Archive
A Few Things
Grace Silver - A Lot More Fun Than She Looks
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JESUS: Son of Mary. No one knows who she was. Father was god, who deserted his mother before his birth, leaving her without room rent or medical attention.
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LOVE: A sentiment which all preachers are supposed to feel for all men, women, girls and boys. Sometimes it leads to a prison sentence.
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MISSIONARY: A fellow full of enthusiasm and religion, who endures mosquitoes and malaria in order that he may christianize the heathen, in return for which he receives an allowance, an extra pair of wings, and a pass to an orchestra seat in heaven. The poor heathen are defenseless.
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Four Hundred Thousand Swedish Perverts
GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
Don Kulick 2005
Cool Search Tip
I gotta tell ya, history is really cool. Well, let me clarify – history is horrifying, but in that historical learning way, it’s pretty cool.
Feminism Disease
I mentioned before that I was poking through the New York Times archives; I’ve been looking for early mentions of feminist activity, because I thought it might be entertaining for people to read and fun to write about since it’s not all depressing and current and such. It didn’t really turn out that way, cuz I wasted a lot of time and got all sorts of distracted reading unrelated things, which just bummed me out anyway.
Anywho, I’ve been learning all sorts of stuff.
“THREE DREAMS IN A DESERT” – by Olive Schreiner, 1890
I’m all lazy, so here’s another thing that I didn’t write, but I think it’s super cool. I was nosing around in the New York Times archives (evidenced in last post), and some chick had sent in a letter to the editor saying ‘yay feminism’ and she mentioned this ‘three dreams in a desert’ so I went and looked it up:
THREE DREAMS IN A DESERT
– by Olive Schreiner, 1890
As I travelled across an African plain the sun shone down hotly. Then I drew my horse up under a mimosa-tree, and I took the saddle from him and left him to feed among the parched bushes. And all to right and to left stretched the brown earth. And I sat down under the tree, because the heat beat fiercely, and all along the horizon the air throbbed. And after a while a heavy drowsiness came over me, and I laid my head down against my saddle, and I fell asleep there. And, in my sleep, I had a curious dream.
Scandalous Women
The “other” in the affairs is almost always “the other woman”, and boy oh boy do they pay for it. For being women without power, I mean.
Some wonder why don’t we hear about Powerful Women having dalliances with pool boys and such, they reach and blame society for not thinking older women are hot, or say women can’t brag about it the way men do. Fact is, it’s about power, the husband of a powerful woman knows that if he accuses her of running around with the pool boy, nobody will really care. Good for her, they will say.
Typical
I saw this mind boggling comment on an article the other day, and I got distracted because in the middle of it the person told me to go read about how Tiger Woods sex-trafficks-women-and-children-especially, but I couldn’t not share the rest of it. Sad thing is that this is in no way unusual, and I’ve read almost exactly this sort of reasoning all over the place, long before Tiger Woods crashed his car. Some of you might recognize this as a description of “rape-culture” but not the part about actual rape, just the part about how slutty women cause it. I checked out the comment poster’s blog and it was entirely rational, because entirely rational people are falling for this stuff. I think it’s because they don’t know a lot of sluts:
Most of the “analysis” of the Tiger Woods scandal is just a silly waste of breath.
Good thing you don’t have to breathe when you type, or else you’d be wasting breath if you continued.
The truth is our society … coddles males, lets them get away with being selfish, thoughtless, irresponsible, completely self-centered and inconsiderate of other people during their childhoods
Wow, umm. I guess. Your brother sounds like a huge jerk.
All Women, All Men, All Gods
Most of the time I write about stuff in generalities: Women do this, Men do that. I say that women do this or that and men do this or that, but I know it’s not ALL women and ALL men. I know it’s outrageously more complicated than that.
When I talk about sex work, I know all sex-workers aren’t women, and I don’t mean to make it sound as if they are all women, but the issues that affect sex-workers affect all sex workers regardless of gender, and it’s those opposed to sex-work who claim they oppose it on the grounds that it’s oppressive to women. I know it’s an attempt to stifle debate, I’m tired of wasting time being sure to point out ‘men too’ or ‘trans too’.
