Everything you wanted to know about Kay Mère and _Trainwreck_ but..

..were afraid to ask.

Babs correctly predicts feminists won't like the ending of Amy Schumer's movie.

Why?

Feminists loathe redemption and respectability, which are TRULY the only things that give purpose to the *trampy* protagonist's life, according to Kay.

_Trainwreck_ is an exemplary morality fairy tale, an inspiration to whores and bad grrls, in her R.E.A.L.women view.

Thank gawd for professional slut-shamer Kay, and all the women who share her sour, tight-sphinctered and pearl-clutching ideological constructs.

Common, every-day patriarchy as well as its bastions: the Vatican Taliban, Hasidic extremism, Saudi Wahhabism to name but a few, would crumble without its handmaidens.

The *happily ever after* is such a predictable Hollywood cliché ending — even when hipsters produce such movies — that I saw it coming a mile away.

What offended me about _Trainwreck_ was its crass, opportunistic and shallow execution. The script is a contrived series of sketches that might have been dynamite on their own, were they sharpened up and NOT riddled with hackneyed plot devices.


The only thing that distinguishes _Trainwreck_ from any bland TV sitcom episode?  The brilliant performances of Tilda Swinton, LeBron James and John Cena.

Carafem: Just Another Day at the Abortion-Spa

Big props to the new abortion clinic Carafem in Washington, DC.

It's got ALL the fetus freaks' knickers knotted.

With its natural wood floors and plush upholstery, Carafem aims to feel more like a spa than a medical clinic. But the slick ads set to go up in Metro stations across the Washington region leave nothing to doubt: “Abortion. Yeah, we do that.”

The Maryland clinic, opening this week in Montgomery County’s tony Friendship Heights area, specializes in the abortion pill. The advertising reflects its unabashed approach — and a new push to de-stigmatize the nation’s most controversial medical procedure by talking about it openly and unapologetically.

Website.

It's hard to say what has the freaks most outraged -- that women could be treated decently, that abortion could be treated like any other medical procedure, or that a business, yes, a business, could aim to help destigmatize a common life event.

The Dominionist Astroturf Gang, We Need a Law (Like a Hole in the Head), is appalled that the furniture is comfy.

SUZY ALL-CAPS is SHRIEEKING that abortion will be destigmatized OVER HER DEAD BODY!!!!!!!!

http://www.bigbluewave.ca/2015/03/abortion-will-never-be-de-stigmatized.html

Kay Mère, as befits her very limited cognitive processing ability, is all over the map in her objections.

She cites a "left-leaning think tank" that points out that destigmatization worked for the LBGT community by sharing stories and coming out to friends and families.

But this is an untenable comparison. Gays are human beings with a minority sexual orientation.

As opposed to people who have abortions who are not human beings but amoral, irresponsible baby-killing sluts.

Ultimately, what bugs her the most is that Carafem is a business and this new and humane approach to a common procedure may make them money!!!!

The Focus on the Family Astroturf Gang, as usual, takes its cue from Kay, considered to be among the more "reasonable" of anti-choicers, and squeals about the profit.

Well, shut my mouth. I thought all these right-wing nut-jobs worshipped at the altar of the Free Market.

These are the same people eager to label any efforts by government to regulate contraception and abortion services as Communist! Fascist! Maoist! (You get the idea.)

Yet, these are also the people who revelled in the gore and filth of Kermit Gosnell's totally unregulated predatory racket.

But who insisted that there must be Gosnells in Canada. We just haven't caught them yet.

This Carafem development has them shoved back in that terrible pickle again.

HORRORS! People needing abortions are being treated decently.

HORRORS! People needing abortions (in the US) must pay for them and so will prompt entrepreneurs to cater to them.

HORRORS! If people needing abortions are treated decently, there will be no more Gosnells, no more stigma, no more needless suffering.

Ha. I say again -- props to Carafem.

By the way, the cost of a medical abortion at Carafem is below average.

The average pharmaceutical abortion cost about $500 in the United States in 2011, Guttmacher figures show; [Carafem President Christopher] Purdy plans to charge around $400.

