Isn't it lovely to live in a sexist culture where women aren't considered real humans?
I've been meaning to post a link to this for a while now. cereta made a post that has spawned lots of thought and discussion that I think is important.
( Cut for possibly triggering stuff in the excerpts and comments, for those of you who are interested; links below if you'd rather just that )
( Cut for possibly triggering stuff in the excerpts and comments, for those of you who are interested; links below if you'd rather just that )
Oh, honey, the way that our experiences have fucked up our thinking!
You are NOT part of the problem. You are thinking and considering and re-considering. You are calling "that thing that happened to you" by the name you CAN while still being functional. You are LIVING, and that is what matters. If you can't, this week or next year, say, "I was raped," then, well, we can still figure out that "that thing that happened" to you was rape and we can count our lucky stars that you're around to be our friend and wonder WTF was up in the ashram that they didn't GET THIS and DO SOMETHING sooner--NOT, btw that YOU didn't "do something" sooner: it was the job of the adults...and, particularly, the rapist NOT to rape you--so that you would have an easier go of it now.
And, with your dad's edict, and your experiences re: brood mare and threatened and actual forced action toward YOUR BODY...I think your hesitancy and position makes perfect sense. Also, as I said to someone in another journal in another thread, the fact that you support LIFE does not make you anti-choice: you vote for choice, you want that choice there, and you ACT on that. Just because you, personally, don't always "support" as in "think it's a good idea" every termination that every woman has, doesn't make you anti-choice: it means you, personally, frown. Your comment here makes it clear that you would not STOP that woman--through coercion, violence, or law--from MAKING that choice, even when it's not one you agree with.
That, honey, makes you pro-choice, despite your reservations, as does your desire for kindness and compassion to rule treatment of everyone, even when that person is making a choice of which you do not entirely personally approve.
You can be pro-choice AND pro-life...and I, like so very many, am TOTALLY WITH YOU on the idea of excellent education, birth control, social services, support, etc., being the answer. We need to have cheap, accessible, available, effective birth control with LOTS of options for BOTH genders. The fact that YOU can't easily get/change your BC options is part of this greater issue you're addressing...and is, I think, the important answer. Now if we can just convince the stragglers out there that BC is NOT abortion...and that women shouldn't be denied BC in order that they may be punished for their sluttiness in enjoying sex.
*hugs*
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*applauds*
You can be pro-choice AND pro-life.
THIS. I really hate that the anti-choice people stole that phrase. Its an excellent example of the power of words.
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And *hugs* you. You don't have to be anon, sweetie, but I understand why you'd choose that and am okay with it.
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You are wise and wonderful, as always! *hugs*
we can count our lucky stars that you're around to be our friend and wonder WTF was up in the ashram that they didn't GET THIS and DO SOMETHING sooner
By the by, the "thing that happened to me" I was referring to happened in college. :) I won't deny that what happened / may have happened / almost happened / ETC in the ashram was wrong and strange and should have been addressed, but I'm much less clear on actually what happened... so in that case, if I say, "that thing that happened" it's really because I don't know. Which is different.
I think I'm much more pro-choice now than I was, too. For a while, fortunately before I could vote, I was pretty determined to vote against it too. I understand more about the world now, and how that could cause so many problems. I worked with a woman when I was in high school who had had twelve abortions in her life (and then could not have children when she wanted to, though I don't know if there's a connection), and the casual way she spoke about them kind of hardened me for a while to the idea of people who use it as alternate birth control or say "Well, it's just not convenient for me to have a baby now, but I totally want to later." As I get older I realize that there are many more reasons for the decisions people make.
Also. BIRTH CONTROL IS WIN. And you know, I am sympathetic to the way that some people think that chemical birth control runs the slight risk of allowing a pregnancy and then terminating it right away, and how some people find that deeply unacceptable to their beliefs. (As in, I don't think it's stupid if that is someone's choice not to use chemical birth control for that reason -- I think that the law needs to protect the rights of women to be able to ahve access to whatever form of birth control they want, regardless. I've read a lot of "quiver full" information, actually, because I'm so curious about stuff like that -- but srsly, why the hell would God be against condoms?? Or any sort of PHYSICAL birth control?? I can't figure that one out, and that shit needs to be made available to EVERYONE EASILY OF REPRODUCTION AGE while we hammer out the moral ramifications of the other stuff.
