Like father, like son

The guy emailed a few minutes ago to tell me that, during the east coast feed of Jeopardy, he saw an ad urging fathers to show their sons how to respect women. (Click here for Quicktime video.) He says he was ''floored'' by how good it is, and how it gets its message across so simply. 

It's part of a campaign by Newfoundland and Labrador which is the only Canadian jurisdiction where spousal violence  is increasing.

That's why it is investing $12 million in an education campaign to raise awareness of violence against women, show how to get help, how to help victims and, most important, what it means to be a respectful man and boy.

The website acknowledges that women can also be abusive -- but it recognizes that there is a huge disparity in the frequency and severity of that violence.

Which, cough cough cough, some regular readers here never do.

Into the wilderness

Well. Today's treeware column, which kind of picks up on themes I blogged yesterday, sure got the comments section jumping. The mods closed it at 95.

So, without further ado, here it is, with linky freshness, and one clarification:

Oh, let's not kid ourselves.

The birds of `pray' who will be targeting women's clinics in Canadian cities for the next 40 days really don't care about saving lives.

If they did, they wouldn't be so much about intimidating the desperate women and girls who are seeking abortions.

That's because, no matter how much they will attempt to cloak their vigils outside two Toronto clinics with solemn vows to "never stop defending life," their true agenda is unveiled by their lack of support for babies once they're born, their often impoverished mothers and the kind of sex education and contraception accessibility that would avoid abortion in the first place.

Nowhere on 40DaysForLife.com is there any discussion of any of these matters.

That's why it's easy to assume that what the anti-choice movement is really about is exactly that: no choice for women. No choice when it comes to their reproductive rights, no choice when it comes to being free to pursue independent lives, no choice to have careers, no choice at all.

All across North America, where the nutbar mobs south of the border are battling public maternal health care for women, and here in Canada, where Prime Minister Stephen Harper's caucus, rife with members of the Christian right, is repeatedly supporting bills that would curtail reproductive rights, the pro-forced pregnancy cause appears to be gaining ground.

Indeed, a new study in a forthcoming issue of the journal Reproductive Health suggests a correlation between those U.S. states where there is the most thumping of the Good Book and higher teen pregnancy rates.

There are states – most recently Florida – where there are bills to ban contraception. Some pharmacists and doctors, both here and in the U.S., are refusing to provide the pill to patients, even married adult women.

We interrupt this column for a clarification:

The proposal in Florida is for a state constitutional amendment that critics assert would result in criminalization of the Pill. It wouldn't be the first time there have been legislative moves to ban some contraceptives, including the pill. (Via Dammit Janet, a just released self-congratulatory round-up of legislative victories by the Christian forced-maternity crowd.)

And now, back to our regularly-scheduled columnizing:

There are reports in the blogosphere that Harper will replace Status of Women minister Helena Guergis – who hasn't done much for women, but that's another column – with the anti-choice Cheryl Gallant, who has fought against gay rights and even parental leave.

It just gets worse.

Last weekend, a prominent American anti-choice activist made a speech at the "Value Voters Summit" where she proposed that abortions be performed "in the public square."

This is the true backlash against feminism, whose second wave became a tsunami after the pill became widely available in the late 1960s.

It's all about keeping women down to those Biblical depths where they are little more than breeding stock, born to serve their masters.

What cracks me up is how often they attack the most backward and sexist Islamic countries for doing the exact same thing.

Last year, Alberta political scientist Michael Wagner, a favourite of anti-feminist groups such as REAL Women and Equipping Christians for the Public Square, authored a book about the Christian right.

He opens Standing on Guard for Thee: The Past, Present and Future of Canada's Christian Right with a definition of what the movement stands for: "A collection of people, organizations and publications which, because of their conservative Christian principles, are determined to oppose the effects of the Sexual Revolution."

That just about sums it up: shaming and harassing women back to the bedroom, baby's room and behind her man.

How far, far, far away is that from former prime minister Pierre Trudeau's declaration 40 years ago that, "There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation."

No wonder Harper boasted two weeks ago, in a closed-door meeting of the party faithful, that he killed the mechanisms for women to protect their constitutional rights.

