Author Archives: Judith

Equal rights for all?

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Have you ever had one of those days where everything pissed you off?  Well, I’m having one of those days.  I can’t even feel good about helping in my intactivst endeavors, because all the other crap keeps getting in the way.

I guess it all boils down to that it’s Genital Integrity Awareness Week, but that’s being overshadowed by the US Congress hearing the pros and cons of same sex marriage.  One of the strongest voices in the intactivist movement was there, and when asked why he was demonstrating about RIC, he said that 99% of the intactivst movement agreed with the LGBT movement.  I have to admit that this offended me.  How dare he speak for the rest of us?  So only 1% of intactivists are against it? Where did that statistic come from?  I can tell you where. He pulled it out of his butt.

I personally don’t want to be tied to a group that I not only don’t agree with or support, but that has absolutely nothing to do with stopping routine infant circumcision.   The LGBT movement cries that they want equal rights, but they already do.  They have the exact same rights that I do.  We all can feel free to marry a member of the opposite sex. They merely want special rights.  They want to rewrite the definition of traditional marriage and destroy the concept of a true family forever. For those of you who want to disagree with me? That’s fine, and it’s your right. Just like it’s my right to voice my opinion here on my own blog.

RIC isn’t just about a person’s rights (or lack thereof) though, but so much more.  It’s about strapping an unwilling victim down and letting him scream in terror and pain as someone with a scalpel skins his penis.  Yes, skins it.  The foreskin amounts to most of a baby’s penis, especially since it is too small for any doctor (or whoever performs this procedure) to safely estimate how much to remove.  No one can know how that penis will grow or how much skin it needs to allow that growth.  And they don’t care.

If the LGBT community wants to use this same argument for equal rights, again, they do have the right to their whole body. They can misuse it as much as they want.  They can poke holes through it, tattoo it, and modify it to their heart’s content, just like the rest of us.  We intactivists merely want to grant baby boys that same right, when they are old enough to decide.  And if that baby boy grows up to be gay, he will still have the same rights to mutilate his own body as every other human does.  He just shouldn’t expect special rights.

Why do I disagree with same sex marriage?  Because it wasn’t so long ago, before the introduction of politically correctness, doctors and psychologists were honest about what homosexuality is…a dysfunction.  My husband studied it when he took anatomy and physiology, and he still knows it’s a dysfunction. In his own words every gay person he ever dealt with had some childhood trauma.  I won’t go into detail, since I would hate to start a virtual riot, but granting the right for anyone to marry anyone else is acknowledging that their dysfunction is acceptable, and that is a dangerous road to travel.  It can and will lead to worse things.  Let them have their civil unions, living wills and power’s of attorney, which gives them just about the same things married couples have.  And believe me, married people do not get tax breaks.  If I had filed separately this year, our total refund would have been higher! So stop using that as another red herring.

Let them do whatever they want in the privacy of their bedrooms, but I fear living in a society where it’s allowed to be made public and exposed to not only me, but also my son.  That would be the beginning of the end of our way of life.  And shit trickles downhill!  Everyone will suffer for it.

The bottom line is that I can no longer associate with a movement who thinks that we should also support same sex marriage. So I will no longer call myself an intactivist or associate with those who do.  This is tragic and sad, since I will forever oppose routine infant circumcision and those who support it.

 

 

My email response to Douglas S. Diekema, MD, Circumcision Taskforce

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For anyone following the AAP’s new stance on infant circumcision and the rest of the world’s doctors’ critique of it, one of the taskforce members, Douglas S. Diekema, MD, responded, seemingly on his own, with his own twisted version of events.  You can read that here: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2013/03/12/peds.2013-0081.full.pdf

This response so thoroughly sickened me that I had to write him, and here is the email I sent this morning to the address mentioned at the above link:

To diek@u.washington.edu
Subject culturally biased
Date Tue, Mar 26, 2013 07:23 AM
Mr. Diekema,

Yes, I deliberately left off the doctor in your title, since I only address people I respect as such. I just wanted to express my disgust at your ridiculous response to those many doctors from around the world that basically gave you and the rest of the circumcision taskforce a virtual slap across the face. The lot of you needed to be put in your place after changing your stance in August of last year. And for you to respond
that just because parents are starting to get educated and leaving their sons intact means YOU have reason to be unbiased? Well, that is just a load of…BS to put it nicely. Do not use the new statistics to fuel your perverted and/or greedy desire to mutilate newborn male genitals.