Gril on Gril: Babs Spanks Gwen

More for the novelty than anything else, herewith a column by Babs Kay that isn't stupendously stupid.

Taking on Gwen Landolt's latest moronic brain-fart (that deBeauxOs critiqued yesterday), Babs first maunders on about how much she respects REAL Women.

I found this amusing though. In one paragraph she says 'since, unlike most feminist organizations that wouldn’t exist without some form of government subsidy, they are self-funding' and in the next she gauges the actual size of the gang with 'their president, Gwen Landolt (who effectively is REAL Women)'.

Then Babs proceeds to spank Gwen. Some gems:

Ms. Landolt is out of line here. . .

stunning moral gaffe. . .

Her statement, first of all, offends against Christianity. . .

Thus, in one fell swoop, she has aligned herself with anti-Semites who shrugged as Jews were persecuted in Russia. . .

I think REAL Women may just have imploded as a credible organization. . .

OK, well, that last bit is pretty stupendously stupid. REAL Women never was credible to anyone but the credulous.

But maybe this Gwen-gaffe is finally enough to discredit the gang even in the eyes of the Contempt Party of Canada.

Too much to hope for? We'll see.

Just checked to see if Gwen has tried walking it back yet. Nope. But comments on the original news release have been closed.

UPDATE: LanDOLT not backing down.

Added by deBeauxOs: Alison at Creekside on R.E.A.L.Women supporting Russian family values. 

Hmm. I wonder what Gwen Landolt thinks of Pussy Riot?

Hey, I'm just goofing around!

Paging Barbara Kay to the Apologist's Phone in the Lobby

While perusing the confundity around 'advocacy' group Men's Rights Edmonton (An organization incestuously intersected with the American "A Voice for Men" anti-woman collective of sites)  and their brave slut-shaming campaign this last week, I came across AVFM comments rooting for conservative columnist Barbara Kay to step into the media fray on the behalf of their 'cause'.

Realizing I was likely well behind the times on this and being of  a morbidly curious bent, I googled off to find out what raised such hopes in the minds of a crowd already excited by their raised profile.

It looks like they have good reason to believe Ms. Kay is their media BFF but she's not their only ally at The National Post.

The CAFE organization she promotes in the article is also intersected informally with AVFM as cited by Vice.com, is recruiting on campuses across Canada (often by their lesser known and less PR friendly subset,  "Mens Issues Awareness" or...MIA...geddit? geddit?) and has had their asserted mandate compared to their actions by critics .

A recurring point in articles criticizing CAFE-hosted events is that they do draw in men seeking assistance in men's issues but that the selling point 'feminism is-what-has-buggered-men-over zero-sum game theory' complete with misleading claims of fact, manages to miss the men's liberation barn by several kilometers.

It also seems the MRA gateway meme preferred even by lecturers at CAFE events, is women's perfidious destruction of men's lives with false sexual assault accusations, so MREdmonton appears to be simply parroting that the best consciousness-raising idea for men is pro-actively 'gaslighting' accusers and any who might take their part.

Just as an aside...

I would like to know, does this 'regret' perfidy extend to gay/bi/straight men(and boys) making sexual assault accusations against men or are gay/bi/straight men inherently honest bcuz XY trump, where women of any stripe are not?  Where do transgender men identifying as straight/gay fit into that?  What about hetero cis-men/transgender men and women/lesbian/bi women accusing women of sexual assault? Are they also perfidious miscreants out to ruin women's lives?

CONtemptuous, Weasel Words

This morning, I couldn't help but draw this to Babs' attention.

It was the ever-online-vigilence of @FrogsAreLovely and @PierreLucDaoust who brought it to my attention.

You may recall that last week Kay Mère wrote tedious fawning glurge about Rona Ambrose, stopping short of nominating her for a humanitarian award for all her alleged achievements in the name of girls.

Jymn blogged about Ambrose's claim about a UN award, as she once again appropriated Malala Yousafzai's name for her own glory.

This is why Harper's CONtempt party needs to employ hundreds of communication flunkies throughout their government to lie about their "accomplishments".  And Babs Kay, nicely paid by the NatPo

Faux-semblant, lying lies and Attack Parrot speaking points, uttered high and low.

