Why women musn't get the vote

Young footballer gets away with enabling rape

Contacted by Scotland on Sunday, Whitaker admitted he knew the girl's age when he had sex, but added: "I was 16 and two days old, hardly an adult myself. I knew she was 14 but it wasn't going to stop me."

Asked if he had any regrets, he said: "I do regret it but I don't have many reasons to regret it because I never received punishment. I thought I would get punished because I knew it was illegal, but it wasn't rape.

"I regret being dragged through the courts and I regret the effect it had on Callum. He was playing for Hibs and could have achieved anything, but because of one stupid mistake his career is over."

Whitaker claimed: "Videos like that go around our school all the time and some of the girls have been even younger than 14."

Sparkle*matrix discusses the report of this same incident
here

Scotland's 'lost generation' of autistic children
and
Rise and rise of autism spectrum disorders
and some comment about whether or no they're linked to MMR vaccine, or simply more accurately diagnosed nowadays.

Kate Sheppard, 1892. Referring the clause which until that date had read "person does not include female"
There is a grim suggestiveness in one of the interpretation clauses of the Bill, which will speak volumes to the future historian of the emancipation of women. ... It reads thus:- '"Person" includes female' The natural inference is that up to Anno Domini 1892 a woman was not a 'person' in the eyes of the law. As she was not a person, she must necessarily have been a 'thing'. Now, 'things' are possessed and owned, can be taken up and put down, and we shall not be accused of any stretch of imagination when we say there are still many men who regard woman as a thing created solely for the pleasure of man. Woman is useful for making puddings and savoury dishes, and also perform the very necessary duty of rearing young citizens. But her sphere must be limited by her household duties, and anything like spontaneous or independent thought or action must be firmly repressed.
The desire for repression is a most natural one for men who consider woman as a 'thing'. The moment a thing ceases to be subservient it ceases to be useful. Who would care to own a horse that insisted on going its own way, or a slave that persisted in whitewashing his own cabin when set to paint his master's house, and had ideas as to the rights of labour? Therefore the men who regard woman in the light of a chattel and have found her useful as such, naturally oppose the proposition to give her the franchise. Her value as property will be practically lost, and we are therefore not at all surprised to find Mr Fish plaintively complaining that if women are permitted to place a paper in the ballot-box they will lose their womanliness. This gentleman complains, too, that women who want the franchise are women who want ot stop the sale of liquor, and have ideas about Christian work, and other unwomanly thoughts. From his standpoint, it does seem hard that power should be given to them to carry out such notions.

*linkage*

A friend blogs about racism

A day to remember: on 30/12/06 the Australian Prime Minister declares feminism over and defunct
Feminists everywhere greet the news with glee

Internal links - a round up of Sophie's posts for 2006

I am decidedly in favour of extending the franchise to women. I should like to give them much the same place in politics that men have. I feel however that my opinions on many questions are too advanced for many of the people, the result being bitter opposition and gross misrepresentation. However, I suppose I must put up with these.
Dunedin MHR, Donnie Stewart to Kate Sheppard, 1885

Mokau

Reading
Thinking Girl: The personal is political

Abbys2hope: surviving the aftermath of rape (A2H, Joe is an asshat and I get tempted to tell him so every time I click on your blog...)

Recent research into attrition of rape cases (pdf file)

School leaving age to be raised to 18 on both sides of the border (Scotland/England)
I read that and thought, WTF? And then I told myself that a leaving age of 18 was normal in most countries, and I only had a strong negative reaction because it's been 16 in the UK for longer than my lifetime.
But by the time my thoughts turned for an instant to what my life, and my family's life would have been had there been a requirement to stay till 18, I knew such a move would have been oppressive in the extreme.
The child labour laws were bad enough. Most of the paid work I did was illegal, or borderline illegal - because I wasn't given a break every two hours or some such nonsense. Because I worked an eight or nine hour day, rather than the limit of five hours for u-16s.
I stayed on to my final year of schooling, and through starting school at four, was seventeen when I left. The last year (sixth year) under the old system was a complete waste of time. Back then, I'd got a collection of O-levels (standard grades) at fifteen, Highers at sixteen and that was all anyone was interested in - Employers, colleges, anyone. But I wasn't legally old enough to start college - and with the O-levels, I wasn't legally old enough to leave school and start a job.
Even back then, the leaving age rules (and college entry age rules) sucked big time. How is forcing teenagers to waste years of their life twiddling thumbs in a classroom going to improve society any?
And then there's the little matter of leaving home. I couldn't get out of there soon enough. One of my sisters was thrown out. My brother left when he was sixteen. Not one of the four of us was still at home at the age of eighteen. Okay, a youngster in their late teens isn't a fully mature adult in a lot of ways. But most of us are ready to leave home, leave school and create our own identities. Stifling freedom at that age does more harm than good.
So, if they raise the leaving age are they also going to restructure the courses? Raise school entry age to five or six? Make provision for young couples becoming parents (marriage/ age of consent is still sixteen)? Build a few new schools and employ more teachers for the extra young adults banged up there five days a week?

