I started this blog so that the people who I think are cool and have good ideas would have a place to bring them out, discuss, and improve them as well as providing a platform for voicing objection to the current powers that be.
I thought that since I have smart, open-minded, progressive friends that I wasn’t gonna have to give you all a smack down and a primer on the power of the patriarchy. Man was I wrong. After Redd Herring’s comment “don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story” on the El Salvador abortion story, I know I have 2 choices when it comes to you boys- I can give you all the bitch slap you so desperately need and try to remember that I like you while I’m doing it- or I can close this thing down cause I’m really pissed and I don’t want to spend my time getting pissed off teaching people who should know fucking better what the deal is.
I will not play Professor Bitch to you boys more than once- so learn this and learn it now or I am yanking privileges. This is not a blog for “Anti-misogyny 101”- you should know better already.
1) It is different for girls. Flat out. Most boys do not spend every day from the pre-puberty on with the fear of rape hanging over their heads. Just this one fact, that 50 percent of the population knows that at any given moment their body can be invaded and abused and that they will be blamed and scorned for it alters the power dynamic. Most of you boys have never been in a situation where someone could forcibly enter your body and hurt you. To those of you that have been in that situation- you shouldn’t need to have it explained how powerless it makes you.
If a girl is raped- society says she is responsible because of where she was, what she was wearing, what she has done before, what kind of girl she is (see the comments made by Napoli of South Dakota on what kind of girl can get an abortion- only church-going virgins who have been sodomized -and then go back and read the comments about the black stripper who was raped at Duke). We don’t do this to boys. We don’t hold soldiers who get hurt in wars responsible for their injuries (but they we asking for it- they went to war), we don’t blame men who are robbed or beaten by saying they were asking for it by what clothes they were wearing. But girls are somehow responsible for bringing out the animalistic rape urges in boys. Boys are not held responsible for bringing out the animalistic kill urges in other boys.
2) Girls are given 100% of the responsibility for sex and few of the tools to guard from the consequences of it.
If a girl decides to have sex, she is responsible for birth control and the failures of birth control- but every method that might give a girl a chance to choose her own fate is being systematically stripped away. Yet it is biologically programmed for people (men and women) to have sex. We can no more control the desire to have sex than we can control the desire to eat or breathe. Sure, it can be put off, delayed, squelched, whatever- but I think I safely say that only a very tiny minority of adults die virgins.
Right now, today, in this very country, girls are having access to birth control, emergency contraception or abortion services limited on every front. Funding is being cut. New laws are being passed to make it difficult for clinics to stay open. Pharmacists and doctors are not only refusing to provide medications for abortions, but also for birth control and emergency contraception (which is just a really high dosage of birth control pills and not an abortifacent- though you would never know that from the news). Laws are being written so that birth control doesn’t have to be covered by insurance, though Viagra still is.
Now I will make some allowances for differences in anatomy. Girls carry more of the responsibility because we carry the risk. We are the ones who risk our lives and health to have babies. Until there is a major change in biology, girls will be the only ones who carry that risk. Until that time comes- you boys are gonna have to give up some of the power and let us control our own bodies. Pregnancy impacts every aspect of a girl’s life from the moment she finds out she’s pregnant. We have to decide if we willingly give up control of our bodies to another. I know of no similar situation where a boy can be forced to give up control of his body.
It is this ability to temporarily give up the control of our bodies for the good of another that has let society think we should give up control completely. But they (you) don’t get to decide that, society doesn’t get to decide that. The only person who can decide is the one whose body it is.
As an example- pretend that I have a fatal kidney disease. You have the only kidney in the world that is a match. You are risking your health and even your life if you give me your kidney. Your life will never be quite the same afterwards, though modern medicine has come far enough along that the risk to health and life have been drastically reduced. Should you be forced by society or the government to give me a kidney? Should you be placed in jail if you decide not to give me a kidney? You may decide for your own moral or altruistic reasons to give me a kidney out of kindness, but if it’s a risk that you don’t want to take or can’t take, should you be charged with murder when I die from kidney disease?
You boys think that this doesn’t have anything to do with you, or that it can’t possibly get as bad here as it is in El Salvador (or, and this is specifically for you Redd, that the story from El Salvador is not based on fact). Fuck you. No really. Civil rights had nothing to do with privileged white males either, except that they had to give up some of the power they had. Slavery had nothing to do with privileged white males either, except that they had to give up some of the power they had. And the privileged white males that understood that they had to give up some of their power because it was wrongly gained were part of the reason that things changed.