Barbara Kay Lies Again

Last night Barbara Kay and I had this exchange over her column and my response to it.

@fernhilldammit The 1989 Holly Howe study using a N.Y. IA registry has never been refuted or withdrawn.

— Barbara Kay (@BarbaraRKay) October 5, 2012

(The Howe study is the only link in her piece backing up her 'abortion causes breast cancer' lie.)

Withdrawing a paper is a very big deal indeed and rarely happens. But science consists of refutation and refinement. I was curious what others -- scientists and non-scientists -- had to say about this particular study.

First, I regular Googled 'H.L. Howe cancer abortion'.

The first non-sponsored link is to the abstract itself. (The sponsored link is to an abortion clinic.)

I checked only the first five pages containing 50 of the 1.5 million links. But those were all links to anti-choice or religious sites or known anti-choice so-called scientists like Joel Brind.

Then I Scholar Googled it, which says that it has 83 scholarly citations.

That seemed low in the face of 1.5 million links on regular Google, but too many for me to waste time on. Especially since more than 100 of the world's leading experts have already concluded that there is no elevated risk of breast cancer after abortion.

So I went to PubMed Center, aka the US National Library of Medicine, where it says that nine other papers in its collection cited it.

I checked them out. One was not related to breast cancer but to colorectal cancer, so I didn't bother. Two were by our pal Joel Brind, aka 'a leading advocate of the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, a theory rejected by major medical bodies'. I didn't bother with those either.

Of the remaining six, not one supported the Howe study and four specifically refuted it.

It seems to me that this study is so old and so oft-cited by the fetus fetishists that some researchers feel the need to at least nod at it in the References section.

Kinda the way someone writing a history of science would nod at phlogiston.

Barbara Kay is correct to say that the paper has not been withdrawn. But she's lying again when she says it has never been refuted.

This morning I asked Kay on Twitter if she stands behind only this study of the ones she links to in her column. No reply, but I'll update if there is one.

BONUS: Here's a real scientist taking on the BAD science of ABC (abortion-breast cancer) link. Fascinating and thorough.

Lies Canadian Journalists Tell

The conversation seems to have begun. What can consumers of Canadian journalism expect in the way of honesty?

If the recent (and ongoing?) Margaret Wente fustercluck is any indication, not much.

Today, there is another spectacular example of dishonesty, larded with bonus condescension.

In the National Post, Barbara Kay writes about abortion and informed consent.

First, check out the language.

Everyone has a different reason for killing her unwanted fetus. Reminding them of when life begins is not going to change their minds, even those who are killing them for gender reasons.

I think we need another approach. We should not be looking at regulations over women’s bodies, but at regulations over their minds. By that I mean we should consider imposing a set of regulations to ensure that when abortions take place, they are occurring in the light of informed consent. And we need an abortion registry to gather data. Almost everyone in this abortion debate is ridiculously under-informed.

She offers no proof for this blithe statement of universal ignorance at this point. (We'll get to her undercover work in a bit.)

Trust her. Women have no idea what they're doing when they seek abortions. And no one tells them anything.

Ms Kay offers examples of the kind of information withheld from the poor clueless women, consisting of the usual myths about abortion, without links or attribution.

For the following assertion, she offers two links.

Risk of death also increases with each abortion.

The first actually disproves the assertion and is, in fact, often cited by the pro-choice side. (Got her linkies mixed up maybe?)

Thus, between 1972 and 1978, women were about seven times more likely to die from childbirth than from legal abortion, with the gap increasing in the more recent years.

The next link is to an online only abstract for a study by our old pals Priscilla Coleman and David Reardon, and another we haven't heard of before, B.C. Calhoun.

Those first two names should ring alarm bells with regular DJ! readers. We remember
Priscilla Coleman, don't we? The BAD(biased, agenda-driven) scientist whose work is regularly slammed by real scientists. One recent study was found to be so fatally flawed in the service of the anti-choice cause that even the editor of the journal where it appeared agreed.

