Antifeminist crusader Erin Pizzey bravely tells Redditors that “never in the history of the world have men been so unprivileged, if you think about it.”
How Erin Pizzey imagines most feminists live, apparently
Longtime antifeminist crusader Erin Pizzey recently did an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit. Here are some highlights — by which I mean lowlights — from her answers.
Ms. Pizzey wants to ban feminism as a hate movement:
Personally, I would like to see the feminist movement described as a hate movement, so that we can then ban them from the government, from university faculties, from anywhere where they can destroy the minds of young women and men.
It’s just a teensy bit ironic, I would say, that she characterizes feminism as a hate movement at the very same time that A Voice for Men, a site she has very publicly aligned herself with, is leading a hate campaign against an individual feminist activist. (More on this to come tomorrow.) Indeed, Pizzey herself adds to the vilification of the activist here.
And speaking of A Voice for Men, she apparently agrees with AVFM’s Paul Elam that feminists are only interested in the issue of rape because they have rape fantasies and are angry that they’re not getting enough attention from men:
If you’re referring to Paul’s statement that many or most women fantasize about being taken, I’m sorry but that’s the truth. That doesn’t mean they want to be raped, but it’s a fantasy I think almost all women have. And I think he went on to say that feminists like Andrea Dworkin who were and are so obsessed with rape are really projecting their own unconscious sexual frustration because men don’t give them enough attention. Andrea was a very sad lonely woman like this–I didn’t know her but I knew of her, and I knew Susan Browmiller and you can just read her stuff to see it there.
Yeah, I’m thinking that Dworkin’s “obsession” with rape might have had less to do with her wanting “attention” from men than it did with the fact that she had been raped.
In response to a question about using Title IX to increase the number of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), Pizzey argues that most women’s brains aren’t equipped to handle all that sciencey stuff, and that most women would rather be raising children:
what will happen is that a few women will come out of that world in those areas that suit men’s brains better than women’s, and do well, but most of them won’t, and they’ll just leave and go on to other professions or to have children or family. That’s what’s been happening all the time when they’ve had quotas.
But what about the men who get excluded because of that? That’s the tragedy isn’t it, and the waste of money. Harriet Harman has proposed quotas for women in parliament, quotas for women in all the high-status fields, and women have flocked in but do not want the gruelling hours that men are willing to put into their professions because most of them–MOST of them–want to be spending time with their children at home, and that God for that.
Pizzey believes that most feminists are “mental patents” who deserve only condescension:
Personally, I don’t get into arguments with mental patients, which is what most feminist women are. Look at them with pity and compassion if you can, speak the truth as you know it.
But if you want a real reaction, pat her on the head and tell her not to worry her pretty little head about it. That’s what I do! I think men have to start using their sense of humor as a weapon. You must get past any sense of anger when you do such things though!
She believes most prominent second-wave feminists were feminists mainly because they hated their dads:
One of the early mantras of the feminist movement was to make the personal political. Therefore, those women who had bitter and violent experiences of the first male their lives (e.g. their father) then branded all men as violent and dangerous. They are also what I call the walking wounded. As far as I’m concerned the prominent feminists of the day virtually all had appalling relationships with their fathers. So if feminism grew out of a justified sense of grievance, and created a platform where they did not attempt to heal their own damage, but to project onto all men… so yes it’s very cultlike that way. But it’s any cult group that works that way, they all have either a figure they adore or a hate object that keeps them together. And their hate is against men, even when they deny it.
Yes, that’s right, she says all this and somehow does not notice the hatred of women amongst the MRAs she’s aligned herself with.
While she dismisses feminists with “daddy issues” she urges those who have been abused by their parents to forget the abuse they’ve endured, forgive their abusers and “move on.”
[T]each yourself that the past is truly the past, it is done and you cannot change it, all it is is a loop in your brain that needs to be closed down so that you can move forward. Because those patterns are deep within you, it takes a lot of hard work, but in the end you FORGIVE YOURSELF and you FORGIVE YOUR PARENTS and move on.
Meanwhile, she thinks that it makes sense for men who don’t like feminism to “head for the hills” and Go Their Own Way.