No wonder those 40 Days for Life vigilantes feel that their prayer days are about to hit a payload.

Like I said. A lot of comment, many from some of our regular guests right here on Broadsides. One comment I did want to post here however. It's from my friend Marshall, who wrote this on my Facebook page:

Thank you for standing up for this important issue in such a public way. I can only imagine what your Inbox currently looks like. And you're right - it's quite unbelievable that we're still having this debate.

About 15 minutes ago I passed a bunch of these.. people... outside the Cabbagetown Women's Clinic with their placards and giant photos of fetuses - right outside a housing building where many children were walking past on their way home from school. I guess that it's ok for them to irreparably scar these children with their images in their zealousness to "protect" their rights. Such single-mindedness is both maddening and upsetting.

Don't stop. There are many, many of us behind you.

For that, I am grateful.

But I worry about a Conservative majority government.

Mr. Big Stuff

Shelly Nickason Friesen posted this on our Facebook ''Proud to be a member of that 'left-wing fringe group' called 'Women'" page. Felt I had to re-post it here:

Just a couple of caveats though.

It's just a little too partisan for me. I'm all for voting the Conservatives out for their anti-women (plus anti-gay, anti-minority, anti-war resister etc.) agenda but I can't forget how the Liberals lollygagged on bringing in a national daycare program plus, last year, a whole whack of them voted on that bill that was not about curtailing abortion rights until it became about curtailing abortion rights.

Speaking for myself, I find the NDP and Bloc Quebecois have much more women-friendly politics.

But I still like the video.

Plus you can dance to it.

Oh -- and the Facebook group is up to 2,166 members -- in less than a week.

We should have t-shirt info firmed up by tomorrow.

Mother and Child YouTube

I don't know whether this is the real deal, a hoax or a very clever way to get a date but you can't dispute its effectiveness as performance art:

If it is the real deal, I have to hand it to her. The lady has eggs! And she is clearly a great mom.

I wouldn't want to give her false hope but I bet 50 guys claim -- or offer -- to be the father.

Nah, 500.

Okay, maybe 5,000.

Be fruitful -- but not a fruit

Um, isn't Job No. One of Judaism to ''be fruitful and multiply?''

The first commandment given to the Human Race was stated in Genesis, when Adam and Chava were told to "be fruitful and multiply." This involves more than just conceiving and giving birth to offspring: raising and educating children is included in this commandment. Judaism places special emphasis on the birth and education of children.

Isn't the low reproduction rate of Jews a concern, at least in some circles?

Committed Jews should be concerned about the depletion of the Jewish population, especially in light of the fact that a third of the world Jewish population was exterminated in the Holocaust. Rather than making up for that loss we seem to be adding to it, especially when we take into account those Jews lost to us through assimilation and intermarriage.

Haven't Israelis been concerned that the Palestinian birthrate is outpacing theirs?

Israelis on both sides of the political spectrum always lament that high Arab birth rates represent an existential threat to Israel that dwarfs any terror strike or Iranian nuclear weapons program. These pessimists (of which I’m one) contend that non-Jewish Arabs procreate at much higher rates than Jews. Due to the semi-democratic nature of Israel, Arabs will eventually compose a majority of the population and remove the title of “Jewish State” from Israel. This outcome would re-establish the Middle East as an Arab (and likely Muslim) region where Jews would have no right to land and fear for their safety.

Okay then. So explain this. Please.

Rabbi Menachem Burstein, head of the Jewish fertility organization Puah Institute, said Thursday that "there is not one rabbinical religious authority in the world allowing a single woman to give birth."

 Speaking during an event at the Ono Academic College, Rabbi Burstein claimed that Rabbi Yuval Cherlow has reconsidered an approval given in the past to a single woman approaching the age of 40 to get pregnant from a sperm donation.

 <SNIP>

Rabbi Burstein spoke during a conference held under the title, "Parenthood at any cost?" The rabbi presented the halachic problem in giving a sperm donation to a single woman.

 "All the efforts we are making for treatments and insemination are aimed at starting a family, and here the framework of the family is damaged," he said. "Judaism does not permit one person's happiness at the expense of another, and it has been proven that a child born to a single woman from in vitro insemination suffers greatly."

