Oh, goodie. :-) It's not every morning that I get a chance to start my day off with a good rant, but here I have two idiots offering me an opportunity to do so, on a silver platter.
I simply cannot resist. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "mainstream20016" > > <mainstream20016@> wrote: > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <no_reply@> > wrote: > <snip> > > > > You have NOTHING to say about it. > > > > > > > > It's not your body. > > > > > > > > It's not your decision. > > > > > > You pose your declaration as though I were blocking the > > > entrance to an abortiion clinic in protest. How dare you > > > suggest I refrain from expressing my thinking that abortion > > > is cruel! > <snip> [ the rest of mainstream's post, so carefully snipped by Judy, hereby reinserted ] > > > Regarding your compassionate support to so many women > > > tormented by their decision to abort - I think you > > > had alot more involvement in their basic predicament, > > > and that you lobbied for the eventual decision that > > > caused them so much pain. [ my response to mainstream ] > > Wow. > > > > This is so insane that I'm a little afraid. > > > > Now you know why I don't discuss abortion; > > it brings out the inner fanatic in people. [ Judy, being...uh...herself ] > Actually, he's right on target in the part I quoted. > > Whether what men have to say, pro or con, about > abortion *counts* is one thing; it's quite another > to tell them they have no right to express an > opinion. > > Just imagine the fireworks if someone told Barry > he had "nothing to say" about something upon > which he'd made one of his pronouncements! Ok, you guys started this. Now sit back and take what's comin' to ya. There is NOT ONE WORD in my original post in which I suggested that mainstream should not express his opinion on this subject. I did NOT tell him that he had "nothing to say" ON THE SUBJECT. I told him he had nothing to say about the *decision* any woman makes on this subject. And he doesn't. Mainstream, whether he believes it or not, really IS (at heart) one of those guys who *would* stand in the doorway of a doctor's office (which he would demonize by calling it an "abortion clinic") and try to stop some woman from having an abortion. But he doesn't have the balls to do that. So instead he tries to make the woman feel GUILTY about her decision. That's the form of punishment he metes out for her type of "sin." And when I stood up for the women and pointed out that he was trying to characterize them unfairly, he decided to try to mete out some of the same punishment to me. He made up a story in his head (which says a great deal more about him than about me) that I was the father of these poor, aborted fetuses, and that I was there at the women's side, urging them to kill these poor human beings without a care. I NEVER EVEN HAD SEX WITH ANY OF THESE WOMEN. THEY WERE MY FRIENDS. I can see how mainstream might have a problem with this concept. For him it must be difficult to imagine a man just being friends with a woman and trying to help her through a tough time. He'd much rather try to make her feel bad -- and GUILTY -- about having come to a decision about what to do with an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. In his mind, that makes him some kind of moral giant, a man protecting the poor, helpless fetuses of the world against those callous women who would murder them. To me it just makes him JUST ANOTHER GUY, trying to impose his will on women whose will and whose rights he doesn't understand and doesn't respect. And when another guy comes along and busts him for being such a male chauvinist pig, he lashes out and calls me a liar, and makes up a whole story that some- how implicates me in the "murder," and allows him to try to make ME feel guilty, too. Didn't work. All it did was inspire in me an enormous sense of pity for someone this insane, whose fanaticism has blinded him to the fact that what he's trying to do by expres- sing his opinion on a subject that doesn't concern him personally is make the women whom it *does* concern feel GUILTY about their decisions. I'm sorry, but pity is *all* I can feel for him. I did NOT say that he should speak about this subject -- he imagined that, and so did Judy (in his case because he's blinded by hatred for those he considers murderers, and he wanted to consider me an "accomplice"; in her case because she's just blinded by hatred, period), and they made up stuff in my post THAT WASN'T THERE, and then turned it into an excuse to dump on me. Mainstream has nothing to say about whether a woman has an abortion. Even if he succeeded in getting laws passed to make it illegal he'd have nothing to say about it. He just hated being reminded of his powerlessness, and wanted to consider himself a big, powerful, moral MAN whose word had some authority over these women he con- siders murderers. Me, I was even worse -- a guy calling him on being an oppressive guy -- and so he had to invent some way that he could call me a murderer and try to make me feel GUILTY, too. That was his INTENT. It failed. I don't feel a gram of guilt. All I feel -- for him -- is pity. He is free to rail all he wants on this subject; I never suggested otherwise. All I did was tell him WHY he was really doing it -- to try to impose his will on women -- and that I thought it was pretty small of him. His response renders him even smaller in my opinion. As for Judy, well, I think everyone here knows that the only reason SHE chimed in was that it was just one more excuse to DUMP