Quick hit: Why Patriarchal Men Are Utterly Petrified of Birth Control (via alternet)

This is an excellent article from alternet.org and explains, from an interesting sociological perspective, what the War on Contraception is all about. Excerpt:

With that one essential choice came the possibility, for the first time, to make a vast range of other choices for ourselves that were simply never within reach before. We could choose to delay childbearing and limit the number of children we raise; and that, in turn, freed up time and energy to explore the world beyond the home. We could refuse to marry or have babies at all, and pursue our other passions instead. Contraception was the single necessary key that opened the door to the whole new universe of activities that had always been zealously monopolized by the men — education, the trades, the arts, government, travel, spiritual and cultural leadership, and even (eventually) war making.

Full article.

Quick hit: stalking – the terrifying crime the law may at last be taking seriously

This woman was forced into exile because the legal system in the country she was living in, like almost every legal system in the world, was utterly uninterested in recognising or responding to the daily terror that she was being exposed to. The police told her they could only act once she was physically attacked. She could have sought an expensive civil injunction, but to do so she would have had to turn up in court, in full view of the man she was desperately trying to avoid, and give him the tremendous satisfaction of hearing just how effectively he had frightened her and damaged her life.

“That’s everything he wants,” she said. “To force me to see him, to hear how scared I am and how powerful he is – that’s just what he’s trying to achieve.” She decided not to when her solicitor told her that the police rarely arrested any man who broke such an injunction. It was a waste of time.

Just don’t read the “poor menz, what about us” comments.

[guardian]

No sex please; we’re British. And we’re called Dave.

Below is an excellent and interesting critique of the recent announcement by Dave (Cameron) et al that said that we need to halt the over-sexualisation of our young girls. Dave et al are backing several proposals (from a Christian organisation, it’s worth noting) that aim to protect children from sexual imagery (e.g., by selling top shelf magazines in brown sleeves). In predictable Tory fashion, Dave said that such change is about “social responsibility, not state control”. The conservatives are always keen to giveth autonomy with one hand and to very quickly taketh it away with the other. Whether it’s their plan or not, any measures introduced to combat over-sexualisation of young people will, inevitably, result in greater state control. But that’s an aside (for now).

Now, don’t get me wrong – over-sexualisation of young girls is a very serious issue and is unavoidably an aspect of our patriarchal objectification and sexualisation of women, and the impossible centrality of their physical appearance (they must be attractive but not too attractive because that’s inaccessible, they must be thin but not too thin because that’s emaciated, they must be curvy but not too curvy because that’s slutty and/ or fat, they must be lightly dressed but not too lightly dressed because that’s also slutty, etc. etc.) In short, they must be perfect but not too perfect  because then they’d never bang you. These norms are communicated to our young people everywhere they look, alongside the image of women as (available and willing) sex objects. So, should we do something about all of this? Yes, we absolutely should. Though we should be honest about it. If it’s about addressing the issue of pervasive sexual imagery and messages, that’s one thing; if it’s a cover for something else entirely, though, then we have a whole new problem. Laura Woodhouse from the f-word unpicks what is really going on with this conservative policy.

… the real problem with thongs and padded bras being marketed at young girls and pop culture being defined by women writhing around half naked is that it encourages children and teenagers to have sex.

…

For these right-wing, often conservative Christian types, the commercialised vision of sex being thrust in kids’ faces is dangerous because their view of “normal” has no place for anything other than sex between one man and one woman, bound together for life, who are willing to accept the tiny wee bundle of a consequence that may result. Sex for pleasure, sex outside relationships, sex that results in abortion – any sexual activity that deviates from their norm – is a sinful, threatening act that tears another rip in the moral fabric of a fading social order they are doing their darnedest to resurrect. This kind of sex is dark and dirty, while children are pure and innocent. By bringing the sinful world of sex into childhood, we defile our children.

