Why Patriarchal Men Are Utterly Petrified of Birth Control — And Why We’ll Still Be Fighting About it 100 Years From Now | Visions | AlterNet

I have heard others arguing in favour of the historical importance of Contraception, not least Germaine Greer. But all the examples that spring to mind focussed on the importance of Contraception to Women. What I like about Sara Robinson’s argument is her focus on it’s importance to Men, particularly those patriarchal men who, of course, I normally refer to as the Authoritarians. (Yes there are Authoritarian Women too, but the vast majority of them are conditioned by their religious beliefs as we’ll discuss)

It is obvious to all observers that Authoritarianism is primarily testosterone driven. But I hadn’t made what, after reading this essay, now looks like the obvious connection between Contraception and Authoritarianism, viz Religion.

Religion has provided the pseudo ethical justification for the authoritarian control of society for at least two and a half thousand years. Almost every religion throughout human history has been patriarchal and tightly focussed on preserving the subservient status of Women for a variety of reasons, many of which were plausible right up until cheap effective mass FEMALE contraception became available. Suddenly, in one massive swipe, Male Authority was completely undermined, and, I would add, so too was Authority in general.

I disagree with Sara on one thing. Her pessimism (which echoes Margaret Atwoods “Handmaids Tale”) is unjustified. I certainly agree that the battle is not over. They will continue, until their kind has ceased to exist, to try to force many of our new liberties out of existence. I believe this will be the basis for the “Final War”. But I don’t believe they’ll succeed. The “only” risk is that they might render our species extinct in their attempt to regain control…

Why Patriarchal Men Are Utterly Petrified of Birth Control — And Why We'll Still Be Fighting About it 100 Years From Now | Visions | AlterNet.

Red Duchess wed lesbian lover to snub children – Telegraph

Tell me this aint a damn good storyline for a movie!

Born into the Aristocracy, a member of the illegal (under Fascist Franco) Socialist Party, defeated in a court case, by her own children who succeeded in preventing her giving away a large portion of her wealth and then, apparently to prevent them getting their hands on the estate, wedding, on her death bed, her lesbian lover of twenty years.

Pretty fascinating stuff on its own, but what really made her a heroine was going to jail for 8 months in the 60s for leading popular protests at the near catastrophe caused by the Americans dropping 4 hydrogen bombs from a crashing B52 after it collided with a fuel tanker over Southern Spain.

I’m betting you’ve never heard that story. I can’t remember hearing about it and I was definitely awake at the time. Can you imagine the coverage that would get today??!! Four H Bombs dropped near the village of Palomares, 2 of them actually detonated on impact.

Not their nuclear payload, obviously (I think you might have heard about that one) but the conventional explosive required to detonate the atomic bomb (plutonium) which in turn compresses the hydrogen to the point required to trigger a thermonuclear explosion. Although they didn’t trigger any kind of nuclear explosion, they did, naturally, spread the plutonium over nearly a square mile of Spanish soil. It’s still contaminated today.

And I only came across this story because I had this sudden notion that we need a “Bayesian Search Engine” where you could punch in things like “Lymphatic Cancer” and find all the potential causes of it. So I went looking for “Bayesian Search” and found, instead, that it’s a long established statistically driven Search protocol for finding lost things of great importance; like missing H Bombs. Although 3 of the bombs above landed on dry land and were found the same day, one dropped into the mediterranean and took two and half months to find – using a Bayesean Searth protocol. Which is mildly interesting in its own right, but not a patch on the Red Duchess…

Red Duchess wed lesbian lover to snub children – Telegraph.

Courtney Martin: Reinventing feminism | Video on TED.com

Inspirational

Courtney Martin: Reinventing feminism | Video on TED.com.