Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Saturday, March 03, 2012

Is Jerking Off Genocide?

Delaware Online:
Wilmington City Council sent a message to lawmakers everywhere Thursday night: It's time to hold men accountable for the well-being of their sperm. The council passed a resolution that asks state legislatures and U.S. Congress to enact laws that forbid men from destroying their semen. For Loretta Walsh, the councilwoman who introduced the resolution, it's a way -- an admittedly "tongue-in-cheek" way -- to call attention to "the absurdity of men making health decisions for women."
I couldn’t be happier –- as I’ve also written about here -- observing women’s healthcare and pro-choice activists finally turning away from the serial failures of a generation of defensive apologetic pre-emptive surrender to completely batshit crazy women-hating slut-shaming enforced-pregnancy theocrats as though they are fit partners to reasonable negotiations, and taking up instead what look more like the fabulous tactics of aggressive exposure and derisive subversion that queers took the streets and to the nets over the course of the exact same historical period with serial successes.

Whether we are talking about sodomy laws or about coat hangers, about haunting images of barracks showers or of ultrasound homunculi, the assumptions and aspirations are much the same – Keep Your Laws Off Of My Body! Whether we are talking about everyday people educating their families and neighbors through brave painful testaments to personal experience or about exposing the hypocrisy of the powerful who enjoy benefits they would deny others, the tactics are much the same – come out if you can, and out them if you must!

I’d say more, but I think I’ll go spend ten minutes or so slaughtering between two hundred and four hundred million people instead, thanks.

7 comments:

jimf said...

> I couldn’t be happier. . .

Hm. . . Does this make up for the fact that Christine O'Donnell
had Delaware in the national news (from the opposite angle)
a couple of years ago?

Probably not. ;->

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44mqiBrB0zI

Dale Carrico said...

Christine O'Donnell was not only not a witch, she was not a riot grrrl.

Chad Lott said...

I support renaming masturbation: "Being Galactus"

jimf said...

> "Being Galactus"

A comic-book supervillain?

jimf said...

> I think I’ll go spend ten minutes or so slaughtering
> between two hundred and four hundred million people instead. . .

But don't forget:
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/moredetails.aspx?showBleed=false&ProductNo=22943906&colorNo=0&pr=F

Or, to put it into practical terms:

http://www.fathersarducci.com/pagetwo.html
-------------------
"Life is a job. You get $14.50 a day, but after you die, you have
to pay for your sins. Stealing a hub cap is around $100. Masturbation
is 35 cents (it doesn't seem like much, but it adds up). If there's
money left when you subtract what you owe from what you've earned,
you can go to heaven. If not, you have to go back to work.
(Sort of like reincarnation -- many nuns are Mafia guys working
it off.)"

jimf said...

> Life is a job

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbSZlqKxAE4

jimf said...

> The council passed a resolution that asks state
> legislatures and U.S. Congress to enact laws that
> forbid men from destroying their semen.

And how could anybody bear to hurt these little cuties?

http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/products/spermcell.html