With all the reading I've done this week, why am I posting about TV?

Maybe I'm biased. Maybe it's because I love androgyny and/or butchness in a woman, but this episode of What Not to Wear is driving me insane. This woman, Annie, is not feminine, she doesn't feel it, wear it, or act it in any conventional sense of the word. She owns this, she says this (so I'm not throwing words in her mouth), and she's fucking beautiful. This is a typical episode, but they throw out her clothing (regardless of whether or not it fits and looks good!) if it's from the "men's" side of the store. It's clothing, people! I thought they were of the "looks good on you, you're comfortable in it, good to go" camp. They're normally so, "dress for the body you have, and life you live". But Stacy and Clinton just keep taking away her gender expression, telling her that she needs to get out of the men's clothing to look professional. Stop robbing her of her identity, you assholes. She's clearly shit-terrified but they get her in the dress. Obviously self-identity and outward expression are important to this woman; they're important to all of us, but let her deal in her way- not by telling her butch is out of style. Damn it Stacy and Clinton, if you stop taking away all the butchness a sense of style, self and maybe even gender will be suppressed. More importantly, I won't have anyone to date.

Fuck you/Real life moments: response to a real comment made in psych class

If I ever have a child who is diagnosed with Down syndrome, and someone asks me if I'm going to "try again" for a "second chance", they will receive a roundhouse kick to the face while getting an earful. *

This is going to be short, because I have a paper to finish tonight, but this is a response to a comment I heard in developmental psychology. In university. Where people are supposed to think. Do people think anymore, or was that just like a passing fad?
I shouldn't have to do this, but I'm going to because I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. Why would anyone say this to a parent or even at all?!By the opening paragraph people might get the idea that I would be offended as a parent if this were to happen. And if I were a parent, I would be, but for now I'm pissed off at this line of thinking because I'm human. I'm shocked and saddened that people think that babies/anyone with Down syndrome are somehow less of people than people without Down syndrome.
Asking if someone is going to "try again" for "a second chance" sounds like they have been trying to get pregnant but have not been successful with actually doing so. This is not something you say about a child with Down syndrome or any child; these children aren't somehow failures. They are human beings, but these kinds of comments dismiss this fact even if the person didn't mean it that way. It's just a horrible and mean thing to say, suggesting that a child isn't good enough- for any reason! And considering people replaceable, interchangeable and even disposable makes the future look bleak at best. 
What if people who think this way have children with Down syndrome? Being the child of someone who thinks this way must be hard. Do the children constantly wonder what it was about the older children that made their parents "try again"? How would these assholes introduce their children? "This is Dylan. He has Down syndrome, so he doesn't count. We tried again, so this is our second chance, Bethany." That's just fucked up.

This thought quickly lead to abortion in my mind and there's more opinions than people out there, so I'll just throw mine out there. I think pregnant persons should have the right to abort an embryo or fetus if that's what they choose. But getting pregnant, finding out the child will have Down syndrome and aborting the child based on this knowledge, with the intent to conceive a child who doesn't have Down syndrome shortly after? That kind of weirds me out, and I think it's because when people do that, they are saying that the child with Down synodrome just wasn't good enough for them. These are the people who one can say are "trying again" for a "second chance".

*I reserve the right to react this way in the event that someone makes these comments about other people's children

"Boxes"

This post started out as something entirely different. I just started typing one night, and it became more of a journal entry than anything else. The majority of it didn’t make its way to the blog, because it just got really messed up where someone else would probably have to be inside my brain to understand what the hell I was talking about. So these are the more coherent parts of that day. Please keep in mind that yes, I am aware of what an egocentric, selfish piece of writing this is.

I think I feel compelled to at least pretend I like one gender, one sex or any gender or any sex to feel socially acceptable. No one believes the asexual person exists. I think people would easier believe that I have some kind of supposedly “perverted” fetish rather than accept that there’s a strong possibility that I may just be asexual. Another perspective... I’m bisexual- repelled by all sexes, all genders. But by god, I better find a label, a box, an identity quick. (I feel like its playing musical chairs or something, and everyone sits down in their space while I’m standing there, wide-eyed and thinking “oh shit”. Everyone has their label but me; I’m just kind of floating here.)

