feminine-genius

A granny's plea

This story is difficult to read, and reminds us of the difficult decisions that every family has to make -- decisions that we can only weep over years later:

Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother warned against sending the Prince of Wales to boarding school in Scotland because she thought he would be miserable, according to a collection of her previously unpublished letters. 

Despite the Queen Mother’s pleas, the Duke of Edinburgh ruled that his eldest son would attend his alma mater, located in rugged countryside near Elgin. But her concerns proved accurate after the prince described the inter-denominational school as “Colditz in kilts.”

His father's reason was that if Charleys went to Eton (so close to London) he would be hounded by the press -- and we do know what the press is capable of in making one's life unpleasant. But the isolation of the school chosen for Charles was only part of his future suffering:

He thought Charles would thrive at Gordonstoun because his eldest son loved Scotland, the author said.

But, unlike his father, the young prince did not enjoy the Spartan regime, which included cold showers, physical punishment and morning runs all year round.

In a letter home in 1963, he wrote: “The people in my dormitory are foul. Goodness, they are horrid. I don’t know how anybody could be so foul.”

One contemporary at the school recalled that Charles was bullied “maliciously, cruelly and without respite.”

Indigestion in the lunchroom

This is unfortunate, given the age of the children. They are essentially trapped:

A parent of two young girls was caught off guard recently when her daughters came home from school with questions about a man dressed like a woman on duty in the school cafeteria. The parent was further chagrined when officials in the Sierra Sands Unified School District confirmed the story but insisted their hands were tied.

What continues to floor the parent, Phyllis Fernandez, whose daughters attend kindergarten and third grade at Faller Elementary School, is that the employee’s attire would not be permissible for students. The employee, a substitute lunch duty worker, was wearing makeup and a spaghetti strap shirt, with his bra straps visible to students. District dress code policies for students ban both spaghetti straps and visible undergarments.

“I shouldn’t have to be explaining to my five and eight year old girls why a man at their school is wearing a bra,” said Mrs. Fernandez. “The school believes they have to give special treatment to this individual because of his chosen gender expression, but the learning environment is suffering.”

With the current legal trajectory in place in this country, there is only more of this on the horizon. Technically, there is nothing to be done, given our refusal to stand by Judeo-Christian morality. In a secular state with no effort to define morality, the children will be fed to the lions.

Applauding divorce

Marriage can end in two ways: there are divorces and there are decrees of nullity (saying there was no legitimate union in the first place). Since other religions don't have the wisdom of the Church to remind them of fundamental elements of human dignity, they must use divorce to separate what should never have been united. Like geriatric men and little girls.

"ten days later..." ?!

From Jihad Watch:

(ANSAmed) - ANKARA - A 12-year-old girl from Corum, a village in central Anatolia not far from Ankara, has been sold twice by her father: the first time in exchange for four cows, and the second time for 10,000 Turkish lire (around 4,800 euros). Just yesterday the police discovered the crime and arrested the girl's father and the second buyer, while the first is still being sought.

The story was reported by daily paper Vatan, which writes that Sukru A. (this is the name of the father) sold his daughter K.A last summer when she was just 12 years old to 29-year-old bricklayer Kamber Bostan in exchange for four cows, who married the girl in a religious ceremony in front of the imam. After several months however, the girl - who became pregnant in the meantime - went back home because she didn't get on with her husband.

Last December, in her sixth month of pregnancy, she lost the child. Ten days later the father sold her again, this time to a 20-year-old unemployed man, Gokhan Turk, who paid 3,000 out of the 10,000 lire agreed upfront, and took the girl home. Yesterday, when Turk refused to pay the balance - claiming that the girl he bought was not a virgin - Sukru A. turned to the police and reported him for insolvency but without mentioning the reason.

After a short investigation the truth came out and both the father and Turk were arrested, while Bostan is still being sought.(ANSAmed).

A religious ceremony with an Imam speaks volumes, ladies. This must stop -- and if they wanted to, they could do it. People in a village know what goes on (note: "short investigation"). As to the baby, it could have been a stillbirth or an abortion --I suppose we'll never know. This is child abuse of the highest order.

UPDATE: and those who speak out can expect this. (In France, no less.) Bottom line -- "If you say anything bad about Muslim men, we will kill you." Bless her for her courage.

No fault, no sweat

This is a weeper, but should come as no surprise to marriage advocates whose driving concern is the welfare of children:

Nearly 10 percent of children from broken families say the process has left them suicidal, according to a new UK study. Other children from such families say they later sought solace in drink and drugs or turned to crime. The survey, by the London law firm Mishcon de Reya, also revealed that one in three children whose parents separated or divorced over the last 20 years said they had lost contact permanently with their father.

In addition, the study found that tens of thousands of children in the UK lose contact with their fathers every year because of a “failing” family court system and disastrous custody arrangements. Children involved in divorces complained of feeling “isolated” and “used”, and parents admitted having used children as “bargaining tools” against each other. Lawyers stated that the study showed that the court system itself was making family break-up more acrimonious with children used as "pawns”.

