authors said; however, they were surprised to discover that children in lesbian homes scored higher than kids in straight families on some psychological measures of self-esteem and confidence, did better academically and were less likely to have behavioral problems, such as rule-breaking and aggression. “We simply expected to find no difference in psychological adjustment between adolescents reared in lesbian families and the normative sample of age-matched controls,” says Gartrell. “I was surprised to find that on some measures we found higher levels of [psychological] competency and lower levels of behavioral problems. It wasn’t something I anticipated.” In addition, children in same-sex-parent families whose mothers ended up separating did as well as children in lesbian families in which the moms stayed together. The data that Gartrell and Bos analyzed came from the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), begun in 1986. The authors included 154 women in 84 families who underwent artificial insemination to start a family; the parents agreed to answer questions about their children’s social skills, academic performance and behavior at five follow-up times over the 17-year study period. Children in the families were interviewed by researchers at age 10 and were then asked at age 17 to complete an online questionnaire, which included queries about the teens’ activities, social lives, feelings of anxiety or depression, and behavior. Not surprisingly, the researchers found that 41% of children reported having endured some teasing, ostracism or discrimination related to their being raised by same-sex parents. But Gartrell and Bos could find no differences on psychological adjustment tests between the children and those in a group of matched controls. At age 10, children reporting discrimination did exhibit more signs of psychological stress than their peers, but by age 17, the feelings had dissipated. “Obviously there are some factors that may include family support and changes in education about appreciation for diversity that may be helping young people to come to a better place despite these experiences,” says Gartrell. It’s not clear exactly why children of lesbian mothers tend to do better than those in heterosexual families on certain measures. But after studying gay and lesbian families for 24 years, Gartrell has some theories. “They are very involved in their children’s lives,” she says of the lesbian parents. “And that is a great recipe for healthy outcomes for children. Being present, having good communication, being there in their schools, finding out what is going on in their schools and various aspects of the children’s lives is very, very important.” Although active involvement isn’t unique to lesbian households, Gartrell notes that same-sex mothers tend to make that kind of parenting more of a priority. Because their children are more likely to experience discrimination and stigmatization as a result of their family circumstances, these mothers can be more likely to broach complicated topics, such as sexuality and diversity and tolerance, with their children early on. Having such a foundation may help to give these children more confidence and maturity in dealing with social differences and prejudices as they get older. Because the research is ongoing, Gartrell hopes to test some of these theories with additional studies. She is also hoping to collect more data on gay-father households; gay fatherhood is less common than lesbian motherhood because of the high costs of surrogacy or adoption that gay couples face in order to start a family. (emphasis added) This is robust research. Any banal “WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!1?” battle cry about the sanctity of marriage as an institution solely for manufacturing humans in a ‘good environment’ is not an argument; it’s an opinion. It is something used to justify discrimination and statism in the private matters of parenting. Neocons, meet science.

Why I’m tired of people demanding government ‘protect’ traditional marriage ‘for the kids’.