It was many years ago I was talking to a very eligible bachelor, who was a lawyer, and asked him about American feminists. He laughed and he said “what they never banked on was that men would get together and take to the hills.” This is where that expression comes from. He and his male friends would get together and have a wonderful time, they did not make permanent relationships with women, because they realized they would have too much to lose: their homes, their children, and their money. I always remember this. When 40 year old feminists complain that they can’t find any men to commit themselves, why is it men’s fault? I can’t blame men who feel this way in today’s legal environment. If the so-called women’s movement, the feminists, want men, they have to care equally about men’s desires and men’s need for protection.
This sort of makes sense, given that Pizzey seems to live in an imaginary world in which women, not men, are the truly privileged.
The actual irony of this situation is there is nothing more privileged than white middle class women, who are most of feminists. Very very privileged, because they know when they are born that either the state or a man will take care of them if they do not choose their own career. Men on the other hand are born underprivileged, particularly now, even as small boys they are demonized and discriminated against. …
I cannot see how sane sensible educated intelligent woman can consider that men are privileged. It has always been rich and middle class women who have been protected, and they are the truly privileged.
Indeed, she’s managed to convince herself that “never in the history of the world have men been so unprivileged, if you think about it.”
Naturally, all of her comments were happily upvoted by the Reddit masses, and her “Ask Me Anything” post itself got more than 1200 upvotes. Evidently pandering to Reddit’s collective fantasies about the oppression of men pays off big in the upvote department.
Posted on April 14, 2013, in a voice for men, antifeminism, evil women, harassment, hate, hundreds of upvotes, imaginary backwards land, imaginary oppression, ladies against women, MGTOW, misogyny, MRA, only men pay taxes apparently, oppressed men, patronizing as heck, paul elam, playing the victim, rape, rape culture, reddit, straw feminists and tagged antfeminism, erin pizzey, reddit. Bookmark the permalink. 547 Comments.
Not to mention that Pissy Pizzey has been an arsehole for decades anyway.
Most of the new age stuff I find silly but harmless, but the anti-vax stuff? Not harmless. Very, very dangerous. I did not expect to see whooping cough come back to the developed world in force in my lifetime, and anti-vax people are the reason why it’s happened.
Ditto what CassandraSaid.
Prolly a stupid question and one you’ve heard a zillion times, Aaliyah, but is there any chance you could live with your mum instead of your several-degrees-lower-than-arsehole dad?
I talk to her about that with her sometimes, but she’s afraid of vaccines because, according to her, they stunted part of my growth from ages 1 to 5 until I stopped getting vaccines. I barely even talked – people thought I was “autistic” apparently. In reality it was probably either malpractice on the care provider’s part or some unknown side-effect not common to all vaccines. Nevertheless, I’m understanding of her personal aversion to vaccines – I just hope that she sees them differently someday as I’m definitely pro-vaccine.
Cassandra: part of the problem with whooping cough is that the vaccine we get as babies doesn’t last. You do have to get revaccinated as an adult. But the anti-vaxxers are bring shit like measles back, and that’s really fucking dangerous.
@cassandrasays
O_o It did? I don’t even know what it is? Should I google? (or if you guys wanna explain I’d like that, just leaving google as an option if no one does.)
Marie: you should probably google.
And if everyone got the booster shots when they were supposed to it wouldn’t be coming back. And not vaccinating your kids means that both they and the older adults in your community are at risk.
The idea of just not getting your kids vaccinated (and thus compromising herd immunity as well as risking your own kids) because of a (not true, but even if it was) risk of autism is really fucking offensive because what those people are essentially saying is that they’d rather have a dead kid than an autistic kid. That’s fucked up.
Not that I don’t want to explain, but there’s better stuff with more detail than what I could give you.
@hellkell
Kk. Googling now :)
Cassandra, no argument here. Vaccinate your kids, people. I want Jenny McCarthy to STFU forever.
She has offered that to me. I’m sure she would love to have me stay with her as she’s also worried about me and misses me a lot. I usually only get to see her once every year. I’ll take her offer only if I have no choice, though, because I don’t want to potentially burden their household by staying there. Maybe if I have a flexible job as a web developer staying there wouldn’t be such a bad idea – but that won’t be for a while.