Proven? Really? Where?

But what's this?

Rabbi Burstein added that his institute was dealing these days with the matter of marriage between homosexuals and lesbians.

AHA!

I agree with this comment, below the story:

Can't find a husband? No child for you!

I am against these rabbis and their archaic way of thinking. This is also plenty of evidence showing a child in a loving single-parent house hold growing up well adjusted, and equally many, many examples of a child growing up in a two-parent household with a dysfunctional relationship growing up to pass on that dysfunctionality.

So i ask you rabbis....should a woman rush out and get any man to marry in order to have a child? Seems like statistics works against you and the children I've seen don't do any better.

But I suppose your answer will be to "become Orthodox, allow a matchmaker to find you a partner, then do nothing but push out babies while your husband recites Torah". A pretty high price to pay for the joy of parenthood.

(I like this perspective on Torah and feminism.)

So anyway: Eeek! Single mothers, homosexuals and lesbians, oh my!

What's up with all these patriarchal religions anyway? Does it come down to one thing: The God who claims the most followers wins? Or be fruitful -- but not ''a fruit,'' eh? -- and multiply.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE (Aug. 18/09): Now this is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about.

Hundreds of gay men have been tortured and killed in Iraq in recent months, some by the nation's security forces, Human Rights Watch said Monday.

Interviews with doctors indicate hundreds of men had been killed, but the exact number was unclear because of the stigma associated with homosexuality in Iraq, the New York-based watchdog group said in its report.

"Iraq's leaders are supposed to defend all Iraqis, not abandon them to armed agents of hate," said Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. "Turning a blind eye to torture and murder threatens the rights and life of every Iraqi."

Make no mistake: While they're killing them en masse in Iraq, they're still hating them in our supposedly more civilized -- and Judeo-Christian -- society.

Doing it wrong

You know, sometimes I wonder about that ''faith-based'' world where kids still go to malt shoppes, and don't kiss until the third date, and never have sex until after the wedding.

Here's the latest:

Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush's evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US's major public health body.

In a report that will surprise few of Bush's critics on the issue, the Centres for Disease Control says years of falling rates of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease infections under previous administrations were reversed or stalled in the Bush years. According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991 but are up sharply in more than half of American states since 2005. The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled.

Note that the numbers are up in more than half the states. Although demographic factors such as ethnicity and income are important since rates are highest among African-American and Hispanics, they probably reflect the religious mindsets in the schools. What's more, kids in the northeast, where rates are lower, have access to more options.

Read the whole study here.

The age group of adolescents aged 15--17 years sometimes was included to reflect the fact that consequences of poor reproductive health are likely to be more severe in this group than among persons aged 18--19 years because early pregnancy and poor health are likely to interrupt their schooling and to have greater social and economic impact.

Can you say more poverty? More crime? Bad long-term health outcomes? (Half the girls who were pregnant did not get proper prenatal care maybe because they either did not know they were pregnant or hid their pregnancies.)

Some more findings from the study:

One-third of adolescents hadn’t received instruction on birth control methods before age 18.

There were more than 744,000 pregnancies among teen girls younger than 20 in 2004 - about 16,000 were among girls aged 10 to 14.

Approximately 1 million teens and young adults aged 10--24 years reportedly had chlamydia, gonorrhea, or syphilis. While one-quarter of females aged 15 to 19, and 45 percent of females aged 20 to 24 had human papillomavirus (HPV) infection during 2003-2004.

More:

Planned Parenthood said the CDC report is "alarming" and confirms that teenagers need "medically accurate, age-appropriate, comprehensive sex education".

But supporters of abstinence-based education said that the new report shows that there is too little not too much emphasis on discouraging sex before marriage.

Look, I agree we live in a hyper-sexualized society. Sex is used to sell all kinds of things. Little girls are encouraged to dress like 20 year old hookers. Sitcom characters who, in my day, slept in twin beds and pajamas, now all but have sex on screen, even on ''family'' shows.

You can't turn back the tide.

Just look at Bristol Palin and Jamie Spears.

So ''discouraging sex before marriage'' is just a valuable waste of school time which could be spent either teaching kids how to avoid pregnancy and STDs -- or even how to do calculus. Kids will have sex before marriage. Deal with it.