lalibertarienne: canadiansheepdoggie: loveandotherhumanrights: canadiansheepdoggie: The word ‘feminazi’ is derogatory slang for feminism because it draws on the heated emotional hatred for Germany’s National Socialist Party. (aka Nazis) Generally people hate the Nazis because of their horrendous crimes against humanity & genocide which ultimately resulted in World War Two and most of Europe in ruins. The term actually fits with feminists really well, many prominent feminists are on the record as wanting to rid the world of men as if we are vile creatures. Similar genocidal rhetoric can be seen in Hitler’s Nazi Germany prior to the holocaust where millions of Jews and other ‘undesirables’ were mercilessly slaughtered. The term feminazi is also appropriate because the word ‘Nazi’ is a blending of the name of the National Socialists party. Feminist beliefs are almost unanimously socialist or collectivist falling directly in line with the ‘socialist’ aspect of the Nazis. So yeah, feminazi fits perfectly, feminists are genocidal maniacs who want free goodies from the state. Zero feminists call for the murder of men. Zero. If someone asks for men to die, that person is not a feminist, no matter how much this person may claim to the contrary. Feminism does not require a feminist to be socialist at all. Feminism and socialism are separate belief systems and need not be confused for one another. An individual feminist may choose his/her own individual political alignment and preference for socio-political structures—the only requirement is that those systems account for fair treatment toward people in terms of their gender. I will also say that socialism does not relate back to the Nazi regime as we think of it today. Nazis are known for genocide, not thinking everyone deserves an equal slice of bread. “Feminazi” is a term coined by Rush Limbaugh because he is keenly interested in inciting illogical, hot-headed fanship by way of his outrageous, uneducated behavior. The use of “-nazi” was not selected due to socialist ideals that can be related to the term in historical contexts. It was selected because the sound of it stirs up deep-rooted fear. Really? None? Lets examine this shall we? “To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking Dildo.” — Valerie Solanas, Authoress of the SCUM Manifesto “Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex.” — Valerie Solana, SCUM founder (Society for Cutting Up Men.) “The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness…can be trained to do most things.” — Jilly Cooper, SCUM (Society For Cutting Up Men) “I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig.” — Andrea Dworkin “Q: People think you are very hostile to men. A: I am.” — Andrea Dworkin “The more famous and powerful I get the more power I have to hurt men.” — Sharon Stone; Actress “The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race.” — Sally Miller Gearhart, in The Future – If There Is One – Is Female. “If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males.” —Mary Daly, former Professor at Boston College, 2001. “All men are good for is fucking, and running over with a truck”. Statement made by A University of Maine Feminist Administrator Need I continue? These women are prominent feminists and have not been unanimously rejected by feminists. What about the claim that socialism and feminism are separate belief systems? Gloria Steinem covered that one. “Overthrowing capitalism is too small for us. We must overthrow the whole patriarch!” Feminazi was not coined by Rush Limbaugh (though I think we can agree he is a wacko) it was around long before he made it popular. In fact he even credited someone else for coining it in his book if I remember correctly. Feminism isn’t about equality, every prominent feminist who gets any notable audience is a overt psychopath. The rank and file never get together and denounce someone prominent for showing her psychopathic tendencies. A militant movement that silences it’s detractors with the gambit of logical fallacies should be ignored. Yet I have yet to see any prominent feminists come out against the psychopathic beliefs held by the upper echelon. Feminazi is defined by merriam-webster.com as: usually disparaging : an extreme or militant feminist Origin of FEMINAZI blend of feminist and Nazi First Known Use: 1989 Fascinating! I did not know about these statements! It’s quite terrifying and ironic Feminism and misandry are mutually exclusive. So are the terms liberal and socialist. The perversion of language for political gain isn’t a new phenomenon, but using the terms with those the perverted connotations only serves to perpetuate the problem. ‘Feminism’ denotes equality, whereas ‘misandry’ aptly describes the comically self-described scum quoted above (and those who are tolerant of such abominable hatred parading around as pro-woman, whom you referenced above).

The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog.: Feminazi?

Birth Control is one *end* to hormone treatment

botticelli:

thecheekylibertarian:

makemyheartsigh:

I’m a 20 year old GAY member of the NAVY and I happen to be on BIRTH CONTROL. I’d like to be able to keep all 3. 

What, so the president determines your sexuality? And there’s really no reason for someone who’s gay to be on birth control, unless they actually just mean they take the same hormones for a different purpose, in which case, it isn’t *birth* control; birth control is an ends, not a means.

A president doesn’t determine one’s sexuality but having a president in office who is supportive of the GLBT community DOES matter. You are missing the point. The point of the original poster’s statement is that because of President Obama and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell she can both be opening gay and serve in the Navy. Before, she had to choose one or the other. 

The way you question why somebody is on birth control just based on her sexuality is just condescending. Birth control is a colloquial term for any hormonal treatment that alters a woman’s reproductive cycle, which has many effects and benefits to the female body in addition to prevention of pregnancy. The difference you are pointing out is just semantics. Republican hostility toward birth control access does not discriminate between those who use it to prevent pregnancy or for other purposes (which are not mutually exclusive). How is birth control only an ends? People don’t take a pill every day at the same time just because they like the taste or undergo surgery for a contraceptive implant just to do so (both of which cost money before President Obama’s birth control mandate). How is taking birth control for the purpose of not being pregnant, not having debilitating cramps, averting anemia from abnormally heavy menstrual cycles, etc not a means to an end? Not to mention that 1 in 6 women have been victims of rape or attempted rape and birth control is one way to prevent unintended pregnancies in that case.

If Obama gave a rat’s ass about LGBT rights, he would have dismissed all charges against those dismissed dishonorably from service under DADT and would have immediately repealed DADT. I don’t know how many times I’ve written this.

