Women: Stupid, Petty Traitors

Women have always been stereotyped as coy, manipulative and yet stupid. These persistent stereotypes of women as unfaithful, lacking in loyalty and stupid have existed for centuries. A lot of these ideas of a womans inability to understand important concepts such as policies, politics etc were the basis of denying women equal rights. However with the defeat of Hillary Clinton and Mccains picking of Sarah Palin it is obvious that not much has changed.

Picking Palin assumes that women are incapable of separating one woman from another. McCain didn't pick a black man, he and his advisors, didn't think that black people would confuse the difference between Alan Keyes and Obama. No, no one thinks that would happen. However we women are so stupid as a group that clearly we cannot tell the difference between Sarah Palin and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

What the difference between a pro choice, pro gay rights candidate, an environmentalist vs an anti choice, anti gay rights, environment destroying candidate? They both have vagina's. That as far as we treacherous and stupid women can see.

We don't care about the quality of our candidates. We don't certainly understand the implications of picking one vs the other. Oh no! All we can understand in our infinite pettiness and stupidity is that we will support one vagina when the other has failed.

In fact we are too stupid to even understand that second seat is not shattering a glass ceiling. Second seat has been done before.

Of course so far I have only addressed how the Republican party views women as stupid and petty and vengeful.

Let us look at the Democratic party's response to Palin on the blogospheres. The liberal blogs could attack her on any number of issues. She is everything HRC was NOT. She is anti women, anti gay, anti environment etc but what do they pick? Her ability to mother.

Mostly whether a mother of a three day old child can be a good person if she wants to be Vice President of the United States of America. Apparently she cannot be a good mother. How dare she leave her infant? As far as anyone knows this infant has a father. However apparently this father is not expected to take care of his child, though through hundreds of years women have taken care of babies while their husbands have gone on to do ambitious things with their lives. This baby is going to die from neglect since it will left in its father's care between Sept-Nov. The outrage!!!!

She doesn't have to work, she chose to do this. Hence the immorality. Reinforcing the belief that only men have a right to ambition. We have a right only to supplement income. We should only work if there is no choice in the matter. Our ambitions are never to super cede our children. It doesn't matter if this does not hold true for men. Their ambitions do matter since their work is not considered supplemental.

I don't want to defend Sarah Palin, she stands for everything I don't. I think like Mccain and Bush and Cheney, she is pure evil. But I will support her right to work for ambition and not because she has to.

The twofold attack against the intelligence of women and our desire to control our fates this week have been very disheartening for this feminist.

Saffron Rice with Apricots and Sliced Almonds Recipe

Soak rice for at least an hour in water (1/2 cup per person)

Soak a few saffron threads in warm milk

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Heat a pot of water till it boilsDrain rice and put in water (about 7-9 minutes till done)

Drain rice

Spread rice on a cookie tray so that it doesn’t clump together

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Heat a large wok with a bit of peanut oil/ghee/safflower oil

When hot put in cinnamon stick for a bit

Turn the heat off, put in almonds and apricots

Swirl for a bit

Turn heat back on and start adding rice—stir to mix

Add the saffron milk mixture-- stir to mixAdd salt to taste and a bit of sugar ---stir to mix

Ted Haggard & Larry Craig Doesn't Explain All Homophobes

Very few things piss me of quite as quickly as when people dismiss homophobes as being closeted gays. This squarely shifts the blame from a homophobic society created by the majority to an oppressed minority. Their are many reasons why this argument is utter nonsense but I will first discuss how memory works.

We tend to remember unusual event more than typical events. How well do you remember last Tuesday vs 9/11? Events that are unusual and atypical produce more vivid memories. A well known homophobe such as Ted Haggard being discovered as engaging in homosexual behavior, sticks out in our mind because it's unusual and atypical and also because its well covered in the media. It makes us forget the hundreds of other homophobic pastors, rabbi's, priests and politicians who are not engaging in homosexual acts. Memory is also easier to retrieve if we have emotions attached to it. Having a Larry Craig exposed as cruising in the bathroom causes a lot of media attention, highlighting the event and making it salient. Therefore this event is more likely to stick in your head than your homophobic mother/aunt/grandmother/pastor etc. So we forget our regular mundane straight homophobes while remembering the aberrant homophobe (i.e. the gay homophobe)

Here is another reason I don't buy that homophobes are disproportionately gay. Think about your grandparents generation and how much they do not like gay people. Do you think they were a particularly gay generation? Do we really all have closeted gay grandparents? Was this the gayest generation ever? Now, think about youngsters today, and how much less homophobic they are. (according to most polls, a large percentage of young people support gay marriage). Is this a particularly heterosexual generation?This is one of many reasons i don't buy the "homophobe=closeted gay" argument.

How about cultures that are more homophobic than others? Is Iran really more gay than the Netherlands? Is Palestine more gay than Israel?

Yes some homophobes are gay. I would say the proportion is same as the population. i.e: 1/10th are GLBT.

I also find this argument highly hypocritical. When you meet a racist, do you assume they are black, or part black? When you meet a sexist, do you assume they are part woman? When you meet a xenophobe, do you assume they are part foreign? So why is it this assumption is made just for us. Yes, their are biracial bigots. Hitler is rumored to have been part Jewish, however what about the rest of Germany that went along with that genocide. Were they all part Jewish? No. Similarly there will always be some gays suffering from sever internalized homophobia, but it will always be a small percentage.

The roots of homophobia do not lie in internalized homophobia. It cannot because if there was no hatred of gays from society, an individual gay person could not have internalized any hatred. Just as straight people cannot suffer internalized heterophobia, since heterophobia doesn't exist. Homophobia exists largely because of misogyny and rigid gender roles. There are other theories as to why homophobia exists, but its certainly doesn't and indeed cannot have its roots in internalized homophobia.

It is very dangerous to make this quick assumption that homophobes are gay because it shift the blame of homophobia in society back to gay people. This way society (majority of whom are straight) do not have to take the onus of homophobia. Its like blaming black people for racism. We ignore the institutionalized homophobia in religion, law, customs are point and laugh at Larry Craig's wide stance. This is why I think this assumption is really irresponsible and blames the victims for what is really not their fault.

Fundamental Religious Folk and Their Lack of Faith

My contention is that as much as religious right wingers from all religions preach about their faith in their various Gods, they actually really lack faith in their Gods. God is considered infallible in monotheistic religions such as Islam, Christianity and Judaism. However religious bigots and fundamentalists, consider homosexuals an abomination. This I find a mighty big problem with their 'faith' in God.

Yes, I could see how god made a small mistake, like making Bangladesh under the sea level. Poor things get flooded all the time. However making 10% of the population a mistake, 20% if you count bisexuals and drunken sorority chicks, that is far short of infallible. That is just a poor worker. Now, I don't claim to love my job or excel at it, however even I don't make a mistake 10-20% of the time. The infallible one should make a far lesser percentage of mistakes than me, I can see making a mistake 1 in 10,000 or so, but 1 in 10?

Which brings me back to my original point where is the faith in this? This is literally an outright mutiny against God. Believe that God did the right thing in making homosexuals. He wanted something out of it, maybe you don't understand why... and this is why you need to have FAITH in your God.