Men Who Want To Control Women

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I’d never gotten around to reading James Michener’s 1978 novel Chesapeake until now that I’m going to that bay area on a camping trip. Much of the book is very boring, but not the parts on how the Virginia and Maryland colonies treated women.

We’ve progressed since the 1600s, but we retain some Dark Ages vestiges. There’s the “vaginal wanding” matter in Texas and Virginia, Texas cutting off Planned Parenthood, and Hawaii’s refusal to order emergency contraception for rape victims in all hospitals.

It’s about telling women they cannot abort.

There are religious beliefs at play, but they’re the same ones employed in the colonies to ordain that a husband was master and a wife his servant.

Men continue to want to control women, and men are our dominant lawmakers.

You might think only strict Islamic countries restrict women, but take a look around. America is no shining example.

This “my religious belief” business has to go.

If something offends your religion, don’t do it.

And do quit telling others what they must do or not do.

“It’s in the Bible” is an excuse only for those who believe everything in the Bible or the interpretation.

Conservative men of many faiths want to yoke liberal women, and they are frequently abetted by conservative women they’ve already yoked.

Like many of you I tend to get huhu at Hawaiian Electric about lights going out any time there’s some rain or wind.

The outage this month in my neighborhood seems to have been complicated by a delivery system that’s 50 years old and, according to the repairmen, “very dangerous.”

I know what HECO will say. “We can upgrade but we need another rate increase.”

A medium user’s bill on Oahu is $203 already, so no thanks.

Why spend so much money on those TV commercials telling us to use less electricity?

Less use reduces HECO’s revenue. Then it applies for another rate increase! Catch-22.

A book that just came to my attention is Victor Sheymov’s Tower of Secrets, ghost-written by local literary agent Roger Jellinek. Sheymov was a top Soviet Union KGB communications-security expert who defected and brought his secrets to the U.S.

It makes you wonder why citizens defect. Sometimes for money, love or because of screwed-up lives. But often because they’ve lost faith in their country’s moral authority.

Of course, if it’s the latter, you need to find a new country of high moral authority.

That’s a Sisyphean task these days!

Also a good read: The Statues That Walked by UH anthropologist Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo of Cal State Long Beach. Updated research on the early people of Easter Island and how those giant moai were moved from the quarry to their set-up sites.

Hunt and Lipo’s work questions earlier scholars’ (and charlatans’) assumptions about what sealed the fate of the island’s original Marquesan seafarers and their descendants.

Probably not Long Ears versus Short Ears warfare.

But I’ll not spoil the ending for you.