Jack Layton, may you rest in Heavenly Peace. (Aug 22nd 1950 – 2011)
Are my blogs unprofessional? Do my blogs attack women’s groups?
A friend told me to watch out for these things. He pointed out that I could lose readership from different groups of people. One of the groups of readers I was told I could lose is, women – the central target of my blogging.
This friend is Steve (Hon. Dr. Hedy Fry’s senior special assistant). I became immediately concerned. Honorable Dr. Hedy Fry, my acquaintance and fighter of women’s rights, who has maintained interest in my project goal and who has ocassionally spoken in women’s groups about FASD, could herself, become less interested in my writings.
I’ll first speak on professional writing and then revisit it with examples later. It’s true, I am not a professional writer. I did take a ten-week creative writing course years ago whereupon rule #1 was to basically, “shake’em up.” I’m not trying to be a creative writer on my blogs but the “shake’em up” part does play a role in my blogging. I want people to be shaken up about the growing problem of feotal alcohol spectrum disorder, not about so-called “bad” women.
I try to stop FASD by telling the truth. In telling the truth I may shake up emotions in women in general. This is unavoidable. Still, Steve forced me to go through my blogs. It took me a long time and I came across more support for women than anything else. In fact, I really cannot find any embroidered attack on women in any of my blogs. So I want to be very clear about this:
The only attack I am making is against FASD and I’m doing it in many ways. As it is, women have babies, not men. So I maintain that if any woman is offended than she is taking things personally when in fact I have also included men in many of my blogs specifically pointing out that they too share responsibility as partners for FASD births. I honestly don’t have any deliberate goal of offending anyone.
If a pregnant woman who after 3 months of drinking found out she were pregnant, would I be offending that woman? Again, this is not my intention and, in fact, my sharing of the facts of where she may be in regard to having foetal damage should be nothing less than a mental kick to stop her habit(s) immediately as well immediate educational guidance.
My goal has always only been to see healthy pregnancies. FASD is a horrible life sentence and is an uncomfortable topic for those who wish to have a drink but are reminded of the ugly consequences. That is not my fault.
Again, if I want healthy pregnancies by giving the foetus a voice in my blogging, I am not going to feel bad. I feel only good about it because I want all newborns to have the same chance at success in life, a success that is impossible for children born with FASD. It wasn’t I who created the woman as the bearer of responsibility of healthy pregnancies; it was evolution (if you don’t believe in God) or it was was creation (if you do believe in God). And still I add men to the responsibility duty list of protecting the foetus.
So I beg all women and men to really look at my blogs and ask them to then look at their own purpose for their foetus (baby) when dealing with a pregnancy and to see that in fact I am providing informed consent through various means and that I do it because I care.
Back to: Regarding “professionalism” in my writing, I do see in my blogs that I have some changes to make. One change I made, for example, is in blog: “Lots To Think About - Special Emails (Aug 2011),” half way down where I replaced a pair of words with a “BLEEP” in green lettering. This was a thwack against the government of Canada.
There is another blog where I wrote a somewhat juvenile sentence regarding a manager that fired an employee for not serving alcohol to a pregnant woman. See blog: “Poor Sap Gets Fired For Refusing to Serve Alcohol to Pregnant Woman. (Aug 2011)” In this blog I was reminded that a woman has total domain of her body and is by all rights the sole decider of what to do with it. I must say with emphasis, this is something I have never taken for granted. Steve’s reminder was still duly noted and again, I am going through my blogs to catch any miswritings I may have made.
Having said all this, I have already went through a most of my blogs and have clearly seen that I have not attempted to take women’s right for granted. My goal is to inform women of the serious nature of drinking while pregnant. This I am completely adament about and am satisfied that I am not trying to take anything away from women’s rights, including drinking while pregnant.
True, I may have run a little interference but if anyone would read all of my blogs they would realize that what I am really attacking is the actual problem of the incidence rate of FASD births and the governments failure to help with the prevention of Canada’s number one birth defect – not women’s rights.
Please take nothing personally and understand my goals and my “hit ‘em hard” approach designed specifically for the only ones that cannot have a voice without me – the foetus.
I'd like to think that, like Jack Layton, I fight on the issue.
Let the fetus do its job of becoming your baby.
No Booze. No Drugs. Being Real.
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