I’ll talk about “sex workers” – for example: “sex-workers face danger, but women are often more vulnerable to assault even if they aren’t sex workers” – I don’t mean to say all sex-workers are women, but so often the anti-sex work factions use ‘women’s vulnerability’ to justify their anti- attitudes, so I don’t bother partitioning the people into “men, women, trans” because that just plays into a “divide and conquer” strategy that (imo) they have implemented to silence anyone who argues against them. They want to waste our time, and they want to tire us out by making us go to the effort to “be specific” – yes, it’s important to be specific, but the fact that it is important can’t be used as a tool to silence me. Not anymore, goddammit.
How Did All This Patriarchy Get Into My Feminism?
If the “acceptableness” of woman has been defined by patriarchy largely by her willingness to not demand attention - If patriarchy doesn’t approve of attention seeking women – whether they get attention by sex or smarts – how can approving of attention seeking women support Patriarchy? It doesn’t, no matter who says it does.Two groups have fought like hell for 30 years to keep that status quo. Conservative Patriarchy upholders and ‘Radical’ Feminism. We never turned the status quo into “women who use sex are the best!” – although many radical feminists today seem to think that we did. Since the very first woman’s studies programs began, feminism has split into a war over whether or not getting “attention by sex” is good or bad. One side says it’s bad, one side says it’s good. One side upholds the status quo, one side doesn’t.
Almost all of feminist energy, only 3 or 4 years after roe v. wade, was focused exclusively on fighting “pornography” which – not coincidentally was the go-to industry for women who wanted “attention for sex” or who used sex to attain power. It’s not a coincidence that feminists such as Betty Friedan, who literally started ’2nd wave feminism’ with The Feminine Mystique,aligned themselves against the anti-pornography crusaders. Those early “pro-sex” feminists recognized that women who use sex for gain were not the enemy that ”radical feminism” painted them as.
It’s interesting if you look at the start of things, of 2nd wave feminism, if you look at it with a skeptical eye, I have and no it doesn’t make me an anti-feminist, but it’s interesting that there were groups of feminists, and then there were women who were powerful in other areas, but didn’t actually seem to be saying very feminist sorts of things. They were lawyers and doctors and writers who were of the opinion that even though women deserve to be ‘equal’ – sluts were still bad (nevermind the question of what makes a slut). They justify that wrong-headed belief that sluts are bad with a lot of theories, which when you break them down they are all basically: hate the sin, not the sinner. Slutty Sinners are only tempted by the Devil of Patriachy with empty promises and lies.
As feminism advances, the fight against it changes, and the most hotly debated area of feminism is still all about women who use sex for attention. A sex positive feminist will say that a woman who poses in playboy is being a feminist because she earns money using sex/sexuality/her body, Not-so-sex-positive feminists will say that she is using sex/sexuality/her body to get attention. Then the quesiton is ‘what’s wrong with attention’ and the reply is that it depends on the kind of attention – right back to the belief that sex to get attention is wrong – right back to the status quo.
If you ask what’s wrong with liking attention by sex, you get a whirlwind of justification for why it’s wrong like she’s advancing ‘rape-culture’, which relies on the theories that say men are just natural born brutes and liars and sex fiends who’ll do anything to keep a woman under his control. They rationalize and justify the dislike of women who use sex with examples of what the most violent and disturbed men have done to women. If someone doubts the assertion that so many men are that violent, and if they say that some women just like sex, they are painted as an apologetic and an anti-feminist. I doubt the assertion, not because I care that men get a bad rep, but because it is clear to me that they use this image of Man as Beast to justify their own discomfort about these women who use sex. No woman would choose it, no woman would like, they must have been forced. They must have been tricked, coerced, trained to perform.
There is nothing wrong with disliking women who use sex, but it’s not feminist to try to sway everyone else to your way of thinking when you have to use lies and distortions to rationalize your questionable theories.
Being so dedicated to that feminism because that’s what you’ve been taught, to the point where you can’t step away and take a look with a critical eye, isn’t a good thing. You can’t tell that the back of the house is on fire unless you look or you have a smoke alarm. Pro-Sex feminism is the smoke alarm. At this point, we’re very very very alarmed. Not many people seem to be listening. A lot of people would like us to shut up and go away, and we will, but you have to put out the fire first.
Women Can’t Be Heroes?
So, I’m over on Alternet earlier and I see this article: Media Fail: 2nd Cop, not Kimberly Munley, Brought Down Ft. Hood Shooter
On Friday, the New York Times ran an interview with Sgt. Mark Todd, the police officer who, contrary to previous reports, ended the Fort Hood rampage by shooting Nidal Hasan.
Sgt. Kimberly D. Munley has been applauded as a hero across the nation for shooting down Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan during the bloody rampage at Fort Hood last week. The account of heroism, given by the authorities, attracted the attention of newspapers, the networks and television talk shows.