Wild Sophie...
encounters placatory language.



Mid-January means most of the cows should be pregnant and the ones that aren't have run out of time - anything serviced now will calve in late October, too late for a seasonal calving farm.
The boy's done a good job. He's placid, behaves well around the cows, let me put a new tag in his ear yesterday. That's him up there, a two year old Aberdeen Angus. Best bull I've handled yet.
The truck came in to pick up him and one of my cows today, a small truck, with two pens. He walked up the ramp easily, and the cow behind him and then the truckie shut the door behind him, climbed on top and swung open the door into the first pen. A young hereford bull immediately swung round and locked heads with my guy, the pair of them set to do battle in the doorway.
My fella was bigger. But the other was being pushed back among cattle, whereas mine was slammed against the wall of the truck every time the other gained ground.
For about five minutes.
While the dairy cows tried to move as far away from the shaking truck as they could get, painting the yard and milking pit with shit.
Then the truckie managed to get all the cattle into the first pen and shut the door.
I was not a happy farmer. "That pen's too crowded," I said at once. "You got other stock to pick up?"
Yes, he did. Yes, he knew that what had just happened was unacceptable. Yes, he knew there were too many in that pen - three bulls and two cows, in a pen that would normally hold four cows. My bull alone is one and a half times the size of an average cow. Nothing he could do about it, it was the company.
I told him I was going to phone the company, have words with them. I didn't blame him, if he'd been told to pick up too many bulls for his truck and was expected to mix strange bulls, then it was hardly his fault.
"You'll never change them," he told me. "It's all money, you know. Cutting costs."
"Yes. Well, it's money for me too," I told him. "That bull will be bruised now."
"Heck yeah," he exclaimed.

note here how that word 'money' was brought up. Fact is, I couldn't care less about what I've lost financially from the incident. But it's an argument that he was able to understand. I doubt he'd understand that I take a pride in healthy, clean animals leaving the farm. Or that I had some awareness of the fact that a quiet happy bull was going to be in severe pain for the rest of his (short) life. More furious was I that farmers have to toe the line by new animal welfare laws coming in all the time, but the trucking and meat companies can get away with this sort of shit. No-one in their right mind introduces strange service bulls in a small, solid pen - it's guaranteed that there will be injuries.

A few hours later I called the trucking company, and asked to speak to the person who had made the arrangements to collect my cow and bull. The person I was speaking to admitted that that was him, and quickly told me that there had been a late call, not enough time to send another truck out to collect the extra bulls. In total agreement with me when I tell him that service bulls should not meet for the first time on a truck.
"Are you telling me it's a one-off?" I asked.
Yes, an unusual occurence, nothing that could be done about it.
"Look," I said, "I don't buy this, 'nothing could have been done'. I know I'm hard to get hold of - but I would have kept the bull till next week rather than have this happen. That was a healthy bull when he got on the truck."
Oh well, if I'd complained to the truck driver before they were loaded he could have called them and it would have been sorted out on the spot.
FFS! "My cow and bull were loaded into an empty pen," I told him. "I had no way of knowing they were going to be mixed until the driver opened the door."
He said he'd speak to the stock agent on my behalf and thanked me, which I suspect means I may be due compensation. Maybe.

I'm getting two different stories here. The truckie blames the company, telling me that they're always doing stuff like this in the interest of cutting costs.
The company rep assures me it was a one-off incident, very sorry, nothing he could do about it.