A study purporting to show a causal link between abortion and subsequent mental health problems has fundamental analytical errors that render its conclusions invalid, according to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Guttmacher Institute. This conclusion has been confirmed by the editor of the journal in which the study appeared. Most egregiously, the study, by Priscilla Coleman and colleagues, did not distinguish between mental health outcomes that occurred before abortions and those that occurred afterward, but still claimed to show a causal link between abortion and mental disorders.

We confidently expect that Coleman's colleagues will turn their attention to this one in due course.

Another link points to a Finnish study that Kay 'explains' in confusing prose also proves elevated mortality risk associated with abortion. I read it and it says nothing about actual causes of death, but is, in fact, concerned with the classification of maternal death.

Now the howler. I'm not going to link to the old 1989 chestnut claiming that abortion causes breast cancer.

This lie has been debunked so often and so thoroughly that any supposedly reputable newspaper that prints it should be taken out behind the woodshed and whupped.

Next, Kay says that she sent a 'sleuth' into three different abortion clinics who was either refused information or lied to.

Well. Barbara Kay says so.

She ends with:

That’s the route we should be going. Informed consent, a consultation in which all the information is discussed, including a stern discussion on gender-based abortion if necessary, a 24-48 hour reflection period, and an offer to view an ultrasound. Is that such a terrible affront to women? I don’t think so. It could in fact save them from a great deal of anguish later on. And if it saves a few babies from being killed, is that so terrible either?

Must regulate those benighted women's minds, eh?

Kay herself seems to be woefully ignorant of the 14-page (PDF available here) 'Induced Abortion Guidelines' issued by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada.

Here's what it says about 'counselling'.

Every woman seeking abortion should receive supportive and compassionate counselling on all the options available, including continuing the pregnancy and having the child adopted or seeking assistance should she wish to parent. Counselling should take place early enough to avoid any delays in the event the woman chooses to terminate the pregnancy. The counsellor should be free of personal bias and responsive to the woman’s circumstances.

If the woman chooses to terminate the pregnancy she must have the opportunity to fully understand the nature of the proposed procedure including the type of anaesthesia, safety, potential immediate and long-term complications, and side effects.

The patient needs to know that her care is completely confidential unless she is below the age of consent (see Informed Consent).

Contraceptive counselling, including risk behaviour and risk reduction strategies (including those to prevent sexually transmitted infections), before and after the termination is imperative to reduce the risk of recurrent unintended pregnancy. The advantages and disadvantages of available contraceptive methods that fit the individual woman’s needs, as well as when and how the method of choice will be initiated, should be explained. The physician must assure the patient of the availability of post-abortion counselling.

And here's the section on 'informed consent'.

It is essential to obtain the patient’s written consent for both medical and surgical methods of pregnancy termination. The physician must make sure that the woman understands the nature and the potential complications of the procedure and that she has the necessary information to make an informed decision.

If a minor presents for abortion accompanied by a parent, it is important to ensure the youth was not coerced and the decision is voluntary. In Canadian common law and in some provinces “age of consent” follows the “mature minor” rule: the legal right to make health care decisions depends on decision-making ability rather than age; in other provinces the age of consent is consistent with the age of majority.6 The key element is the minor’s competence and capacity to understand the consequences of the procedure and the potential for complications, not her chronological age. In provinces that have not adopted the mature minor rule, health care providers can treat minors when appropriate without parental involvement, as common law invariably overrides local legislation. However, there should be documentation that the health care provider discussed the importance of involving parents in health decisions, and there must also be a reasonable impression that the intervention is in the best interests of the minor. It is imperative that health care providers be aware of the laws of the province in which they work.

In short, Kay is lying.

She's lying about the risks of abortion.

She's lying about what information is offered to Canadian women.

This, of course, is nothing new.

But in the wake of Wente's public shaming, I'm wondering if there is anything to be done about it. Any body we can complain to?

We here at DJ! will continue to patiently document the lies, distortions, and scare-mongering of anti-choicers. Maybe we'll have to persist for a few more years, as Media Culpa did, before anyone pays any attention.

