Happy International Day of Families

by philg

(with somewhat unfortunate timing given the tragedy in Buffalo) … the United Nations says that today is International Day of Families. The site has some statistics:

Maternity leave, which was offered in 89% of countries in 1995, was available in 96% of countries by 2015.

What about birthing persons who don’t identify as “mothers”? Based on the photos, the UN’s site seems to be plagued by cisgender-normative and heteronormative concepts of “family”.

Only 57% of women, who are married, or in a domestic union, are able to make decisions about sexual relations and the use of contraceptives and reproductive health services.

How is the term “women” defined? What about “men” who are capable of giving birth? Isn’t their decision-making power relevant? Also, the implication is that it is bad when people (“women”) can’t decide what medicines to introduce into their bodies. Should women also be able to decide whether to get a COVID-19 vaccine?

Here in the Florida Free State, where vaccine coercion is banned by statute, living together as a family means that we solve problems together… problems that we wouldn’t have if we had been more proactive about using contraception.

Readers: What are you doing to celebrate this day?

From yesterday, home of a future sea turtle’s family is staked out on Juno Beach:

(Performing 84 abortions on human pregnant people would yield nearly $100,000 in revenue for Planned Parenthood or similar. But 84 sea turtle abortions earned Lewis Jackson of Brunswick, Georgia 21 months in prison (justice.gov).)

3 thoughts on “Happy International Day of Families”

  1. The UN link gives a fascinating insight into the long and convoluted process that lasted from roughly 1983-1993 and culminated in the proclamation of this happy awareness day.

    How many billable hours for highly paid civil “servants” have been burned in the process?

  2. I think we need to subdivide the calendar into fractional days so that we can pack more International celebrations into each “day”, and Google should alert us to them. Obviously the holidays and celebration festivals we already have are nowhere near what is needed because there are so many good causes that are being neglected.

    9 PM at night? You were just about to drink a glass of warm soy milk and turn in for the evening? Your Smart Watch reminds you that from 9-12 PM in your time zone it is International Toe Jam Cleaning Time, and your watch automatically donates $3.75 to the International Toe Jam Prevention Society, deducting it from your bank account. Then it keeps flashing and beeping for three more hours until you clean your Toe Jam.

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