Although I never said so, I've no doubt that he's fully aware that if he admitted to overcrowding stock and taking risks with stock that don't know each other being a regular occurence, I'd be taking this story to a higher level.
If the truckies can get away with compromising animal welfare, the law needs to change.
And it wouldn't be the first time I've had an animal downgraded for bruising, when I knew there was no way she could have got bruised on the farm.
The company rep had every reason to placate this angry farmer with reassurances that it was a one-off.
The truck driver of course, would rather pass the buck than take responsibility. How do I know he isn't going to be told to pen up the stock on the roadside rather than on the farms, after this? What the farmer doesn't see he can't complain about.
And I've been left with nothing concrete to approach Federated Farmers with the suggestion that things need to change. Since my case was apparently a one-off - and it's another year before I'll need to truck another bull - then unless I hear similar stories from other farmers, there's no proof that the trucks are regularly compromising livestock welfare.
That is the power of placatory language.


**
I have the cutest baby hedgehog on my lap as I type

**
And
this company made the front page of the NZ Farmer's Weekly this week. They're looking for specialist goat farmers to produce a pharmacuetical product from the blood of live goats - a treatment for HIV.
The animlas need to be of high health status and kept in near quarantine conditions - which is why New Zealand, so the article goes. As a remote island NZ has a better chance than most places of avoiding the various transmitable diseases.
There is no FDA approval for the drug, but it has been trialled last decade and the company is hopeful that it will pass FDA testing.

Pregnant women to be made aware of employment laws

Equal Opportunities Commission plans to reach 54,000 Scottish mothers a year with pamphlet explaining their employment rights

And, of course, the usual misogyny in the comments.

Again, an interesting topic, and one which I have thus far been able to understand only from the male perspective. The employment of women who may or may not become pregnant, and the legal issues thereof were discussed a few times during my college courses.
The consensus of course was the same as the commenters have said - don't employ women of childbearing age and don't make it obvious that that is the reason.
Dammit, maybe that's why I find it so hard to get a job. Why didn't I think of that?
Why?
Because the first 'reason' most people will give in farming for not employing a female is that they're not strong enough. I doubt the implication of pregnancy occurs to employers until further down the list.
Discrimation against a women because she is pregnant is illegal - just as discrimination against a woman for being a woman is illegal.
Both are happening.
Commenters complain that employers are put in an awkward situation, especially in a small business. When I was at college, an older vet explained that the main problem with the large number of female vets coming through the system was the fact that the had babies.

A change in thinking is needed? Employers have a choice - discriminate as much as they can without openly breaking the law, to protect themselves from the 'consequences' of employing a woman of childbearing age. Or accept that all employees, including women, are subject to unplanned downtime and that the business nmust be operated in such a manner that it can cope with an extended absence. After all, employers tend to discriminate for young men who play rugby, because they consider it a sign of a well-balanced, healthy individual. When rugby injuries occur they cope, just as they would have to if a woman left in the later stages of pregnancy for several months.

On vets - for several years now female graduates have outnumbered males. Nationally, and quite likely internationally, there is a desperate shortage of veterinarians.
But the vet's prediction over a decade ago hasn't come to pass. I don't know if many female vets leave the profession after having babies. I do know that all the dedicated small animal vets I know (in rural practices) are female, and it has been said that there is a strong tendency for women to move to small animal work after having their babies.
I guess it's the same as women who give up riding/working with horses after becoming a mother. I've heard of it, but have no idea how prevalent it is. Large animals are dangerous to work around. Mothers tend to want to be there for their children in the foreseeable future, not disabled or dead because they got too close to the wrong animal.
For several years I've worked with young women vets, but over the last two years I've met several vets who were already mothers - and who had continued to work with cattle. In an area where their expertise is desperately needed, these women are doing a great job.

Refusing to employ women of child-bearing age is equivalent to shooting oneself in the foot.
There's no doubt that certain employment situations can go very wrong if pregnancy results - on the farm I managed last year, the next farm down was run by a sharemilker like me. Young. Single. Female. And hiding a pregnancy.
Basically it all turned to shit when it was discovered. But somehow or other, the cows got milked.
The problem should be considered less in the light of females who might get pregnant, than in the light that there is a massive skill shortage in our industry. The same goes for vets - there's a national shortage of them. The contribution of women who happen to be capable of bearing children far outweighs the risk of that contribution being interrupted by children actually being gestated and born.