This is really personal for me right now because Mr C has a niece who’s right in the age range in which kids tend to catch all that stuff, and there are anti-vax people all around us. There was an outbreak of whooping cough a few years back. It got bad enough that there were signs outside Walgreens begging people to get their kids vaccinated.
Is there any other work you could get there, part time or something? (You’re studying, yes?)
I GOT whooping cough a couple years ago. No fun.
Cassandra, has Mr C’s niece been vaccinated?
That’s horrible. I’m sorry if I managed to upset you. Perhaps I’m sounding overly apologetic because I’m very biased towards my mom (despite the fact that I’m vehemently pro-vaccine).
Also, I think part of the problem with the vaccination issue is that a lot of people our age and younger never saw any of the old childhood diseases in action, because past vaccination campaigns were so effective. So they have no idea just how bad it was, and they’re not making a realistic assessment of the risk.
I worry about my MIL too. She’s in her 70s, and although her overall health is pretty good, a lot of that stuff could kill her just as easily as it could kill a kid. Elderly people are a risk group that people seem to have forgotten about, but if any of those diseases made there way into a retirement community it would be really, really bad.
Yep, I’m still a student. I guess I could do part-time work while living there, but I need to work on getting a career that will help support me fully in the long run. And the schools I want to go to aren’t in Colorado, where my mom lives. Perhaps there are some good nursing programs there, but I don’t know when I’m going to start my nursing education. (Nursing is the career I eventually want – web development is just a side job that I hope will help get me off my feet).
My niece is being vaccinated against everything, thankfully. She could still pass something on to her grandma, though.
(Grandma is a new age person too – good thing she doesn’t get to make medical decisions for the kids.)
@cassandrasays
Wow. :( I knew about the anti vax stuff, I just assumed it was a heck of a lot less common.
Aaliyah – that sort of squashes the idea if none of the schools are in your mum’s area. :(
I was thinking of the usual student jobs, just something to bring in some cash so you could contribute to the household, not A Job with any sort of permanency about it. Is there any sort of support payment for students in the US? We have AusStudy, which is a pitiful little payment from the government, but at least it’s something.
@ Marie
I think it’s regional. Some areas seem to have a much higher concentration of anti-vax people than others. Maybe you’re lucky enough to be in an area where that idea hasn’t taken hold.
@cassandrasays
I hope it hasn’t. I heard about it from my mom, who was ranting about it for the obvious reasons, with a side dish of her being a scientist, so scientist rage behind that. ;) But I haven’t been getting out as much, so I can’t say whether it’s a regional thing. I always just assumed it was a fringe thing :(
It seems to correlate with hippie and new age beliefs in general, which is why it’s common here. Which I find extra frustrating because to a certain extent those are my people, and I like the fact that there are so many of them here, but at the same time I think that they should be forced to follow standard vaccination protocol, especially if their kids are in public school.
I’m not sure. But if there’s a good nursing school in Colorado, moving back in with my mom is a great plan. I’m very fond of the idea, and I’m glad you reminded me of it.
Another reason I’m so fixated on getting a strong career early on is that I want to be on my own as soon as possible. I feel that’s best for me even though I know my mom would have no problem with me staying with her, my step-dad, and my little step-brother.
Re: whooping cough vaccine booster for adults — get DTP instead of just a tetanus booster, it’s diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (whooping cough) except in France and the Netherlands where the P is polio.
As for MMR’s…fucking motherfucking idiots. German measles (rubella) in pregnancy can cause congenital blindness — utterly fucking preventable, definitely actually causes it, unlike MMR’s “causing” ASD but noooo…vaccines must be evil!
I know the older regulars know this, but let me brag? The autistic kid in Dear John is my cousin’s son, his younger brother was never vaccinated after their mother (my cousin) went all anti-vaxxer. So it’s personal. Yeah the older boy has no concept of white lies and gets royally upset if he finds out he’s been lied to, and refuses to let anyone else win because games of skill should be win by skill! But seriously? You’d risk congenital blindness to prevent his differences? And yeah, he’s “high functioning” but really? There’s no link.