So is it about saving our children’s innocence, protecting them from the horrid world of the patriarchy, and teaching them that they don’t have to subscribe to these messages? Or is it just that the right-wingers don’t want anyone (apart from a happily married man and woman) having sex? I’m inclining towards Woodhouse’s argument. Nadine Dorries, for example, is notoriously anti-abortion. By and large, if I may generalise, anti-abortionists are also anti-non-marital, non-procreative, sex-for-the-hell-of-it sex. But here’s the rub: sex is “normal”, teenage sex is “normal”, teenagers are horny little rascals, teenagers are walking frickin’ sexers. Teens have been having sex for as long as anyone’s been having sex. Teenagers living in a vacuum would still have sex.

Yes, girls need to know that they don’t have to be anything for anyone, that they don’t have to do anything for anyone, that the messages they see every day present a patriarchal view to which they do not have to subscribe, but if Dave’s new bandwagon is about preventing sex and little else, then the conservatives are once again barking up the wrong tree.

You’ve turned your daughter into a SLUT!

There’s a new nightmare on the block for femisogynist moms. Now that they’re all grown up and settled down with teenage daughters of their own, they’re shocked to find out that the sexual empowerment they’ve been championing for decades has backfired on them. How has it backfired? Well, the femisogynist moms are finding out that sexual empowerment has really turned their daughters into slutty teens.

If you need a quick hit of misogyny and slut-shaming this Friday afternoon, look no further than this link.

Sexual liberation has made all our children SLUTS, don’t you know! The piece uses the word ‘empowerment’ in the same paragraph as the word ‘whores’ so quite obviously doesn’t know what it means. No, it’s clear that, from the author’s perspective, ‘empowerment’ is a very dirty word when it is related to women. Indeed, women are just dirty, period, this author thinks. (Oh, see what I did there! Filthy periods!) It’s ironic, given that she’s a women herself, but it wouldn’t be the first time. She’s terrified that women and girls can have any sort of sexual agency at all, and that they could possibly enjoy sex on their own terms. She would prefer it if women (but not men?) practised pre-marital abstinence, and fathers controlled their daughters’ (but not their sons?) sexual activity.*

But, ultimately, let’s face it, she’s wrong. Feminists don’t actually complain about their ‘slutty’ daughters because feminists don’t slut-shame. (We know that the author and her mates are able to do plenty enough of that already.) She’s mistaking a discourse about the hyper-sexualisation of young girls (which arises from the patriarchy and not, what she hilariously terms, ‘femisogynists’) for some sort of generational hysteria amongst women. Misogynists may certainly despise a woman for her sexual choices, but feminists most certainly do not.

–

* Because, after all, purity balls aren’t creepy at all.

Fear dictates Ireland’s abortion policy

I’m very much behind on my posts and have too many posts sitting in drafts waiting to be finished or, at the very least, cobbled together.

This piece which was recently published in the Guardian resonates greatly with me. As a pro-choice and pro-abortion women who has spent most of her life so far living in Ireland, I know that there is such a climate of fear around abortion there that pro-choice and pro-abortion women (and men) are often frightened to speak their mind about abortion. The anti-abortionists/ anti-choicers in Ireland are very powerful, and they of course have the full backing of the Catholic Church and, by extension, the Government and legal system. Nothing changes in Ireland unless the Church says it can change. But it’s more than just taboo; it’s an unspoken and pervasive acceptance that it is very unlikely that abortion will ever be discussed rationally, fairly and purposefully in Ireland in our lifetimes. The anti-choice movement has become so prominent there that it has become almost impossible to stand up for abortion rights.

It has always taken guts to stand up for abortion rights in Ireland, north and south of the border. Straight off, you’re likely to be hit by a slew of strident invective from the pro-life lobby, trailing pictures of aborted foetuses in their wake, and nameless bloggers will fall over each other to brand you a baby-murderer. Sure enough, the three women trying to overturn the Irish abortion ban in the European court of human rights were immediately accused on anti-abortion sites of having “travelled abroad to have their children killed”. … Why expose yourself directly to such hatred? Such nasty outbursts could be dismissed as so much ridiculous hysteria, were it not for the fact that the anti-abortion lobby, with its scare tactics, “prayer vigils” and wild accusations, has effectively been allowed to define the situation in Ireland, shifting the entire discourse on to moral grounds.

