Granting women control over their own reproduction would combat overpopulation and reduce carbon emissions

Reuters article by Asma Alsharif, dated Sunday, October 25, 2009

RIYADH (Reuters) – A Saudi court sentenced a female journalist to 60 lashes in a case brought after a Lebanese television channel she worked for aired the sex confession of a Saudi man, the reporter and a lawyer said.

Rosana, 22, who did not want her full name disclosed, said a court in Jeddah convicted her on Saturday on grounds that the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. she worked for did not have proper authorization to operate in the Islamic kingdom.

Read the entire article here -

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSTRE59P0DL20091026

This story speaks for itself. From the free Sara Kruzan action page at change.org:

This Post is from the Blog  www.feministing.com

Click on the appropriate  Online Book Store where you can see more and purchase it and other interesting books and DVD’s.

Online Book Store – Canada

Online Book Store – United States

Online Book Store – United Kingdom

Online Book Store – Deutschland

Online Book Store – France

Part I – The Simpsons:

Flying under the radar, so to speak, it is not recognized that the popular animated series “The Simpsons” conveys a powerful Matriarchist message. Homer Simpson is the nominal head of the household which is the expected norm in a Patriarchal society. He is stupid, ignorant, irresponsible, lazy, incompetent, insensitive, complacent, unambitious and devoid of self-discipline and any ethical or moral sense. Rated in terms of qualities, he is totally undeserving of his position. He is the incarnation of the worst traits to be found in the Patriarchal male.

Imagine if you will, a world run by Homer Simpsons – that is essentially the world we live in. The fact that he is able to retain his job as the technician responsible for plant safety at a nuclear power plant is a harsh commentary on the level of incompetence that is tolerated within the various institutions of a Patriarchal society. Remember what happened at Chernobyl. (look it up on Wikipedia if you don’t know)

Marge is intelligent, wise, practical, level-headed, conscientious, industrious, sensitive and ethical. She is in reality the one who manages the family so that the centrifugal forces of dysfunctionality, both within and without, do not destroy it. She is an excellent role model for any human being.

Bart is a typical boy. He hates school. He dislikes discipline and constantly challenges authority. He can’t sit still except when trapped at his school desk, otherwise he is constantly in motion. He is adventurous, loves to play and has a visceral aversion to anything remotely intellectual or artistic. He is constantly getting involved in high risk activities and situations without giving any advance thought to the obvious dangers or possible negative consequences in general. This behavior is hard wired into his DNA as a male of the species. It is not the result of his cultural environment. He is usually well intentioned but invariably winds up creating a mess. He is always remorseful when this happens but never draws the logical conclusion that he should be more careful in the future. He is a perfect example of a Patriarchal male in the formative stage.

Lisa is at the extreme right end of the behavioral bell curve. She is exceptionally intelligent and intellectual, precociously so. She is conscientious and self-disciplined. She is artistically talented- she plays the saxophone at an advanced level. She is very empathetic with a highly developed social and environmental awareness. She aspires to higher levels of achievement in all aspects of her life. In one episode she is portrayed in the future as being elected the first woman president of the United States. In sharp contrast, Bart is portrayed as having grown up to be a shiftless ne’er-do-well, a Billy Carter or Roger Clinton type presence who is a constant source of embarrassment and distraction for President Lisa Simpson.

Although a child, she is keenly, often painfully, aware of and regrets the boorish behavior of her father and brother. She is already a Matriarchist at the tadpole stage without realizing it

Copyright 2009 by Matriarchist Forum

Part II – Family Guy:

This animated series can also be said to have a strong Matriarchist message. Peter Griffin, the head of the household has an IQ that is in the dull normal range at best. His social skills level is equally deficient. He often seems disconnected from the real world and only marginally a functional person. With regard to his physical appearance, the most salient characteristic is the fact that he is clinically obese. Not only is this unattractive, but bodes ill for his future health and reflects a deplorable indifference about his physical well being. He never hesitates to lie in order to avoid taking responsibility for his continual blunders or to gain some unmerited advantage. He seems devoid of any commendable personality traits other than being fairly affable and well intentioned. To summarize, he is basically an innocuous bumbling buffoon.