Hopefully that makes some sort of sense. I find it hard to see this issue other than from the employer's, and the male's perspective - because that's how I've been taught and where I'm at.
I don't want children. Of course I've wondered what I'd do if catastrophe happened - and really, for me, the only answer is abortion. Supposing I did have to continue a pregnancy then I'd be looking at a) how long I'd be physically capable of my job, and b) the potential dangers of miscarraige (one of my friends emphatically warned me to never allow a pregnant women in a milking shed, because she knew one who'd been kicked in the stomach, resulting in the loss of the baby. To put this in perspective, I've been milking for around eleven or twelve years now - twice a day, every day - and I've been kicked in the stomach twice. It's rare, but it happens. Two or three times I've been thrown across the pit by a kick from a cow, once slammed into a wall, once pushed against a set of rails, three times I've had bone injuries from kicking or crushing, once pushed off my feet when a group of yearlings got a fright and several times rolled between cows in the yard - which last I don't mind but it seems to shock anyone who sees it. Cows stomachs are soft, and you can be caught and rolled between them without coming to any harm at all. Admittedly also, some of those events occured because of PMS disturbance - ie, I'd put myself in a position where I was likely to get hurt.)
Gone off-topic - but it has to be said, for twelve years in the second most dangerous industry around, that's pretty good going. The actual risk to an unborn child from any of those incidences would have been negligible.
So c) on the presumption that at some stage (and much earlier than the point at which most women would start maternity leave, given the physical nature of my work) it will be necessary to quit working full-time and employ someone, I have to consider firstly whether the business can afford to both employ a manager and continue providing me with an income and secondly, find that temporary manager.

Mention something about skill shortage in the dairy industry earlier? That last is going to be the hardest part. Once you think you've found someone, they've got to be reliable. Many aren't. One of my employers decided we needed an extra person to help through the busy season. With less than two days notice before he was due to start, the man he employed informed him that he had another job and wouldn't be turning up.
As usual, my employer and I got through the busy season on our own by dint of working 90 - 100 hours a week for six weeks.
Faced with this sort of workload at the start of the season, many new employees walk out. Or they get halfway through and don't see that things are going to get better - all they know is that right now it's fourteen hours a day, every day, in the driving rain and cold.
Before you can blink they've got a job in town, or they've decided to become a plumber instead.
The workload is thrown back on the people who are left. Or emergency relief milkers if they can be got - most likely they can't.
As the owner-operator of a small business the 'people who are left' is me, and me alone. That looks like a good enough reason why I couldn't afford to be pregnant unless I was actually capable of working through gestation and birthing between milkings, then back to work. Having seen my friends waddle about with their big stomachs, that proposition looks about as unlikely as sprouting wings and flying to the moon.

Reality and common ground

I've just received a comment on an earlier post which questions my idea of what reality is.

So I think it's a good time to provide an explanation.

From AG: In your 12/30 post you use the phrase "your truth" as in "You know your truth."

That sounds as if you believe there's no reality and each person's perspective is equally valid.

Is that what you really think?

The short answer is yes.

Who we are, and what we believe is created solely by the way our sensory system perceives the world, and what our brain can make of these images. Okay, that sounds complicated, but it's not really. What it does mean is that everyone's 'reality' is unique.
My 'reality' is built on what I have experienced and what I observe around me. My understanding is enhanced by reading, by listening to other people, by testing the 'laws' of my world (such as whether it's true that an object thrown up will always return to the ground).
My observations tell me that it's true, thus far. I could use that information to decide that gravity exists as theorised. I could then extend that to believe that the other scientific research related to gravity is also true.
Or I might not. I could equally validly decide that while so far every ball I've thrown up has returned to the ground, that could just as well mean that it was a coincidence and might soon stop happening.

I see it that a sphere - and by that I mean our entire world, universe and beyond - is individual. When individuals have common experiences, then the spheres overlap. When individuals talk about those experiences, they can understand each other, and with this sort of communication the integration between spheres can be increased.
In practise, I think it's likely that the spheres of individuals within any culture will overlap so closely that they almost correspond.

But what of an deeply autistic individual, as an example? They also have a reality, and access to many of the same sensory images as the individuals with these overlapping spheres. But there is limited ability to communicate, and thus limited ability to share the experiences that integrate spheres, or to understand how individuals in other spheres think or experience things.
An individual with a disability, or from a different culture, or even of a different species, has a sphere that has less in common with 'average individual' than another 'average individual'.
This does not make their observations and conclusions less valid.