You should have left it at “let the parents decide”, but to go on and use lies
and manipulated data to back your agenda is beyond disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself. You and the rest of the taskforce need to rethink why you want to push this barbaric procedure on the innocent. Is it only for the money, or can you not deal with the idea of future men having something that you never had the chance to keep? I was able to protect my son from men like you, and it is my hope that eventually all sons will be
afforded the same protection…and respect.

I sincerely hope that someday soon, you and the rest of that taskforce of yours will follow along the same path as other circumcision proponents such as Vernon G. Quaintance. I look forward to that day with a big smile on my face.

Judith

If he responds, I will post an update, but I strongly encourage everyone to also email their outrage at this man for continuing to not only promote RIC but continuing to lie about its benefits as well as how being intact is more dangerous. Just by doing a simple search, it is easy to discover why the majority of this planet does not perform this unnecessary and risky procedure on their infants.  Again, SHAME on your Douglas Diekema and the rest of the circpervs on the AAP circumcision taskforce!

Pro-choice means you support a person’s choice!

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Ok, get ready for a vent, because here comes a big one.   A few days ago I friended a fellow intactivist on Facebook to help her out with a debate over a photo she posted that said, “Pro choice does not mean pro abortion”.  This inspired the pro-life people to attack her, so I thought I’d help her out, since I’m pro-choice.  I’m also anti-circ, since I AM pro-choice, meaning I support a person to make their own personal choice about their own body.  That means a woman has the right to choose abortion, even though I might not agree with that choice. It should still be her choice to make.  Just like I support pro-choice with circumcision, meaning that if a male wants a circumcision, that is HIS choice, not his parents’.

Pro-choice also goes with breast feeding. If a woman wants to use her breasts to feed her children, that is her choice.  The same if she chooses not to. So how can someone who claims to be pro-choice with a woman as far as aborting a life inside her, but she isn’t pro-choice if that same woman won’t even try to breast feed?

I agreed with this silly bimbo on two of these three things, but since I dared disagree with her on her page about condemning women who either gave up breastfeeding or didn’t want to try, she not only unfriended me immediately, she sent me a nasty message and blocked me.  Talk about an extremist.  This woman is on the nutter side of scary.

OK, end vent!

 

All extremists scare me, so where do I draw the line?

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At some point in every activist’s life, he/she must decide if it’s worth continuing to support their cause.  The only thing I’ve ever felt strong enough about supporting is intactivism, which is someone who is against routine infant circumcision (RIC).  The only place I fight for this cause is on facebook and twitter, though I hardly ever use twitter anymore.  The circumfetishists on there became too much for me to handle, so I had to give it a break.  Well, now I’m about ready to give facebook a break too.  Why?  Because I have learned the hard way that just because you agree with a big group of people on one cause doesn’t mean you agree on everything.  I have also come to the conclusion that when someone takes anything to an extreme, they have more than just a few loose screws in their head.  I have never considered myself an extreme intactivist.  I don’t attend public demonstrations or pester people in hospitals or the like.  I merely try to help convince ignorant people that what they think they know about circumcision is wrong.  That alone is enough to be called crazy or a hate monger along with many other vicious names.  People don’t want to be told that they’re brainwashed, even if admitting it might save future generations of men and their relationships.