But the initial story of how she and the accused gunman went down in an exchange of gunfire now appears to be inaccurate.
Another officer, Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, 42, said in an interview Thursday that he fired the shots that brought down the gunman after Sergeant Munley was seriously wounded. A witness confirmed Sergeant Todd’s account.
This Just In: Prudes Don’t Like Floozies
I saw this and this about this ”Sluts or New Feminists” article, and made this comment on feministe, but I think it was too long and it got caught in the moderation queue or something:
Quoting from the article:
They argue that women who invoke a new kind of feminism — the right to have sex whenever and with whomever they choose — is demeaning to women.
“A popular thing to say among this intellectual crowd, in the ivies and in feminism in general, is to say that sex is empowering and a real woman uses her sexuality in any way she pleases,” said Rachel Wagley, a 20-year-old sociology student who is TLR’s co-president. “It’s blatantly false and a lie that this culture tells to girls for their own benefit.”
Gee where have I heard that before? Oh that’s right I hear that from half the feminists I run across every day. Heck, you don’t even have to be hooking-up, just showing your flesh gets the “you’re not empowered, you’re stupid” shaming treatment.
As annoying as that is, that this person says ”A popular thing… in feminism… is to say that sex is empowering” – is even more annoying. It’s totally obvious she’s never been to IBTP or any other of the many sites out there that don’t believe in the “casual sex is empowering” stuff – so how can she even say she knows ANYTHING about feminism if she doesn’t realize that this is a HUGE debate within feminism? If she even googled “sex empowering” or anything, she’d have known that her theory that “feminism in general” has a hive-mind belief of any kind is simplistic bullshit. Oh but that’s right, she knows, and she meant to co-opt the whole thing – don’t credit radfems for the theory; while simultaneously pushing “feminism in general” into the role of the opponent who wants women to be big-ol-dirty-sluts.
Gah. that’s annoying. I don’t care what side of the empower-ful debate you’re on, it’s not cool to have non-feminists claiming feminist theory as their own.
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“England, who set out to explore the dating habits of college students, found they were kissing, having oral sex and sometimes intercourse with “no expectation that either party has an interest in moving toward a relationship.”
The horror. NO relationship?! AT ALL?! The absolute horror.
“There’s a lot of degrading treatment of some women and it is empoweringly free for other women,” she told ABCNews.com.”
I bet 10 bucks right now that next we’ll hear that women who do like to “hook-up” only do so because they have been abused or are victims of incest.
Which Side Are You On, Boys?
Dedicated to all of those who would like us to take one for the team:
What A Hero
I found this guy commenting about stuff on change.org’s human trafficking blog . He supports a lot of causes, which is swell, but he’s writing books about human trafficking and how terrible it is, and of course his books are fiction. Fiction about a man who likes to save women and kill a bunch of people along the way. Glory hallafuck. You can find the page I quote through that profile, I’m not going to link to him directly. The first book is Svetna, currently available through Amazon, and interestingly, when I looked at it’s Amazon page a couple of weeks ago, there were 4 reviews which rated the book 5 stars, I thought they were all fake, and I guess I was right because they’ve been removed. Ha.
Here’s a quick description:
But, Women Are Made For Penises, Right?
I mean, why should I pay for sex when women are for sex? That’s why God made them, so we could have sex with them! It’s like God already paid for the sex, and then he gave it to us by creating women. That’s God’s plan! Paying for it is like saying women weren’t specifically put here for a man to put his penis into in the first place, and that’s just plain crazy talk!
And you know, if you make me pay, then there is no chance that I will fall in love with you, and isn’t that what you really want? For me to fall in love with you? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way, that’s only in the movies honey, This Ain’t Pretty Woman, you know. Here in the real world men who pay for sex know that you are trash, and they won’t ever love you. So come on, you know I can’t pay because I actually kind of like you. I might love you if you let me fuck that hot cunt right now, don’t you want that? That’s what women want, I know it is, women want love and someone to care about them. You need to decide if you want love or if you want people to think you’re trash, it’s a decision only you can make.
This is so sad. So sad that you never learned the pleasure that comes from only having a dick inside you instead of the sinful deviant perverted pleasure of having a dick inside you and 300 dollars. You only think it’s ok because you don’t know any better, who taught you this nonsense?! They robbed you of the ability to love my cock, and the opportunity to earn a chance at me loving you. It’s quite tragic, actually. You just really haven’t got a clue what love is really like, do you?