If my cat, in her wary sphere, concludes that the visitors to my house are scary and might be a danger to her, her viewpoint is valid, and so is her response (running away).
If I say to her "these people are safe' and conduct myself around them as if I'm unafraid of any harm - then my response is also right, and valid.
Yet they're contradictory.

Having widely different spheres hinders communication, because the individuals within spheres are drawing on different experiences, and different understanding of what words mean, even.

So when people are 'talking at cross-purposes' often it means that they are presenting arguments that are based on an entirely different set of experiences. This is making a presumption of total honesty, which is rare.

To use an obvious example, some of my readers may have wondered why I bothered questioning a statement that was plainly ridiculous.
The one which stated 'the impact of a false allegation can be worse than actual rape'.
I questioned it because the writer appeared to be otherwise intelligent, and appeared not to find the statement ridiculous. This told me that either:
a)I've misunderstood him
or b) He has information that I don't have from which he has drawn this conclusion
or c) He's deliberately manipulating words to enable rape and oppress women
or d) His sphere is so far removed from mine that he honestly cannot understand what he consequences of rape might be
and e) perhaps my sphere is so removed from his that I cannot empathise with a falsely-accused man more than someone whose sphere overlaps more closely with mine.

By questioning him, I could establish (a) and (b) relatively easily. No, I didn't misunderstand him. Yes, he has information I didn't have. I have (some of) it now, it has been integrated into my sphere and I have used my own experience to decide how much or little of this new information is valid.
We're still not communicating from common ground. What the discussion told me was that (d) at least is correct. Some of you have suggested that (c) is, and I'm inclining that way also. The communication suggests to me that his sphere is more comfortable if it rejects the information presented from my sphere (that is, my point of view).

So to come back to the original question - tantamount to saying that there is no reality, I will say that I believe reality is a very individual concept.
And yes, provided the individual is entirely honest with himself and all around him, that makes all perspectives - even opposing ones - equally valid.
It's the honesty part of the equation that destroys the validity of most arguments. And the other difficulty, the one which we try to overcome by reading and surveys and research and scientific trials - is establishing how wide-spread any individual experience is.
If I have noticed that cut grass smells pleasant, does that mean that everyone thinks cut grass smells pleasant? Most? Some? A few? Or only me?
My truth is that cut grass smells pleasant, at this time.
Your truth may be different.

Nice guy

So how does a nice mormon guy respond at 1:30 am when his girlfriend (not me) suggests that he should leave the sofa where she sleeps and make his way to his own room and bed?


mmmmm...?

I turned the heater off, opened both windows, the room door and the outside door.
There was a nice cold breeze blowing.

It worked in less than ten minutes. :-)

Why not the first time she told him to go?

Who really knows our language?

Sophie *peers at computer*: How many photos of your foot did you take?
K: a few
Sophie: three, four - there's five here.
K: Yeah, we were trying all settings.
T: A few is eight.
K: No, a few is between 3 and 99.
T: A few is eight.
K: What? It's between 3 and 99. Dad told me.
Sophie: A few is proportional.
K: Well, there you go. Three people, three different answers.
T: A few is eight.
K: It is not. How can you know that?
Sophie *scrolling down through digital photos*: Hey, there's another row here. There are eight photos of your foot.
T: Let's turn to the scriptures and see what they say.
K: Always the right choice. Which book?
T: Try Peter.
*They return to their permanent pastime of reading scriptures/ institute manuals on K's laptop*
T: How many fingers have you got?
K: A few *holds them up* See *starts counting*
*K dissolves laughing* Eight
T: See.
Sophie: And so it is proved. A few is eight.

A moment later,
Sophie: How did you know she took eight photos?

Much later:
*K reads* "The sexual impurity of the world today is the result of the loss of manhood through indulgence."
T: so you see it's self control.
Sophie: Oh well, I'm fine then.
K: because you weren't just looking at pictures of horny girls *(referencing my other blog)* So what's this beach place? Are we going?
Sophie: O-------
K: You coming with us?
Sophie: Ah, no. I got pictures of dead birds to play with.
K: what do you call people who are fascinated with dead birds?
T: Deadly
K: Sophie, you're a deadly person.
*all dissolve laughing*