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Three Stooges of the Patriarchy

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Created on Monday, 30 April 2012 06:41
Written by Betty Krawczyk
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Taliban, the Pope and Stephen Harper
by Betty Krawczyk l Betty's Early Edition
What does this unlikely trinity have in common?
 
The first glaring commonality of these three that comes to my mind is their unhealthy concentration on controlling women’s most intimate body parts.
 
First, our Prime Minister: While Mr. Harper appears displeased with his backbencher’s determination (Stephen Woodworth) to try to open up the abortion debate in Canada, Harper is, in my opinion, the architect of the planned proposed debate. Our Prime Minister belongs to a fundamentalist, literalistic, Pentecostal church whose pastor and congregation are waiting along with our Prime Minister for the “Rapture” (when Jesus Christ comes back to earth floating through the sky). Until then, for these religionists, according to the Bible, men are the head of their households and women must obey their husbands.
 
Birth control is frowned upon and abortion made a crime by association with women’s perceived inferiority.
 
The Catholic Church?
 
Well, we all know Catholic popes have forever condemned birth control and abortion even as significant numbers of their priests have endured the priesthood by buggering little boys, or sometimes, depending on their proclivity, little girls. And the Taliban? Well, their holy book says husbands can beat their wives if they disobey, all four of them if need be.
 
So according to their religious beliefs, Harper, The Pope and the Taliban are simply being true to their faith when acting out their sexist beliefs about women. They sincerely believe that women are not equal, and will never be, in fact have been put here by their various gods to have numerous babies, preferably sons, cook, and cleanup behind the males while teaching daughters their job description.
 
The problem is, all three of these categories of patriarchal male groups wield a great deal of power over women.

Of course Mr. Harper would have been better pleased, with increased confidence in eventually imposing his religious beliefs on all the women of this nation, had the Wild Rose Party succeeded in Alberta. I believe the Wild Rose people voice the same utter contempt for women that our Prime Minister dare not say aloud. And yes, I know the wildest wild rose of the Alberta Wild Rose Party is a woman. An ignorant woman in my opinion, as Danielle Smith doesn’t recognize science, evolution, or global warming. She doesn’t like other women, either, or she wouldn’t happily consign them to the hell of unwanted pregnancies. This doesn’t even make good economic sense.

There are now more women working in Canada than men. While the religious right wing is hell bent on women not having reproductive rights, they at the same time refuse to even consider affordable day care (Harper government). Day care in BC costs the equivalent of what a woman working for minimum wage would make in an outside job in many of the operating day care facilities in BC. Only the Quebec government has the attention span, or the slightest interest in women’s lives, to subtract these two numbers and realize that women will find ways not to obey such stupid, contradictory dictums from right wing religious fanatics who are not guided even by common sense, but by a delusional Biblical Armageddon Star Wars scenario.

I agree with Robin Mathew’s article: “Psychopaths in Power: The Fight for Democracy in Canada" by Robin Mathews April 22nd, 2012. We are not being governed by simple incompetence, or by fiscal conservatives’, but by actual social psychopaths.