dream country

Yesterday, my boyfriend came across a poster for an anti-abortion rally, to be held here in Bergen on the 16th. He promptly showed it to me, and my gut reaction was to tear it down. I couldn't, however, as it had been put up on the inside of the window of an already-closed shop. I am actually tempted to go to the shop today and discreetly pull it down. When I voiced this desire to my boyfriend, he said something along the line of "we do have freedom of speech in this country, you know". Don't misunderstand, however, it was obvious that he disliked the contents of the poster as well.

These rallies are quite rare in Norway, because we don't have that many fundamental Christians, and I guess if they'd been more common, I wouldn't have reacted so strongly. And it can seem strange that I did react in that way, as I've never had an abortion.

But anyone presuming to have the right to tell me and the rest of the female population what to do with our bodies... This angers me to no end.

And in this case, I don't give a damn about freedom of speech.

Originally posted at auromheim.net

In Norway, every university student has to take a course in philosophy. It’s supposed to teach you to question what you learn and think for yourself. I took the course last semester, and though I felt it was dull and pointless at the time, I’m coming to appreciate it more and more.

The course is supposed to be angled towards the field you’re studying, so for the MatNat faculty, the course, especially the latter half, was focused on the field of science. We learnt about paradigms, Popper, etc… The most interesting for me, though, was a brief mention of feminism in relations to science.

Newer theories on science have proposed that, even in natural sciences, you can’t have completely objective observations. The observer affects the object being observed. And, of course, the interpretation of what is being observed will be affected by the person observing.

Yes, there is a point in here somewhere. Up till the last century, scientists have, pretty much, been men. And if you buy into the whole “aggressive male” stereotype, you can see how it has affected the way natural processes are described.

In my Organic Chemistry book, there are a lot of descriptions of reactions, and reaction mechanisms. There’s a lot of talk of electrons “attacking” atoms. It’s a completely innocent way of describing what is happening, but it is also interesting to look at in connection to the previously mentioned male domination in natural sciences, and male/female stereotypes.

A woman might describe the electrons as “reaching out for” the atom?

Happy International Women's Day!

edited to add: In Russia this day is a national holiday! That's just awesome. :D

Ages back, I rambled a bit about how much I loved reading teenage magazines. They were mindless entertainment.

Well, now my respect for one of them has grown a bit. I bought last month's issue of [mag], and ended up staring at the bikini-montage with a big grin on my face. The models weren't skinny. You could see clearly that they had some fat on them - though they were still slim. Just like that, [mag] took over as my favourite teen magazine.

Then, in this month's issue, you of course had a letter from a reader exclaiming over how great it was that they'd used "normal" models. The magazine's reply heightened my respect even more. They'd put a lot of work into finding those models, and also said they were proud to be a magazine that refused to support dieting (though they still support working out for health reasons).

I hope they'll keep up the good work. :D

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4513805.stm

Brazil had to turn down AIDS-funds from the US because to get the money they had to agree not to use it to treat prostitutes. Because goodness knows the US doesn't want to be supporting prostitution!

This is an obvious variation of the "you got yourself into it, you can get yourself out"-theme. It makes me sick. Not to mention because nothing in that agreement said anything about the customers. Oh, yeah, the men can get treated, but the women can just get sick and die because they were foolish enough to get themselves into that situation. It's not like any of them were forced or anything. >_<

I am so glad that I don't live in the States.