Society is pretty damn insistent on putting us in multiple boxes, demanding that we check male or female; man or woman; single, divorced, married or common-law; straight, gay, (bisexual and/or queer if you’re really lucky to find that on paperwork). And it’s not just our families, friends and partners that want to know this stuff, it’s every single god damn form ever filled out. Banks, school, doctor’s offices, surveys, driver’s license, birth certificate, health cards, insurance information, tax forms, job applications, scholarship and awards committees, blood and organ donor information, flu shot forms, and passport officials, just to name a few, demand to know what our genitals look like. I’m going to assume that this is not vital information to any of these people. Possibly your doctor, but it’s really bizarre for other people to need to know what we look like naked, in order to obtain a license or get into school. Why even bother with the boxes and demands to know about other people’s bodies on something that is so clearly not even a little bit related to sex? I’d say “just ignore the box”, but most places won’t let you do that, you must label yourself or be labelled. And so often it’s just two measly choices. Male or female; you must pick one or the other. There is pressure there, but I think that it would be better if we recognized that gender and sex are different things entirely. People wouldn’t demand to know our sex on forms if we just eliminated that part of the form. But then we’re still left with gender. Is that anyone’s business? I’d say it’s more likely than sex to be relevant to everyday life -what gender you identify with (if any) brings social definition to your life and interaction with others. (That doesn’t mean people have the right or privilege to make it their business.) We’ve constructed gender as being a prominent identity in our society, and getting rid of it entirely won’t happen. Some people even like identifying with a gender, but I do wish we could casually opt out of the gendered society without repercussions from our peers and institutions we rely on. I wish we could disconnect the correlation society made between sex and gender. Instead of making more and more boxes to “accommodate” to those who don’t fit in the two given, we could disassemble the boxes entirely.

Fuck you moments: pregnancy tests

Here’s something that pisses me off: Clear-Blue pregnancy test commercials. They’re the one with the feature that tell you roughly how long you’ve been pregnant in weeks. At the end, the woman says “the only thing it can’t tell is whether it’s a boy or girl”. Are you fucking kidding me, lady? Here are some reasons I think you're annoying:

1.  Why is the only question that comes to mind when you discover you’re pregnant? To me, it sounds like this woman is using her kid’s sex to determine its future.

2.  She uses the terms “boy” and “girl”. Gender is constructed and is hardly something one can predict when they’re six weeks pregnant. The terms “male” and “female” are more appropriate. If you don’t like the way it sounds in the commercial, leave that stupid bit out.

3.  Are we assuming that we will know something about the kid if we do find out the probable sex?

4.  The test can’t tell you if your kid is healthy, or if it’s going to have blue eyes, if it’s going to be a schizophrenic genius who will plot to kill you when it turns nine. The test can’t tell you who the father is.  It can’t tell you if there are multiple things growing in your womb.  

5.  There are more than two sexes, there are even more genders. Stop trying to shove your binary down my throat.

No doubt there's more, but this was just a distraction from psychology for a few minutes. I'll be posting tonight or tomorrow about sexuality, bodies, language... that could hardly be more vague if I tried. .

  

general life rules: think before you speak.

It makes me wonder what kind of state the world is in if we have to have pamphlets and training to tell us that asking about a stranger's genitals is rude and invasive.

Discourses of age and sex

[Normally I hesitate to read books labelled as “philosophy” after I completely bombed contemporary moral issues in first year. Sometimes (mostly in science/math courses) I get annoyed at the world in general when I fail again and again after working my ass off. This was the exact opposite of that. This was like straight-up my own lack of common sense and basic school skills that awarded me a 13 percent on a test. The other marks weren’t great, either; it may have been the only time I’ve failed a paper. I don’t know; I never got it back. I’m not entirely sure why I’m making this introduction a confessional about my dumb-assery, but it might be used as a statement to say that I am not a philosopher by any stretch of the imagination.]

Despite my hesitation, I stumbled upon a philosophy book in the library called Ethics and Sex by Igor Primoratz. I’ll admit that chapter ten is the only chapter I’ve really read, not just skimmed. Simply titled “Pedophilia”, he explores a great deal in eleven pages. He’s one of those authors that I’ll likely keep looking at, because his arguments are so basic and understandable and his work has kind of kept me in check when I’m reading different authors. But the argument I’m going to explore for now is his ideas about discourse.

Discourse is the language we use and the ways we talk about particular practices or institutions. Our uses of language as well as our ways of understanding and knowing about a particular identity (for example) help to make up discourse. Talk is never “just talk”, but is supported and regulated by dominant perspectives and social structures such medicine or law. Our use of language shapes the way we see and understand the world. People can understand our perspectives better when they consider the language we use.  

Although Primoratz doesn’t use the term discourse to describe his opening to the chapter, he engages in the definitions of discourse I describe above. He begins by distinguishing in detail the labels or identities of pederasty, ephebophilia and pedophilia. He challenges contemporary use and understanding of these terms by outlining the differences between them. (I’m only going to look at pederasty, ephebophilia and the notion of an age of consent in this post. I had originally planned to dissect his understanding of pedophilia in detail in this post, but I let the following paragraphs get out of control, so pedophilia will have its own post.)