Oh well.

Asking For It, part 2

As Kay Mère has repeatedly demonstrated, not only is she tone deaf with regard to women's issues, her rigid rightwing blinkers also make her rabidly anti-feminist.

Over and over again she has clumsily yielded her hatred as a battering ram in situations requiring rational thinking and common sense judgement.

When she fixed her gaze upon the response to one tweet, she missed the basic message.

Don't rape.

It's that simple and basic. Responsibility and accountability for one's actions. No man - or woman, since sexual assault laws do not discriminate on the basis of gender - can justify forcibly coercing someone to have sex with them, no matter how their victim is clothed, or not.

But MASSIVE scold Kay mère has already designated the villains on this issue, the people she perpetually blames for all evil in society: feminists.

Can you identify how many kinds of wrong Kay shrieeeks about here?

Dressing like a slut – and nobody has to define it; we know it when we see it – may have started as an ironic fashion trend, the same as ripped jeans, but it has now become an activist costume, and strutting one’s sexual charms in a mimicry of prostitutes’ behaviour an act of political theatre.

What is forgotten in this “rights” performance is that real women — the ones most at risk of assault by men who crave their services but who have nothing but contempt for them as people — are being mocked. Most prostitutes would give their eye teeth to be “respectable” women wearing respectable clothing. They dress the way they do, because they have to. When women who don’t have to dress like prostitutes do so anyway, they are mocking society’s their most vulnerable sisters.

Strangely, Kay has nothing to say about the way Krista Ford and the members of the Lingerie Football League choose to dress, not even pronouncing judgement on whether their attire is "respectable" enough for Kay's impeccable standards of respectability.

Oh, and your piteous bleating about *mocking society's most vulnerable sisters*? Shove your faux-solidarity up your sanctimonious orifice, won't you?

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Kay and other enraged anti-feminist ladies against women embody Poe's Law.

To complement Barbara Kay's gynophobic views, I posted a trailer for a clever horror movie that explores what might happen if women evolved physiological weaponry that cut down rapists at the root of the problem.

BAD Journalism Makes Science BAD

Babs Kay has her pearls in a death grip again. And gives us a dandy example of how journalists *cough* either deliberately or simply stupidly misread reports resulting in biased, agenda-driven (BAD) science info.

First she provides a link to a recent study that finds increased risks of psychiatric problems for children born prematurely, or pre-term birth (PTB).

Then, gripping those pearls, she goes on to SHRIEEEK that abortion is a MASSIVE risk factor for PTB and rattles off a scary bunch of numbers from a study 'proving' it.

Interestingly, she does not provide a link to that study.

But commenter KentsKorrections does provide a link then proceeds to take Babsy out behind the woodshed in two comments.

He -- rather patiently I thought -- points out the fatal flaw in the MASSIVE numbers she cites.

BTW Odds ratios are NOT a measure of risk but of effect size (sorry for Wiki but it was easier to find a simple explanation for the issue).

"Odds ratios have often been confused with relative risk in medical literature. For non-statisticians, the odds ratio is a difficult concept to comprehend, and it gives a more impressive figure for the effect.[13] However, most authors consider that the relative risk is readily understood.[14] In one study, members of a national disease foundation were actually 3.5 times more likely than nonmembers to have heard of a common treatment for that disease - but the odds ratio was 24 and the paper stated that members were ‘more than 20-fold more likely to have heard of’ the treatment.[15] A study of papers published in two journals reported that 26% of the articles that used an odds ratio interpreted it as a risk ratio.[16]

This may reflect the simple process of uncomprehending authors choosing the most impressive-looking and publishable figure.[14] But its use may in some cases be deliberately deceptive.[17] It has been suggested that the odds ratio should only be presented as a measure of effect size when the risk ratio can not be estimated directly.[18]"

I am 100% behind providing as much information as we can to patients no matter what the procedure as everyone should be made aware of the risks. However it should be CLINICALLY RELEVANT. This is why we have doctors and not journalists deciding what information is relevant to disclose.

Good to see more volunteers stepping up in the BAD Science Watch.

