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Post by hibernicus on Jan 25, 2013 17:07:24 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 28, 2013 16:05:09 GMT
A NEW YORK TIMES piece by Ross Douthat points out the flaw of the argument that women's equality relies on ready access to abortion: massive changes in attitudes towards women working outside the home have not led to corresponding shifts in opinion on the pro-life issue. This may not necessarily be identical to the Irish situation, because women got into the professions in the US rather earlier than they did here - indeed, the most prominent early US women to campaign for "family values" were often pioneering women professionals - such as Nellie Gray, who founded the US MArch for Life, as mentioned by Douthat www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/douthat-divided-by-abortion-united-by-feminism.html?hp&_r=0EXTRACT such an understanding was too simplistic when Nellie Gray founded the March for Life, and it’s grown steadily less compelling with time. As Jon Shields of Claremont McKenna College pointed out last year, pro-life sentiment has been steady over the last four decades even as opposition to women in the work force (or the military, or the White House) has largely collapsed. Most anti-abortion Americans today are also gender egalitarians: indeed, Shields notes, pro-life attitudes toward women’s professional advancement have converged so quickly with pro-choice attitudes that “the average moderately pro-life citizen is a stronger supporter of gender equality than even the typical strongly pro-choice citizen was in the early 1980s.” Among the younger generation, any “divide over women’s roles nearly disappears entirely.” The pro-life cause has proved unexpectedly resilient, in other words, not because millions of Americans are nostalgists for a world of stricter gender norms, but because they have convinced themselves that the opportunities the feminist revolution won for women can be sustained without unrestricted access to abortion. This conviction is crucial to understanding why opinion on abortion has been a persistent exception to the liberalizing cultural trends that have brought us gay marriage, medical marijuana and now women in combat. It helps explain, too, why public opinion on the issue doesn’t break down along the gendered lines that many liberals expect — why more women than men, for instance, told the latest Pew survey that abortion was “morally wrong” and (in smaller numbers) that Roe should be overturned. It also has long-term implications for how the abortion debate plays out. The best way to argue with a Todd Akin is to dismiss him as a chauvinist, a creep and the enemy of a more enlightened future. But the best pro-choice rebuttal to the young idealists at the March for Life or the professional women who lead today’s anti-abortion groups isn’t that they’re too reactionary — it’s that they’re too utopian, too radical, too naïve. This means that the abortion rights movement, once utopian in its own fashion, is now at its most effective when it speaks the language of necessary evils, warning Americans that while it might be pretty to think so, the equality they take for granted simply can’t be separated from a practice they find troubling. For its part, if the pro-life movement wants not only to endure but to triumph, then it needs an answer to this argument. That means something more than just a defense of a universal right to life. It means a realist’s explanation of how, in policy and culture, the feminist revolution could be reformed without being repealed. END OF EXTRACT BTW, yesterday's SUNDAY TIMES column by Justine mcCarthy, though about the disgraceful case of the suspended-sentence rapist, included yet another pro-choice rant in which she essentially denounced Caroline Simons and Niamh UI Bhriain for being traitors to their sex because they addressed the pro-life rally "every time they speak I hear the chains tightening on women's wombs", proclaims Ms McCarthy. She also sneered that the pro-life campaign had now got a prominent female presence compared to its conspicuously all-male ranks twenty years ago - obviously Ms McCarthy had conveniently forgotten the roles played by Bernadette Bonnar, Dr MAry Lucey and Alice Glenn (and many other women) in the original pro-life campaign, not to mention the fact that Niamh Ui Bhrian (nee Nic Mhathuna) was already the public face of Youth Defence twenty years ago and that the most prominent pro-life figures to get elected were Dana and Kathy Sinnott. Ms MCCarthy will get away with this because she can count on her audience's ignorance of the past, and because we have done so little to record our past actions and so leave them to be ignored or misrepresented by the other side
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2013 1:11:09 GMT
www.tcdsu.org/info/gender-identity-referendum-and-abortion-preferendumBecause exams, under/unemployment, emigrating graduates and 7 grand a pop for a year in college is less important than having the right to have sex without consequences and doing what exactly with your gender? Why is this important apart from trying to galvanise a youthful abortion-supporting answer to the young fertile girls and boys at the pro life rally? Old Bacik's face will show up on the Front Square now. For once. What do I get to do with my gender exactly? Is it all a social construct? Am I Marilyn Monroe if I say I am? Will boys who say they're girls get to change in the female locker rooms now? I'm not trying to be facetious, just despairing at the gender nonsense, seriously, affirming people in a delusion is not charitable. Are there not more pressing issues, like reduced front desk staff in the library that could be tackled? More than the Pav in which to drown your sorrows? Has anyone seen what they did to The Buttery? It's a neon coffee house now, no beer at noon for bonding over booklists. Poor old students. Anyway, yeah it's preferendum time, anybody else's old haunt doing this?