It’s not just the anti-choice movement which suppresses debate, however; it is the Church itself. I have had numerous discussions about abortion (see also, sex before marriage, divorce, homosexuality, race, women’s rights) with the more sanctimonious members of my family and they were quite enough to make me wary of who I get into discussions with in Ireland. In short, Catholicism is allowed to rule all of these debates, and the Catholic Church is allowed to stipulate who discusses what  and where in the public domain. If you agree with the Church, you have free reign to be as outspoken as you like; if you do not, you will shut up. And the religious right is always secure in the knowledge that nothing it has this backing from the Church.

But the real issue here is not necessarily the debate, or the lack it it; it’s about the women who are not still not allowed to make a choice about abortion in Ireland. And these women, as the piece states, continue to travel in their thousands every year to England to abort. If there’s one thing we know about abortion, it’s that women will access it – legally or illegally – and will travel to wherever it is available, despite the variety of costs. It is also not news that abortion is often a difficult, emotional, and traumatic experience. Forcing women (many of them very young) to travel many miles to an unknown place to abort is not only wrong but completely reprehensible and it’s about time the Government of Ireland had the courage to stand up to the Church for the sake of its electorate.

So the situation in Ireland remains in stasis. Those who are pro-choice continue to be unable to air their views in public, those who are anti-choice continue to bully and harass those with whom they disagree, abortion is still illegal, choice is not available, and women continue to lose.

Anti-depressants now kill your unborn child

There’s one thing I’m tired of and that’s hearing how ‘research’ has found that anti-depressants are bad for you. (Do you know if you take them for too long, your limbs fall off one by one?) Every time I read such a finding, I think of Tom Cruise’s rant about anti-depressants and how evil they are. I mean, for the love of the Gods (of Scientology), if Tom Cruise says it’s wrong, we know it must be right.

Anyway, the latest anti-anti-depressants decree maintains that anti-depressants are linked with a higher risk of miscarriage. The study, which was conducted at the the University of Montreal, examined 69,742 women from a a pregnancy register compiled in Quebec, 5,124 of whom had had a miscarriage. Among these women, 5.5% had had at least one prescription for an anti-depressant during their pregnancy, compared with 2.7% of the control group (presumably, those who were not on anti-depressants). Researchers calculated that those women who were on anti-depressants had a 68% higher risk of miscarriage than those who were not, and concluded that the findings indicate that the risk was greater for women who used two or more classes of anti-depressants.

Now, I don’t know the details of how these researchers did their analysis, but I’ve done some statistical analysis myself in my time. I’m thinking that it’s fairly unlikely that the very small proportional difference between those women who miscarried who were on anti-depressants and those who were not (5.5% vs. 2.7%) would be statistically significant, never mind that the likelihood of the former miscarrying was 68% higher. The difference between the two is so marginal that I cannot see where they could have got 68%. They also have not indicated how many women who were not on anti-depressants miscarried or how may who were did not. There is a lot more going in here than you first think.

And ultimately, this isn’t about warning the medical fraternity of the dangers of anti-depressants, it’s about contributing further to the swell of ‘rules’ that come from the medical industry which dictate what women are and are not allowed to do with their bodies. They should breast-feed, they should not be given drugs during birth, they should eat greens, they should not have caffeine. The lists go on and on and your choice during your pregnancy is constantly mediated by what ‘science’ dictates to you to do. This latest decree is particularly dangerous, however, because depression during pregnancy is very common and it is considerably more serious and important to consider than the effects of the odd cappuccino. It’s all too possible that new research will be released next week which will refute these findings and carry with it another rule about pregnancy, but we have to wait for that with baited breath.

