Recently a girl was found. She had been kidnapped in at the age of 11 in 1991. At the age of 14, after being raped who knows how many times, she had a child. Four years later, sometime around the age of 18, she had another child. It is unclear, but it an earlier draft article made mention that she had and the two children hadn't been allowed access to any medical care. She would have been 14 years old when she bore the first child, and I cannot help but wonder if she received any medical attention during her pregnancy or while in childbirth either time. But when she was a 14 year old having a baby, didn't anyone wonder about what was going on?
At this moment, the article for the story is "Kidnapping Victim Was Not Always Locked Away." Implicit in this title is victim blaming. Despite being abducted from home at the age of 11 told who knows what about your parents, told who knows what about what's going on and why it's going, while being brutally assaulted (they haven't actually described the details of the sexual assaults, but any time any one under at least 15 is forced to have sex it cannot be anything other than a brutal act. Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, 14 and 15 year olds are so young, their bodies are not developed. Until your body is destroyed in so many ways that has to be the most terrible and painful experience.
But the article is already victim blaming. Trying to give us some assurance that if it had been us, or our chilrden we wouldn't have let this terrible thing happen to us. Forget that she was only 11 or that she was pregnant and having children around the time she might have begin growing into a more adult body and maybe beginning to develop a rebellious streak. Now imagine probably barely remembering the world, having no idea what reality is. Not understanding why you haven't been rescued at this point, probably believing it's what you deserve, probably trying to figure out how to make the best of your situation.
There are some astonishingly horrible people out there. This man was one of them. In addition, to holding this woman captive as his sex slave, and who knows what else, he is apparently suspected in several murders.
another one of the freaky things about this, is he had a female accomplice. Maybe it's because I'm numb to idea of men being brutal that this question comes out, but I just don't understand how any woman could be involved in all this. I mean, your "husband" is sleeping with children and is impregnating (through rape) a young girl. In what kind of world is there anything okay with assisting in this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/us/29abduct.html
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Stats from Other Sources
Senator Kennedy died today. Fought for public health insurance for a better part of his career and sadly he didn't get to see it happen.
It's late, and I have a headache, so no deep thoughts, but in an effort ot continue the daily commitment here are some stats from national women's orgs.
- More than 17% of women are uninsured, and even more are underinsured.
- Between 1999 and 2008, health insurance premiums increased 119 percent — 3.5 times more than wages during the same period.
- 3 in 5 women are unable to pay her medical bills.
- Women only make $.78 to a man's dollar.
- The U.S. has no guaranteed medical leave for childbirth; we're trailing 168 countries in the company of only Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.
- The U.S. is near the bottom of the list -- again -- in our public support for quality childcare for children of working parents.
- Women only make up 16% of our representatives in Congress.
- And our right to safe, accessible, legal abortion is threatened by hostile state legislators as well as by domestic terrorists who intimidate, harass and even kill health care providers.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Abortion
I had a pleasant conversation with a friend today. One of many topics that came up was abortion. Here's one of the things about the whole abortion debate that I think gets lost and I think it's a very important to remember the history of the judicial history of women's reproduction freedom.
1965 - Griswold v. Connecticut - The first time the Court declares that there is a right to privacy in the bedroom. The idea is that a married couple should be able to decide whether or not they want to use contraceptives.
1972 - Eisenstadt v. Baird - The court extends the right to use contraception to nonmarried women.
1973 - Roe v. Wade - Court extends the right of birth control and the zone of privacy to include abortion.
In a span of 8 years, we went from a society where the criminalization of birth control was considered constitutional to a society where women suddenly had a great deal of control over their bodies.
Around the same time, it also became illegal to discriminate on the basis sex when the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed. In 1972 the law banning sex discrimination in education was passed.
The world was rapidly changing. And many people were unhappy with it. There has been a fight raging against women's full participation in society from before the laws ever passed.
Discretely there are fights in the courts that continually try to narrow the definition of sexual harassment. Insurance companies will regularly pay for Viagra, but will refuse to cover birth control.
The biggest fight, which attempts to shade itself as something other than an attempt to control women's bodies, is the fight around abortion. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that some people really struggle with questions about where life begins. Here's the thing, studies show that the people who attempt to eliminate abortion also don't believe in provide support to children once they're born. They don't support early support programs, they don't support free lunch programs, they don't support affordable child care, or increasing paid family leave.
Don't get me wrong, even if the government fully funded all of the expenses of having children, it would not mean that abortion should be outlawed, I'm merely pointing out the hypocrisy of the anti-abortion movement and why it should never be allowed to be called the "pro-life" movement.
The anti-abortion movement, by attempting to frame it in some sort of distorted picture of protecting fetuses gets to harass women, doctors, and other health care providers under some sort of moral superiority. They rarely get called out on the sexist nature of their movement because too much of society has bought into this idea that it is about some sort of amorphous beginning of life point. The anti-abortion movement even threatens and follows through on its threats to kill actual human beings involved in providing health care to women. The vast majority of the anti-abortion proponents also object to teaching sex-ed in schools, preferring abstinence only education.