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 5, 2013 8:45:17 GMT
Students have always got caught up in the "big" issues rather that things which seriously affect them and in my observation is that these issues get madder and madder. My impression is that students have always been used by external agencies with agendas and always fell for it. Trouble is that a lot of kids are doing their growing up in college and they'll look back and ask what was going on then. However, meanwhile the goal posts have moved.
Once upon a time, Maynooth was a particular target for obvious propaganda purposes. But that no longer matters. I think the problem is that students are being schooled in taking promiscuity as a given and that the only problem they see is if someone takes thoses 'rights' away. They don't see that the purpose is to divert their attention from real issues.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Feb 5, 2013 20:22:49 GMT
"Are there not more pressing issues, like reduced front desk staff in the library that could be tackled?"
Yeaaahhh, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout, we need a lot more people worrying about that!! Not just in TCD but in other places, say (just randomly off the top of my head) UCD.
Every time I hear the word gender I reach for my revolver. If you don't act quickly someone is going to say "negotiated identity" and before too long it will be "self-identify as".
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 5, 2013 22:00:42 GMT
We really underestimate the lunacy to which the "gender is purely a matter of self-definition and anyone who tries to restrict it is morally equivalent to a racist" mindset can descend. Rod Dreher reported a case in point some time back; apparently in the US some born-male individuals who describe themselves as "transgender lesbian women" but have not actually had the operation are complaining that female lesbians who refuse to get intimate with them are engaging in "transphobic discrimination". If you don't believe me, see HERE www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/of-cotton-and-ceilings-lesbians/ and remember that if this rubbish is being put forward in the US, the gender studies departments in Irish universities will soon be solemnly debating it and demanding a research grant for so doing.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Feb 6, 2013 9:44:23 GMT
I take some glee in the fact that yesterday's ultra-right-on radical is today's narrow-minded bigot (for instance, lesbian feminists who intolerantly hold that a lesbian shouldn't have chest hair and a prominent Adam's apple).
This departure of gender from biological reality surely throws the door wide open for anything. Why stick with male and female? Why not invent new genders? Why not be a new gender every morning? Why not combine various genders?
I think this is the inevitable result of a contradiction within radical thought; on the one hand, there was a belief that we should treat sexual difference as being as irrelevant as eye colour, and on the other hand there was the notion that sex was the very centre of human identity and creativity and self-fashioning, that sexuality was repressed, that public recognition of sexual difference and sexual appetite and so forth was a human right. The tension between those ideas was bound to cause problems eventually.
Ultimately I think it comes down to a belief that only what is chosen can be life-affirming and authentic. Family? Nation? Sex? Social convention? Religious dogma and tradition? The individual soul should seek to fly by those nets. But this kind of sterile self-creation can never actually invent anything new so it just ends up ringing the changes on what is actually given-- gender-bending, multiculturalism, "alternative" families, postmodernism, liberal Catholicism or liberal Judaism or liberal Mormonism.