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And re: when you were younger, well, that's why folks can't vote till they're old enough to DO the research and consideration you have done and are doing. I'm just going to keep my mouth shut about my very negative opinions about the quiver-full folks.
And, like you said, I have sympathy for the PERSONAL position of avoiding chemical birth control. But I think that any and every form of birth control that can be IMAGINED should be available and accessible and CHEAP so that each person can use what works best for them.
I used BCP for 7 years with no problems. Then I started having breakthrough bleeding that wasn't controlled by switching pills, and I started having more and more and more migraines and finally had to stop using them.
When I tried them again (after we had our kids) I got migraines again...AND became literally suicidal. The last time I tried them, I was 4 days into a pack and I was sitting, hunched on the sofa, unable to make the decision even to stop taking the pills or to throw them away--I had to have two or three people TELL me to and give me PERMISSION and I still felt bad about it--and I just wanted to DIE. So...no longer an option for me.
YAY for permanent surgical sterilization!
And...LOVE you, hon. *hugs*
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The quiver-full folks are very strange, but I read about them because I was curious. I think it's wrong that large families are stigmatized -- I think the "the planet is overpopulated!" argument against having more than 2 children is unfair, because if you're able to raise five or six intelligent, caring, thinking, environmentally conscious beings in this incredibly affluent nation, you are possibly doing more good for the planet than not having those kids. It's a tough issue, but, you know, there are lots of good reasons to have large families, even if it's just "I can provide for and love every member of my ridiculously large brood, and I really want to." However, I think it's also wrong to assume that God wants all humans to do nothing except reproduce, whether or not they want to or it's the best thing for their family. I think any time you're in a situation where you're thinking "It is morally wrong to live your life any way other than the way I'm living mine," you're probably pushing your agenda too far. But I'd actually really like to hear your very negative opinions. :)
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Oh, honey. I know how that is and it SUCKS and...*hugs*
and my immune system completely collapsed, and mono of doom! cfids! badness occurred.
*hugs* again... Yeah. I know that LOTS of ED and CFIDS folks (way more in that first camp...like...nearly 100%, I think) have abuse in their backgrounds and your comments made me curious since I knew that the CFIDS-onset started in college.
I think it's wrong that large families are stigmatized
I have issue with large families in a number of ways. I think that kids get less attention in large families and I think that there is a strong tendency to deputize the older kids to take care of the younger ones. One of the things I've read about large (over 6 or 8 kids) families is that the older half of the kids tend NOT to want large families (they got lots of WORK and frustration out of it) and the younger kids (who didn't have as much responsibility but were taken care of by everyone) often WANT large families. That says a lot to me.
if you're able to raise five or six intelligent, caring, thinking, environmentally conscious beings in this incredibly affluent nation, you are possibly doing more good for the planet than not having those kids
THIS, however, is an EXCELLENT point.
"I can provide for and love every member of my ridiculously large brood, and I really want to."
*grin*
I think it's also wrong to assume that God wants all humans to do nothing except reproduce, whether or not they want to or it's the best thing for their family.
EXACTLY THIS.
Also, the idea of breeding FOR THE PURPOSE of RAISING children to be brainwashed into worshiping YOUR god YOUR way and shunning any of the children who stray from that path...that's my impression of the QuiverFull folks (and the Mormons...and several other scary-fundamentalist Christian groups' policies/expectations). I mean, it's essentially breeding an army, and seeing your children as little soldiers who are as much "owned" by you as soldiers are "owned" by the government, and I have nothing polite to say about viewing one's own children in that manner.
Additionally, the QuiverFull folks deliberately distrubute patently false information about birth control to increase the control they have over the families who believe this movement is From God, as well as promoting false information declaring vasectomies to be dangerous and cause "blowouts" in the male system since undergoing the procecure leads to greater incidence of EVERYTHING from testicular pain to non-hodgkins lymphoma, erectile dysfunction, and lung cancer. Yeah.
