h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks Emily. It will.

~A~

As I see the raping part has been modified. Good, the most repugnant part of this piece of writing was removed.
(Perhaps I got a little carried away in my posting before)

As to the rest of the entry: In my opinion it is not well researched and also not well written. I do not think that some changes and a little redactional cosmetics will help. (Precise comments and suggestions can be found within this thread)

I think the author would have to rewrite and re-research many parts of the entry before submitting it to the PR again.

But then again... this is just me and my opinion.

HELL

Pegasub,

Will get in touch soon on both subjects. If you want to know more, see my 'space', go to my index page, read under 'Therapy-Poetry'.

That goes well more than double for the writer of the above article, which if I were not drugged beyond recognition because of just having been discharged from hospital after a teensy respiratory arrest, I would stomp flat.

Uhh, Roman Catholicism, or indeed any branch of Christianity, is not a 'derogation'. Where did the writer come up with that weird choice of word? Roman Catholicism is not even a 'Denomination' which is the correct word for divisions among Non-COE Protestants.

Abortion laws in vary, literally from municipality to municipality, here in the States.

In the States, if the gender of the foetus is known, female foeti are four times as likely as male foeti to be aborted.

I was pregnant by my father twice, once at just under the age of eleven (11) years, in which instance he provided a chemical abortifacient (the use of which, including RU-486, is excruciatingly painful, and can cause nightmarish long-term complications... it is not simply 'popping a pill', it is followed by several days of haemorrage, and if the blood-loss is not controlled, can be fatal... it must be agreeable to never have had to think of these things.)

The second time I was pregnant by my father, I was 16. Both pregnancies were deliberate on his part. The second time, I had no money, and nowhere to turn to, and didn't much care whether I lived or died. I KNEW that being pregnant for any amount of time with my father's child would feel like being raped by him, around the clock, regardless of whether or not the foetus was viable. If I had not chosen to take a chance on living, by 'terminating' (KILLING, the word I would use is KILLING, in this context) *another* child of that man's begetting, who didn't ask to be born, any more than I had done, I should have thrown myself in front of a moving train, and ended two lives, and not just one. I was there first. That does not make me cavalier or casual about abortion. On the contrary. It was, with the exception of two other episodes in my fairly horrendous life, the worst thing I was ever forced into a corner and given no choice except to do or die, or do and die. When you are 16 years old, and your options are knitting needles and kitchen implements, or pregnancy with a child by your father, your life basically sucks.

Rape is an act of violence. Rape is not 'nonconsensual sex'. Rape is not 'an accident'. Rape is violence inflicted deliberately by a person/s (gender irrelevant) on another person/s (likewise gender irrelevant) to demonstrate power over, humiliation of, ownership, and control of the life of the other person/s. Barton, I'm surprised at you for your naivete. If a male were accosted by a sufficient number of male toughs, who wanted to humiliate him (this happens to gay men ALL THE TIME), they would rape him.

If you, author, cannot feature that, you are not clever enough to be online by yourself. What physical parts are involved in rape is IRRELEVANT. My hand can caress a face with affection, or smash a face in rage. One is an act of tenderness, the other of violence. Castrated convicted rapists, once released, frequently commit recidivist crimes using *objects* to commit their acts of violence, since the organ they used to use is no longer available. THIS is one of the many reasons that castration is not considered any sort of appropriate way to handle sex-offenders.

Since well over 90% of rape and incest goes unreported, worldwide, it follows that the pregnancies that come out of those crimes, also go unreported. I couldn't just pop down to the old Abortion-clinic and say, 'Hey, I have this minor nuisance I need you to clear up'. To have done so would have been to expose myself to life-theatening danger from the dangerous crazy SOB who sired me, and the child growing in me. I did not have the money. I was legally a minor, and many places require parental permission before they will do even an early-term abortion on a minor.

I am utterly appalled at the complete lack of humanity with which you, the writer of this uninformed and uninformative article showed in your style, content, and how you arrived at what to say.

Lucinda is right, 'hysterotomy' and 'hysterectomy' are two entirely different operations: '-otomy' (as in 'lobotomy') signifies the removal of something which someone perceives as undesirable for a number of reasons; '-ectomy' (as in 'appendectomy') is the removal of an organ, usually because it is diseased.

Caesarian section is utterly irrelevant.

Kudos to whoever pointed out that one in four pregnancies end up as spontaneous abortions!

