Lets read the bible together!

Theres one in every hotel room in the world....
in every house....
its meant to be our moral compass....

Yet how much do we know about the greatest book on Earth aka The Bible.

In fact hardly any religous people I know have even read past the first page,but once you get passed all that boring apple and snake bit it gets rather riviting!

So, Welcome to my weekly Bible group! Each week I will be delving into this fascinating read book by book.

This week we start with Deuteronomy.

Deuts is the fifth book in The Old Testament.It is thought that it is the Word of God as given to Moses. The bulk of the book is made up of Moses sermons.
Moses is considered one of the most important prophets in Christianity.

Here are some of my favourite picks from Deutoronomy:

Deuteronomy 21:10-13 describes how a soldier can force a woman captive to marry him without regard for her wishes.

"When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the LORD thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife.

Deuteronomy 22:28-29 requires that a virgin woman who has been raped must marry her attacker, no matter what her feelings are towards the rapist.

"If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife...."

Deuteronomy 24:1 describes the procedure for obtaining a divorce. This can only be initiated by the husband, not by the wife:

"When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house."

Deuteronomy 25:5-10: states that if a woman is widowed, she would be required to marry her former brother-in-law. This was called a "levirate" marriage. Their first-born son will later be considered to be the son of the deceased husband. The man could refuse to marry her. Women were not given a choice in the matter.

" If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her."

Deuteronomy 25:11: If two men are fighting, and the wife of one of them grabs the other man's testicles, her hand is to be chopped off. There is no penalty if a male relative were to grab the other man.

"When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets. Then thou shalt cut off her hand..."

The Anti Room

People, you must check out this seriously good blog called "The Anti Room" which was recommended to me.

http://theantiroom.wordpress.com/

Their blurb:

Welcome to the Anti-Room, the home of many Irish ladies writing about everything from fashion to feminism, pop culture to politics, and lots of things we haven’t even thought of yet. The Anti-Room was founded in 2008 by four Dublin-based journalists, including Anna Carey, Edel Coffey and Sinéad Gleeson, who initially wrote under pseudonyms. Now the blog has expanded to welcome a wide range of regular contributors

Isn't armpit hair natural (part deux)

Those naughty minxes at Sure are at it again!

This time they've targetted songstress Alexandra Burke to flog their anti-stinky sprays.

Alexandra is looking very freakish and unhuman like in the adverts, with not a hair on her body in sight. So I've photoshopped her back to her natural,womanly,beautiful state of hair on her armpits and legs.

Come on Ireland!!

The Irish Women Under 17's soccer team is through to the UEFA Championship final after beating Germany 1-0.

It's some achievement and I'll definitely be tuning into Eurosport this Saturday , 26th June. at 12.30pm to support the girls in green!


http://www.fai.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=101057&catid=11&Itemid=20

Sending Sexism to the Sin Bin.

So Hunky Dorys came out with a new advertising campaign last week which seriously pissed me off,and has put Hunky Dorys on my 'never to buy again' list.

As previous posts will indicate I am very passionate about the rampantsexism that exists in Ireland when it comes to women and sports,something I think that was exemplified by the Hunky Dorys ad camapign.
Women are valued more in our society as sex objects than athletes,something which Is so frustrating to the thousands of female rugby players in Ireland who get little to no funding,acknowledgment or respect for their sport and have to deal with constant offensive remarks about their sexuality and gender.

As usual the media debate centred around the concept that 'sex sell's' and so the people at Hunky Dorys are being rather clever actually......... What a load of Bullsh*t! This is NOT SEX,but women bodies being USED as sex objects. Advertising exec's must be having REALLY bad sex If they can compare the full sexual sensory experience to a two dimensional picture of some women holding a rugby ball.

I'm not a massive fan of making formal compaints to goverment bodies,as advertising companies feed off this sort of exposure. How sick must an industry be to push the boundaries to try and be offensive to as many people as the can to maximise their exposure to sell their shitty crisps?