UPDATE: Another snarky and informative comment from the appropriately named smarterthanyou.

You would think a crack journalist like Kay might take the time to look at a real consent form for abortion before she writes about the subject.  These consent forms are often much more comprehensive than your typical hospital consent form for any other procedure, and give women way more information than they typically get if continuing a pregnancy. (Nobody ever told me that peeing and pooping could be problematic and post-natal psychosis could be in my future. But I digress.)  

Why does she not name the studies she claims definitively prove her claims?  Consent forms typically state that which is proven and accepted in the medical community as fact. Consent forms may even stretch a bit and mention possible risks when the jury is still out. But in service to the truth and accuracy is helping their patients assess risk, they don't jump on every bad science claim that comes along, unlike the brilliant Postmedia writers such as Kay, Jonathan Kay, Fr. de Souza, Margaret Sommerville, Naomi LaKritz and Susan Martinuk.These anti-choice writers love to exploit every possible claim that abortion will cause every bad thing that ever happens to you after without question. They never saw an anti-abortion study they didn't like. They never question why these claims are not supported by any major medical organization like the SOGC, CMA, Canadian Cancer Society, or Health Canada. Anti-abortion studies have become an industry. Any academic who starts spitting them out can get instant play from the likes of the above mention writers, who are eager to jump on any bad news about abortion that supports their belief that all women should be forced to continue all pregnancies all the time, because they think so.

ALSO: KentsKorrections says both at NP and here in comments that he (she?) tried to post an argument-destroying link that wasn't allowed.

Bad Sex Lit Award

The official list is out.

Yet Barbara Kay is not one of the *winners*.

It's a shame, really. She should receive a life-long achievement award for bad sex writing in non-fiction.

Her arid, hectoring, astringent prose - which projects her deeply gynophobic fear and loathing of juicy, passionate, joyful women and the men who love them that way - is the very opposite of sex.

Rarely have I read such unbalanced and scolding screeds. Though misery loves company, I can't even imagine men who are drawn to Babs' particular brand of verbal abuse.

On the other hand, if one were contemplating entering a convent or a monastery, her turgid little pieces would certainly make life-long chastity and sexual abstinence appealing.

Two RWNJs shrieeek about Insite.

Yesterday someone asked on Twitter whether Windy Wente was really a columnist.

Our response was that some have presented evidence Mags is an accomplished plagiarist.

And now, Kay Mère steps forward, also clucking and flapping about Insite.

Who knew those two were twins, separated at birth yet both raised to become insufferable defenders of class entitlement and social privilege? They are classic examples of people who vote for the Contempt Party.

Mark my words, those two will next write anti-feminist screeds defending, fawning over the behaviour of Dominique Strauss-Kahn — with Mags helping herself to heaping sentences of glurge written elsewhere. Whereas Babs will proclaim the whole thing is proof of an international anti semitic plot, thus unwittingly allying herself with the loathsome Ann Coulter. (Click on the link, I'm not sending you to her tweet directly.)

A compassionate and moral defense of Insite can be read here, another in support of its efficacity here. And finally, today's Dan Gardner piece about Insite.

Barbara Kay would like to remind you she's not getting any.

This post was originally titled: "Why does Barbara Kay hate women's freedoms?" Then I took another look at the churlish, sour puss decorating her column and reconsidered. Because there's really no other reason for writing such a resentful, gynophobic screed.

It's a bizarre spin about a relatively reliable contraception. Does she really believe that contemporary women are so shallow that their 'happiness' rests on medication? Clearly Babs misses the pharmaceutical fog that Valium gave her peers, back then.

Instead of putting the focus on the fact it allows women to plan when to be pregnant (or not to be, ever) and couples to control their reproductive abilities so they can parent the children they want as best as they can, Kay quotes skewed research from the obscure Timothy Reichert - you could at least spell his name correctly, toots. As you can well imagine, Reichert's bloviations have become akin to the New Testament, over at LifeShite.

But in the final analysis, Babs is shrieeekkking at all those selfish, selfish, selfish!!! young women who turned down her son's Jonathan's invitation to be his baby mama, and to give her the grandchildren she wants, dammit!