Full disclosure, I have no problem with abortion. I don't know and I don't really care at what point life begins. There are far too many children unwanted children abandoned in foster care. A system that fails miserably at serving the children in its care. I also don't think women's bodies should ever be incubators. It is far too high a demand to place on the body. Sex is not a crime and women should not be punished for lopsided consequences.
I would also like to point out that if anti-abortion activists were really interested in eliminating unwanted pregnancy, males would be expected to get snipped. It's a relatively easy procedure that is reversible. If every male had to go in and affirmatively state that he was attempting and ready to have children prior to having the getting his sperm released again, there would be a whole lot fewer accidental pregnancies in the world. Sadly I think this would also greatly increase the number of stds.
You will never find this proposal existing, despite the number of times in our history that women have been sterilized because of sexism. Men want their sperm to be able to impregnate women, even if they don't actually want to impregnate a woman. I've never understood it. I don't think I can understand it, but whenever this idea is floated around in the presence of males, they are greatly opposed to it. Only thing that can explain it to me is sex stereotyping.
1965 - Griswold v. Connecticut - The first time the Court declares that there is a right to privacy in the bedroom. The idea is that a married couple should be able to decide whether or not they want to use contraceptives.
1972 - Eisenstadt v. Baird - The court extends the right to use contraception to nonmarried women.
1973 - Roe v. Wade - Court extends the right of birth control and the zone of privacy to include abortion.
In a span of 8 years, we went from a society where the criminalization of birth control was considered constitutional to a society where women suddenly had a great deal of control over their bodies.
Around the same time, it also became illegal to discriminate on the basis sex when the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed. In 1972 the law banning sex discrimination in education was passed.
The world was rapidly changing. And many people were unhappy with it. There has been a fight raging against women's full participation in society from before the laws ever passed.
Discretely there are fights in the courts that continually try to narrow the definition of sexual harassment. Insurance companies will regularly pay for Viagra, but will refuse to cover birth control.
The biggest fight, which attempts to shade itself as something other than an attempt to control women's bodies, is the fight around abortion. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that some people really struggle with questions about where life begins. Here's the thing, studies show that the people who attempt to eliminate abortion also don't believe in provide support to children once they're born. They don't support early support programs, they don't support free lunch programs, they don't support affordable child care, or increasing paid family leave.
Don't get me wrong, even if the government fully funded all of the expenses of having children, it would not mean that abortion should be outlawed, I'm merely pointing out the hypocrisy of the anti-abortion movement and why it should never be allowed to be called the "pro-life" movement.
The anti-abortion movement, by attempting to frame it in some sort of distorted picture of protecting fetuses gets to harass women, doctors, and other health care providers under some sort of moral superiority. They rarely get called out on the sexist nature of their movement because too much of society has bought into this idea that it is about some sort of amorphous beginning of life point. The anti-abortion movement even threatens and follows through on its threats to kill actual human beings involved in providing health care to women. The vast majority of the anti-abortion proponents also object to teaching sex-ed in schools, preferring abstinence only education.
Full disclosure, I have no problem with abortion. I don't know and I don't really care at what point life begins. There are far too many children unwanted children abandoned in foster care. A system that fails miserably at serving the children in its care. I also don't think women's bodies should ever be incubators. It is far too high a demand to place on the body. Sex is not a crime and women should not be punished for lopsided consequences.
I would also like to point out that if anti-abortion activists were really interested in eliminating unwanted pregnancy, males would be expected to get snipped. It's a relatively easy procedure that is reversible. If every male had to go in and affirmatively state that he was attempting and ready to have children prior to having the getting his sperm released again, there would be a whole lot fewer accidental pregnancies in the world. Sadly I think this would also greatly increase the number of stds.
You will never find this proposal existing, despite the number of times in our history that women have been sterilized because of sexism. Men want their sperm to be able to impregnate women, even if they don't actually want to impregnate a woman. I've never understood it. I don't think I can understand it, but whenever this idea is floated around in the presence of males, they are greatly opposed to it. Only thing that can explain it to me is sex stereotyping.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Discouragement
I'll never understand this kind of comment: "Not every man/woman issue is necessarily about the persecution of women. If you rant about every potential man/woman dynamic, more mainstream peeps will assume you're a wacko, which will detract from the message of the very important overall cause for which you're fighting."
The person who said this to me is the husband of one my favorite people. He and I have had less than a half a dozen conversations. The very first conversation we had almost destroyed my relationship with my best friend. He was an ass from the first moment we met and I couldn't understand how my friend would be with a guy who was so belligerent. And almost six years later, he pulls this garbage. If you want to challenge the legitimacy of an idea, let's do it. Although you better come with facts and be willing to accept mine. But that's not what this comment is about. This comment doesn't care if every single issue is based in fact, this comment embodies the idea that even thinking or speaking about injustice should be silenced. This comment is one white man's privilege not wanting to accept and believe that heterosexism is pretty much everywhere.