But can you believe it? In some areas, where anti-choice pharmacists refuse to dispense birth control and even keep condoms in locked display cases, kids don't have a hope of avoiding problems.

All of this is exacerbated by how little support teen mothers get, either with childcare or healthcare.

Can somebody please explain this whacked out mindset that abandons children with children, while doing nothing to prevent the problem in the first place?

There are forces here in Canada that would institute many of the same abstinence-only practices -- if they don't already.

If you ask me, abstinence-only education is child abuse.

Burly men

''Mens Rights Now,'' whose handle always cracks me up, suggests somewhere in the comments on some other post that I blog this piece of propaganda by a right-wing think tank type for an ultra-conservative publication.

Well, you know how I just live to please guys like Men's Rights Now.

Anyhow, the piece is about how unemployed ''burly'' men in the US -- who, admittedly, have been hit hard by the decline in construction and manufacturing jobs -- are supposedly being shortchanged by some grand feminist conspiracy to keep them from benefiting from stimulus spending by President Barack Obama.

Seriously.

Never mind how the author cherry-picks statistics, and compares apples with oranges, to make it seem as if women are living high off the hog while men are on the bread lines. Never mind how women make up the bulk of the poor. Never mind how, except for right now, the unemployment rate for women is consistently higher than for men. Never mind how so many families are headed by women who have no fallback support. Never mind that most women struggle in part-time jobs that the author never mentions. Never mind that women are less like to qualify for unemployment benefits. Never mind how women make less. Never mind how, when the government bailed out the financial sector, it was men's jobs that were saved.

According to the author:

A "man-cession." That's what some economists are starting to call it. Of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, characterizes the recession as a "downturn" for women but a "catastrophe" for men.

Men are bearing the brunt of the current economic crisis because they predominate in manufacturing and construction, the hardest-hit sectors, which have lost more than 3 million jobs since December 2007. Women, by contrast, are a majority in recession-resistant fields such as education and health care, which gained 588,000 jobs during the same period. Rescuing hundreds of thousands of unemployed crane operators, welders, production line managers, and machine setters was never going to be easy. But the concerted opposition of several powerful women's groups has made it all but impossible. Consider what just happened with the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Last November, President-elect Obama addressed the devastation in the construction and manufacturing industries by proposing an ambitious New Deal-like program to rebuild the nation's infrastructure. He called for a two-year "shovel ready" stimulus program to modernize roads, bridges, schools, electrical grids, public transportation, and dams and made reinvigorating the hardest-hit sectors of the economy the goal of the legislation that would become the recovery act.

Women's groups were appalled. Grids? Dams? Opinion pieces immediately appeared in major newspapers with titles like "Where are the New Jobs for Women?" and "The Macho Stimulus Plan." A group of "notable feminist economists" circulated a petition that quickly garnered more than 600 signatures, calling on the president-elect to add projects in health, child care, education, and social services and to "institute apprenticeships" to train women for "at least one third" of the infrastructure jobs. At the same time, more than 1,000 feminist historians signed an open letter urging Obama not to favor a "heavily male-dominated field" like construction: "We need to rebuild not only concrete and steel bridges but also human bridges." As soon as these groups became aware of each other, they formed an anti-stimulus plan action group called WEAVE-- Women's Equality Adds Value to the Economy.

Now, although this story is American, it has some relevance here in that Canadian men have also suffered in the job market -- although our government completely ignored what women said about so-called ''shovel ready'' projects.

I won't bother to eviscerate the entire piece, despite the easy pickings. I will point out however that these evil feminists were not conspiring to take away jobs from men, but to ensure that money went to families for such things as, horrors, health care and food. They also thought it would be only fair that, since women's tax dollars were going into this (and so much has been lost by the macho men on Wall Street), that it would be a good opportunity to even out some of the incredible inequalities that persist in the trades.

