The Cambridge Feminist Network were up in arms about the whole affair and their spokesperson, Emma-Rose Cornwall, said: "SPUC's supposed concern for zygotes is a poorly concealed desire to see women forced back into their 'god-given' roles as mothers and housewives, and simultaneously to punish what they perceive as promiscuous sexuality."
Both The Guardian and Cambridge Feminist Network are completely correct, when a single issue, anti choice group starts spreading propaganda, they must be tackled. But there is a problem here, at least for The Guardian and that is the fact that while condemning one anti-choice group, it supports another – Object.
Pro-life groups like 40 Days of Life and SPUC want to remove a womens right choose to terminate their pregnancy and The Guardian quite rightly condemns them.....
Object want to remove a womens right to choose to work in a lap dancing club and The Guardian loves them.
The Guardian is a huge Object supporter and columnist Polly Toynbee is now named as Objects ‘Patron’ and she seems to take any opportunity to write about them and UK Feminista in glowing terms.
There has been in recent years an increasing number of groups that spend their time trying to tell women what to do. There is no real difference between Object and 40 Days of Life, they are just two sides of the same coin. Self righteous bigots that are trying to institutionalise the erosion of womens choices about what to do with their bodies.
The modus operandi for these groups is identical, especially when it comes to the ‘facts’ that they produce to support their campaigns…
For Object it is that lap dancing clubs send men on rape sprees…
For SPUC et al, it is that abortion causes breast cancer and maybe even premature death…
Both of the above views are unfounded and untrue.
In recent weeks, the Guardian has been focussing on pro-life groups, yet it apparently fails to see the utter hypocrisy in supporting a group that is just as dangerous, on the basis that their campaign is morally more palatable.
In some respects The Guardian reminds me of Chris Morris on Brass Eye when his character, a Jeremy Kyle like TV host differentiated between ‘good Aids’ and ‘bad Aids’ on the basis of how the disease was caught. Anti choice groups that resort to lies and intimidation are all bad and must be tackled, there is no acceptable stance that allows anyone to support one and deride another.
I close with this comment from The Guardians Zoe Williams…
'It's a useful reminder, if one were needed, that there's no technique too mendacious, too meddlesome or too unpleasant for people who think other woman's reproductive organs are de facto their business. Ignoring them, as tempting as it is, probably won't make them go away'.
Zoe, if these are the kind of people that you are talking about......
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| 40 Days for Life protest outside BPAS in London... |
......then so are these.
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| Object protest outside 'For Your Eyes Only'. |
What were the tea cups all about?
ReplyDeleteI suspect the story was as follows...
ReplyDeleteObjects campaign strapline was that lapdancing clubs were being licensed like coffee bars. They then went onto reason that dancers were being bought like cups of coffee. Hence, I think, the coffee cups. The issue is that they were being a too clever by half and passers by probably thought they were protesting against another branch of Starbucks....
If Object didn't have contacts in the Guardian, and access to the Home Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister under the last government, they would have sunk without trace beneath the weight of their own obscurity by now.
ReplyDeleteThis is true. They are a fairly small group yet they have a disproportionate influence with politicians and journalists. They have created a moral panic and now people are afraid to stand up to them.
ReplyDeleteMaybe people are afraid no more....
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