I decided therefore to take matters into my own hands and, with the help of my feminist friend John, we tried to highlight the sexist nature of the ad's in city centre locations.

Two little gems

I first came across this tune on 'The Wonder Boys' soundtrack, which aside from 'The Blues Brothers' , is one of my favourite all time film soundtracks.

Theres just something about it that sends shivers down my spine. It's the perfect song to have a real slow,sensual dance with someone you want to be really,really close too.



The Second video I'm going to put up, especially for St.Patricks day, is one of my favourite Irish tunes of all time.
It has special resonance for me as I grew up watching first hand the massive effect emigration had on so many Irish men and women. The lyrics

And I'll never go home now beacuse of the shame, a misfits reflection in a shopwindow pane

make me remember all the lonely Irish men trying to find life at the bottom of a bottle that I saw while growing up in Cricklewood.

Ageing Beauty

I think this is one of the most beautiful prose written on ageing women. It really does make me look forward to my older face!

“You could see the signs of female ageing as diseased… Or you could see that if a woman is healthy she lives to grow old; as she thrives, she reacts and speaks and shows emotion, and grows into her face. Lines trace her thought and radiate from the corners of her eyes after decades of laughter, closing together like fans as she smiles. You could call the lines a network of ‘serious lesions,’ or you could see that in a precise calligraphy, thought has etched marks of concentration between her brows, and drawn across her forehead the horizontal creases of surprise, delight, compassion and good talk. A lifetime of kissing, of speaking and weeping, shows expressively around a mouth scored like a leaf in motion. The skin loosens on her face and throat, giving her features a setting of sensual dignity; her features grow stronger as she does. She has looked around in her life, and it shows. When grey and white reflect in her hair, you could call it a dirty secret or you could call it silver or moonlight. Her body fills into itself, taking on gravity like a bather breasting water, growing generous with the rest of her. The darkening under her eyes, the weight of her lids, their minute cross-hatching, reveal that what she has been part of has left in her its complexity and richness. She is darker, stronger, looser, tougher, sexier. The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold. Or, if your ad revenue… depend[s] on it, it is an operable condition.”

Naomi Wolf - The Beauty Myth

Isn't armpit hair natural?

Theres been an advert running for the last few weeks both on TV screens and on billboards thats been really irking me.
Its for 'Sure NaturalMinerals' deodorant. The advertising camapign focuses heavily on just how natural the product is, with a model jumping over streams,rivers and waving her armpits around in the middle of fields trying to appear all back to nature and etheral.

Anyway, the whole camapign has struck me at just how UNNATURAL the model looked. Her armpits and legs are tanned and waxed to within an inch of their life? When did we start equating women waxed limbs as 'natural'?

If Sure really want to promote a 'natural' deodrant then maybe the should show a natural women as well, armpit hair and all!

Drop the Dumb Teddy

You can just imagine Western reporters doing this in Haiti as we speak......

What's a GAA to do?

Nothing beats a good GAA match.
The weeks before the match when the whole town is abuzz with excitment , colours, pagenatry, excitement and endless pre analysis before the big game. The trip down to Pairc ui Chaoimh or up to Croker with horns a beeping and flags a waving. The rush and adrenaline pumping as you walk passed Barrys and down past Jurys waving and stopping to meet neighbours,old adversaries and new friends. Eating squashed sanwhiches and lukewarm flasked tea out of the boot of a car, Laughing as the stewards mess up Plan A again;
Ok Il stop before this turns into a poormans Billy Keane monolouge but you get the idea. Whatever gender,race,creed or age nothing beats a GAA match day.

I think when it comes to women and their involvement in sport the GAA is an exemplary sporting organisation. There is just as many ladies on the terraces and in the stands all whom can tell their Gooch's from there Gouldings. Unlike football and rugby, female GAA fans are treated with a bit of respect. Its one of the things I like most about the sport.
And then last Friday this happened and made it into every major newspaper in the land......