Here's a summary of what WEAVE wanted:

No. 1: Affirmative action plans:
These ensure that women and people of color are actually hired and trained for public-sector jobs. In the years since Bush took office, the number of federal contracts has risen sixfold. Spending has also gone way up, to almost $368 billion currently from $209 billion in 2000. Staff to monitor these contracts at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, meanwhile, dropped. In his inaugural address Obama talked about government conducting its business in the "light of day" and on his first working day in office he emphasized financial transparency. Government contracts are the place to put those sentiments into action.

No. 2: Infrastructure projects:
In 2003 only 4 percent of the roughly 400,000 registered apprentices were women. Scholars with expertise in these matters must be brought to the policy table so this gross discrepancy can be fixed. This is critical because while women hold 10 percent of construction jobs, most--5.8 percent--work in offices where wages are about 16 percent lower. Unless the Labor Department recommits to workplace integration--by gender and race--the jobs that pay a truly livable wage will not benefit women or people of color in proportion to their presence in the labor force.

No. 3: Spending on health care, child care, education and social services:
This spending both provides jobs to women and provides services needed by all families. The fastest-growing segment of the homeless population is families. Forty percent of requests for emergency shelter come from families. More than 85 percent of homeless families are headed by a lone parent, and most are women.

Now, while it's true that WEAVE pushed for more jobs for women in the trades, it also recognized that people were in serious trouble:

Overall, two-thirds of the stimulus program will go toward tax cuts, relief for state budgets and direct payments to the unemployed and others hurt by the recession, part of the administration's desire to provide immediate fiscal relief. Much smaller pieces of the pie will be allocated for weatherization, affordable housing and other projects designed to create jobs.

John Husing, a Southern California economist, said keeping teachers and police officers employed should help prevent the recession from getting worse. But he said the stimulus package would have improved communities' ability to grow over the long haul if it had dedicated more money to public works.

While billions of dollars eventually will flow to infrastructure projects, Democrats who crafted the package say they directed most of it to existing government programs such as Medicaid and education to prevent state economies from slipping even more. One goal was to help fill state budget gaps, keeping teachers and others employed while strengthening the social safety net.

Let's be clear about one thing: A bunch of feminist economists, no matter how smart, are not going to divert gabillions of dollars in government spending away from men just because they hate them.

Which is what this ridiculous piece insinuates.

The truth is, when you look at who wrote it, who paid her, and where her piece was published, the truth emerges.

Any money that doesn't go to business is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

Any money that goes to the public sector is feminist-driven socialism.

Talk about shovel ready.

Happy Men's Rights Now?

Our bodies, Our choices

Today's treeware column, which has generated quite a few comments, republished here, with notes and linky freshness:

When I was at my most fertile, somewhere between the Beatles breakup and the dawn of disco, a pop arty graphic cartoon was making the rounds. It showed a shocked woman with the word-bubble going something like "Oh no! I forgot to have a baby!"

Since then, there have been many imitations. But the original rang true for me then – as it does still.

It's not that I forgot. I couldn't justify it.

At that time we had the first "oil crisis," which jolted many of us into smaller cars. We started saying things like "earth-friendly" and quoting from Paul Erlich's The Population Bomb.

There was The Whole Earth Catalogue. The back-to-earth movement. We even had the hideous Earth Shoes.

Besides, The Pill and Women's Lib gave many women permission to skip the maternity clothes and jump into the power suit.

In 1980, I went back to school and earned an MBA.

I have no regrets. In fact, I would have had my "tubes tied'' had my sainted mother not talked me out of it. She even called me "selfish" for years for not giving her grandchildren.

She has grandchildren. Just not the brilliant and beautiful ones I would have given her. (KIDDING NIECES!)

Which brings me to Cameron Diaz.

This month the 36-year-old actress tells the U.K. edition of Cosmopolitan that a "baby bump" – come on down, Angelina! – isn't for every woman. But heaven forfend they should admit that.

"I think women are afraid to say that they don't want children because they're going to get shunned," she says. "But I think that's changing too now. I have more girlfriends who don't have kids than those that do. And honestly? We don't need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet."

Shunned?

More like verbally stoned.

Last Sunday, when the Guardian's Polly Vernon picked up on the Diaz interview, she recalled her own no-baby confession earlier this year. That column drew "terrifying" feedback: "Emails and letters arrived, condemning me, expressing disgust. I was denounced as bitter, selfish, un-sisterly, unnatural, evil."

