Is your birth control pill controlling YOU? New book claims hormonal contraception is a tool to suppress women in society

Stupid feminist conspiracy theory

A new book has claimed that the Pill is in fact the tool of a capitalist patriarchy intent on altering and suppressing femininity.

British author Holly Grigg-Spall has written 'Sweetening the Pill: Or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control' and believes that a number of studies proves her point that contraception is in fact controlling women.

She adds that women’s unquestioning acceptance of such powerful medications is in some ways a submission to a culture steeped in hatred of the feminine.

A book review by Vice magazine writer Kelly Bourdet reveals that while Ms Grigg-Spall was on birth control she felt a distance between herself and her ‘femaleness'.

Ms Grigg-Spall said: ‘Over the years [of being on the Pill] I felt no connection between my self and my body, between my self and the world around me, between my femaleness and myself.’

A 2011 study of women both on and off hormonal contraception found that the medication did affect a woman's memory.

Both sets of women were shown photos and told a story about a car accident involving a young boy and his subsequent hospital visit.

Women on the pill remembered more of the emotional aspects of the story - the boy being hurt, what happened to him at the hospital - while the women who were not on the Pill were more likely to recall the details of the scene - what things looked like and where they were placed.

Ms Grigg-Spall argues that if memory contextualises our past experiences and governs our future behaviour and understanding of the world, then a drug that alters it in even a slight way might have far-reaching consequences.

Indeed, the changing testosterone levels in a woman’s body has been shown to affect women’s choice of sexual partners and mates.

A 2012 study revealed that women on hormonal birth control - which suppresses naturally occurring testosterone - were attracted to men with lower testosterone levels.

However when women went off of the Pill, and their testosterone levels increased, their attraction to their feminine partners decreased.

Reviewer Kelly Bourdet agrees that the evidence does show that the hormonal contraception has powerful and life-altering side effects.  And she adds that it’s fair to wonder whether a drug that could alter our choice in long-term partners is 'too powerful for comfort'.

But the reviewer says the anti-Pill activist's argument has its flaws. She says that it presumes that a woman is 'somehow entirely defined by her hormones, lack of hormones, or artificially achieved level of hormones.

'That a woman couldn’t possibly use her brain to decide to alter her hormones and that the hormonal levels once believed to rule women's behaviour in such a way to make her nervous, emotional, and hysterical, once suppressed, rule her in an entirely different way.'

SOURCE 





Norway Christians hanging on (just) to Biblical teachings

Norway's first woman pastor to enter into a same-sex civil union will quit her ministry to protest against the discrimination gays and lesbians face within the Lutheran Church, she said in an interview published Wednesday.

"It has become untenable for me to represent a Church where parts of it are still quite exclusionary," Hilde Raastad told the daily Aftenposten.

In 1997, she became the first woman pastor in Norway to tie the knot in a civil partnership with another woman.

Ten years later, the church officially authorized the ordination of gays, but gave bishops and clerical authorities in charge of recruitment the right to refuse a ministry to a person living in a same-sex civil union.

Raastad said she had been refused several positions even though she was sometimes the only candidate, and said she had sent a letter to Oslo Bishop Ole Christian Kvarme asking him to annul her ordination.

"I consider homophobia a sin," she told Aftenposten.  "A local church can't pick people by the colour of their skin or their ethnicity. In the same way it can't exclude or judge people by their sexual orientation," she said.

"It has been a burden to feel the disapproval of my superiors, to see that they consider my love a theological problem and that I live a life that would lead to sin and perdition," she added.

Questioned by the paper, the bishop, a conservative who is known for his opposition to the employment of homosexuals in the Church, refused to comment on the contents of the letter which he said he had yet to read.  He said he would likely meet with Raastad in person to discuss her complaints.

Norway has allowed gays to marry in church since 2009. Church and state were officially separated last year.

SOURCE






Nine-month ordeal of men taken to court after catching migrant burglar on their roof as British police waited on the ground

Crap British justice again

Two men were dragged to court for apprehending a Romanian they caught burgling their business.

A nine-month ordeal ended for Steven Iliffe, 54, and son Daniel, 26, yesterday when a judge threw out the case against them.

They had begged police to go on a roof to arrest career criminal Petre Ilie.  But officers were barred by their superiors, via their radio, due to health and safety rules.

Eventually, the father and son, both former soldiers, went on the roof themselves to tackle the armed man.

