Power--But No Glory

It was a nightmare.

A number of men, all in a row, some representing religious institutions, were testifying about the horror of birth control, and why women in the United States should not be using any form of it.    But wait.   It wasn't a dream.  I actually saw this scene, broadcast from the U.S. Congress, in February, 2012.   At the same time, the state of Virginia was actually considering the governmental rape of women seeking abortion in the first trimester, by penetrating their vaginas with a foreign object in order to perform an ultrasound, so they have "all the information they need" before making this decision.   The assumption that such a step has not been given any thought by the women about to undergo this procedure is so patronizing and insulting that it defies a coherent response.

Rape: penetration without consent.

But on February 28 I was rendered totally gob-smacked by the latest in spewed hatred from Rush Limbaugh.    A female student at Georgetown University testified that her college friend lost an ovary because her insurance company refused to cover her treatment for cysts--which happened to be oral contraceptives.   Limbaugh's rant, which I don't intend to repeat here, concluded with an astonishing demand that women who use contraceptives covered by their insurance policies, are sluts and prostitutes and should videotape their sexual liaisons and post them on-line for everyone to see.   "I'm paying for them and this is what I want in return"--was his thesis.    John Boehner said his remarks were inappropriate.   Inappropriate?   That's it?



In Cutting For Stone, Abraham Verghesi illustrates the plight of young women in Ethiopia whose lives are destroyed by fistulas, occurring in the area between the vagina and the rectum, as a result of being too young, we're talking 10-15 years of age, when giving birth to a child.   These dreadful chasms in the body make it impossible for these poor girls to properly urinate or defecate, and they are thus treated as outcasts and pariahs because they are of no further use to their families or "society."    And to add insult to injury, they reek of faeces, and must live outside their neighborhoods.

But what about female circumcision?  And how many women insist that this dreadful "surgery" be carried out on their own daughters as a result of their acceptance of hundreds of years of an unquestioned barbaric practice?   We can also include the partial sewing-up of the vagina, so that women experience pain, not pleasure, upon intercourse.   If the idea is to keep the women faithful to their husbands, then I guess it works.   I always thought that our Puritan outlook on sex--ostracism in Hester Prynne's case-- was bad enough, but this?

I saw a BBC documentary recently about forced marriages carried out under the radar in Indian and Pakistani neghborhoods in the United Kingdom.    Some of the women ran away, but were hunted down by private detectives or were living in isolation with the ever-present fear that they would be discovered.   I also read articles about the murder of young women who caused their families living in England to lose their "honor" because they were:  a) seen unaccompanied with a young man, b) were the victims of rape, or c) were caught after they ran away in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid their fathers' or brothers' wrath.

And now this--the wanna-be presidential candidates in the United States republican party decrying birth control.

What is it about the need for dominance and power among some religious males over their female counterparts, aided and abetted in many instances by many female "believers?"   Who are these people?   We're certainly not in Somalia or Ethiopia or Saudi Arabia or Russia, which latter has its own thriving sex-industry commodity:  young women who are either kidnapped or promised a better life elsewhere as an au pair, but who end up in brothels usually in the west.  I don't let Thailand off the hook, either, as it is a mecca for pedophiles to indulge their proclivities with children who are sold by or kidnapped from their families.


Will we ever improve?   Is it enough to shine candlelight in our own small corner of the world as some of us try to do?

As a point of interest, the manufacturers of Viagra haven't a care in the world.