ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES: Speed-Blogging Monday, November 11, 2013: On guns and mothers in Texas and on suffragettes

Monday, November 11, 2013

Speed-Blogging Monday, November 11, 2013: On guns and mothers in Texas and on suffragettes

On Saturday, nearly 40 armed men, women, and children waited outside a Dallas, Texas area restaurant to protest a membership meeting for the state chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun safety advocacy group formed in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
According to a spokeswoman for Moms Demand Action (MDA), the moms were inside the Blue Mesa Grill when members of Open Carry Texas (OCT) — an open carry advocacy group — “pull[ed] up in the parking lot and start[ed] getting guns out of their trunks.” The group then waited in the parking lot for the four MDA members to come out. The spokeswoman said that the restaurant manager did not want to call 911, for fear of “inciting a riot” and waited for the gun advocates to leave. The group moved to a nearby Hooters after approximately two hours.

Check out the picture at the link.

2. Also in Texas, Tammy Cooper was arrested for child endangerment and had to spend eighteen hours in jail because one of her neighbors had called the police stating that her children were playing outside the house without adult supervision. The charges were later dropped as baseless. Cooper says that she was outside, sitting in a chair on the sidewalk.

The odd point about this story is that looks like you might not get arrested for shooting people who arrive at your door asking for help after a car accident, and you certainly don't seem to get arrested for being a white-collar crook in the stock markets or in the housing markets.

I get that children need supervision. But children have been playing outside unsupervised, probably for centuries. Even if Cooper had let her children to play alone outside, what that would have meant is in no way comparable to the kinds of crime suspicions which get no real reaction from the police.

You can draw your own conclusions about the reason for the rapid police response. It certainly has much to do with the idea that mothers are the only ones responsible for children and that the only standard of good mothering is perfection. And note that Cooper's husband only appears in a photograph in this story. It's about mothering.

3. Finally, and just because it is interesting, check out this early 20th century photograph opposing women's suffrage. It shows what the society feared might happen! Which sorta did, of course, but the edifices of civilization are still standing.

You may have seen another picture showing a humiliated husband wearing an apron, sitting in the kitchen with a squalling baby in his lap, while his suited and cigarette-smoking wife is preparing to go out to vote. I always loved that picture because of the inner fears it reveals: A role reversal! Men would have to accept the kinds of lives many women then had and women would get to have the good lives some men then had.

Voting couldn't do it and suffragettes didn't aim at anything of the sort. But it's true that giving people the vote provides them with some power in a society, and that can be frightening to some.

A Texas mother was sent to jail and charged with child endangerment for letting her two children play outside.
Read more at http://www.realfarmacy.com/mom-arrested-for-letting-kids-play-outside/#zVePsS5Cfu3xMg4G.99