ON BARRY. She's a bitter old woman who has nothing going on in her life *except* trying to make other people feel bad about themselves. So in a very real sense she and mainstream are "intent brothers." But Judy is an EDITOR. She should *know* that what she made up about my post is a lie. And she doesn't. She is that blinded by hatred for me. So she joins in with mainstream's agenda and tries to make me feel guilty and bad about myself. Him for some "crime" that he made up in his head, and which has no relationship to reality. Her for saying something that she *knows* I never said. The only thing I can do is PITY them, both for what they are, and for the delusional belief system that allows them to be these things while considering themselves privy to the best, most effective form of meditation on the planet. Here is my original post, in its entirety. Tell me where I told mainstream in it that he didn't have the right to speak on this issue. I didn't. All I said that was that his opinion has no meaning; he has nothing whatsoever to say about it. If a woman he's trying to make feel GUILTY so that she doesn't have an abortion wants one, she'll get one anyway, whether it's legal or illegal. THAT is what he hates -- the sense of his own powerlessness. I honestly think that's what Judy hates as well; she just aims her fury at the individual human beings who are beyond her oh-so-imagined power to make them feel bad. Fuck 'em both. I'm back to dealing with only people here whose actions seem to indicate that their decades-long practice of meditation has actually done something for them. DS responds to mainstream20016 Re: Abortion I have been carefully staying out of this, partly because, on the few non-argument- driven forums I hang out in on the Net, abortion is a banned issue. The reason is that, as someone said earlier, one is either pregnant or one isn't. It's that kinda issue. You're either "for" or "against." Like pregnancy itself, it's tough to find a middle ground amongst all the rhetoric. So, just for something fun to do on a sunny afternoon in Sitges after a rain, with the environment washed clean and my self feeling similarly so, I think I'll actually violate a personal rule and weigh in on the subject. Just this once. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "mainstream20016" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "oneradiantbeing" <oneradiantbeing@> wrote: > > > > Mainstream: The wanton disregard of the fetus in determining > > to abort is incredibly cruel. Mainstream, have you ever been the guy helping a woman to get through an abortion? >From the way you speak, I have to imagine that you have not. I have, several times. And none of the fetuses in question had the slight- est DNA link to my own. I tried to help the women through a painful experience because they were in pain and I wanted to help, in any way I could. One of the only ways in which I found that I *could* be helpful was just not to judge. I'm sorry, but there is just one enormous load of judgment in your statement above. It's in the second and third words of the sentence. "'Wanton disregard' of the fetus?" How about wanton disregard of the carrier of the fetus? It is *not* as if abortion is an easy decision. You're trying to make it sound as if it is one. I'm sorry, but if you had been the shoulder to cry on for as many women who have made the decision to have an abortion as I have, I don't think you'd talk the way you did above. > > DS: I believe it's more cruel for a religion or government > > to abduct the bodily rights of a living individual and > > force them to reproduce against their will. The bottom line is actually more sinister than that. When abortion is banned, the religion or government in question has abducted the woman's right to *have* a will. It's a power game. They're trying to impose *their* will on the will of all the women whom they mistakenly think they "govern." Whether it's a priest or a state governor, it's almost always a man. And that man is saying to the women he is supposed to *represent* within a democracy, "So I understand that you think you have a will. I'm here to tell you that you don't have one. No matter what *you* decide about this fetus dwelling within you, I am here to say -- definitively -- that your ideas on this matter Just Don't Count. *I* am the one who gets to decide what is right and what is wrong in such matters, not you. Live with it. And if you don't *like* living with it, please remem- ber that I have the right [in the near past and, if some people get their way, in one possible future] to throw you in jail / excommunicate you. But you do what you think is right. I'll wait." > If one doesn't want to reproduce, one should prevent pregnancy. > There are many convenient ways of preventing pregnancy. There are many convenient ways of trying. Not one of them is foolproof. Every one of the women I helped get through an abortion was practicing -- and regularly, without a single exception -- some purportedly effective means of birth control. I'm sorry, Mainstream, but you're talkin' like a priest or a politician -- and above all, like a GUY -- trying your best to make women feel really, really, really, really BAD about contemplating an abortion, or having had one in the past. And in my book, that puts you on a very, very, very, very different plane of attention than the women I held while they sobbed their way through the experience you so blithely call "wanton disregard of the fetus." You have NOTHING to say about it. It's not your body. It's not your decision.
