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This is EXCELLENT. Dr. Helen Alvaré, professor of law at George Mason School of law, brings common sense logic, intellect, empirical evidence, and many more resources to the table to talk about human sexuality, feminism, religious freedom and of course the HHS mandate.
If you are at all concerned about your freedom to practice your religion -not just for Catholics!- and if you are at all concerned for women’s rights, I recommend finding the time to watch this. I watched it in intervals throughout my morning in between our breakfast, diaper changings, play routine. It’s 53 minutes long but worth the insight if you seem to be finding yourself grappling for the empirical evidence needed to combat the irrational rhetoric used from opposers to shut us up lest we feel like we are “WAGING A WAR ON WOMEN!”
Oh yes, a war is being waged on women, but it is from the very mouths of the individuals who are accusing us of it. …and the sad thing is, they hardly realize it! (…only the very dangerous ones do.)
They hardly realize it because they are choosing to ignore the empirical evidence, and the common sense logic. They believe in no moral absolutes. They believe that a human is defined solely to the core of his/her being by sexual impulses. ”DO WHAT FEELS GOOD.” They liken us to animals, mere creatures among the dogs and cats: to be neutered and spayed.
When a society believes that the core of a person’s identity is defined by their sexual desires, we reduce ourselves to that type of poverty of ignorance to our full human capability.
It’s atrocious that so many Americans are just sitting by, reading about Snooki’s pregnancy, or what celebrities look like without make-up, or garbling about the wage-earning gap between men and women.
Dr. Alvaré says, “feminism has ONLY gotten us birth control and abortion. It didn’t get us anything toward work life balance; to the extent we have it, we fought for it one woman at a time.”
I believe she’s darn right. And how sad is that!? We’ve got our birth control, our abortions, but we are still angry: we still feel unequal. We still feel objectivized by men.
WHY IS THAT, we angrily wonder? We write and talk and shout. We burn our bras and panties in proclamation of our “sexual freedom” yet we are still not free.
Because we reduce our WORTH as a human being to our sexual “deficiencies” and desires.
Oddly enough as it may seem to secular society (the non-religious), Catholicism and many other Christian denominations ACTUALLY TEACH that human beings are MORE than their sexuality. Much more.
And this is what our government does NOT believe. Women are being treated like chattel, reduced to their fertility and nothing more. ”Women NEED abortion, women NEED birth control in order to be equal” the government and secular society tell us. Yet we are still angry.
This type of stuff is what is and should be so important to all women. Yet, it’s not easy to read or to listen to. It’s not like reading a cheap 50 Shades of Grey or Twilight or watching The View or any sort of entertainment.
This is REAL STUFF. This is reality. So many women, it seems to me, hide their faces behind the fiction, the TV shows, the magazines and don’t utilize the time instead to do the hard work and really think and question what is going on and why.
All I seem to see from some of the more obtusely loud individuals is, “I AM SO ANGRY ABOUT THIS!” “WOMEN DESERVE EQUALITY” “WOMEN AREN’T OBJECTS” …and it’s normally followed with comments of many other angry women in ignorant support, with no intellectual, logical thought or questions to follow it. Just a bunch of angry rhetoric.
I am so tired of angry, empty rhetoric. It doesn’t explain or demand anything but anger and irritation.
What I hardly see from these angry women is work. There seems to be no digging or scratching of the surface of motives or questioning of who are the people behind the movement and what is their motive, and from where have the motives derived, and are they founded in moral logic? And by the way, what IS moral logic?
This is serious, and The View doesn’t dig into it, doesn’t even use a little gardening tool to shuffle through the loosely laid fertilizer.
Women need to be reading for themselves. This video helps, but only if you understand the basics of moral absolutism. And that goes to the very root of …well.. everything.
And if as a woman, the phrases “moral absolutism”, “inherent dignity”, “secular society”, “objectivism”, and “moral relativism” sound boring or confusing even, you’ve got work to do. It is in everyone’s urgent interest to become interested in the meaning of these words and how they apply to how we are being viewed and treated today.
It is paramount to even understanding how we understand and respect ourselves as individuals.
It is work. Work is hard. But this work makes us a smarter, stronger people for it. And nothing worth having in this world is easy to get.
I know, at the end of the day, I want to rest. I want to watch a movie or read a good fiction book. Nothing’s wrong with that. But there is something wrong if that’s all we EVER do.
I find time to do this reading, listening and watching. I choose, instead of creeping my Facebook “friend’s” status updates and latest acquirement of material possessions, to read and watch this type of stuff I post about. I do it in segments. I read at least an article a day. It can be from anything, really. I take note of the author and find out about the author. I read supporting articles, I find other resources attached to the articles. I discover where they come from and upon which foundation they are rooted.
Because at the end of the day, this is really what is going on in our nation and we individually have an obligation as an American citizen to KNOW it! …not what Lucy just bought her three year old for Christmas…
THIS is a great place to start, if you’ve never (or ever) thought about the question “What is right, and what is wrong, and who are YOU to judge me?!”
THIS is a beautiful explanation of understanding the dignity and equality of ALL human life.
THIS is a great place to start forming thoughts or different views upon what REALLY is sexual intercourse for.
Here is a small clip of a series of videos that more simply describes the text above.
and THIS is a great book that discusses the consequences and paradox of the sexual revolution (when contraceptives were normalized). And don’t let the title deceive you, it’s not some hyper-biblical lunatic writing about ADAM AND EVE… it’s written by a well-educated -gasp!- WOMAN.
What I have given above as references can be a starting point. Yes, lots of it is from Catholic authors. There are thousands of other authors to choose from, but I have been able to more easily identify and understand these authors. I recently told an acquaintance that the key to understanding these topics comes from being able to actually enjoy the work you’re doing; by identifying with the author, by enjoying how he/she writes or speaks. These people spoke to me and that’s why I give them as references, in hopes that others will find it easy to read as well. And then, that they will hunger to read more and branch out their own way!
It takes a long time to get to know and fully come to understand the meaning of some of the vocabulary used. Keep reading, questioning, digging. I started questioning in high school, continued through 5 years of college, and I am STILL reading. I am still digging, I am still questioning. It becomes a life-long burden… a good and worthy burden to educate and arm ourselves with. Because then we can teach it to others, to our children. We can awaken the ignorant and the lukewarm impassiveness of the couch potato laborers who think no further than the soap operas they gape at and the mundane family dramas they relish talking about.