Just another day in my inbox.

Ah yes, the uterus. A piece of real estate more divisive and disputed, and for much longer a time, than the West Bank.

If everybody doesn't have a claim on it, they all have an opinion on it.

And they have plenty more to say about the woman in whose body it sits.

If she's not a baby-killing feminist, she's a welfare mother. If she demands equal pay and equal opportunity, she gets shut down for taking maternity leave. If she asks for state-subsidized daycare, she's a drag on the taxpayers who can afford nannies. If she works outside of the home for pay, she neglects her kids.

I need not go into much more detail, need I? It might invite the usual how-many-zygotes-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a pin crowd that insists that three cells = baby. As if they could stay away. (HI BOYS!)

Then there is the religious nuttery, like this. Or like this.

The thing is, Diaz is correct. There are more than enough people on Earth, and she's groaning under the burden.

Some 82 million babies are born every year. That's more than twice Canada's population.

(At the bottom of this post, I have linked to a 90 minute doc worth watching.)

Going forth and multiplying is far from fruitful.

I have repeatedly blogged on this subject from many angles, including about the 500,000 women who die in childbirth every year.

Then there's the religious nuttery angle -- like here, here, here and especially here and here.

And that's just the tip of that iceberg.

One of my biggest beefs with the baby boosters is their insistence, if we white women don't procreate, the breeding brown people will take over. As if it's my uterine duty and responsibility to ensure the future of ''The Master Race.''

Heh-heh.

News flash: According to a recent Bio-Medicine.org report, the economy is driving up the number of vasectomies, at least in the United States, where, incredibly, sterilization of women is the most common form of contraception. Twice as many women than men there undergo this more invasive form of surgery.

North of the border, more men step up for the snip, with vasectomies outpacing tubal ligations.

Draw your own conclusions.

Now I was stunned to discover that Americans differ significantly from Canadians in this regard. 

My own conclusion?

Because contraception is not as easy to get in the US, especially for those stuck in towns where the only pharmacist believes ''THE PILL KILLS!'' -- not to mention the fact that abortions are generally much harder to come by and are not covered, as they are in most places here, by health insurance, sterilization is a woman's best option. But that's just my speculation.

Who knows? It could be that doctors are more reluctant to perform tubal ligations here. In fact, judging from some of the emails I received today, that's more likely the case.

That leads to:

This could explain why, last week, a 21-year-old pregnant Brampton mother complained that her doctor refused to sterilize her after she delivers her second child. His reason? She may change her mind later.

True, a fraction of the young women who undergo the procedure, which is not without risks, do regret it later.

But we're talking about our bodies. Our bodies.

That's why, when people try to dictate what women can do with them, I say, "Forget about it."

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Teena in Toronto liked my column.

I've been seeing the same doctor for about 20 years. In my twenties during my check-ups, I talked to her about getting my tubes tied. And she kept saying no because I was still young and I'd change my mind. The summer I turned thirty, we had the same discussion yet again and she finally agreed to send me to a gynecologist.

The gynecologist agreed to do it but not until October (three months away) because she was giving time to change my mind.

I got my tubes tied as planned and I've never ever regretted this decision.

SHUT UP WOMAN DATE: Oh please.   

'When you're raising children, you don't both go off to work and leave them for somebody else to raise.'
— Iris Evans, Alberta finance minister

Now watch this.

 

Oh dad, poor dad, so sad

Women who kill their children-- some 200 a year in the US -- are always angry, jealous or looking to free themselves of baggage so they can join their lovers.

And yeah, I am being sarcastic.

The thing is, unlike with men, infanticide is the most common capital crime women commit.

More than half of the 45 women on death row are there for killing their husbands and/or children and almost all reported that no one believed them when they cried out for help saying "I cannot be trusted with my children."

Women have many motives, although mental illness is usually a factor, especially post-partum depression and/or psychosis.

As many as 50 to 80 percent of all women experience some degree of emotional "letdown" following childbirth—the so-called "baby blues." Fortunately, its more extreme sister disorder, postpartum psychosis, is rare, affecting only about one in 1,000 new mothers.