Oh you say that you have people who care about you, and that you have love… but come on, do you really? How could you? You charge men for sex, and I already explained to you that nobody will ever love that, it’s against the rule that says Women Are Made For Fucking. There is no rule that says women are made for paying, you know. In fact there are rules against it!
Besides those good reasons, don’t you know that if you make me pay for it, you’re gonna make it harder for me to take other women seriously when they tell me that they don’t want sex WITHOUT love? Don’t be ridiculous and say that I should respect what those women say! How can I respect other women’s wishes when YOU – a WOMAN – have already told me that you – a WOMAN – are fine with being fucked without the bonus of me possibly loving you? You know that what goes for one woman goes for all, and how can you speak for all those decent women and say my precious love doesn’t matter? You might not care about the possibility of experiencing the wonder of my love – but what about other women? Do you want to deny them the chance? Do you really think it’s wise to send the message that it’s ok to fuck for money and NOT love?! Why oh why would you want to deny them the opportunity of worshipping my dick out of the kindness of thier hearts?
I just can’t believe that you are fine with being trash, with being a – yeah I’ll say it – you’re just a whore. I’m not gonna fancy it up with “escort” or “call-girl” because you’re no better than a common whore. I’m sorry, maybe that was out of line… you’re not that bad, you are smart and funny and you seem so normal – it just breaks my heart that you think men will love you when you refuse to even try riding their dicks without money. It’s like you don’t even consider that the feeling of my dick up in you will be worth it without money. You might enjoy it, you know. Ever think of that?
You don’t realize it, but if I give you money for something that I technically already have a right to, it automatically makes you unable to appreciate my dick on its own merits. Maybe it’s too late - even if you didn’t make me pay, you wouldn’t be able to appreciate it. You’ve gotten so used to dicks coming along with money attached to them, that any dick without money won’t even interest you! No, you might say it’s just MY dick that you don’t want without money, but I know that’s impossible, because My Dick is the greatest Dick and no sane woman would turn down the chance to have it.
You act like I’m hassling you! HA! I actually care about you. I’m probably the only person who actually does. These people who give you money – they really don’t care, you know. Oh sure, they are giving you money, and that lets you feed your children and pay your rent and save for a rainy day – but is that really evidence that someone cares, really CARES, about you? That they feed and shelter you and your children? Really, that’s all it takes? So sad, so sad.
I mean, sure, it sounds good, but only if you think of it like just another job - but it’s YOUR VAGINA!!!! it’s not your feet or your hands or your muscles or your mind or your talent or your opinions they are paying for - it’s your vagina! God gave you that vagina, and he gave it to you for a purpose. It’s your only purpose, really – to be the keeper of that vagina – that part of you that takes my seed and loves it, nourishes it, and gives that seed a place to safely grow into my children – that is more important than anything else. If you don’t realize that, it’s just… so so sad.
And you know, you should be really glad that I don’t just call the cops on you, or rape you for that matter. Anyone else would, you know. other than these men who degrade you by feeding and sheltering you, anyway. They are just as sick as you are, maybe worse. Yep, gotta be something wrong with a guy who doesn’t have enough self-esteem to know that his dick is for worshipping. I don’t know who I feel worse for, them or you. Or maybe it’s our fucked up culture, and this attitude we have that women can just go around being sexual for the sake of being sexual. I mean really, when did that become acceptable? Even feminists can see the problem with that – a woman’s sexuality isn’t for public consumption. It’s private, and precious, and should be kept safe and cared for and out of sight.
There was time when men just took sex, didn’t ask or anything, and feminism taught us how wrong that was. We learned about asking, learned that women should be asked first, but this is just too much. Expecting me to pay is just going too far. I’m asking like I was taught – and you can say no, but you’re not even saying no! You’re saying no, unless I pay - then it’s yes! What does that say about all those lessons telling me I had to ask? Why didn’t they teach us that all it really takes is money, and we don’t even really have to ask at all? They teach us that no means no, and yet you don’t really mean no when you say no – you mean no “not for free” and yes “for money”. How are men supposed to keep all of that straight?! How are we supposed to understand that no means no, but sometimes it’s ok if you pay?! You are practically teaching men that it’s ok to rape women, don’t you care about that- about the women?!