I won’t go into detail on why RIC is wrong, since I’ve detailed it plenty on this site and don’t feel the need to beat that dead horse.  But when fighting intactivism means I have to deal with ignorant people who support their own extremist causes, I should probably back away.  I will give a few examples of what I mean, since two major ones come up quite often, and a new one just came to light today.

First let’s start with the intactivist who unfriended me on facebook last night.  She posted a photo of a mostly naked woman who was heavily tattooed.  I find that very unattractive and nothing anyone says will ever convince me that it’s anything but ugly.  Though it is HER body, so it’s her right to mess it up as much as she wants. It’s also my right to not look at her ugly body, which could actually be quite beautiful in it’s normal and natural state. After all, I stand with other intactivists about leaving babies whole as they were born, no alteration needed.  If they choose later on to mess it up, while that’s sad, it is THIER choice.

But the thing about the photo that made me comment instead of hiding it, so I wouldn’t have to look at it further, was an asinine comment across the side of it that basically said that if tattoing was fully understood it was actually a religious act that made the person closer to God and more beautiful and whole.  Gag worthy in my opinion, since that is exactly what pro-cutters say about circumcision. So I posted “Sounds a lot like an argument for infant circumcision.”  Well, the chick got offended and told me to remove myself from her page. This surprised me for several reasons. First, the fool could have unfriended me her lazy self. Second, I was right, but she couldn’t acknowledge that, since she is an extremist tattooer, and lastly, she is the one who initially requested the friendship since she felt we had something in common: intactivism.  I have had to unfriend several intactivists over the last year, all for differing levels of extremist behaviors that I couldn’t stomach.

I like to think of myself as moderately open minded about what people do, but I will never accept any form of extremist activism.  Since I started with the tattoo, I will continue with that.  I don’t have any tattoos.  I personally don’t really like the thought of letting someone with a sharp needle and ink permanently mar my skin, but I would never hold it against someone if they did it.  A few here or there?  Whatever!  But if that person takes it to an extreme and has tattoos all the way up their arms and neck and chest and/or back?  I doubt I could look at them without curling my lip, because that person has some type of mental problem that they are trying to fill with tattoos.

Breastfeeding is another hot button topic, and another reason I have unfriended FB friends, and I’m sure I’ve lost a few for the same reason.  I try not to be vocal on FB by anything other than intactivism, but every once in awhile I can’t avoid it.  The first thing that will set me off is when someone says, “you can’t support breastfeeding and then say but. It’s all or nothing”  Um, yes you can, and no it’s not.  I support breastfeeding, and I nursed my son for as long as I could, but (yes, a very big BUT), no one has the right to think that just because they have milk in their tits that they can make others around them miserable.  Many people don’t like seeing it in public, but extremist breastfeeders don’t care.  They feel that if you don’t want to see it, then there is something wrong with you. They refuse to acknowledge that the breast is sexual. They are only there for a baby.  That’s another thing that will set me off.  If that is true, why do we have them most of our lives? If they are only for a baby, shouldn’t they only form when we have a baby and then go away afterwards?  If you do the math and breastfeed two children for a total of 8 years, and you die at the age of 80, that’s only 10% of your life that you used them for their “only”:purpose, and that is an extreme. Most women might only nurse for 6 months, so that wouldn’t even be 1% of their life. So I guess you should slap away your husband any time he wants to play with them or suck on them during sex?  Really?

Extremist breastfeeders don’t even care if other nursing mothers don’t like public nursing, since they will attack their own cause if anyone dares to disagree with them.  They’re like cannibals, and they always go for the kill.  They actually scare me more than any other cause, so I try to stay the hell out of their debates, which is why I’ll unfriend the worst offenders.  Life is hard enough without complicating it with a bunch of loonies who want to nurse their kids until they lose all their baby teeth.  Enough about that.

