Please Study

While unwinding this Christmas break (Happy Holidays everyone) I was drawn to my television to watch the trash that has overthrown The Learning Channel much like how the  Nazis invaded Poland. In other words my eyes were binging  and purging on “My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding.” Even though shows like this make me no longer want to associate myself with mankind, I suppose that there are lessons to learn. Well, in the form of study hard so you do not end up like these people, kind of way.

This particular episode of my cringe worthy guilty pleasure followed a pregnant 17-year-old, “gorger” named Amber, as she married Tommy, a Romany gypsy in West Virginia. I have two wishes after watching this episode. First, I hope that people abroad do not watch this only to ask, “what the fuck happened to America?” Secondly, I hope that young girls watch this and decide to focus on school work so that they do not grow up to have elaborate weddings that are followed by pushing out babies and an endless cycle cleaning of campers.

Everything about this episode appalled me.

First of all, why are you seventeen and pregnant? There are so many ways to not get pregnant, that teen pregnancy is just ridiculous. For teens who choose to be sexually active, there is the holy trinity of condoms, birth control, and the morning after pill. Then there are the less popular, and slightly revolting sponges, and female condoms. For god sake, they have apps for your smart phone that will tell  you your peak days of fertility so you can be extra careful. And of course there is abortion. I get that not everybody likes it, but a baby at seventeen, while not impossible, would make it incredibly difficult for someone to get an education that would lead to a lucrative career,
and self-sufficiency.

What I’m saying is, if you do get pregnant as a child, because I don’t care how much life experience you have, you’re not an adult at seventeen, you don’t have to get married. In my experience as a child of divorce, and whose friends are almost exclusively children of divorce, young marriages almost never work. What happens is you get married before you get to really know the person, because you took Romeo and Juliet from your freshman English class to the extreme and insisted that Shakespeare wrote it with your love life in mind. This leads to a wedding that is “like the funnest time ever, like everyone got sooooo wasted! Did you see my dress? Fab right?” Have a fun few years because you are young and so very in love. Next you turn to hobbies because you are miserable and act like a normal fifty year old would before you turn thirty. Before you know it, you’re in divorce court and both people try to reinvent themselves. In words that a seventeen year old can understand, it’s like leaving a party before it even gets started.  Just save yourself the stress and put on a damn condom. It’s the cheaper, less tiring option.

I have such a problem with the way that women are treated on this show. There whole lives they are being prepped to be the perfect housewife, nothing more. Tommy, Amber’s fiance, told her that, “we’re always gonna do what I want to do,” after she expressed her desires for a more stable family life down the road. I’m sorry, Tommy, but did you buy her at a slave auction, did you purchase Amber off of eBay, or Amazon perhaps? No you didn’t. You are about to enter a partnership with this girl, note I said girl, because she is a child. Important life decisions need to be made together, not by some punk who thinks he is God’s gift to women. Also, the men on this show fear that if they even touch a broom, they will spend some time in jail in the near future. That is the worst cop out I have ever heard to get out of cleaning. I would say they are children, but I’m pretty sure it would be redundant to say so.

What I want you to take away from this, is to know the importance of being able to be self-sufficient. It is important to be able to take care of your self. Work hard and you won’t have to worry about cleaning a camper everyday for the rest of your life, and living by the rules of a man. However, if you slack of and can’t take care of yourself, you are going to get trapped into a situation like this.

Photo Credits: tvlistings.zap2it.com

channelguidemagblog.com

And a special thank you to TLC for airing such gems on television. Keep up the good work.

Does Democracy Still Work in America?

Buy on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/American-Democracy-Still-Future-Series/dp/0300126107/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356270907&sr=8-1&keywords=does+democracy+still+work+in+america

Alan Wolfe asks, “Does American democracy still work?” The consensus of his book is that it does, but not in respect to the ideal liberalism that the country was founded upon.  This is the question that Wolfe, a political science professor at Boston College, set out to answer on the front cover. Wolfe asserts, with Fareed Zakaria as reference, that a democratic nation is not necessarily a liberal one. Liberalism, by definition, is fundamentally the idea that the government should be as non-intrusive as possible, holding a respect for pluralism, individualism and law. But, a democratic nation can vote for intrusion and disrespect. Yes, democracy is absolutely prevalent in America, yet it is not fulfilling liberalistic qualities, because American sentiment to government and politics has changed.

While Americans are consistently less politically active, politicians are decidedly more ideologically driven, creating a state of conflict in government based primarily on emotional sentiment to private lifestyles. Because of this, Americans are less informed, and find themselves turned off by politics all together. What is most compelling about Wolfe’s analysis is that politicians want this so that they can pass their agendas under the noses of a public that doesn’t give two shits about what happens to our country because they have been led to believe they have no affect on it.

Wolfe’s purpose of writing his book was to mobilize Americans to become interested in and educated on current affairs in order to shape the country they want by choosing representatives that signify their philosophies. He urges Americans to become active in their government and be a part of Democracy to create the country that they are proud to represent and live in. 

At Not Your Coffee Bitch, we aim to answer to this battle cry.

Success: Cosi Responds to Energy Efficiency

Late last month, I posted regarding COSI, a renowned Science Center in Columbus, Ohio. I urged them to look into energy efficiency and conservation involving their lighting system. Here is the response I received:

Dear Calley-

Thank you for your suggestions regarding lighting in our Adventure exhibition. We are always trying to improve the experience for our guests at COSI, so I have passed your information along to our exhibition design team for consideration. If they have questions I am certain they will be in touch.

Thanks again!

Sincerely,
Chuck Clark
Director of Guest Relations
614.228.2674 x2420
cclark@mail.cosi.org

—-

Thank you for furthering and supporting this important cause.