Oh, I understand that all of those are legitimate health concerns, from personal experience. So are prostate-related and otherwise man issues. Calling something ‘birth control’ implies that controlling the incidence of babies is its function. Hormones can do that. Hormones can also do a lot of other stuff. Implying there is only one purpose of hormone treatment, which the blanket term ‘birth control’ does, equates transexual hormone treatments (which would be for those who are, by definition, not biologically female) with oral contraception (which isn’t just ‘hormones which alter a women’s menstrual cycle’—they’re pretty much all just estrogen; the altered menstrual cycle is an effect, not a definition), which are not the same thing. Not at all. The link above is to a post which I had in my queue; I posted it for the purpose of expanding upon my problem with the politics surrounding the oral contraceptives debate (since apparently no other form of birth control exists), because I think it’s important to recognize the consequences of using the catch-all label of birth control (as well as having it by prescription-only, in the first place) and having totally arbitrary definitions of which organs receive preference. The whole debacle is extremely objectifying and anti-feminist; I really don’t understand it. 

Also, that very last part was deeply disturbing to me. I’m assuming, since you’re generally using ‘birth control’ colloquially, as in to mean ‘oral contraceptives’, that you’re saying women should take oral contraceptives ‘just in case’ they get raped. Which would be the equivalent of saying we should all walk around in bullet-proof vests ‘just in case’ we get shot. Condoning a culture of fear does more harm than good; we should be more concerned with the incidence of rape itself than the resulting sperm. If the latter is a concern—which it should be, just certainly not a primary one—Plan B is a more concentrated, chemically identical form of The Pill, designed precisely for the purpose of impeding impregnation after-the-fact. 

coeus: Virginia Postrel, the American political and cultural writer, has an idea for de-escalating the birth-control controversy that’s sweeping the United States: Sell the Pill over the counter. After all, that’s the way it works with condoms. Anyone can walk into a drugstore and buy a three-month supply of Trojans for under $30, no questions asked. Nobody argues about who should pay, who’s morally entitled to them or whether they should be covered by health insurance or the government. Make the Pill as convenient and cheap as condoms and the fight would be over. Besides, the Pill is far more effective. […]Tim Rowe is one of Canada’s leading experts in reproductive health. He’s been arguing for years that selling the Pill by prescription is outmoded and paternalistic. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to buy the Pill as easily as you buy Aspirin – or condoms. “There are much more dangerous things available without prescription,” he says. Antihistamines and alcohol are two examples. If the Pill were easier to get, far more women would be using it. But going to the doctor in order to get a prescription is a nuisance. Getting it renewed is a nuisance. And getting your annual pelvic exam is a major nuisance. This exam has nothing to do with the Pill anyway. It’s just a convenience for the doctor. In fact, there’s no more reason to have a pelvic exam before you get the Pill than there is for a man to have his testicles inspected before he uses condoms. (And how many men would put up with that?) Dr. Rowe, who heads the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the University of British Columbia, argues that the benefits of greater access to the Pill would be huge. Apart from preventing unwanted pregnancies, it also reduces the risk of uterine and ovarian cancer by 50 per cent or more. Some experts say it should be available over the counter for its cancer-reducing effects alone. Not everyone agrees, of course. Some doctors worry that if women didn’t have to come in to get the Pill, they’d skip their Pap smears. Some fret about the risk of blood clots and stroke. […] “It’s time to liberate the Pill,” says Dr. Rowe. “This should be a feminist issue.” As a woman, and a supporter of free-markets, I agree with Wente here. Birth control pills aren’t something that should be regulated by governments of any level, and if it was more easily available, more women would be on it. Just a thought. Agreed. After a year or two of being prescribed experimental neurological medication in the attempt to relieve my chronic migraines (which I’ve gotten every single day since I could remember), my mother was chatting with her OBGYN about how nothing the neurologist prescribed me was working (and how Topamax gave me such severe anomia, I had to ask to retake tests at school) and he suggested we look into hormone treatment, i.e. the Pill. I was mortified that I’d have to see an OBGYN for the prescription, even though I would be taking it for neurological, rather than reproductive purposes—as a 15-year-old who looked all of 11 years old, I did not want to endure the embarrassment of sitting in an OBGYN’s office, or worse, undergoing an exam. Fortunately, they waved the exam and gave me medication which completely changed my life (and which, especially compared to the anti-epileptics my neurologist put me on, was innocuous). I will admit, the one nice thing about looking so young was they often gave me the free samples, out of concern for my *clearly* deviant lifestyle, but I still get the most judgmental looks from pregnant women when I go in there, because I’ve been told I look as young as 14.I also think it’s absolutely ridiculous that you need a prescription for a less concentrated version of the over-the-counter Morning After Pill. Seriously, any anti-abortion advocate should be jumping for joy at the prospect of prevention replacing after-the-fact solutions.