The final one is the newest one, which is an offshoot of intactivism, and that’s sad to say.  Why?  Because even intactivists don’t always agree. How could we, since many are extremists, and I am afraid of all extremists, remember?  Well, there is a guide to let men know how much foreskin they have, and the scale goes from 1 (none) to 10 (too much).  No one should want to be a 1 (extreme), and it makes sense that no one should want to be a 10 (opposite extreme) either.  I commented stating that, and a guy wrote back that if he was gay, he would want to be 10, since it would be easier for him to “dock” with another gay guy.  Sorry, but you’ll have to look that up, since it’s too gross for me to even want to discuss.  As usual an extremist would naturally want to go to the extreme for their cause, and that’s scary.

It does remind me of a 4th extreme and that’s something that is apparently called ear gauge   For those who don’t know, that’s when someone decides that merely have pierced ears isn’t enough, so they get gauges to make the hole bigger and bigger and bigger. I guess they will eventually want to put a damn plate in there, so they can hang with the natives, but I find it ugly…like I do with all other extremes.  Since that is exactly what an ear gauge is, an ugly extreme of ear piercing, which is something I fully support.  These gauges are just another form of body modification for people who aren’t happy with their bodies and think messing them up will make them feel closer to God or make them more spiritual or some other hokey thing they’ve dreamt up in an attempt to fill the mental problem they suffer from.  But again, we are supposed to let these crazy people do whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.  Again, the only pain it causes me is having to look at them.  And won’t that be hard if everyone does it?  That would be a very frightening world indeed.

So the bottom line is that I’m not sure how much longer I will be able to stay on facebook.  People are getting stranger every day, and I just don’t know how much more of dealing with that I can stand.

Foreskin is NOT gross!

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I haven’t written in awhile about this, but I’m feeling a bit disgusted, and the best way to vent is to write about it.  I am sick to death of hearing from ignorant people how gross it is to not be circumcised.  I still don’t talk to that bimbo ex-friend of mine who said that having foreskin is ugly and gross.  Anyone who would say that has no idea what a foreskin is or how it works.  Since I bathe/shower, change and help him use the potty, I see my son’s penis every day. Not once in the four years of his life have I ever thought it was gross or funny looking, and definitely not ugly.  Since I see it more often than my husband’s penis, I have to say that it’s startling to see my husband’s.  Why?  Because I shouldn’t be able to see his glans while he pees or showers.  That should only come out if we were having sex.  No one but the guy I’m having sex with ever gets to see what’s between my legs, so why should it be different for a man? It shouldn’t be.  My son is four years old, and I have never seen his glans (head of the penis).  I probably won’t unless he becomes retractable while I’m still caring for him, which is possible, but I’m not worried about it. Because like I said, only the person you’re having sex with should see your sexual organ.  So that privilege is reserved for someone my son won’t meet for many years.

Someday (in the distant future I hope) there will be some lucky gal who will excite my son and see his glans for the first time.  It is also my hope that she won’t be like the shallow bimbos I encounter on Facebook who think his foreskin is a turn off.  If she is, I can only hope that I have instilled enough confidence in him to kick her to the curb. After all there will be plenty of smarter women out there who will appreciate his body the way he was born…the way nature intended him to be.

There was a post on Facebook the other day, asking if we thought a certain guy was sexy, would it make him less sexy to find out he was intact.  Naturally this is a stupid question, and I was afraid to read the responses and come across a bimbo who said yes.  But can you imagine thinking what a hottie Hugh Jackman is and then going, “Oh gross, he isn’t circumcised?”  Or “That Colin Ferrell used to be sexy until I found out he’s got a foreskin!” Really?  Because I can’t visualize any hot blooded woman kicking either of those men out of their beds.

Foreskin is NOT a flap of skin that needs to be removed.  It is a layer of skin (yes SKIN, the stuff that covers our entire bodies) that is highly innervated and sensitive and helps protect  the penis and aid it during sex.  Like the rest of our bodies, it must be cleaned daily, especially before sex.  Is that really so difficult?  To clean yourself before sex?  Shouldn’t a woman do the same? Heck yeah!