Really annoying part? That cousin is a lactation counsellor, explained to my mother way we have those and my usually conservative mother was appalled that breast feeding is seen as sexual or a luxury and we were bottle fed. Like, feminism, w00t! Anti-vax, noooooo!
/rant
Back in 5 with my monthly polio eradication update :)
Usually I lurk, but I have to say that I love you all for being pro vax! So many places I go, both online and IRL, have tons of anti-vaxxers. It’s worrisome. Whooping cough is all over here (Oregon). (I’m pro vax, *and* a Unitarian Universalist secular humanist/atheist.)
Erin Pizzy- I just can’t comment on her. She is the worst kid of awful.
@Argenti Aertheri
Polio stayed eradicated, right? Please say it did. ::makes best
puppykitty eyes::I didn’t know that. So yay for your cousin’s son! Sad that his mom won’t vaccinate their younger brother, especially considering it’s b/c what happened to the older one. I mean, that kind of strikes it to me like you think that you’re kid is a… like … trying to think of a way to say this
Like idk you’d go back and try to make things different to prevent it? And I could swear we have a thread where people mentioned whether they thought their mental conditions were part of them, or afflicting them, and lots of times it was part of them (though I will admit, I mostly feel my depression afflicts me. The only possible bright side is that I mellowed out and learned how to live with myself since it got worse)
Yeah, it’s the fact that anti-vax ideas are so common among people that I generally agree with on other things that makes me want to tear my hair out.
18 cases so far this year, versus 41 year to date in 2012.
So on one hand, MMR for fucks sake yes. On the other…most countries can forgo polio vaccine at this point, it’s dead in all but a handful of countries. Haven’t turned anti-vax, just that polio can be reintroduced from vaccine caused cases, and those cases are beginning to equal the number of wild cases. May you live in interesting times?
@cassandrasays
::gets demotivated::
Marie — not there yet, but damned close!
Fade — yeah, idk if he’d say similar, he’s 13~ but I can’t imagine what I’d be if not bipolar. I’ve always been this way and it’s a part of who I am the way…idk, my eye color is almost? And idk about his mother, she definitely loves him, fought to make the school still classify him as special needs since “if he can make a movie…” *tears hair out* but yeah, I get the impression she’d have preferred he be “normal”
Better than the husband of one of my other cousins, who left not long after his daughter was born with an easily correctable birth defect. She talks a bit funny still, but is a perfectly normal happy kid…who he can’t deal with because she isn’t perfect. So compared to that I can’t fault other cousin, she definitely loves him, just, loves him “anyways”?
Ah, I didn’t doubt she loved him. Just to clarify. XD
Whooping cough…
In my family, we are all vaccinated. My mother would have no truck with putting her kids and the larger community at risk. That being said, my brother got whooping cough anyways when he was five. He cough so long and hard he’d turn blue and pass out. All that coughing made breathing an agony for him, the muscles in his chest were so overworked and abused. Couldn’t eat much, because the coughing made him throw up and he couldn’t sleep because being anything other than verticle set it off.
That was a moderate case. I pray I never see a worst case scenario, because I wouldn’t be surprised if the coughing fits broke ribs.
One thing I have noticed about vaccines though, is that babies get them way earlier than the CDC recommends the ages. My guess is its to ensure kids get the full shots, especially as they frequently get minor illnesses that would delay the vaccine schedual.
And to think that when vaccines came out for things like polio, people lined up for hours to get their kids vaccinated. Ask someone over the age of sixty what it was like going to school and have friends disappear after being diagnosed with it. It was very very common and the outlook was pretty bleak.
FYI, the one study that showed a causative affect between vaccines and autism is the Wakefield study, which has since been thoroughly debunked. Wakefield not only purposely left out any data that didn’t conform to his desired outcome, but he also falsified data, all on the promise of the money he’d make if he was the guy who proved that vaccines cause autism. The anti-vaxxer true believers just claim that Wakefield was “silenced” by the evil scientists who are bent on making their own money on tainted vaccines that cause everything from autism to HIV and cancer. Somehow, Wakefield doing this all for the money doesn’t seem to matter to them.