They were stunned when the police later arrested them on suspicion of attempted murder – and later charged them with the lesser offence of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

Yesterday, the pair said they were considering legal action against Leicestershire Police.

Mr Iliffe senior said he had suffered a heart attack in a cell triggered by the stress of his arrest at their scrap metal business in Hinckley, Leicestershire, last December.

He added: ‘We had suffered a string of burglaries and went up onto that roof only because the police had refused to do so.’

He said he grabbed Ilie by the shoulder and ‘walloped’ him once to the chest to restrain him, while his son admitted striking the intruder on the hand with a wooden roof baton to try to dislodge an eight-inch metal roof bolt from his grasp.

Mr Iliffe junior is said to have struck the suspect again before the pair managed to drag him off the roof and down a ladder to police.  But a PC waiting on the ground claimed to have seen them carry out a ferocious assault.

Leicester Crown Court was told yesterday that Ilie, 39, already had ‘a number of convictions for burglary, failing to surrender and breaching court orders’ in the UK under the name Christopher Tudor. In 2010 he was deported but sneaked back into the UK. He was then arrested again alongside the Iliffes.

Father-of-four Ilie admitted burglary with intent to steal and the attempted burglary of a nearby business earlier that night.  He was sentenced to 26 weeks in jail and deported for a second time on his release in March this year.

The Iliffes’ trial had been for the judge to consider a defence application to throw the case out as an ‘abuse of the court process’.

The application hinged on a  decision by the UK Border Agency to refuse permission for Ilie to be returned to the UK to give evidence because he was a ‘flight risk’ – having been deported twice – and might disappear in the UK.

The Iliffes claimed they could not have a fair trial if Ilie could not be cross-examined.  The judge agreed and granted the application.

SOURCE




Australia: Challenger in Prime Minister's electorate opposes Islam and wants mosques banned

Representing an evangelical Christian party that regularly criticizes Islam

A CANDIDATE for the Prime Minister's seat of Griffith has put outlawing the Islamic faith front and centre of her election campaign, branding it a "religion from hell" and claiming that building mosques in Australia is "high treason".

Sherrilyn Church of the Rise Up Australia Party says her top policy priority in the election is to ban the building of mosques in the electorate, south of Brisbane.

Ms Church - a small-time citrus farmer from Crows Nest on the Darling Downs - said her primary concern for the electorate was "the Islamisation of the city by councils giving permission for mosques to be erected".

"Basically, I see Islam not primarily a religion but a system of law because to the Islamic mind the existence of a mosque in an area means they believe that Sharia law applies and the Islamic flag must fly - now that is high treason in a sovereign nation," she said.

"Islam is a legal system before it is a religion. We have freedom of religion but their religion is illegal.

"We are multiethnic, but we are not multicultural, because that's where the law comes into it.

"The people in the mosque can be as charming and pleasant as your best Australian but there is also those elements, as you know across the world, where young men are recruited to jihadist training camps from these mosques.

"A lot of people consider it to be fine. A lot of people also consider that having gay marriage is fine."

Ms Church, 61, said she believed the Muslim faith and democratic citizenship were fundamentally incompatible.

"This question is asked of all Australian citizens when they stand before the governor or to become citizens. They have to declare that they will come under our system of law, and our flag.

"If you're going to say; 'no, I'm going to hold to the laws of the Koran', I would say `pack your bags, get on the next plane and go home'.

"Our laws are totally and utterly contrary to the law of the Koran. There are some religions that didn't come from heaven, they come from hell."

Ms Church's platform has proven unpopular within the local Islamic community, which has two mosques in the Griffith electorate at Holland Park and West End.

The views only damage hard-fought steps to integration with the southside community according to Islamic College of Brisbane chairman Mohammed Yusuf.

"It's a very sad thing that because of ignorance and people trying to gain cheap publicity with these things they do so much damage," Mr Yusuf said.

"It really annoys us when people who through their own ignorance or for their own political gains, say things which are damaging. It's not in the best interest for anyone.

Mr Yusuf said that Christianity and Islam were fundamentally the same and the Sharia is compatible with Australia life and "does not affect anybody else".

"There's punishments and penalties for certain things -- adultery or stealing and all that -- under Sharia law that apply in Islamic states, not Australia so there's no way the Muslims are going to say I'm going to introduce that here.

"The majority of the things we talk about for Sharia law are already in existence here -- we follow what applies to us, what does not apply we refrain from and don't practice."

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS,  DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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