Check out the letter I sent here: https://notyourcoffeebitch.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/activism-in-action-bitch-fights-for-a-more-energy-efficent-museum/

-CN

Supreme Court Takes On LGBT Rights: Bitch’s Predictions

Today (Friday, December 7th, 2012) the Supreme Court announced that they’re going to be hearing two cases this March.

One is a challenge to constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, and the other is a challenge to California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage.

For those of you who aren’t savvy when it comes to LGBT rights legislation or just need a quick refresher, the Defense of Marriage Act (or DOMA) is the federal act, passed in 1996, that defined marriage as the legal union between one man and one woman for all federal purposes (including insurance benefits for government employees, immigration, or filing joint tax-returns), while Proposition 8 is a 2008 state constitutional amendment that banned gay marriage in California.

These cases mark the Supreme Court’s first entry into the gay marriage debate, and while the SCOTUS currently stands (or rather, sits) at a count of 5 conservatives to 4 liberals, it’s my prediction that the ruling will actually stand 6-3, invalidating both DOMA and Proposition 8.

The justification for this prediction is comes down to looking at the the past records of one conservative justice (Anthony Kennedy) and the motivations of another (Chief Justice Roberts)

Despite often being clumped in with the conservatives, Anthony Kennedy in many ways has been the flag bearer of LGBT rights in the last 16 years.

In fact, Kennedy wrote the opinions for the most significant pro-gay rights cases in history, Romer v. Evans (1996), where the court held that a Colorado constitutional amendment preventing gays from attaining protected status under the law was constitutional, and Lawrence v. Texas (2003) where the court held that states could not ban consensual homosexual sex as illegal sodomy.

Roberts, on the other hand, is going to be dipping his feet into his first major LGBT rights case as a supreme court justice. While Roberts is also usually clumped in with the conservatives, it’s usually justified. However, Roberts I think is forward looking enough to realize that these cases are both going to be incredibly historical cases, the LGBT equivalents to Brown v. Board of Education, and with the Healthcare ruling last year, I think Roberts has shown that he cares more about his legacy as Chief Justice than he does being a party line voter.

~~~~~~

So here is the prediction: It’s going to be a 6-3 vote on each case (or at least a 5-4 vote, if Roberts yields to his faction), invalidating DOMA and Proposition 8

Kennedy will write the opinion(s) as LGBT rights cases have largely become his legacy, and he will continue to use the rationale he used in Romer v. Evans, where he states that discrimination against homosexuals is not rationally related to a legitimate state interest. (Which is, not coincidentally, the language that the lower courts have used in their opinions invalidating the two pieces of legislation)

Scalia will write the dissent(s) (which Alito and Thomas will join) where he’ll say that there’s nothing in the Constitution about equal protection of marriage and will say that if the LGBT community wants constitutionally protected marriage, then they should pass an amendment changing the constitution rather than interpreting the constitution outside of its intended bounds (this is the same originalism argument that he used in Lawrence v. Texas, the very case I talked about earlier that Kennedy wrote the majority opinion for)

It’s hard to see the court’s decision to hear these cases as anything but a great thing for LGBT rights advocates everywhere. Even with the court composition as it is, it’s hard to imagine a situation in which the court upholds either of the two laws being presented, especially with Kennedy on the court. LGBT rights is his legacy, and the cases coming before them have been sent up the lower courts who have consistently found the challenged legislation illegal, using the exact same language Kennedy has been using for over a decade.

I imagine there will be a lot of happy couples in California and across the United States come this June (when the opinions will be released)

Independence is Sexy (to some)

A man doesn’t want a powerful and independent woman as a wife? So women should be more sexy? Isn’t it possible to be both Suzanne Venker?

I want to applaud Suzanne Venker for serving as the devil’s advocate to the feminist movement. She is in fact, a strong and independent woman for representing martial living, which is currently deemed out of style and over-rated in the minds of many people, including myself. Perhaps an article such as this would be mainstream half a century ago, but her editorial describing women’s “war on men” and her book How to Choose a Husband (And Make Peace with Marriage) are leaving many women upset, as it has been rapidly circulating around the internet this week. So why are people, especially women, upset? Venker’s argument glorifies the submissive and docile woman, riding the coattails of the Fifty Shades of Gray franchise.

A submissive woman in the house is not needed, especially today. Women, especially mothers have to organize a family’s schedule. In this way, women are nurturing and strong. I am not a mother, but I’ve watched mine and have concluded this: mothering is not for the faint at heart. There is no reason for a woman to be primarily submissive in the household except for to potentially please a man. This opens the door to male dominance and possible domestic abuse, leaving women feeling be-little by gender stereotypes and there lack of “femininity”. No wonder women are angry about Venker’s argument.

History tells us that women have been suppressed from the polls and the work force, submitting to the housewife role in the past. Today, women enjoy the right to vote, the right to be in control of their bodies, and the right to work out of the house in the same positions as men, with nearly an equal salary. Femininity is not a submissive trait, but one of strength and righteous.

That being said, there is really no war on men. There has been an exciting advent for equality that has overall, been successful and should be celebrated. Because of social advancement, women are more confident and independent. If that’s not attractive, I don’t know what is. I would like to argue that there are many men who appreciate powerful and strong women. As a woman, I appreciate a powerful and strong man. Venker’s editorial posses a problem of conflicting character types, not gender equality.

Women have been sold a script that women being feminine is weak…the same qualities you are going to use in the workplace aren’t the same as in a marriage. – Suzanne Venker

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/24/war-on-men/

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1993123442001/is-it-war-on-men-or-are-women-just-not-women-anymore?intcmp=related