They claim that concerns about global overpopulation are alarmist tactics by a group trying to establish global control. They hold up Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) as a crock, and say that, "Population control, therefore, is an ideology founded on pessimistic, irrational fears, misleading and false statistics, and efforts to manipulate people, rather than on Truth."
And this emphasis on getting and staying pregnant cannot possibly result in women having a SAY in their lives and bodies. The movement is also those conservative literalist-Bible Christians who believe that wives should "be in submission," that women should "keep silent," and that men should be the unchallenged head of the household "even as Christ is head of the church."
...need I go on?
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As for the Christians who take issue with condoms, I can put that into historical context for you. It's from Leviticus, which is a morality code made specifically for the Jewish people during that specific point in history. Masturbation, male homosexual relations, and contraception were all lumped together as "spilling the seed of life" and therefore evil because there was a strong need, both from a practical standpoint and for God's plan, for the Jewish nation to grow in population. The belief at the time was that women were just incubators, and that a child came completely from the father's contribution. To spill that contribution anywhere but into the incubator was therefore murder, and murder of a much needed child, at that.
What does that mean now? Well, scientifically we know better (note that the Bible itself does not make any inaccurate claims about the nature of sperm, that's just cultural context), and also the Earth is populated. Bans on homosexual relations, condoms, and masturbation should be lifted along with bans on shellfish, pork, shaving, and vegetable gardens, because all of those things were part of the morality code in Leviticus, which became irrelevant with the new covenant God made with his people through Christ. These laws protected the people of Israel at a time when they needed protecting from things that are quite simply not an issue any more, and they were never meant for the larger population anyway.
And this is from a strict Biblical standpoint -- considering the fact that our government has no right to make laws based on any one religion, it should be obvious from a political standpoint that anything that makes it harder for people to obtain birth control is just blatantly wrong.
The people who compare birth control to abortion are clearly not listening to God. And I'll stop now before I get ranting on people who claim to do God's work but in fact accomplish just the opposite.
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Indeed.
careful with referring to Mormoms as Christians
I consider them Christians because they consider themselves Christians. They have an additional prophet they believe in, but their primary theology of salvation and the like are Biblical in basis: they believe Jesus died for mankind's sins, that one must be baptized for redemption of sins, etc. I have a couple of friends who grew up Mormon (and RAN) and they are really UPSET by people who insist that Mormons aren't Christians, even after leaving.
And my Catholic friends are sort of horrified that the fundamentlist Christian group of my childhood considers Catholicism to be idolatrous because of the iconography...
As for the Christians who take issue with condoms...
because there was a strong need, both from a practical standpoint and for God's plan, for the Jewish nation to grow in population
Course, the primary Christians (other than the QuiverFull folks) who forbid condoms are also the Catholics...whose anti-birth control edict comes down from a Post-Plague Europe with a 50-75% reduction in population: same reason, similar cause.
all of those things were part of the morality code in Leviticus, which became irrelevant with the new covenant God made with his people through Christ.
That's the thing that drives me CRAZY. Again, I grew up in a conservative, fundamentalist group...but a SCHOLARLY group: we READ and UNDERSTOOD the book of Hebrews, which is a legal brief outlining the reasons that the Old Law had been done away with unless it had been repeated in New Law (NT). So when I see fundamentalist Christians on the tear of, "It says right here in Leviticus...." I see red...then I say, "Oh, really? Do you eat cheesburgers? Wear poly-cotton clothes? Use electricity or pockets on Saturday? Then SHUT UP."
considering the fact that our government has no right to make laws based on any one religion, it should be obvious from a political standpoint that anything that makes it harder for people to obtain birth control is just blatantly wrong.
Preach it, sister.
And I'll stand at your back and make sure the people behind you can hear too.
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Yes, because children always take after their parents, and never, ever rebel or want to live a different lifestyle.
And even if every single one of your litter decides they're going to be good li'l environmentalists, unless they're all living "off the grid," they're still going to be using many, many more resources apiece than their counterparts in very poor countries.
If you want to breed like a freakin' cockroach at a time in history when we have more than enough warm bodies on this rock, nobody's stopping you. Just don't lie to yourself or anyone else that you're doing the rest of us a favor.
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