For those of you who say you have done educated research but still decided to mutilate your baby boy, that is a blatant lie.  There is no way you did valid research or watched a circ video or read the long term effects or risks and still decided to do it.  You probably read the pro-cutting propaganda on the AAP website, which is run by a bunch of men who are financially and emotionally vested in keeping this barbaric ritual in practice.  Or you visited medicirc dot org or circinfo dot net and read their lies and exaggerations.  Nothing that any of these sites say make it OK to circumcise an infant, who can do nothing but scream while the most sensitive part of their body is sliced into.

It all boils down to one simple thing.  Even if there are minor benefits to circumcise, they are all rare things that circumcision will POSSIBLY PREVENT.  It won’t totally eliminate it of course, even if the benefit truly exists. But for those of you who refuse to believe that circumcision does nothing but harm the child as well as the man he grows to become, let’s look at what you think it does, shall we?

1. Reduces UTI’s.  Not true, but let’s assume it does.  Little girls get more UTI’s than cut little boys.  Should we perform surgery on them too? Or just give both sexes antibiotics?

2. Reduces penile cancer. Not true and even the American Cancer society has now admitted that on their site.  But let’s assume it does.  Removing the foreskin would only reduce the chance, not eliminate it.  So should we remove breast tissue from little girls to prevent them from getting breast cancer, which is more common in males than penile cancer?  Of course not.  Should we perform any other surgery as a means to prevent something?  Like removing a baby’s appendix so they won’t need to get an appendectomy?  Or removing a baby’s tonsils, so they wont’ need them removed when they are older?  Removing any organ will prevent it from going bad later in life, but that doesn’t make it right…unless it’s medically necessary.  Removing an infant’s foreskin is RARELY, if ever, medically necessary.

3. Reduces STD’s and AIDS.  Not true, but let’s say it is.  Even those biased African studies showed that the men who were cut were given condoms and educated on safe sex.  They were told to always use condoms. The intact men were not given condoms or education, and they were having risky sex with people who had HIV. So chances were good they would get HIV.  So was it really the circumcisions that reduced the HIV, or was it the guys wearing condoms?  Even the people pushing for the circumcisions are telling the men getting cut that they still need to wear condoms. So why cut them to begin with?  Just tell them that they can keep their foreskins if they always use condoms, since they will have to use them anyway.

4. It’s my religious belief.  No it’s not, but let’s say it is your belief that you must force your religion on your child.  Shouldn’t he be able to wait until he’s old enough to make his own decision about which religion or God he wants to worship?  Shouldn’t it be HIS sacrifice/covenant to make?  Your right to practice your own religion ends where another person’s body begins. He has that same right to practice his own religion.

5. He should look like his father.  No, he shouldn’t. No two penises look alike.  Are you going to glue hair on your baby son’s penis or stretch it to make it the same size?  If his father has tattoos, will you tattoo your son?  If they have different eye color, will you put contacts on your baby? Or dye his hair to match?  Of course not.

Well, hopefully I’ve made a few valid points and made someone rethink their own ignorance.  But it will always amaze me that someone must be convinced not to do unnecessary surgery on their infant, instead of the other way around.  If anyone created circumcision today, they would be thrown in jail.  Anyone who practices it should be.

Avoid First Premier Bank’s credit card offer

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A few weeks ago, I received an email from First Premier Bank, boasting in one minute, I could be approved for a credit card. It said it was a “credit card opportunity you can’t miss.”  I don’t need another credit card, but I was bored and clicked “learn more” anyway.  I’m glad I did, because I got a good laugh out of what I read on their site.