Don’t even try telling me that YOU are a feminist! Feminists understand the worth of a woman, you sure as hell don’t. You think a woman is worth only a few hundred dollars, but I know you’re worth more than that, you are worth so much that you have no wor… er umm, I mean you are priceless, umm, you know what I mean… Women just can’t be thought of in that way – because the worth is in what they do, in how they behave, in the things they accomplish – there is no worth in just being a woman, you have to have something to offer. Ugh. NO! You CAN’T offer me your vagina, aren’t you listening? That part of you is special — in fact anywhere I decide to put my dick is special — your mouth, your hand, your ass, between your tits, … it’s wrong to expect me to pay to put my dick into any of those. It’s just wrong to expect me to pay to put my dick where I decided I wanted to put it. My God. You really are a stupid whore if you don’t understand that by now.
Ok, fine. It’s your lucky day then. I’ll pay.
Oh that is rich….. you’re a fucking hypocrite! Now you say you won’t even fuck me for money! Because I was rude?! Are you out of your mind?! You can’t actually say NO! You’re a whore!
Oh Ok, Yes, you can say No… , ok then, yes I understand that is a pretty big gun, ok I’ll just find my own way out, no disrespect ma’am, really I was just kidding… sorry, sorry…
Pre-Post Ramble #1
Most of the time there is a lot of stuff I cut out of my posts. It’s a bunch of rambley digressions and ranty offshoots that really don’t have much to do with what I actually wanted to write about, but a lot of it is, I think, interesting. Or at least it’s stuff that I selfishly don’t really want to delete, so I’ve decided to make a special category called “Pre-Post Rambles” and post it anyway.
:D
Sometimes I feel like I’m constantly plagued by self-doubt. But then I kinda think that’s a good thing, because it makes me always question myself and what I believe. That doubt has motivated me throughout my entire life, and a lot of the time it’s gotten me into trouble. Official trouble, I mean, like arrested for selling pot when I was 18. I wouldn’t have tried pot in the first place if I wasn’t so doubtful about the old “pot’s a bad thing” status quo.
For me, if everybody is telling you not to do something and the best reason they can come up with is something like “you might like it too much” then whatever it is, you should probably try to do it right away…
Hypatia: Last Light of the Library
I don’t know when this movie is supposed to be released in the US. I heard December 18th, but then I read this article from October 14th detailing the trouble finding a US distributor because of belief that it will have “limited appeal”. Apparently the patriarchy has a problem with it.
It’s the cinematic story of the last days of Hypatia, a mathematician and astronomer, and a pagan woman; a scholar in the ancient city of Alexandria. Some modern scholars consider her death to be the first “witch burning” of the long and brutal transition from pagan culture to christian rule. Socrates of Constantinople, an early church historian (c.380~) wrote of her death:
Some of them therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home, and dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them.
Catherine Bennett: Women Are Only For Making Babies
Last week an article in the Guardian talked about how the number of trafficked women has been inflated. In today’s Guardian Catherine Bennett responds, letting us know how very much she loves women in an article with the headline:
No trafficking? Well, there’s a hell of a lot of women suffering
Beware those who argue that prostitution is just another job. If it is, why do so many women die in this sordid trade
She ends with:
As others have pointed out, the police are not much good at prosecuting those responsible for forced marriages and genital mutilation either. To say nothing of bankers and MPs responsible for fraud. But perhaps those stories are, themselves, nothing more than mischievous moral panics?
The sub-headline is hilarious! ha. It’s like asking “Why do women keep dying from abortions?” in 1940. Goodness knows. It’s a fucking mystery, get Sherlock Holmes.
And I love the genital mutilation strawman. That’s always a good one, no matter how many times I hear it.
8=5+5=10 and I Love Your Boobs!
I love your boobs.
The boobs in this sentence have been objectified.
This is not feminism. This is language. It’s about people, and parts of people, being used as the object in a sentence. It can be done correctly or incorrectly. Correct usage gives us understandable results. Incorrect usage gives us a recipe for disaster. How many times have you had something similiar to this conversation:
Does Abortion Exploit Women?
I was reading something about exploitation of women by some pro-life organizations today – I was googling for this alternet piece from a few months ago, and stumbled across some anti-choice results proclaiming that “Abortion Exploits Women”. The first result was on “lifeandlibertyforwomen.com”
It starts off with a detailed description of a late-term abortion and says that the primary purpose of abortion is to harvest “an extremely valuable commodity – fetal tissue”; here are some excerpts:
Also, if the pro-choice point of view is really about a “woman’s right to choose” then why is that “choice” always about abortion – not other issues? You don’t see “people for choice” fighting for a woman’s right to prostitute herself or to use illegal drugs. Laws against these activities certainly restrict a woman’s right to “choose” what to do with her body – why not fight for that choice?