Anti-feminist relay team.

Good grief. First it was La Mère Kay who had a full metal, shrieeeking melt-down in public view, by way of her hen scratchings and pecking in the Postal Nation and her surrogates' blogsites.

Now we learn from JJ in her blogpost about diversionary tactics that Naomi Lakritz has caught the baton and that she's merrily twirling it to the drumbeat of the approaching ReformaTory budget.

WTF? Oh right, the Special Olympics are still unfolding. (Correction - the Paralympics begin in mid-March.) I've just never realize there was a women's anti-feminist shotput throw and relay broad-jump event for strident screechy rightwing columnists way past their "best before" date.

"Anonymous" was a woman?

Anonymous was a woman. That pithy aphorism was found on buttons and stickers in the 1970s, as the formerly invisible contributions of women to art, literature, politics, religion and civilization came to light, were discussed in universities, and flooded popular culture.

Thus it's only appropriate to re-purpose it to wonder out loud who was the "anonymous" author of a malevolent op-ed at The (going) Postal Nation, as referenced by Canadian Cynic: I could swear it wasn't April 1.

Commenters observe that it walks and quacks like Barbara Kay. It certainly does have her smudgy fingerprints all over the place, in particular the lack of solid evidence and the overwrought rhetorical styling.

Will Mère Kay own up or evade taking responsibility for this trashy screech attacking Women's Studies programs in universities?

Kay Mère Has a Burr Up The Saddle.

Well, goodness gracious. From Canadian Cynic's: Heathers and courtesy of Dr Dawg, we discover that some people can dish it out - think of all the vile and mendacious invectives Babwa has rolled out against feminists - but can't take it.

And since those fresh horse puckies were too pungent for even The Postal Nation to publish, guess who got tasked to do so.

Yup. Best female friends forever. Until the Rapture, of course.

YWCA document gets little or no attention.

Perhaps they should have chosen a headline that screeched "honour" killings!

But unlike the rabid and pathologically anti-feminist Naomi Lakritz and Barbara Kay, the women of the YWCA don't profit from peddling cheap shots at human misery.

No, they're more the 'roll-up-your-sleeves and pitch in to help' type of gals. In this October 13 media release, they say:

A new report by YWCA Canada, the country's largest provider of shelter for women, calls on all three levels of government to coordinate policies on violence against women. Life Beyond Shelter, released today by YWCAs across the country, points to the causal connection between domestic violence and women's homelessness, highlighting poverty, housing, the legal environment, life in the North and the exclusion of marginalized women as critical barriers for women seeking to move beyond violence.

"Over 100,000 women and children enter shelters in Canada annually," says Paulette Senior, CEO of YWCA Canada. "They leave their homes, communities and jobs in a courageous effort to build a new life. And what happens once they leave the shelter? It's a long story of poverty, a struggle to provide for their children, and constant risk of homelessness. It doesn't have to be this way. This report is a game plan for change with a very clear message."

Life Beyond Shelter cites the implementation of coordinated policies at all three levels of government and across parallel jurisdictions as the only possibility for an effective national response. Policies must recognize the realities and vulnerabilities of women in Canada's north, and address the needs of Aboriginal women nationwide.

"Women and children need to live safely beyond shelter, with dignity, without fear of stalking, abuse and homelessness," says principal report researcher and family law expert Pamela Cross, "to achieve that, it is absolutely necessary for people at every level of government to collaborate."

"Shelters are the first and most immediate line of defence, but shelter is not a permanent solution," says Ann Decter, YWCA Canada's Director of Advocacy and Public Policy. "We need to stop violence before it starts, the same way we take the keys out of the hands of a driver who's been drinking. We need a broad change in attitude. Tens of thousands of women and children should not be forced into shelter each year."

Canada's YWCAs have a strong history of advocacy for women who find themselves in difficult circumstances. And the women's Ys have evolved, expanding the foundation of their volunteer membership and directing those resources to places where they're needed.

Neener, neener, man-hater

Think Barbara Kay will go into accusation mode over what was written in the Québec media, in response to the brutal murder of two children?