Incidentally, if anyone is labouring under the misapprehension that rape is Stranger Jumps out of Bushes and Attacks Female for 15 Minutes, I was trained by the local Rape Crisis Centre. The average (meaning typical, or usual) rape lasts between 4-8 HOURS. The perpetrator is known to the victim in over 80% of cases. 35% of all rapes occur in the victim's home. And anyone who thinks rape and incest are different, is missing the extremely obvious point that while all rape is not incest, all incest is rape. In the States, and I doubt the UK is much better, one out of three girls, and one out of four boys, is sexually abused before the age of 18 by an adult in a position of trust. These are the conservative, law-enforcement statistics, which do not take into account all the unreported rapes, which is 90% of them.

Sexual violence is hate-crime. It is not different from bashing homosexuals because they are who they are. It is not different from killing people of African, or Indian-Subcontinental ancestry just because of racism. It is not different from shooting a Roman Catholic for the Church of England, or vice-versa. Hate-crime depends upon one thing and one thing only: the object of the crime is just an object, to be used in whatever way the criminal wants to use that object. Boys and men live with this, too (where the idiots started the notion that 'no one can rape a man' I will never understand, but I really do not understand men, today, now, here, who cannot grasp that a sufficient number of violently inclined people (including -- though this is very rare with adult males -- female people) can rape any man or boy anally, without very much difficulty. The big rapists in the prisons are not self-identified 'homosexuals'. Homosexual men, in prison, are just 'everybody's woman'.

FINALLY, and I am saying this in a public forum, because I am sickened and outraged by this double-standard, as it exists in the States, and evidently the UK as well: the 'other' ways of aborting babies have, historically worked quite well, thank you. Man finds out woman is pregnant, and bashes her into miscarriage. Man finds out woman is pregnant, and throws her down several flights of stairs. Man finds out woman is pregnant, and shoots her dead. Man gets more and more upset by visibly growing pregnancy, and takes lead pipe to woman's belly (and not incidentally kills foetus). Man finds out woman is pregnant and poisons her. Man finds out woman is pregnant, and introduces, via stab wound or by whatever means, ammonia into uterus. THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON SINCE RECORDED HISTORY.

There is a revolting double-standard that says women are making a 'choice'. Men have *always* made that choice, and in thirty some odd years of reading literature on the subject, I have yet to hear one anti-abortion fanatic point to those brutal men, and call them 'abortionists'. My father forced me to drink that abortifacient, and I was positive I was dying from the pain, the haemorrhaging, and the contractions. It took 12 hours for the thing to work. During that time, I just wished it would kill me, too, NOW please.

Females are objectified. Therefore, sex-crimes can happen. And they do. And I, given my background, feel as though I were just on the receiving end of one! Reading that 'article' was absolutely dirtying. Evidently the author has no women about whom he cares, never imagined sexual violence can and does happen to adult men, and is under the illusion that he can provide a 'public service' to those of us who have KNOWN and LIVED this experience by writing dry, unfeeling banalities.

I'll give you dry, unfeeling banality: because of the damage I did to my body, in performing that abortion at the age of 16, I required a hysterectomy at 28. Since then, I have been as sterile as the room in which they cut me open.

Unbelieving... horror-stricken... appalled... nauseated... outraged...
No, you were not qualified to write on the subject.

Pegasub, email me if you like. I'd like. I feel as though I'd been physically assaulted. Deja vu all over again.

How is it possible, or is it possible, to get this piece of hate-speech removed from the Guide? I assume anyone who wrote something to the effect of 'The Nazis Were Right, and This Is Why' would probably come under some very close scrutiny? This is just woman-hating, which is older, more primitive, less frequently acknowledged as a hate-crime, but is the Original hate-crime after infanticide.

Here we have both. I'm so pleased.

Need to vomit. Can't vomit. Need support. Need to run, hide... all messed up and no one to garrote.

Arpeggio on behalf of all Js, of LeKZ
Praying... prayin... prayi... pray... prey.

Hell,

The author can re-research and re-write all it wants. Since it hasn't the first inklings of a beginning of how to get a clue, no number of revisions will serve any purpose whatsoever.

But that's just my opinion.

Arpeggio

...it confuses people into believing they're being permanently sterilised.

9 words. You buy the plane tickets. I'll crash at your place. We can trade nail polish.

Arpeggio, trying to get as unsick as possible before attempting sleep.

Lucinda,

Re your post #16. What you said. 'Hear hear'. Amen and thank you.

Arpeggio

still very, very upset and just leetle bit androcidal toward one particular andros.