The philosophy of liberation starts out with a grand repudiation of what society expects and thinks, and ends up utterly fixated on the need to win recognition and acceptance from society.
I seem to have wandered off the thread topic, sorry.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 6, 2013 21:00:47 GMT
Actually Maolseachlainn's post is quite relevant because one of the big issues in the debate over Catholicism and women's rights is whether men and women are, or should be, completely interchangeable and whether differences between the sexes are innate or entirely due to gender stereotyping (and if they are innate, whether or not they can/should be changed if the person so desires). It's not as simple as Catholics/Christians believe in sex differentiation, feminists don't (for one thing, there is a strong tradition of "difference feminism" which argues that women are different from men and that their characteristics are morally superior to those of men) but the idea that the only valid identities are those which we choose ourselves is at the heart of a lot of modern revulsion against Christianity. BTW the James Joyce quote you have is a very good example of this, because Joyce is parodying the Psalms. In Psalms 92 and 125 the soul is described as a bird which God saves from the snares/nets of the fowler who seeks to destroy it; in Joyce/Stephen Dedalus's version it is he himself who delivers his own soul from the identities which others seek to impose upon it (Dedalus repeatedly compares himself/the artist to God or wishes to become God; there is some dispute about whether Joyce completely endorses this, but the passage is generally quoted on the assumption that he does.)
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 8, 2013 15:02:41 GMT
Just called on the front line. There is a table set up at the Bank of Ireland, College Green looking for signatures to the pro-life petition. They're getting a positive response with a couple of the usual insults. One person engaged against the cause, but in a respectful way - thing is this person seemed to me to be a transgendered individual. But basically the experience seemed positive. A young Brazilian man was handing out pro-life literature, which is a positive.
The woman behind the desk said she went with a colleague to a Labour women's group meeting as observers. Said she witnessed loads of casual anti-clericalism, but there was also evidence that Labour were taken aback by the scale of the January 19 Vigil for Life. We probably need something bigger.
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Post by Young Ireland on Feb 9, 2013 20:18:12 GMT
Thanks for the update, Alaisdair. At least something is going right for us. I do have some criticisms of the pro-life pledge though: 1. I think its scope should be expanded to include the whole Dail and not just Fine Gael. 2. We should be targeting individual TDs rather than whole parties. I think threatening FG that pro-lifers will never vote for them again is counter-productive, as many FG TDs are pro-life and to deny them a vote because of the leadership will only weaken the influence of the pro-life movement, not strengthen it. 3. If FG is out of the equation completely, who do we vote for? FF are supposedly pro-life, however we cannot guarantee that this will continue to be the case. Labour and ULA are even more hard-line on abortion than FG. SF are pro-choice and even if they weren't, too many pro-lifers (including myself) would not vote for them for reasons that everybody needs no reminding of. The dissidents are in the same boat. The Greens are also iffy on the abortion issue, more so than FG. The CSP are an obvious alternative, and hopefully Cathal Loftus will turn things around, but they seriously need to get their act together. If there is no credible pro-life alternative, we will have no choice to turn to pro-life FG TDs with our tails in between our legs.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 9, 2013 22:12:07 GMT
I agree with Young Ireland on the pledge. I haven't signed it myself because I have scruples about signing up for something I might not fulfil, and I can think of circumstances in which it might be necessary to vote for someone bad to keep out something worse. I agree that individual TDs rather than whole parties should be targeted, and it would be ridiculous to vote against pro-life FG Tds because of the leadership - indeed, it is precisely those prepared to defy the leadership whom we should be encouraging. For this reason I would seriously consider giving PEadar Toibin a vote if I lived in Meath West (which I don't). There are of course some Sinn Fein TDs whom I would never vote for even if they declared themselves pro-lifers, starting with Gerry Adams - too much blood on their hands - just as I would never vote for a fascist who declared himself pro-life (a la Justin Barrett) because that would be a complete travesty of the term. FF's new opinion poll gains may owe something to the abortion issue - note their strongest gains are among the over-65s and in rural areas - but I don't trust them not to go whoring after the secularist vote in Dublin, especially if they see the smoking ruins of Labour as a possible future coalition partner. There are a few of the just to be found in the Fianna Fail Sodom, notably Eamon O Cuiv and Senator Jim Walsh, and every encouragement should be given to that party to do the right thing, but I wouldn't count on them. The CSP can be useful as a protest vote, but in their present state they are nothing more, and any CSP voter will have to consider their second preferences carefully.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 10, 2013 20:04:40 GMT
Cardinal Burke commenting on Ireland gives his view on Irish politicians receiving Holy Communion. www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=123945I wonder is this a nudge of support from the Vatican that if the bishops here choose to sanction after pastoral guidance doesn't work then they will be supported from Rome?