We enjoy herd immunity, but only until it dips below the 85% range. This issue is particularly important because infants who are too young to be vaccinated are actually dying over this.
I work with an anti-vaxxer, who has spouted all kinds of nonsense at me over the issue (she brings it up, I try to avoid the subject).
I read about Wakefield in the local papers recently – quite an eye opener. I hadn’t known the origin of the anti-vaccines nonsense.
And I see Wakefield still has an audience. There’s a measles epidemic in south Wales right now, 700 cases. And The Independent ran a front page screed by Wakefield blaming the government for causing it. He’s an utter egomaniac and a murderer as far as I’m concerned.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/apr/13/department-health-andrew-wakefield
Holy shit…whooping cough CAN fracture ribs. Sweet Jesus, why wouldn’t parents want to spare their kids so much pain?
What frosts my flakes? Pox parties. My daughter has had chicken pox twice, once as an infant and once as a preschooler. And women wanted my daughter and I to come over for a playdate so their kids could catch it.
Why?
To get the pox out of the way, to make sure all the kids caught it at the same time, because a natural immunity is best.
WTF people? Kids die of this disease! And those infected kids will be going to school and potentially infecting their classmates right up until they have the fever and rash. And those unsuspecting classmatesspread it further and risk infecting younger siblings or their other family members. All of this so a mom can get it out of the way…
Not to mention they’re putting their kids, and others, and other adults, at risk of shingles, which is fucking painful, among other things! Some dipshit brought their kid into the Museum when they had open chickenpox sores once. We chucked ‘em out as soon as we realised.
Ouch, my dad got shingles recently. It got worsened by the fact that he went swimming, and possibly correlated possibly not, he got a skin infection due to the shingles (and idk if due to the swimming).
So yes. Shingles not fun. (((Protective hugs over Daddy)))
If there’s a death in wales from this measles outbreak, I hope they damn well hold Wakefield criminally responsible.
Yep, broken ribs. Which can be very dangerous in elderly people too.
Wakefield is right at the top of my list of most dangerous woo merchants.
bahhumbugi: He’s deployed to Germany? You could send a message to his Commanding Officer, letting him know that one of his soldiers is harassing you.
Snappy comeback for, “don’t worry your pretty little head”.
“Did you come up with that yourself? How long did it take?”
Best delivered after a moment of apparent contemplation; so as to make it seem spontaneous. Since the odds are his line wasn’t, it’s got teeth.
Tbh, chicken pox as a kid is a lot better than getting it as an adult. A friend got chicken pox from her husband when he got shingles and she was in absolute misery.
But I think there’s a vaccine now anyway, so that is better than getting it at all.
I’m only partially vaccinated – DPT and polio. My brother got a very severe case of measles just after being vaccinated and lost most of his hearing. Mum wasn’t sure if he got it from the vaccine or not, but she wasn’t giving me the MMR vax, just in case.
I had the triple antigen as a kid, and we were vaccinated against German measles and TB at high school, iirc. I don’t recall what else I might have been vaccinated against, though I know I had measles and I think I had chickenpox when I was very small.
Like most Third Culture kids I got pretty much every vaccine on the market, some of them more often than is recommended because we didn’t have records of previous vaccinations. Out of the group of at least 100 kids that I grew up with who had the same experience, the number of kids who’re on the autism spectrum? One.
Wakefield is full of shit.
This.
Also scary is an article I saw on social networks (twitter, in specific) and the, apparently, differential effect (certainly prevalence) of negative/positive exhortations about vaccination.
The short of it is, this study (a first, and so not as strong as it might be, and we can hope it’s wrong) says that negative tweets are both more common, and more effective. They are certainly retweeted more.
I might’ve had a very mild case of Whooping Cough when I was 17, or so. Would have been in the gap between one set of vaccines and the next.
I coughed myself to the floor; from oxygen dep, and failed to get up for 10-15 minutes, because every shuddering breath was used to fuel more coughing. They gave me codiene (which almost as unpleasant as the coughing). It hurt to breathe for a few days.