Arpeggio,

My first posting to this repugnant entry was found to be violating the HOUSE RULES. I was very explicit in my thoughts then - In the second one (the one you commented) I decided to be more cautious and factual, so maybe that is why I was formulating my utter disgust toward this article with more caution.

What I mean is basically what you have said: No number of revisions and corrections will ever save this piece of entry from the bin.

HELL

The author is particularly unlikely to get a clue on this subject, since they've now left h2g2 - or at least, their last post was early January 2000. So, as tempting as it might be, we should probably back off on that lynch mob... {"dang", says Xanthia, "and after I went to all that trouble to learn how to do a hangman's knot"}

Best of luck with the entry and the project in general, Pegasus. I hope you get lots of help from all the people here, and make a fantastic set of entries to put this ugly memory behind us!

Urrr... Then who the heck changed the entry?

Who must be activated to remove this article and this thread from the PR?

I just went to the Author's Space, he's not come back to h2g2...

The inhouse editors changed the entry with, uh, 'encouragement' from the Scouts - making an exception to their normal rules.

The eventual destination of this entry is currently under semi-active review, as far as I'm aware. There are a number of alternative actions available to the italics, and they'll make a decision in due time, after reading what everyone has said and mulling it over. In the mean time, be patient...

Barton,

Re your post #11 on this thread, you said:

'I'll just step in here quickly to say that as a man (who's wife was raped previous to my meeting her and who's closest approximation to the experience of rape was having his appartment and personal space violated) that I too was offended by the casual and cold discussion and dismisal of the issue of rape.

My suggestion would be that you do not attempt to analyze the emotions a woman might feel having been violently assaulted with a sexual object. Neither you nor I are likely to every fully comprehend and empathize on more than a surface level.'

Surely you are aware that boys and men are raped quite regularly, (mostly by men, who mostly self-identify as 'heterosexual'). It does not really take that much imagination to picture a gun to your head, and some orders grunted at you in such a way that you know you have to comply, or die. I've worked with and talked with plenty of male incest and rape survivors. Because of the stupid nature of 'Macho Culture', there has always been this tittering, tittilating notion of some sexy babe, 'seducing' a man, and this being about as much rape as can happen to a man.

Wrong. Duh. It can be the price of a ride hitched. It can be the price of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It can be the result of having an all-purpose-pervert in or near the family. It can be the 'extra' after the beating with the broom handle, delivered by a vicious and demented person of either sex. Like all rape, the victim is afraid for his life. Like all rape, he doesn't know what to do.

It is understandable that a 6'5" man would not consider such a possibility realistic. As I pointed out to a man, when I was fundraising for the Metro Rape Crisis Centre, 'with your leg in that cast, what exactly would be your options?' Sheer numbers of attackers, or attackers with weapons, and the total *surprise* with which men regard rape, when it comes to themselves, are only some of the reasons why same-sex (NOT 'homosexual') rape is possible between men. Women are socialised to believe we are weak, and that this is more or less inevitable. Men, are socialised to believe it is *impossible*, which really messes up their heads, when it comes to the recovery part.

Females participate in approximately 30% of all child sexual abuse (US statistics) including sexual abuse of boys and girls. Since this is about POWER, and men usually don't perceive women as wanting power, this does not come readily to mind. Dreck rolls downhill. He comes home from a bad day at the lousy job, with the boss leaning on him. He smacks her about. She cannot fight him. She finds the nearest, oldest child to be violent toward. Or, she goes to find the totally outrageous 'comfort' she wants/needs from or with a child or children (gender irrelevant), and if she's as hate-poisoned as is likely, it ends up not being *snuggly*. My ex's she-parent was one of those, only more on a par with my own male parent.

In graduate school, in a course of Human Sexuality, one rather good-looking man of about 30 recounted the 'traumatic' experience of having been ogled and commented upon by some biker men, when he was about 17. The course was team-taught by a man and a woman. Male-prof looked at female-prof, and she said to our Young Handsom Macho Man: 'D___, I'm not a good-looking 17 year old boy. I'm a middle aged frump of a professor. What you described happens to me every time I step out of doors, 365 days a year'. All the women were nodding 'THANK YOU'. Then she said, 'So, have you never done that to a woman?' -- everyone knew he did, all the time. The laughter wasn't even muffled. He got very red-faced, and tried to backpedal about how 'this was different...'.

Right. And the male who raped this body when I was eighteen, to 'cure' my 'sick, perverted, abnormal lesbianism' was just doing society a favour. I've lost count of how many lesbian women I knew personally, who have been raped, in an effort to make them 'normal'.