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Post by maolsheachlann on Feb 10, 2013 20:11:50 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2013 6:27:38 GMT
I agree with Young Ireland on the pledge. I haven't signed it myself because I have scruples about signing up for something I might not fulfil, and I can think of circumstances in which it might be necessary to vote for someone bad to keep out something worse. I agree that individual TDs rather than whole parties should be targeted, and it would be ridiculous to vote against pro-life FG Tds because of the leadership - indeed, it is precisely those prepared to defy the leadership whom we should be encouraging. For this reason I would seriously consider giving PEadar Toibin a vote if I lived in Meath West (which I don't). There are of course some Sinn Fein TDs whom I would never vote for even if they declared themselves pro-lifers, starting with Gerry Adams - too much blood on their hands - just as I would never vote for a fascist who declared himself pro-life (a la Justin Barrett) because that would be a complete travesty of the term. FF's new opinion poll gains may owe something to the abortion issue - note their strongest gains are among the over-65s and in rural areas - but I don't trust them not to go whoring after the secularist vote in Dublin, especially if they see the smoking ruins of Labour as a possible future coalition partner. There are a few of the just to be found in the Fianna Fail Sodom, notably Eamon O Cuiv and Senator Jim Walsh, and every encouragement should be given to that party to do the right thing, but I wouldn't count on them. The CSP can be useful as a protest vote, but in their present state they are nothing more, and any CSP voter will have to consider their second preferences carefully. I was thinking about this last night Hibernicus and was going to let it be but I can't. I understand that you don't want to put your name to something you may not fulfill. However I really believe that it is unproductive right now to second guess the future of what FF may do if, or FG may not do if or or or. Sure an asteroid may hit the planet in 6 months time or a car hit us tomorrow God forbid, we never know what the future holds. We only have today. I think it's more important to allow the FG people to wonder if people will hold to their pledges and let us deal with the threat before us today. We have a need to get a large section of Irish society to sign that pledge and make FG pause for thought. The only thing that will do that is strength in numbers so if there is any sympathy towards the pro life cause then sign it. The only reason I got my signatures of 2 people was explaining to them that if FG do legislate this can bring in abortion for suicide up to 9 months, which is true. One of those people who signed wouldn't mind it up to 8 weeks so there you go. This is a very specific pledge. Don't let's split the pro life vote again, sure look what happened last time.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 11, 2013 8:48:55 GMT
I have some very bad news - the opinion poll which appears on the front page of this morning's Irish Times says 70% or more support X-case legislation and this is reflected in all regions, age groups (the over-65s and 16-24 year being less supportive) and professional groups. All political parties have a majority among their supporters in favour of this.
The only good news is that only 37% believe is abortion on demand (where the woman believes it is in her own best interest). This means there is some hope the situation can be turned around - but essentially the pace of the government will have to be slowed down.
Interestingly, little is said in this morning's Times on FF overtaking FG, but I don't see this as really positive. There are good people in FF (as in FG), but at present, as ever, the party will jump wherever it sees votes for itself.
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