His wife Lois seems to have an IQ in the bright normal range. She is a former beauty queen who has retained her physical attractiveness. A musically talented person, she both plays the piano and sings. In general she gives the impression of being a much more practical and energetic person than her husband. A stay at home mom, she supplements the family income by giving piano lessons. She is capable of functioning well in the real world although at times she succumbs to the pressures of her family and community environment and slides off into dysfunctional behavior. Their daughter Meg is a typical sixteen year old girl. She suffers from the normal insecurities and self doubts of girls in that age range who are not very attractive or popular with their peers. She is usually portrayed sympathetically as the butt of her father’s crude and insensitive remarks and sense of humor. In general, like her mother she does not project a negative image.

The Griffin’s son Chris has inherited both his father’s endomorphic body type and low end IQ. In terms of personality he duplicates his father in being a well intentioned oaf. However, to his credit he is not a mythomane like his father. Although the creators of the series chose to make the two older males in the home considerably less than ideal male specimens, this was most likely done to achieve comic effect rather than to consciously denigrate males of the human species, although that is the result achieved.

The two most intelligent members of the household are the family dog, Brian, and the baby boy, Stewie. They are both more intelligent by a huge margin. It is interesting that one is a member of the animal species and the other is of ambiguous sexuality which sharpens the image of alienation from mainstream humanity. Since this is a cartoon world and not the real one, the creators take extreme artistic license with these two in order to create humor of a truly bizarre sort. Brian is an anthropomorphic figment of a writer’s imagination who talks in a very articulate educated manner. He walks on two legs and is often seen sipping a martini, reading the newspapers or a book and/or smoking a cigarette. He lives the life of a human being for all functional purposes.

Stewie is another bizarre figment of the writer’s imagination. Stewie is either the host for an alien space creature who has entered his body and taken control of his mind or he is the victim of satanic possession. He has two personae in the series- one is a baby, the other is a miniature adult when he teams up with Brian for some adventure. He has a brilliant evil intellect. After all, how many one year olds like to have Goethe’s “Faust” read to them as a bedtime story? (admittedly in English translation) He is also a megalomaniac. His long term goal is to conquer the world, His short term goal is to kill his mother. However, being limited by possessing the body of a diaper clad one year old child, he is always frustrated in his attempts to achieve these ends. Nevertheless, he periodically achieves success in constructing science-fiction type devices from whatever toys and other odds and ends are available. Some devices to his credit are a time altering machine, a hand-held death ray, a mind changing ray gun and a weather changing machine.

When engaging in soliloquies or ranting threats and insults at his mother, which he often does, or conversing with Brian and human beings in general, his command of English is exceptionally erudite. It is safe to say that his command of vocabulary exceeds that of 90% of native English speaking Americans. Unusual and highly creative pejorative epithets directed at his mother like “wretched harridan”, “festering strumpet,” “soulless witch” and “shrew” roll trippingly off his tiny tongue. When in the presence of his parents, for example when seated in his high chair at the kitchen table where the family habitually dines, his acerbic comments are apparently not heard by anyone but Brian when he happens to be also seated there. Stewie often experiences bouts of verbalized raging frustration as one can well imagine about someone in his situation. Brian and Stewie’s relationship is that of adult human peers.

Everything considered about these two series, it is probably accurate to say that their message is as much misanthropic as Matriarchist since it makes human beings in general appear foolish. Nevertheless, the characters who project the most negative image of sheer ineptitude are the male protagonists and and the other male characters. Imagine if you will, the world, or anything of consequence, run by the male characters of either series. As noted with respect to Homer Simpson earlier, this basically describes the Patriarchal world in which we live.

Copyright 2009 by Matriarchist Forum