As a GAA women I was more than slightly peeved of at this. It was incredibly patronising getting hired models to pose beside the Waterford players when there are thousands of accomplished Camogie and ladies football players:Yet they will never ever get a chance to appear in the Sports pages as they dont fit the Western mould of what is 'attractive'. Its a kick in the teeth to all female athletes, who despite their talent and dedication recieve little recognition from the media. It seems the only way Women's pictures can make it into the sports pages is If they are a WAG, a 'hot' spectator, or an attractive tennis player.

I decided to air my grievances in my usual way over on http://www.boards.ie/ (great for a general rant or laugh!) As usual when anyone raises a bit of critisism over the use of women's bodies in the media I got hit with a barage of well, 'sex sells'.

There seems to me two things wrong with this line of argument:

Firstly, that is not sex sellling but women bodies being used as sexual objects.

Secondly,Is that really what represents 'sex' in 21st centurey Ireland? Sex is probably the most interesting thing we humans have...and this is what we have reduced it to? Blonde hair extensions, full makeup, fake tan ,with no discernible talent except to pose? Sex with all its intricities,intimicys eroticisms, taste,touch, sensations, feelings, emotions,varied and multiple turn on's; yet those two blonde girls embody 'sex', Since many people appear to believe they are selling it?

Open any newspaper and you’ll find scant coverage of any women’s sport. The usual arguments which surface to defend this situation include: women aren’t interested in sport, only men read the sports pages, women’s sport is of a lower standard, women’s sport is boring, and so on. But these are all circular arguments. The sports pages are designed for a male audience and alienate women in various ways. Targeting an entire section of the newspaper at men while excluding women, and then claiming women aren’t interested, is illogical. And if sports coverage was more balanced between men and women, greater funding and resources would be invested in women’s sports and the standard would be raised.



So I decided to do a little experiment as I feel the blatant sexism in sport reporting has to be addressed now for future generations.
I have been buying the Irish Times, The Irish Independent and The Sun from Friday last (15th Jan) to this this Friday ( 22nd Feb) to try and get a picture of the medias reporting when it comes to womens sport. I will report back in due course but at the mo It aint lookin good for womankind..........

Undercover at a Limerick rogue crisis pregnancy agency

From the IFPA rogue abortion agency factsheet :

"Individuals can fight RCPAs by providing testimony about their experience and the danger and harm caused by RCPA's. TD's and other elected representatives also can be educated through letters, emails, faxes, phone calls, and visits from's resource centre"