Before I post what it said, let me be clear on what a credit card has to offer before I’ll even apply, let alone use:

APR of 10% or less (preferably less). My most used card is 6%
High credit of at least $5,000 (my highest and most used card is $20,000)
NO ANNUAL FEE (or any type of processing or application or monthly fee either)
Rewards or cash back

Now here is what I saw when I clicked the link for First Premier Bank’s credit card opportunity that I couldn’t miss:

For a whopping $300 in credit (if approved), I would “only” have to pay a $95 processing fee, 36% APR and then a $75 annual fee the first year, which would drop to $45 every year after that AND an additional monthly fee of $6.25, which they will kindly waive the first year.

After I finished laughing, I realized that there might actually be people out there who apply, thinking this is their only choice.  I can only say this to those people: You will NEVER rebuild your credit with this kind of nonsense.  You have credit problems for a reason, and using BS cards like this one will only make those problems worse.  I did a quick search online for any scam alerts for this card, and came across this enlightening article on CNN Money.  Make sure to read that before you are foolish enough to apply.  It details even more problems with this card, which will end up costing you far more in fees than the pitiful credit they give you.  You have been warned!

Here are a few more articles to read about this card:

Yahoo Voices – Buyers Beware: First Premium Bank…
NerdWallet – Please, Please Don’t…

As a last note, if you get this email, just ignore it.  If you try to unsubscribe,  you will then get repeat emails from them every couple days.  I’ve received two more in the week since I unsubscribed!  BAD NEWS ALL AROUND!

The downside of having a baby boy?

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I have heard this more times than I can stomach from new moms of baby boys.  The downside of birthing a male is that they “have” to get him circumcised. Where does that idea come from?  I never felt I had to get my son circumcised, even when I assumed I would.  It never occurred to me that it would hurt or that it wasn’t a good idea. It was just something I thought everyone did.  When I found out that most countries on the planet do not circumcise their newborn males, I realized that I needed to rethink what I had always assumed.  But it boggles my mind that there are women out there who are pregnant with boys and who think there is this downside.  If they know that it will cause their baby pain, then why do they do it? Is it honestly because they feel it has to be done?  Ignoring the creepy fact they are forcing their sexual preferences on their child, can they really think it’s better to do it when they are brand new?  It is amazing that some of these new parents think that the younger the boy is, the less he will feel the pain, but that IS NOT TRUE!  The younger they are, the more trusting they are, and the more damage can be done to their brand new brains.

There is no downside of having a boy, people!  The only downside is his, being born to ignorant parents who feel they must welcome their precious child into the world by strapping him down and forcibly tearing and cutting away a fully functioning part of his body.  It does hurt to have it done as well as the week following to heal, and that doesn’t even include the trauma to his brain that will never heal.

So I try not to snarl when I read another post from another ignorant woman who says she has to circumcise her son, since that is the one downside of having a boy.  If you feel that way, I can only hope you never have a boy to torture in this stupid and senseless way.

Sex between children is not pedophilia

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Yes, I know that’s a strange title. Why have I decided to write about this? Well, I’ve had a few strange conversations about pedophilia lately and felt the need to clarify a few things. For those few who don’t know about Twilight, Bella has a half vampire baby that grows incredibly fast. Jacob falls in love with this child, and they will undoubtedly become lovers when she has matured to look like a teenager (well after the end of Breaking Dawn). I know someone who thinks Jacob would be a pedophile for having sex with this girl. First, he’s a teenager himself, so it’s perfectly reasonable for him to have sex with another teenager, even if she wasn’t actually a teenager. That’s normal. The definition of pedophilia is when an adult is turned on sexually by a child. What is the definition of a child? That question is more important than that person’s age.
Let’s say a 12 year old girl is exceptionally well developed for her age. She’s 5 1/2 feet tall and wears a C cup bra. She wears make up and dresses sexy and turns on a 20 year old man. Is he a pedophile for being turned on? NO, of course not. He is a normal hot blooded man who will respond when a woman (in his eyes) makes a pass at him. Can the law still get him for statutory rape? Unfortunately, yes, even if she lied and told him she was 18, the law would still go against him. BUT that doesn’t make him a pedophile. At least it shouldn’t.
If that 12 year old was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, no make up and looked and acted her age and that 20 year old man was sexually attracted to her, THEN he is a pedophile and deserves to be prosecuted if he acted on those improper urges.