Paternalism and the Pill

I’m voting for Obama

graceyu:

Because I was horrified to discover that when you said “small government”, you meant “small enough to fit in your uterus.”

Dear god, I’m starting to not want mine anymore, if it inevitably is going to lead these people to completely objectify me and pretend that having that in common allows them to speak for me as if I don’t have more important organs, like a BRAIN. Seriously, get your head out of your uterus, practice some damn empathy, and realize that maybe, just maybe, the lives of the civilians who die everyday as a result of your dearest Obama’s warmongering policies ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR DAMN REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS. If you disagree, you are the reason why people don’t take feminism seriously.

Capitalism?

logicallypositive:

socialjusticeally:

daisysnotebook:

uselesstower:

You mean rape.

Except it’s not, at all.

Consensual interactions = nonconsensual assault

i dont even know where to begin….

The next time I choose to go to the grocery store to buy milk, I’ll make sure to consider whether it’s equitable to an act of violence which denies the victim’s very worth as a human being. Good to know we don’t trivialize human rights abuses this day and age.

feminismisprettycool:

Why I’m voting for Barack Obama again in 2012, in the words of Susan B. Anthony:

No self respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her sex.

I, on the other hand, demand to be treated like a goddamn human being. My genitalia is not any politician’s damn business (and I thought liberals agreed, at least they do when it comes to reproductive issues).

Clearly Obama transcends sex as much as he transcends race. I’d be curious to know if the campaign considered how much of the hermaphrodite vote they’d win with this outdated message.

Seriously, I’ve never seen identity politics this blatant. And I did debate in high school.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w__PJ8ymliw?wmode=transparent&autohide=1&egm=0&hd=1&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&showsearch=0&w=500&h=375%5D

statehate:

sexyliberty:

privilegedenyingfeministcunt:

Fempocalypse!!!

This is a long one, folks. Just a heads up.

Throughout this video, I couldn’t help but remember a post I’ve seen floating around here a few times. It’s a picture of some politician or another (the name escapes me right now) and a caption about how feminism promotes a bunch of ideals that seem to be really far fetched and how keeping up with demands of feminism and those who support it hurts the economy. If you’ve seen the post before, then you know that nearly all of the comments and replies are feminists scoffing at those notions. 

Seeing this… the idea of feminist ideals hindering the economy doesn’t seem so far fetched anymore, does it? 

If I ever meet this woman, I am shaking her hand so hard.

Everyone should watch this.

If I ever meet this woman, I’m giving her a big-ass hug.

“But, as usual, feminists are only capable of speaking in half-truth,” and “to the bean counters, the harmful, rotten beans are just as good as the fresh, nutritious beans” are among my favorite quotes — a.k.a. wherein this woman singlehandedly destroys modern feminism and (inadvertently) Keynesian economics.

Watch. This. Video.

I just need to note that this is second-wave feminism, not modern feminism. Modern feminist theory is a misnomer because its focus is on human identity’s transcendence of the narrow scope of gender, sex, and sexuality binaries, seeking to reject the futile attempts (primarily of the government, which is why I assert that post-modern feminism is inherently libertarian) to categorize the complex array of human nature into two boxes. I consider myself a third-wave feminist because I agree with this and I personally identify with this: I am not first-and-foremost a woman and my femininity and heterosexuality are relatively unimportant to my personal value system, whereas I identify more heavily with different parts of my identity, such as ‘activist’, ‘animal rights advocate’, ‘entrepreneur’—my self-concept is not defined by who I am attracted to or the degree to which I comply with gender norms. That is modern feminism. This discussion is of outdated (though obnoxiously persistant and ignorant) 1960’s/1970’s era bra-burning man-haters (i.e. second-wave feminism)—in that respect, I applaud it.

I completely understand that a lot of people are going to roll their eyes because I’m taking issue with semantics, but semantics create language, which composes our conceptual understanding of reality, so I think it is important. Plus, you can gain a lot of respect from the left by understanding the issues close to their hearts and issues of gender/race are simply not things libertarians (specifically Austrians) give enough lip-service to; they are important, if you understand the ‘why’: some people relate very heavily to these issues and ignoring their issues will only serve to alienate them.

Peace through empathy.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)