Engendering

A group of researchers in Intelligent Designland are trying to formulate a birth control pill for men.

Four decades after the birth control pill became available to women, researchers at the University of Kansas and the University of Kansas Medical Center are working to develop a similar contraceptive for men.

The researchers plan to test about a half-million chemical compounds to find a pill that does not involve hormones that men could take weekly or monthly. They also hope to find something that is close to 100 percent effective and has no risky side effects.

As Martha would say, this is a good thing. By the time it is on the market, I'll be able to add it to my cocktail of Viagra, that other pill that delays ejaculation, and my hippie herbal libido enhancer.

In other genderey news, there's new a feminist blog called Women's Autonomy-Sexual Sovreignty. Looking at the welcome page, I am told that the bloggers find the following to be a self-evident truth:

53% of the world's population is Female. The Human Race is therefore Female.

This ranks right up there with the Pink Floyd-is-bad-ergo-Planned Parenthood-is-bad argument I saw last week. Where's the cutoff? Will 50.0000001% of the population being female also make the human race female for these women? I was unaware that the human race had a gender so now I feel stupid. Must be that patriarchy instilling me with the awful notion that human beings have genders, not the whole of humanity.

I also found this a bit disturbing:

No Uterus * No Opinion

Here's how I reply to anyone who says that I am not allowed to have an opinion: Fuck you. I will have an opinion on whatever I damn well please. To be sure, I am obligated to make it as well-informed as possible but to tell me that I have no right to even have an opinion is ridiculous.

After some mathematics intended to marginalize white men, the author states:

So that would leave 16.64% vs. 85.17% if women, gays, blacks, Asians, and "others" would stop voting against our own interests. I'm just sayin'...

Do women, gays, blacks, Asians, and "others" all have the same interests? The author has already established the human race is female and now she asks us to believe that the interests of, say black men, are congruent with those of white women. I don't doubt that there is overlap but how should these groups mediate their differences? Or does she really believe that these disparate groups have the exact same interests? If we're to labor under "No Uterus * No Opinion", then why not the corollary, "No Penis * No Opinion"? Where does the author get off elevating herself to the status of omniscience where she can, in her penisless state, claim authority on what it is like to be a non-white man. Either the author is promoting misandry, which will not abide, or, in the interest of fairness, we must conclude that she cannot have an opinion because of her lack of a penis. How far should we be willing to go in excluding people? "No Melanin * No Opinion"? "No Epicanthic Fold * No Opinion"?

Just sayin'...