This is unavoidable. You get the disease, or the vaccine, and then you are at risk of shingles. Which is painful, but rarely fatal. Adult chicken pox can be debilitating/fatal.
I’ve seen conflicting answers about whether the vaccine can make one susceptible (in rare cases) to shingles or actually prevents it, as it does with chickenpox. Either way, though, letting kids get infected and spread a potentially fatal disease, as well as the follow-up one, is an appalling thing to do.
Seconding the “THIS” about the generations who don’t know what these diseases are like.
Add “well I had chicken pox and it wasn’t so bad” — I had it, my brother was vaccinated. And honestly, compared to being a mosquito buffet, it wasn’t at bad. Neither was breaking my big toe, not about to go around breaking other people’s toes though. Why the fuck not prevent something “minor” if you can?
But yeah, I never had to worry about measles, mumps, rubella, polio, no real threat of whooping cough, fuck, smallpox was dead before I was born.
I said this to my co-worker when we were talking about a children’s book by an anti-vaxxer called Melanie’s Marvelous Measles — the author argued that measles is good for kids because it strengthens their immune system. Oh, and this author is a conspiracy theorist who thinks that scientists are giving us AIDS with vaccines.
Anyway, my co-worker’s response to my argument that these people haven’t seen thousands of people dying of infectious disease? “Neither have you!” I sort of stared at her in amazed horror before replying, “But I know that it happened.”
According to WHO, measles killed almost 3 million people per year before widespread vaccination in 1980.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs286/en/
How compulsory is vaccination in the US?
And my parents are normally really cool, but bought into some of the hysteria with the HPV vaccine a few years ago when my sister did and encouraged her not to have it. Mild brush with homeopathy for Mum, too, and her and Dad have stuck up for workfare schemes. But otherwise pretty cool.
I know only one anti-vaxxer. He has full custody of his son and refuses to get him vaccinated. Something about how vaccines can cause horrible chronic conditions (not autism, but other stuff) and he won’t knowingly give his son something that could cause him serious harm. I don’t know why he picked vaccines and not, say, paracetamol, but there you go. He’s a hippy too…
Haha, my parents did that to us! This was a few years before the chicken pox vaccine. Made me pretty miserable (my sister got a mild case, I got a fucking terrible case) but, as mentioned by others, was a matter of getting it out of the way immediately or risking a much more severe case later. I wonder if they would still have done it if they’d known that we could get properly vaccinated later.
Assuming these women aren’t going into STEM just to evilly deny men their rightful place, they do like the fields. How anyone could interpret the more-likely-to-leave-to-have-children-or-family thing as indicative of lack of STEM talent among women instead of the effect of gender norms with a dash of the sexism in the STEM fields? You’d have to start from an idea that women don’t know themselves as well as men do.
Most elementary schools require vaccination as far as I know but all allow people to receive an exemption due to “religious belief.”
I also just read that there is a big measles outbreak in Pakistan because parents are choosing not to vaccinate over fears that “Westerners” are using the vaccinations to secretly sterilize Muslims.
Again, MILLIONS dead per year worldwide before the vaccination became widespread. Within my lifetime. How can people not get this??
@Fade: Yeah, the ableism also irked me extra much in all that horribleness. I’m a feminist AND a mental patient. And you know what; people get into arguments with me all the time. Actually, you could say arguing is my job, since I’m a philosopher. Somehow my colleagues, even the many of them who know full well that I’m a mental patient, do actual arguing rather than just patting me on the head.
“It’s just a teensy bit ironic, I would say, that she characterizes feminism as a hate movement at the very same time that A Voice for Men, a site she has very publicly aligned herself with, is leading a hate campaign against an individual feminist activist. (More on this to come tomorrow.) Indeed, Pizzey herself adds to the vilification of the activist here.”
I don’t see any sort of campaign against that woman. Dan Perrins wrote *an* opinion piece on her. I certainly don’t see how one piece makes a campaign. She did cheer when the fire alarm got pulled at the talk see about :30-:40 here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO_X4DkwA_Q. She did scream in people’s faces and she did call them names such as “fuckface”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxY-5ISEHPg Pointing those things out isn’t vilification of someone who has acted innocently.