Kindly remember that these statistics are probably not accurate. Children look around them and see that divorce is part of the "normal" landscape, they are constantly told that there are "all kinds of families," and they have even been told that divorce would make their lives better (no more fights at home, etc.). Thus, the number of children who can actually pin their problems on divorce are fewer than the larger number who haven't connected the dots.

The conflagration of suffering was insultingly called the Children's Act twenty years ago, and now we see the results. It took the knife that was already injuring childhood (adultery, pornography, abandonment, teen pregnancies, and rocky marriages) and twisted it -- saying "no fault" divorces would limit the acrimony. Everyone could move forward as friends, the children would experience less trauma.

“The adversarial nature of the system invites people to come and use the courts system as a punch up and the children get used as pawns”, noted Sandra Davis, head of family law at Mishcon de Reya. “It polarises parents and it puts children in the middle of the antagonism”.

The report confirms findings from two major reports published last year, which also highlighted the damage that divorce does to children. The National Child Development Study concluded that divorce has “repercussions that reverberate through childhood and into adulthood”, and a report by the Good Childhood Inquiry warned that family breakdown was a major cause of harm to children’s mental health. A later survey of under-10s found that if they ruled the world, the first law they would enact would be a ban on divorce.

As I said, a weeper. Don't insult children with these insufferable word games. They know love -- and they know what hurts. Divorce can be deadly.

Redefining tragedy

I confess to being baffled by this article on adoption, proving that I will never get feminism. The writer is adopted and loves her parents. That said, while suffering from infertility, she has decided that she cannot support adoption for political reasons, best explained by reading the whole thing. One snippet:

I am part of a growing number of adult adoptees who view adoption as a feminist issue, part of a continuum of reproductive rights. This perspective extends to the right to raise one’s child the same importance as the right to choose whether or not to bear one.

In her book “Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States,” feminist historian Rickie Solinger examines adoption through this lens of reproductive rights. She states, “I believe it is crucial to consider the degree to which one woman’s possession of reproductive choice may actually depend on or deepen another woman’s reproductive vulnerability.” In other words, how might an individual woman’s right to choose adoption actually exploit another woman’s lack of rights?

Jae Ran Kim, a social worker, adoption scholar and author of the blog Harlow’s Monkey, is a Korean adoptee. She echoed Solinger’s call for a broader consideration of reproductive rights: “Who has access to reproductive choice? We focus so much on abortion as a feminist issue, we haven’t talked about a woman’s right to parent.”

Shannon Gibney, an African-American adoptee, activist and writer, said that many of her colleagues have redefined reproductive rights as “reproductive justice,” which has broader implications beyond individualism and invites interrogation of systems of oppression versus privileging the individual. Using this language, Gibney explains, a woman can ask herself, “How can I make the most just decision, given my current historical context?”

Well, I'm not sure institutionalised children care much about historical contexts. Their view of justice is probably more in the realm of sating the deep desire for a family as quickly as possible, which the Church teaches is composed of a mother and father committed to each other in a life-long union.

Technically speaking, justice was undermined well before the wallpaper dried on the orphanage walls -- and that would be when men took sexual favours without being committed to the outcomes. Everything after that becomes scrambled, whether those favours were legitimately for sale, stolen through violence, or offered up in the heat of mutual passion.

Of course, feminists don't give a fig about fatherhood, so it's not a consideration in determining the best interest of the child. Come to think of it, the best interest of the child doesn't seem to be the driving element either. In the myopic world of feminism, it's "all women, all the time." The notion that a home elsewhere is equipped with a resident and devoted paternal unit simply doesn't register. The "right to mother" (evidently the flip side of, "nah, I'd rather abort") seems to be the only yardstick.

Since (as always) it's the child who pays the greatest price, I think the author should look at the needs of the babies, not the question of whether he will subsequently cross a border or the birth mother has reproductive rights. The latter is what got us into this mess -- since it escalates the amount of uncommitted liasons, and leaving the inevitable progeny to pout over their gruel for political reasons misses the point.

I'm lost

I read a lot of dark stuff and have a sad grasp on many things I would rather not know, but this has me perplexed. Who buys the babies and why? Are they slaves or a different traffic? There are plenty of homeless children worldwide and street kids beyond measure for those who need chores done. Why babies? (With the understanding that white babies are at a premium, which these --um-- aren't.)

And for those who believe in the evolution of the human race as a whole towards a higher plane, what's up? Seems like the same old sins century in and century out, poor dears.

GID meets Romper Room

Nancy is a body-builder who had a hysterectomy. She is "married" to tom-boy Tracey, who was never comfortable with her body. So Tracey took hormones, had a little surgery and grew a beard. Wanting to start a family, these two bought sperm on the internet, injected it into the one with the remaining uterus using a turkey baster. Twice.

News flash: Baby Susan has a sibling on the way. The hormonal circus continues apace. This will be a key building block in the self-absorbed culture surrounding your children. Jesus, mercy.