Monday, July 26, 2010

I had a bad day...

...So apologies in advance for the bitterness that is ahead of you, my faithful readers.

A question, to everyone who thinks along the lines of the equivalent of rape convictions going to people who wrongly accuse others of rape, what do you think about this idea?

Rapists should be raped

You know that seems very fair to me, if we are going to start implementing a legal system that exacts "justice" based on the suffering of the victim then this should also be passed into law immediately! Come on people, rape for rapists, sounds good, no? It has a certain ring to it. What do we want? MORE RAPE! When do we want it? NOW!

Why send them to prison and just HOPE they are raped, why not just do it ourselves? While we are at it we can kill murderers and if they tortured people in their perversion we should torture them too. Bring on the needles people, we are going old school!

Afterall, only a rape victim can know the pain of a rape victim, so then, why not turn rapists into rape victims?

On second thought, I have a better plan, why don't we base laws on reason, logic and scientific study? Though they don't call me Crazy Cass for nothing, and this may be a part of that nickname.

Oops, did i just lose my patience with immoral people? Did I fail to shut up and accept the things I cannot change? Did I just commit some dreadful sin?

What about love? Compassion? Empathy? Is it uncool to relate to people who do bad things? Uncool to think that maybe they are people too, not under the influence of some force of evil, but just people, people that are also suffering. While not a fan of the bible I am all for loving thy neighbour (but don't get caught!) maybe sometimes people can focus their attentions on that part and leave the other pages to gather dust.

Today, dear bloggers, I fell apart, the thought that nobody actually gives a shit unless it DIRECTLY impacts on their precious lives, struck home. This terrible day led to these thoughts crowding into my mind. I was confused, how do I cope with the apathy and selfishness I see everywhere? I can never accept it, as people keep telling me I should. Where do I stand now? Well all I can think is I will just have to learn to be stronger, to care more instead of less, to make up for the ignorant and the self involved. To increase my resources, increase my advocacy for those issues that make the blood boil in my veins. To never accept, but always challenge.

Mostly though, I have to keep the hope alive. I hope that this blog is a way to do that, to keep my hope alive, and help others keep hoping. Some days I feel very alone in my passion and my desire to do good and be good, but one is better then none. I can only hope I have the strength of will to keep this one going at least.

And so ends my self righteous rant.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Choice and Beliefs

It has often been asserted on this blog that I am answerable for feminisms weaker points because I have chosen to be feminist. However when I answered with the religion argument (review old posts if you need to) it was returned that believing in god isn't a choice. Well in the same way for me believing in feminism isn't a choice, I didn't wake up one day and say to myself I wanted to be a feminist, it just happened that way. I couldn't stop being a feminist any more then a devout catholic could stop being a catholic. In what way are beliefs choices and in what way are choices beliefs?

Secondly, what does it matter? It is just like the homosexual debates about whether being gay is a choice or not, I often become confused about the matter. What difference does it make if it is a choice? Being able to choose doesn't seem to make things more or less wrong.

What do other people think about this?

The balance of morality

This may be a little off topic here for a feminist blog but I wanted to express it anyway.

It was recently suggested to me that I should view the catholic church as good even though it promotes bigotry and unhappiness. This is because they do charity work. Therefore, I was told, there is a balance, the good they do outweighs the bad. This to me is horrific. How can this possibly be that doing bad things is ok as long as you do good things as well. I drew a diagram of this but I don't know how to put it in here. Basically it is a set of scales on one side there is good on the other there is bad, as long as it is balanced, it is acceptable. Therefore under this (an extreme example I know) I could murder someone as long as I turned around and saved someones life. This makes no sense to me. Doing good never makes up for the bad you have done.

In terms of feminism, I am unsure of how to relate it back to topic. I think it works on the level that people use it to try to make up for past injustices, it is ok what happened "back in the day" because I am a feminist and trying to set things right. I am still trying to arrange this in my head, so any input would be appreciated.