I know you think you have the moral high ground, but I am telling you that choosing to ignore the struggle of half the population to gain control over their own bodies is as immoral as choosing to ignore slavery because you live in a free state.
I don’t ignore the struggles of other people because they are a different race, or in a different country, or because they have a penis. You cannot dismiss the struggle for reproductive rights simply because you will never have to face the fear of carrying an unplanned pregnancy. By doing so you discount half the people on the planet for having less power than you.
I am afraid not to comment since ignoring something you feel so passionately about seems rude.
I have a post about this topic I am still formulating thoughts about.
I hope you like blogging enough to get past your reasonable anger.
(I know, I used “I” too much in a paragraph. I and I hope you are okay with that too).
Redd H:
If you wanted to hit a nerve, you did.
Red Q:
I hope you won’t close the whole thing down. Thank you.
First off let me offer my sincerest apologies to you madam Red Queen. I appreciate you and your efforts to have a place for us to have a discourse- thank you. I have read your preset blog twice and I think I have a better understanding of your position and I think we can agree that the real issue here is the right to be able to choose. I will go to my grave defending the right for anyone to have that ability; even if I am not in 100% agreement with them. My hope is that you would feel the same.
Admittedly I have no experience with being a woman in America or anywhere else for that matter, so I cannot address that side of the issue.
My comments were neither about anyone having ‘ the moral high ground’ or patriarch power. Lord knows we males have mucked up pretty much everything we touch as a gender. My comment were directedto an article about an emotional issue that was presented as objective new.
I did read the NY Times piece and came away feeling that it was slanted; this is not El Salvador. this is America and for all it’s warts and faults it is still the land of the free. I don’t see us becoming an El Salvador since we Americans can still think and choose freely. That is the beauty of this country and it’s failing. We all have the right to be wrong.
Using my right to freely think I tripped into your right to be pissed off at me. So again I apologize to you. I am not such an insensitive jerk to not see that you are passionate about this. Just as passionate as I about defending LIFE. There is an Old Testament verse to goes ” Iron sharpens Iron; so one person shapes the character of another.” Proverbs 27:17[ my paraphrase].
One final thought before you dismiss me , let me clarify myself a bit. I am very much for women’s rights ( ask my wife). My quibble here was with the Times piece. If I recall Journalism 101, Reported items should be presented in a clear and objective manner and an Op Ed piece should be identified as such. To me the article in question was neither and there fore misleading. Be that as it may my ” Never let the facts get in the way of a good story” quip was an off the cuff response to what I thought is an Op Ed Piece masquerading as a news article.
I read recently that the ability to choose to ignore or discount the experience of others is something that only those with power can do. Redd- your comments on this being an unbalanced article do just that. Go back and read it again- the author does talk to those on the other side. He also documents the experience of those who this applies to. I would really like you to clarify what about it makes it unbalanced? Or is it that since it is not an experience you have had(or biologically could ever have) you can’t identify with it?
As for my darling cousin (and your soon to be wife) if there was a situation where a pregnancy threatened her life, what I would want (for her to choose to save herself because I’m selfish and would miss her) or even what you would want are just our opinions- but we can’t make that choice because it is her body, her risk, and her responsiblity. I just want to make sure that she gets to be the one to make it, not someone else. I would make the same argument to the one child only people in China- if a woman chooses to have more than one it is her choice and no one should force her to have an abortion.
Now since you seem to think there is less of a problem than there actually is. “This is America.. land of the free”(ahhhh complacency, another bonus for being the ones with power) I’m gonna go compile a reading list for you. I’ve got one post allready- they will keep coming.
Your point is taken and the choice is and always be hers, as it should be. Nowhere have I never said that the choice is not yours or hers. That is what life is made up of choices.
You chose to allow me into the circle of Bloggers here and you can choose to remove me from that circle, that is your choice. But please note that I have never said that the choice over a woman’s body wasn’t hers, you seemed to have assumed that. Please don’t assume, rather know that I am still evolving politically from a Christian right winger into a left of center spiritually minded Progressive. I am trying to learn here.