The baby blues, though, are common for numerous reasons. The baby's crying and the mother's interrupted sleep and soreness from breast-feeding are enough to make any woman feel irritable, if not overwhelmed and tearful. These feelings typically begin three to four days after the baby is born, according to Kleiman, but normally dissipate on their own within a few weeks.

If the blues last for more than two weeks, however, the new mother may be suffering from a condition of intermediate severity, postpartum depression (PPD), a mood disorder on par with clinical depression. Twelve to 16 percent of women experience PPD, which results in feelings of despondency, inadequacy as a mother, impaired concentration or memory and/or loss of interest or pleasure in activities.

Sleeplessness alone strikes me as enough to dive a person mad. Never mind the raging hormones. (For one particularly tragic case, that of Andrea Yates, pictured above, watch this.)

Men who kill on the other hand?

Check this headline from CNN: ''Despondent dads driven to kill loved ones''

Is it just me or does that virtually absolve killer fathers who usually off themselves after disposing of their families?

While mentally healthy people cannot make sense of killing someone they love, for people with mental illness, "it has to do with their distorted thinking and depression," said Donna Cohen, a professor and head of the Violence and Injury Prevention Program at the University of South Florida.

The person with a mental illness views his wife and children as possessions, believing, "I have to keep this. This is mine," Cohen said. "Nobody else is able to take care of them except me. If I can't control this in my life, I'll preserve it in death so that my world doesn't change. It's the psychiatric issues."

<SNIP>

 In research during nearly three decades, Dr. Philip Resnick, director of the division of forensic psychiatry at Case Western, has outlined two motives for familicides: revenge or despondency. In latter cases, a "nonhostile, hopeless father" kills his family to save them from perceived doom, because he feels unable to provide for them.

"They become very depressed as the breadwinner," Resnick said. "With their distorted, depressive perceptions, they feel that rather than allow their children to go hungry, they may feel they're doing a favor to take their family with them as they end their own life. ... They're not depriving them of life, they're ending what they see as an intolerable life."

In recent cases, some men were facing financial turmoil. In April, a New York attorney who was involved in questionable financial dealings asphyxiated and beat his wife and 11- and 19-year-old daughters in a Maryland hotel. Investigators later found that $20 million from his clients was missing.

A man who decides to commit suicide might want to avoid his family facing the stigma, said Richard James Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.

"They couldn't leave people behind to be ashamed and humiliated," said Gelles.

Now that's ego. The idea that people would be better off dead than ''humiliated.''

Seems to me that, when fathers are as controlling as that, wives and children actually hope for the day he's out of their lives.

Note that the CNN piece barely mentions ''control'' as a factor.

Blink and you'll miss this:

For decades, psychiatrists have been studying such cases to determine what mental issues trigger this behavior. A person who kills his family could have control issues that lead him to decide the fate of the children, spouse and pets, researchers said.

Melissa McEwan over at Shakesville notes:

I would even take issue with the framing that mental illness is responsible for men seeing their wives and family members as their possessions: No, that's attributable to the Patriarchy, and many men who are not mentally ill share that regard for their families. Mental illness occupies only the space in which culturally-sanctioned possession turns into murder.

This is why I object to the term ''honour killing.'' It's about patriarchy and control. The difference is, they put a label on it in some parts of the world.

But it's femicide -- and familicide -- plain and simple.

Here's a Guardian piece on the topic, published last fall:

In the United States, which now sees 10 murder-suicides a week, they have coined names for such men: "slam dunk murderers" and "family annihilators" are current favourites. "The profile of a family annihilator is a middle-aged man, a good provider who would appear to neighbours to be a dedicated husband and a devoted father," says Professor Jack Levin, a leading expert from North-Eastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, who has studied such cases.

"Often he tends to be quite isolated. He is often profoundly dedicated to his family, but has few friends of his own or a support system outside the family. He will have suffered some prolonged frustration and feelings of inadequacy, but then suffers some catastrophic loss. It is usually financial or the loss of a relationship. He doesn't hate his children, but he often hates his wife and blames her for his miserable life. He feels an overwhelming sense of his own powerlessness. He wants to execute revenge and the motive is almost always to 'get even'."