If being sexually abused had anything to do with affectional orientation, there would not be a 13-15% population of lesbian women in the world. It would be about half. If being raped by men turned males into homosexuals, the percentage would be about 30-40%. And why would being raped by a man turn a woman away from men, and a man onto them? But that is the stereotype.... No, it makes no sense.

Sexual violence is ultimate intrusiveness and forced submission to control over WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR BODY. The 'fight' and 'don't fight' arguments ultimately come down to 'is this rapist GOING to kill me anyway?' In that case, fight; 'is this going to become a pattern?' In that case, fight; 'Am I in fear for my life?' (and no one I have ever spoken to has said s/he was not, at some point, afraid for her/his life). If yes, fight, unless you have *good* reason to believe that you can get away alive, by specifically NOT fighting.

Yes, sufficiently imaginative men, with empathy, and understanding, can take every humiliation, public, private, and personal, and add them all up, starting with the little 'accident' at age 2, at Services, going through every 'I'd really rather have a nice root-canal than go on a date with *you*', to every 'I bust my ass and get nowhere, and why am I running so fast and stuck?' roll all those feelings up into something hard and hateful, and place it somewhere where it HURTS a lot. That is roughly equivalent to one experience of being raped.

As far as abortion goes... this is going to sound unbelievably sexist, because it is, but I am glad and grateful that men don't have to decide whether to go through with childbirth or just hang the whole thing up. The species would have gone extinct about 9 million years ago. Women have higher pain threshholds, are used to changes in our bodies, do not react to paper cuts as if they were deliberate acts of aggression (feeble attempt at humour ), and are usually reasonably well prepared for things like childbirth.

I've forgotten who it was. Bill Cosby, I think, who said, 'my wife put it this way: grab hold of your lower lip with both hands. Now pull it up all the way over your head.'

Alternatively, (males in general) imagine that your testes are attached to your body by a 6" diameter, slightly elastic rope, about 12 foot long. Now get it tangled up in your overshoe with the hiking tread, and with every effort to get it untangled, yank more and harder and in weirder directions. Resort to a knife to help undo some of the worse knots. That, for say, 10 hours, is a teeny little trace of what it is like to perform an abortion on your own self, barring the gore.

Hammering this point home with the bluntest available instruments, and knowing these posts might be pulled/blocked. This is *not* impossible for a man to imagine. Not rape, not childbirth, not abortion, not stillbirth. Especially not rape. And anyone creative, who has attempted something that started out beautiful, and magical, and ended up with a dark, hideous monster version of whatever it was, or no version of whatever it was, or a version of something entirely different, can start to comprehend stillbirth and/or spontaneous abortions.

Unwanted pregnancy, in my case and that of many other people I have known: Cancer, only it's human, or could be, maybe. You can't clean it out without trauma at every level. Your body is doing its best to make room for this 'cancer'. And yet, it is not Right. It does not belong in your body. It is a disgusting alien thing, that is going to live off you, in you, parasitically, until it gets Out. 'Alien', the monster movie, the first one, did that pretty well.

The conflation/confusion of sex and violence is one of the worst things to have happened in human history. But where there are humans, and less-than-humans, and human is identified as 'he', and in G-d's image, and the other is, well other... what do you or anyone expect? I stick to Genesis One: (inclusive language intentional, because I do not believe the Divine looks like a male human) 'And G-d created humanity in G-d's own image, male and female created G-d them.' That is the older text. The rib thing was stuck in a good long while later, in Gen 3, and totaly contradicts Gen 1, but was useful for a foundation of a patriarchal status quo...

There. I've made all of this abstract enough that maybe now I can sleep. Maybe.

I used to be disgusted. Now I try to pretend I'm surprised.

Mostly Kassandra and Miriam for LeKZ

*feels empty space in wallet where his money should be*

Arpeggio - how do you feel about swimming over?

Lucinda,

Glad to know something is being done about this poisonous rubbish. I thought I felt bad on my way home from hospital, 7 hours ago. Very, very .

They do not make tranquillisers in quantities sufficient to calm me down, yet.

Humans. Such lovely beings.

Just barely this side hysteria

Arpeggio for LeKZ, who will never get over it... not that bit.

Why's this post up for PR, anyway? How'd it get back up? Seems it's been lying around collecting dust, which is more than it's worth, for some time now... Confused about the Rules.

Hell,

So sorry I missed your first posting... It probably would have helped me not go into quite such a tailspin.

Arpeggio

Swimming, like , or even ?

Heard it gets a trifle chilly in the Mid-Atlantic, just about any time of year. Nahh, you'll just have to raise the money at a Kiss-a-Thon.