For the purposes of educating myself and others on rogue pregnancy agencies this is my account of my experience at the WRC (Women's Resource Centre). To discover the truth I had to pretend to be five weeks pregnant and also used a pseudoname . All articles were given to me by the WRC. This is my complete account......... On Monday the 12th of March I rang the WRC saying I was 5 weeks pregnant and needed to talk to someone. I was asked where would suit me best for a consult. I was confused as I thought there was only a centre in Dublin but I said I'd prefer Limerick If at all possible. She said they had one counsellor in Limerick who deals with women from the comfortable and private environment of her home due.So I made an appointment to see her. During the week I got a phone call from the Limerick counsellor called Etna. She said It was difficult to find her house so we decided to meet at 12 outside the crescent shopping centre the week after ,March 24th. As I stood there waiting for her on Saturday morning I was terrified. How would I know who Etna was? Where was she going to take me? Would she see through my 'pregnancy'? Would I be safe getting into a strangers car? I then thought of all the women and young girls who had stood their before me a lot more scared then I was. I was only pretending to be going through a crisis pregnancy but for those here before this was real. It was Etna who they turned to for help. So I prayed that she wouldn't follow the past history of the Dublin branch of WRC by using scare tactics and false information to dissuade women from having a termination. I was shocked when Etna arrived. She was young (30ish),pretty,nice and caring person. We got into her car and drove to her house in Dooradoyle. We didn't talk at all in the car. At her house she asked me to fill out some personal info such as when I got my last period,any history of pregnancy,miscarriage etc. After this she asked me how I was feeling. I said I was 6 weeks pregnant,in my last year of college and I just couldn't imagine having a baby at this stage of my life. I said the only option I could think of for me at the moment was abortion.I said how I couldn't believe that It had happened as we were safe and used a condom. She told me that condoms have only a 50% effectivity rate. I went on to say that I couldn't tell my parents and my boyfriend of a year,John,was not ready to be a father. She asked me If I was still with my boyfriend and I said yes. I said I was worried that my parents had guessed I was pregnant and she said that most women don't show pregnancy at all. At this point she said she would leave me alone for 5 minutes to watch a video on the abortion procedure . (After trailing the internet I found it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipjhC0WfL9Q (stopped at 6mins, the voiceover part at the beginning was not shown). The video showed an experienced gynecologist standing in front of a tray of surgical instruments used in terminations. The doctor went onto explain how you would terminate a baby at week 6 gestation. She showed a catheter with a pointed suction tube on the end and It was explained how the contents of the uterus were sucked down the tube.It was also pointed out how the pointed tube can cause perforation and bleeding of the uterus. Etna then came back into the room and asked me how I was feeling. I said that I was confused and I didn't know what to do. I said I was scared of having an operation cos I dont like needles and things like that. She then showed me the form I would have to complete before the operation pointing out the clause that 'death' is a huge risk and the surgeon will not be held responsible for this.

She then showed me this graph of how many people die from terminations compared to a full term pregnancy. She then handed me a sheet showing all the physical and psychological effects of terminations. She in particular pointed out 'suicidal impulses' and told me of a girl in America who had an abortion and committed suicide 2 weeks later. (At the beginning of the consult I had told her I was on antidepressants and had been for a year.Also during the consult I was in a fragile,distressed state and openly crying at many stages). After this she told me of the huge increase in breast cancer I will have after an abortion and gave me a sheet of numerous studies (all from the 80's) pointing out these 'facts'.

After all this she once again asked me how I was feeling. I siad I was just really confused. She then asked me what I thought pregnancy was.I said it was a baby growing inside someone. She then asked me what I thought abortion was.I said It was getting rid of the baby. She then asked me would I be able to live with myself knowing I had killed my first born. She then showed me a video of what my baby looks like at the moment. It was an ultrasound of a little fetus doing little jumps with a little heart beat.The video was very cute as It showed the baby jumping around and waving (pretty amazing for a 5 week fetus!). After this video she handed me a little plastic figure of 'my baby' and she showed me a picture of what It looks like. Beside it she showed me two pictures of what my baby would look like after the abortion. She also showed me pictures of body parts in a rubbish bin which really is too horrific to show. I said I was worried because a termination was what me and my boyfriend had decided on.I said I would be scared he'd leave me If I didn't get a termination. She then showed me this and said that the majority of relationships break up after an abortion.

I said I just couldn't tell my parents I was pregnant as they would be really upset with me. She said that most parents take the news well and how would I feel in ten years time when I was telling my parents I had killed their first grand child. I said how I had just finished college and I wanted to go away travelling for a year and have freedom but I cant do this If I have a baby. She agreed and asked me would be able to go away If I had breast cancer or severe depression? I said then that I would just have to speak to my boyfriend about it and the consult ended there. Just for those who are unsure what to make of this let me explain. This agency describes themselves as giving impartial advice on all all options in crisis pregnancy. This is not what I received. I felt at the end of my consult Etna did not care how I was feeling or how I would cope but just pleased that she managed to change my mind on abortion. Family planning agencies should be impartial,honest and there for the good of the patient. They should not give out leaflets on information that is completely untrue. I have forwarded my account to the family planning agencies,dail representatives and the womens council of Ireland. Hopefully with more of these accounts we can get decent regulation of these rogue agencies.