In the meantime, I’d like to see a study coming out which concludes that women know what’s best for their own bodies, whether they’re pregnant or not, and that the decisions on what they do with their bodies should be left to them.

In brief: HA! 95% of US adults have sex before marriage

This is music to my ears. See, ever since George Bush and Sarah Palin would not shut their vile mouths about abstinence-only education, I wanted ALL the world to have sex ALL the time with everyone. Or, at least, I wanted everyone in America at it! And it seems I’ve had my wish.

According to a Gallup poll, 38% of people in the U.S. think that pre-marital sex is morally wrong but 95% of people in the U.S. have sex before getting married anyway (if they ever get married, that is). NINETY. FIVE. PERCENT. That’s huge. That is, indeed, just about everyone. They’re all at it! Nice one!

And listen to this: even among people who chose to abstain until at least 20, 81% of them still did the deed by the time they were 44. Surprising? In 2010, probably not. But apparently, these trends have been prevalent since the 1950s. Excellent!

I had a latte with an extra shot the day I read about these polls by way of celebration (well it was 10am). That’s how damned happy I was. Abstinence-only my behind!

She has ‘low maternal interest’

Does anyone want to join me at rolling my eyes, shaking my head, and possibly spluttering my coffee, at this?

Pediatric endocrinologist Maria New, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Florida International University, and her long-time collaborator, psychologist Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg, of Columbia University, have been tracing evidence for the influence of prenatal androgens in sexual orientation…. They specifically point to reasons to believe that it is prenatal androgens that have an impact on the development of sexual orientation.

So far, so not terribly disturbing. Hey, we all like science (don’t we?) and I have no problems with them looking for the ‘gay gene’. It’s overwhelmingly likely that the results of such research will always be inconclusive so if it keeps certain sectors of the population satisfied to keep looking, let ‘em at it.

But here’s the kicker. It seems that Dr. New is not carrying out this research for the sake of medical science…

In the same article, Meyer-Bahlburg suggests that treatments with prenatal dexamethasone might cause these girls’ behavior to be closer to the expectation of heterosexual norms: “Long term follow-up studies of the behavioral outcome will show whether dexamethasone treatment also prevents the effects of prenatal androgens on brain and behavior.”

In a paper published just this year in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, New and her colleague, pediatric endocrinologist Saroj Nimkarn of Weill Cornell Medical College, go further, constructing low interest in babies and men – and even interest in what they consider to be men’s occupations and games – as “abnormal,” and potentially preventable with prenatal dex.

No, she wants to stop Teh Gay in its tracks. And not only that, she wants to experiment with treating pregnant women in order to lower the chances of their female children being gay or ‘unwomanlike’. (Low interest in babies and men is unwomanlike, by the way, for all you tarts out there who didn’t know that.) Will it work? Who the hell knows? All that science is gobbleygook to me. But that’s not the point. The point is that we actually have people who believe in trying to ‘gender normalise’ children. And we have financial investment in research by people who, obviously, subscribe to that agenda. And what are these gender norms, you ask? Well, according to Dr. New:

“The challenge here is… to see what could be done to restore this baby to the normal female appearance which would be compatible with her parents presenting her as a girl, with her eventually becoming somebody’s wife, and having normal sexual development, and becoming a mother. And she has all the machinery for motherhood, and therefore nothing should stop that, if we can repair her surgically and help her psychologically to continue to grow and develop as a girl.”

Sweet Jesus. Someone needs to tell Dr. New and her colleagues that most enlightened people threw those ideas out the window circa 1972. And now for the irony. New is a woman. New is a woman in a heavily male-dominated industry. New is, in fact, one of the first women pediatric endocrinologists in the US. New is not, according to her own definition, gender normative. Yet she thinks it is viable and acceptable, and presumably desirable, to attempt to force gender norms on the unborn. I just don’t get it.