Un père qui en vient à tuer ses enfants agit souvent pour se «venger» d'une séparation qu'il refuse d'accepter, estiment des experts. «Pour l'homme qui pose un tel geste, c'est vu comme une solution. Il se dit qu'il va enlever à la mère ce qu'elle a de plus précieux au monde», explique le psychologue Pierre Faubert.

«C'est plus qu'une vengeance, c'est une attaque», ajoute-t-il.

Translation and summary: A father who kills his children is being vengeful, he is destroying what is most precious to the woman who is separating from him. It's payback and attack. Faubert goes on to suggest that more research be done into the phenomenon of fathers who murder their children to punish a spouse, to identify the causes of such behaviour and to determine why men feel that they are justified to behave in this manner.

Could the origins be attributed to fundamentalist religion? And patriarchal and misogynist ideology found in right-wing, social conservative, anti-feminist organizations such as the Conservative Party of Canada and R.E.A.L. women, perhaps?

Barbara Kay will not accuse male specialists of spreading misandry, of promoting hate against men. She reserves those special attacks for Margaret Atwood, whose success Kay obviously envies and tries to degrade through her petty and silly ranting.

OMFG! Shoot me now

I agree with Babs Kay on the Genocide Awareness Project, the subject of the current kerfuffle at the University of Calgary.

The piece is a speech Babs gave to an anti-choice group. Before trying to ingratiate herself with the fetus fetishists, she critiques anti-choice propaganda campaigns.

Beginning with the worst, I cannot think of anything more damaging amongst educated observers to the pro-life cause than the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) campaign, which draws a moral equivalence between abortion and the Holocaust.

You cannot build an argument on an analogy alone. In any debate, emotional arousal must be subordinated to rational persuasion.

You have, or should have, the political right to turn people off through shocking images (for that is largely the effect of this campaign). But you don't have the ethical right to exploit for mere rhetorical advantage a human tragedy with no logical, moral or historical relevance to abortion.

The GAP campaign is intellectually flawed because it extrapolates one detail from the Holocaust -- numbers killed -- and on that basis alone proclaims a moral equivalence.

But the point of the Holocaust is not the number of lives extinguished. Genocides aren't about numbers. They are about ideology-based hatred -- unchecked hatred for an identifiable minority group that serves to unite the persecuting majority group, and paves the way for its horrible consequences.

Unborn children are not a minority identity group, nor are abortions performed by political fiat for the purpose of furthering solidarity amongst some dominant group. Every abortion is an individual choice made by an individual woman. None of these women "hates" the potential child she aborts; they hate their situation. Most women who have abortions in fact go on to have children that they love. Nazis did not kill some Jews, and cultivate friendships with others; they hated and considered subhuman all Jews.

Moreover, you are not only describing the action of abortion as evil in this comparison, you are implying that women who abort, like Nazis, are evil people. There is neither truth nor dignity in accusing women of such moral turpitude.

Choose any factual perspective, you won't find a single moral parallel between the situations. And that is why it is not in your interest to pursue the campaign. Or in our mutual interest, because it stands in the way of an alliance between us.

I wonder if those who think the GAP campaign is defensible have really assessed the damaging image it creates in intelligent observers' minds. It brands you as people who feel passionately, but who do not think clearly. High emotion and the absence of reason are the marks of extremists and conspiracy theorists.

Your cause deserves better than the GAP campaign. Because the result -- and I think this is a very grave consequence for any movement -- is that thoughtful, educated people do not take you seriously. They do not respect your strategies for persuasion. You must consider whether the emotional impact of your message is so important to you that it is worth burning the narrow but sturdy bridge you could be using to reach people like me.

Let's recap, shall we? 'Damaging amongst educated observers', 'intellectually flawed', '[not] a single moral parallel', 'neither truth nor dignity', 'not think[ing] clearly'. Yup, and yet that is what the fetus fetishists set up on a university campus. Then, when the university, consisting as it does of 'educated observers', objected, the FFs shrieeked 'free speech'.

Gimme a break.

BONUS: Here's JJ and Antonia on the topic.