Here's the thing people like him, with their pretend helpful advice, damage the soul. It makes you think twice when caring about the important things. And really that's the purpose of that kind of comment.
You see the issue that he decided to share his unsolicited and unwanted advice about, was about an 18 year old female athlete whose gender is being challenged because people are questioning whether she's too good of an athlete to be female. And the thing is, it's not like they are trying to figure out if she is male. They're just trying to do invasive testing to figure out if she might have too many "male" characteristics to be considered female for the purposes of continuing to compete. This patneralistic protectionism of women from other women, isn't about protecting women from other women. But it pretends enough that it can be sold as a spin story.
Here are some real stories:
(1) When women are strong, their femaleness is questioned. The belief that women are weak and inferior is so pervasive that to ensure that we hold on to that myth, we will create all sorts of tests and hoops to weed out who the real women are. The injustice of the testing that is done on female athletes is even more blatantly sexist when one realizes, only female athletes are tested. No one thinks that a strong male athlete might have any potentially female characteristics, where if this were somehow about gender purity, every endurance athlete should be tested for potential female genetic markers. Science has shown that women's bodies are more suited to endurance sports. So maybe the reason Lance Armstrong is so incredible, maybe he really is a little bit female.
(2) It also exposes that the gender binary that we exist in. There really is no medical doubt that there gender goes beyond male and female. There are a broad range of intersex individuals. There is more to gender than male and female. It's hard to wrap our minds around. We have so much invested in this binary, but it doesn't change the reality. It makes things complicated. There are gendered differences between males and females (and the spectrum). The ability for girls and women to have real opportunities to compete is incredibly important. The self-esteem and real physical benefits are vast.
Another concern is what kind hierarchy will we create if we start defining a multitude of genders? As a female this concerns me, because we are always seen as the weaker sex and I wonder what will happen with an array of sexes. I also have a hard time wrapping around how societies will adjust. Will we do some sort of range of genetic/biological testing at birth so we can appropriately categorize people? Can you do them conclusively at birth or will the tests have to be done again at puberty?
I don't know many things. I know that the questions are difficult and despite the hubby of my good friend's suggestion, the answers are not going to come by silencing ourselves.
The person who said this to me is the husband of one my favorite people. He and I have had less than a half a dozen conversations. The very first conversation we had almost destroyed my relationship with my best friend. He was an ass from the first moment we met and I couldn't understand how my friend would be with a guy who was so belligerent. And almost six years later, he pulls this garbage. If you want to challenge the legitimacy of an idea, let's do it. Although you better come with facts and be willing to accept mine. But that's not what this comment is about. This comment doesn't care if every single issue is based in fact, this comment embodies the idea that even thinking or speaking about injustice should be silenced. This comment is one white man's privilege not wanting to accept and believe that heterosexism is pretty much everywhere.
Here's the thing people like him, with their pretend helpful advice, damage the soul. It makes you think twice when caring about the important things. And really that's the purpose of that kind of comment.
You see the issue that he decided to share his unsolicited and unwanted advice about, was about an 18 year old female athlete whose gender is being challenged because people are questioning whether she's too good of an athlete to be female. And the thing is, it's not like they are trying to figure out if she is male. They're just trying to do invasive testing to figure out if she might have too many "male" characteristics to be considered female for the purposes of continuing to compete. This patneralistic protectionism of women from other women, isn't about protecting women from other women. But it pretends enough that it can be sold as a spin story.
Here are some real stories:
(1) When women are strong, their femaleness is questioned. The belief that women are weak and inferior is so pervasive that to ensure that we hold on to that myth, we will create all sorts of tests and hoops to weed out who the real women are. The injustice of the testing that is done on female athletes is even more blatantly sexist when one realizes, only female athletes are tested. No one thinks that a strong male athlete might have any potentially female characteristics, where if this were somehow about gender purity, every endurance athlete should be tested for potential female genetic markers. Science has shown that women's bodies are more suited to endurance sports. So maybe the reason Lance Armstrong is so incredible, maybe he really is a little bit female.
(2) It also exposes that the gender binary that we exist in. There really is no medical doubt that there gender goes beyond male and female. There are a broad range of intersex individuals. There is more to gender than male and female. It's hard to wrap our minds around. We have so much invested in this binary, but it doesn't change the reality. It makes things complicated. There are gendered differences between males and females (and the spectrum). The ability for girls and women to have real opportunities to compete is incredibly important. The self-esteem and real physical benefits are vast.
Another concern is what kind hierarchy will we create if we start defining a multitude of genders? As a female this concerns me, because we are always seen as the weaker sex and I wonder what will happen with an array of sexes. I also have a hard time wrapping around how societies will adjust. Will we do some sort of range of genetic/biological testing at birth so we can appropriately categorize people? Can you do them conclusively at birth or will the tests have to be done again at puberty?
I don't know many things. I know that the questions are difficult and despite the hubby of my good friend's suggestion, the answers are not going to come by silencing ourselves.
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