Of course I realize the law doesn’t specify what I just detailed. If a 20 year old man had sex with a 12 year old, it wouldn’t matter how she looked. He would still be labeled a sexual predator for the rest of his life. Plenty of lives have been ruined for similar reasons in an attempt to protect children, even if the adult is the one who needs the protection.

What about if that 20 year old man is actually a 16 year old teenager? He can’t be arrested for statutory rape, since he isn’t an adult. He can definitely not be label a pedophile either, since it’s normal for a teenager to be attracted to other teenagers, and 12 is only one year off. My main point is how silly it is to call Jacob a pedophile for having sex with Reneesme. Especially when both of these characters are paranormal and fictional. One is a werewolf and the other is a hybrid vampire/human. BUT they are both technically children in a young adult novel.

Just sayin’

Anyone else in Austin ripped off by Austin (Texas) Mac Repair?

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I haven’t written about this situation in a while, though I can’t completely put it behind me. After all, the owner of Austin Mac Repair (now Texas Mac Repair) in Austin, Texas, basically stole almost $500 of mine and my husband’s money. If you would like to know more about that situation, visit the tag, Austin Mac Repair. I think we have two years to file a lawsuit against this crook, which means we have until September of this year. Hard to believe so much time has passed since our dealings with this horrible person. I reported him and his business to everyone I could think of, but so far haven’t heard anything. I know there are many negative reviews on Les, the owner, and how horrible he treats his customers.
Well, I was contacted yesterday from one of those disgruntled customers. She wants to take him to court and asked if I would help. I told her we would both help as much as we could, and I’ve always felt that if enough people got together, that we could make a difference. So if there is anyone else in Austin who got screwed over by Les at Austin (or Texas) Mac Repair, please comment here or contact me.

I’ve even created a petition on change.org that you can also sign. If I can get enough signatures, maybe the Texas Attorney General will pay attention.

Facebook drama

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I have cut back on twitter and facebook lately. All the intactivist drama has been too stressful of late, and it started to spill over into my real life. I can’t let that happen, so I try to limit how much time I spend trying to enlighten the ignorant masses. I have also gotten too close to other causes and almost gotten burnt in the crossfire. A few weeks ago, a natural birth photographer posted a photo she took of one of her client’s placenta. It was all slimy and bloody and looked like that creature from the movie Alien. I thought it was disgusting and hid the pic. It might be what fed a baby for 9 months, but that doesn’t mean I want to look at it. After all, I came from my mother, but I wouldn’t want a pic of her crotch in my FB timeline. Apparently, many people reported the pic and it was removed. This infuriated the photographer and many of her supporters, and they complained how people needed to grow up and realize how beautiful a placenta was. They felt FB should be more open minded about their policies. They also complain when a pic of them openly breastfeeding their child is removed. I can’t help but wonder about women like this, who like to exploit themselves to the public and get on a crusade when someone doesn’t allow them to do it. It doesn’t matter how much they think placenta or breastfeeding is beautiful, FB doesn’t have to allow anything on THEIR site that the majority of their users don’t want to see. Even if it’s a minority of users or only themselves, it is THEIR site, and they let us all use it for free. Maybe it is the whiners who need to grow up a bit.

Think about it another way. The human body is a beautiful thing, but naked pictures of people cannot be posted on FB either. It doesn’t matter how “beautiful” something is, since that is a subjective thing that is open for interpretation. Extremists need to stop thinking that just because they want to look at something that everyone else should have to look at it too.

I for one am glad that offensive photos are removed from FB. I’ve seen quite a few that I wish I hadn’t.