Davina James-Hanman, director of the Greater London Domestic Violence Project, believes "powerlessness" is the key word here. "Domestic violence, whether sustained or carried out in a single killing, is essentially about power and control. If you think of the violence as a continuum, with murder at one end and minor abuse - for want of a better description - at the other, abusive men will go as far down the continuum as they need to establish the power and control to which they feel they're entitled. If the woman leaves the relationship - the ultimate challenge to his control - he will sometimes come back with the ultimate sanction and sometimes the only way to get back at her is through the children."

A particularly macabre feature of murder-suicides is that contrary to claims that the killings must have been the result of a momentary act of insanity, virtually all are premeditated.

Does this mean I hold less sympathy for killer dads than killer moms?

Yes, yes I do. That's because, very often, women have no idea what is happening to them in those bleary post-baby days. Men, on the other hand, have a tendency to ignore or deny their mental health symptoms until it's too late.

And, if their partners attempt to intercede, well, chances are they'll be ''controlled'' into shutting up.

Bedrooms of the nation

Work has kept me from joining the young women of Ontario RebELLES at their pro-choice rally this afternoon in front of Forced Pregnancy Fetophile Central in downtown Toronto.

Location:

Life Campaign Coalition
104 Bond St.

Date: Thursday, May 14, 2009
Time: 5:00p.m.-7:00p.m.

During spring 2009, during the 40 days of Lent Catholic members of Campaign Life Quebec held a vigil daily anti-choice to the Morgentaler Clinic in Montreal. A collective feminist pro-choice was trained to respond by reaffirming the right of women to provide themselves with their bodies and stressing the importance of fighting to preserve women's right to abortion.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the law decriminalizing abortion in Canada entered into force on 14 May 1969, the Campaign Life Quebec and Campaign Life Coalition is organizing a "National March for Life" in Ottawa.

A group called Collectif La Riposte has organized to rally against them as well as for women's rights for legal abortion.

Today is the 40th anniversary of Canada's Criminal Law Amendment Act which was aimed at, among other things, decriminalizing homosexuality and legalizing contraception (yes Virginia, it was illegal then) and easing access to abortion.

This act is just one of the many reasons Cancons hate, still, the late Pierre Trudeau.

Notes JJ:

It’s that time of year again, when the local forecast predicts it’ll be raining fetus fetishists (accompanied by intermittent shrieks) as forced-pregnancy punishment freaks don their water-repellent hair shirts and storm the capital in the name of  freedom, faith and family… because nothing says “freedom” like “All your uterus are belong to us”.

But so what?  Same thing every year.  But this year might be a little different because they’ve been working themselves into a Jesus-driven frenzy over the biblical implications of the “40 years” (their theme this year is “EXODUS”, no religiosity  there, nope) so who knows?   It might get exciting for a change.

Maybe, maybe not.

But looky here: The zygote zealots have conveniently already reported their version of events.

Today, nearly 10,000 people from across Canada participated in the national March for Life, but there is little indication in the mainstream media that anything took place. The Canadian March for Life has occurred for twelve years, but the event marked 40 years of legal abortions.

Writing in the National Post today, columnist Michael Coren notes the lack of media coverage. In fact, at press time, only he and LifeNews.com have covered the March for Life have covered the pro-life event today.

Coren notes there is routinely "hardly any mention of the event in the media — a contrast with the numerous protests a fraction of the size that tend to receive full and fulsome coverage."

That is despite the fact that the March for Life is "intensely reflective of the authentic Canada, unlike most other demonstrations: Conservative and Liberal, able-bodied and handicapped, black and white, Muslim, Christian and Jewish, from every region and background."

Um, yeah. That plus all the Catholic school students trucked in by these people.

But, as Fern Hill over at Dammit Janet! writes, Coren has his factoids wrong. First because the march already got pre-promotion, at the very least by Coren himself in one quasi-national newspaper, and by the Globe and Mail, the actual national newspaper.

And second because, as poll after poll shows, Canadians are done with the abortion debate. A clear and strong majority support a woman's right to control her body and destiny.

That is the ''authentic Canada.''

But what do you expect from those who claim they can back up their position with unscientific and highly questionable polls?

Happy Freedom in the Bedroom day!