Also, Paul Elam has made it very clear that he does NOT want anyone to reveal her personal details and said ” the only thing we know for sure is that she was exercising freedom of expression. We encourage that, even from the likes of this woman.” http://www.avoiceformen.com/a-voice-for-men/a-request-of-readers/ (which implies that she’s NOT going up on register-her.com unless she breaks the law).
“Naturally, all of her comments were happily upvoted by the Reddit masses, and her “Ask Me Anything” post itself got more than 1200 upvotes. Evidently pandering to Reddit’s collective fantasies about the oppression of men pays off big in the upvote department.”
That comes as fairly misleading. Right now that reddit has over 1200 “points”. As I write, it has 3912 upvotes and 2659 downvotes. So, such “pandering” as described in the original post ALSO pays off in the downvote department.
@Blitzgal: Seems to me that lots of anti-vax people believe that the measles only BECAME occasionally deadly AFTER people started vaccinated against them, because vaccination has “weakened” us.
Not quite all, but yeah, most. Have a list — http://www2a.cdc.gov/nip/schoolsurv/schImmRqmtReport.asp?s=Religious,%20grantee&d=10&w=%20%20%20%20&t=2
Harder to follow, but here’re the disease requirements — http://www.immunize.org/laws/
The thing is, you don’t (at least here) have to prove anything to get the religious exemption, it’s just a matter of signing a form. So you can be part of a religious group that has no position on vaccines, or an atheist, and still claim the religious exemption.
Cassandra, as far as I can tell, that’s an inherent vice of religious exemptions; making people prove their religious affiliations is never going to end well. Which immediately calls into question religious exemptions for vaccines, which in turn immediately calls into question all religious exemptions.
Yeah, I don’t have any solution as to how to get around that, other than just not allowing religious exemptions for vaccines at all.
(Which is in fact the solution I would vote for, if they ever put it on the ballot.)
Ugh, I hate anti-vax people for all the reasons outlined above, plus one. My little sister is autistic and has PTSD triggered by the medical environment, due to her almost dying (Stevens–Johnson syndrome) as a young child. Recently my mother had to decide if she wanted to subject my sister to the sheer trauma of going to the doctor and getting a vaccine the school wanted all the students to have, or not doing it. After like a week of debate between her and my dad and my sister herself, she decided to go to the school and request that my sister be exempt from this. Even after explaining why, the first woman she talked to more-or-less called her an awful parent and made my mother feel like dirt. If anti-vax people weren’t so prevalent and dangerous, my mother would have had much less of a hassle avoiding triggering my little sister. :/
As would I. The tricky thing is that it’s hard to think of a justification that couldn’t be applied (reasonably or unreasonably) to most other religious exemptions. I suppose the key one is the danger to others.
What katz said = QFT – quoting, because it’s right there :)
I’m fine with adults making decisions for themselves based on their religious beliefs, and/or what they claim their beliefs to be. Because see, you don’t want a blood transfusion, okay, you’re competent to make medical decisions? Then it doesn’t matter why you don’t want it, whether it be religion, or you just find blood squicky (yes that’s supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum)
Not fine with adults making medical decisions for children/other dependants that go against commonly accepted “best practice” medically. I give zero fucks if your religion says your child’s broken arm will knit back together if you pray, that thing needs to be properly set. Likewise, vaccines are proven — an argument could be made that HPV needs more time, but counter that, that age group could argue they’re competent to decide for themselves.
In short, I don’t think religion, or other views, should have more than minor bearing on how children are treated medically. You want to schedule the vaccine for after your vacation or something, yeah whatever. Fuck, I’m just fine with the “we’re worried about autism” crowd to wait until the kid is 3~4 and would’ve already been diagnosed. But sending the kid to school unvaccinated? Yeah, you can home school if your religion forbids vaccines. Sure state education is a right in the US, but isn’t “a safe education” part of that? (And um, it damned well seems to be with the post-Newtown gun control fight)