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Polling … indicates that less that 1 percent of all abortions are done as a result of rape, incest, or because the life of the mother was in danger. Women shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that abortion is a cure-all.
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“Women Exploited By Abortion” distributed surveys in 42 states, which showed that 83 percent of women who had an abortion would have chosen differently if they hadn’t been encouraged by significant others, parents, friends, doctors and others. Had women been given positive programs to improve their circumstances, 83 percent of those asked would not have chosen abortion.
Most women don’t desire abortion, but they need help and support so that parenting (and/or adoption) can be a reasonable alternative. Abortion is a venture by an industry that doesn’t care about women – only profits – all at the expense of the innocent women it has exploited.
The next result I looked at lead me to an audio sermon titled “Abortion Exploits Women” from Father Frank Pavone of “Priests for Life”. He says in part:
[T]oday I want to focus on the harm that [abortion] does to women. Not only to the woman who goes to get the abortion, but to all women everywhere. Without exaggeration, abortion – and abortion being promoted in this country in a legalized way under the banner of women’s rights and women’s dignity and freedom of choice – is the biggest, cruelest hoax which has ever been perpetrated on women in the history of the world.
Why did they get so angry that I was holding that sign? The reason they got so angry was because I was stealing away from them the moral high ground that they try to stand on. They try to present themselves to the public as the defenders and champions of women’s rights – and there I was – a pro-lifer and a priest standing on the sidewalk showing that I had some concern for women, and showing that the thing they promote as so good for women, namely the right to abortion, actually does not serve them or help them, but exploits them.”
I was protesting against abortion … and I carried … a large poster that said, “Abortion Exploits Women” … I went and joined the pro-lifers. Well, when the pro-abortion people saw me with this sign, they went berserk …
—- he goes on to talk about how abortion exploits women – he explains that he has over 1100 case studies of testimony from women telling how “abortion has destroyed them” emotionally, physically, and morally, and blah blah blah.
I know that’s bullshit. You know that’s bullshit. We know that abortion is a difficult choice, and that for some women, yes, they never really come to terms with the decision they made, and we know that some women terminate pregnancies due to pressure from those around her, and we know that for many women the decision to terminate is influenced by economical concerns. I read comments all the time from women who have had abortions who say that they just weren’t financially able to raise a child, and if their circumstances were different they would have chosen differently.
The problem though, is that pro-life folks never seem to understand that women will still get abortions, they will hurt themselves, they will damage their reproductive organs and risk their lives terminating pregnancies on their own or under dangerous and dirty conditions.
Yes, they never SEEM to understand, but I think they do. They don’t want abortion illegal because they care about babies. No, that is a ruse. They fully understand that just as many unborn babies will be killed by illegal abortions as with legal abortions. The purpose of illegal abortion is to mark women as sinners and to punish them for it. There is no mercy for the sinner, not in the eyes of the anti-choicer. Women who dare to sin with their flesh outside of the sanctity of marriage are supposed to be marked. By giving birth to bastard children, by infertility resulting from self-induced termination, and by death.
Forced birth, infertility, death: In the fervent minds of religious pro-lifers these are the prices that women must pay for their wicked sins. When abortion is legal and safe, women cannot be properly marked. They are far less likely to die, there is less risk of infertility, and the forced birth and mark of ‘single motherhood’ is avoided. It’s not about the babies, it has never been about the babies. It’s not about Mommy loving children. It’s about forcing women to kill themselves or become marked by social stigma for daring to disobey the laws of the religion*. When a woman is denied the autonomy of choice it is always an attempt to keep power from her, and from all women.
So, I wonder, what’s the point of keeping prostitution illegal? Is it also to make sure women are punished for choosing it? In my opinion, yes.
In my opinion, when you find yourself in bed with fundamentalist christians, it’s time to wake up.
(*the first religious laws regarding sexuality were in large part an effort to ensure patriarchal property inheritance – before DNA tests you couldn’t tell who the father was, and because of this women who married had to submit to the control of her husband, so that he could be assured that if his wife became pregnant, he was indeed the only possible father.)
What Comes Next Is Up To You
Malevolence arrived
to brutalize.
It took us over
it told us lies.
It burned our words
as it burned our flesh
To silence, to stop, to oppress