Arpeggio, very wobbly, but with one leg starting to reconnect to planet... oh, S**t, this is planet Xod! Wrong flippin' planet! Try again.

Hangman's noose? Too unreliable. Nothing a quiet garrotting wouldn't take care of...

Dang. I was getting all excited about this wonderful Clean-Up the Earth operation, too!

Xanthia -- we don't have one, but it's a good name,
or Arpeggio

Bossel (Goo Berret) Keeper of Rubber Duckies said:
'I tend to disagree - the headline says it all, and this is an entry about the ways and methods of an abortion.'

About which the author said virtually nothing, or did that fact escape your attention, too? Even his factual information was inaccurate. See any/all later posts this thread, from the one to which I am replying.

Ways? Methods? Abortion is not quite the same are changing a tyre, or improving a fuel-injections system. It is also not similar in any way to computer programming, being an undertaker, plumbing, curating a museum, or being a PARENT.

What part of the 'ways and methods' was legitimate, properly phrased, accurate, fair, and helpful, in your opinion?

Arpeggio

mmm.... -a-Thon...

Entry got put forward for Peer Review by the author, as they are entitled to do. Yeah, it's been largely collecting dust - I guess people have been instinctively avoiding it, which is probably a good thing. Threads stay around in Peer Review until they get picked, or are moved elsewhere (generally the writing workshop) for one reason or another. It was previously judged by the moderators as borderline acceptable, but obviously the reaction here has changed that viewpoint. And so people learn.

It is a sad truth that many people have views of abortion which are (to me) very offensive. A while ago there was a talking point on the subject, and I had to leave quickly before I started casting Fire Ball . For those with a morbid curiosity about how the minds of anti-abortionists work, who don't mind reading a lot of highly offensive content, check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A472295 .

Uggh. Just knowing they're Out There isn't bad enough? We should go and lurk? We'd be triggered out to and so there'd be no hope at all.

We don't think Abortion is a Good Thing. We think it's a necessary evil. So long as one sex get to set the rules, and the other one (the baby having one) do not, where we don't have a voice, we must have a choice.

I can see their position. If I thought 'life' started at conception, I should be very conflicted indeed, instead of just badly conflicted . And if I could somehow work my way 'round the logic that the life of the woman carrying this, yes, potential future human (no, it isn't a cabbage, or an alien, or even a very slightly different species from human) is for some reason LESS important than, and relevant than, the potential life the putative human child would live, I might be able to accept some of their rhetoric/hysteria/propaganda. As it is, I like the bumper-sticker (assume you have same in UK under different name) that says 'If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?'

And, of course, nobody gives a teaspoon of spit about the *quality* of the lives they so righteously save.

Almost taking the body's mother to Sweden, for an abortion, when the male parent found out she was expecting me, was probably the very nicest thing he almost ever did for us.

It's the WOMEN who scare me! Brainwashed, colluding in own oppression. SKARY!

Drinking and still not lucid, but could probably spell Lucidna without any extra letters, at this point.

There are message bbs from which to run, not walk. False Memory Apologists are another *Not MY Battle* for us. 'Man-Boy Love' and other paedophilia likewise. The Internet cuts both ways. See our page of links for one particularly spectacular example of truly sickening no-class, no-taste, this ain't funny, , Internet Toxic Waste. After you've gone and looked, do be a dear and write to everyone you have ever heard of.

OW! Spilt some. This time with the down!

Arponthedgio

Arpeggio,

What I meant to say with my posting, and obviously failed, what that I was completely emotionally devestated by that break-in, BUT I realize that that can't be anything to approach what a woman must feel having been raped. That is still, undoubtedly, far short of any understsanding, but as you say, a man cannot know. The best I can do is *try* to understand. To do less, is to ignore the violence.

You called me naive, even earlier, as well and I have to admit that, though I knew that such a possibility existed, I had did not let that enter my mind at that time. As you say, being 6'5" and hefty, I have had little cause to fear such things. That doesn't mean it can't happen, just that my life has allowed me to live without that particular fear being a part of my everyday life.

Certainly, male society has treated women as property, breeding stock, and worse, as this discussion shows. I try to overcome my male-ness but that is obviously not possible. So, I must bow to you as victress (in a totally male turn of phrase.) What you have said, that a man can understand, I agree with. That which you have said which a man cannot understand, I must simply accept with the same sense of failure that has been that part of my life which has tried to understand what it is to be a woman. No one with a male body can ever understand.

I will continue to try.

Barton