Pederasty, he states, is defined by the sexual attraction if an adult male to boys in their mid-teens. He gives the perpetually used example of ancient Greece, where it was common for grown men and still androgynous boys to have lustful relationships. He labels this interaction as “homosexuality”, but I’m going to question whether or not homosexuality is the right term for this example. Ancient Greece didn’t have the term homosexuality, and maybe didn’t even have the concept of categorizing sexualities by attraction to a particular sex or gender. So can we label something that wasn’t there? If they had a technology that had many of the same functions of a calculator, we wouldn’t call it a calculator because that is misplacing modernity into a historical context. Why should it be any different with sexualities? I’m not saying we shouldn’t have the labels “homosexuality” or “pederasty” to describe particular kinds of ancient relationships, but we should constantly be aware that these are modern terms placed in another context. We should acknowledge that the relationships between practices and identities are often constructed through time, context and space. The terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual are new terms, only appearing within medical discourse within the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries and since then their definitions have evolved.    Men and teenage boys having consensual sexual relationships doesn’t become homosexuality until we label and define it as such.

Ephebophilia is described by Primoratz as the attraction of grown men to “vigorous maleness” in young adults. He argues that technically we can label this practice pedophilia of we have a wide enough definition of the term, as it includes grown men with a sexual desire towards “minor” children. Of course, this understanding is only possible if we construct an “age of consent” rule. Like most identities, age is socially constructed. Not only is it constructed through the somewhat arbitrary decision of what constitutes a year and therefore our numerical age, but age is especially structured within legal discourses. Ephebophilia cannot exist without our understanding of “underage” and “adult”, something which changes through history.

“Age of consent” is a large topic in and of itself, and I intend to do posts solely devoted to it. For now I think it suffices to say that age of consent is nothing natural, but it is shaped around our understanding of what age means. The concept of the child is a relatively new development. Historically, children were typically thought of as being smaller adults. Because “age of consent” laws are meant to protect children and children are historically, culturally and contextually specific, the legal discourses become even more open to debate. Laws are created for the public, the general wholeness of society, not for individuals. It doesn’t work with “exceptions” to the rules of what we deem right or wrong, but tries to maintain some kind of order to these values.

By creating a legal discourse about age and sexual experience, we tell ourselves a lot about what the (supposed) majority believes. Telling children they must be however old to have sex with someone above the age of majority is typically labelled as protection of children against pedophile monsters. Here are some quick facts just in case anyone wants to know numbers: the age of consent in Canada is 16; in America it ranges from 16 to 18. There are, however exceptions. If the 16 to 18 year old engages in sexual contact with someone over the age of 18 who is in a position of authority, then this is illegal. By creating these laws we are placing value on youth, childhood and possibly even innocence. We desire to protect the things we value. The arbitrary age we “permit” children to have sex is a structure that tells us about how we think people mature socially and physically. By creating an age of consent, we are telling ourselves this age defines children as being “developed” or “mature” enough to experience sex with someone over the age of 18. We typically understand physical acts of sexuality to be something reserved for people who are “ready” for the supposed responsibility of it.

Is it right for there to be laws identifying what is the appropriate age for individuals to engage in sex, and with whom? I have a hard time accepting age of consent laws when it goes against what society tries to tell us about sex. We’ve all heard that “sex is personal, intimate and between two people”. Maybe it is those things sometimes, but the fact is, sex is public. It’s regulated by laws, telling us who, when, where and why we have sex. “Sex is personal” becomes meaningless when we consider that we don’t necessarily have the control we thought we did around our sexuality. There are laws telling us we can’t have sex for money, or pay for sex and I’ve already gone into some detail about the “when” and “with whom” regulations with the age of consent laws.

We are getting mixed messages about sex. Popular culture and wedding industries (for example) tell us that sex and love coincide and are personal, private matters. This is at the same time that some states still have laws regarding sodomy in 2010. I wish the message was “sex is about consent”. The idea that “if there are willing, consenting people involved in a sex act, then it’s acceptable” seems a bit too simple, but sometimes that’s what applies to a situation.

You have to understand that I mean “willing” in a very fluid sense. Incredibly intoxicated people unable to consent are not willing partners. Small children are not consenting individuals. My grandmother can’t consent, but because of another situation entirely (and it has nothing to do with age). Consent and willingness has to be about something more than age. I’m not going to try to say that there aren’t young people who are manipulated into sexual relationships with older people, and that their “power” wasn’t abused. I just don’t think we should be able to pin down one age that says “this is when sex is acceptable”.

We’ve accepted in our society that with age brings power and authority, which is one of the main reasons there are age of consent laws. The point of the laws seems to be to protect younger people from experiencing power imbalances within a sexual experience. What they don’t consider, however, is the many other power imbalances that might take place inside a consenting relationship between two adults (I say two because our society seems to love monogamy). There are no laws considering the constructed inequalities that occur within class, race, nationality, gender or sex. For example, we don’t have laws telling women not to have sex with men because of the inequalities we have constructed around gender. Age is just as much a construction as other identities, and I think a lot more than numbers need to be considered when thinking about “acceptable” sex.

I really didn’t intend to go in the direction I did with this post, and my lack of ability to pay attention to my own writing is sometimes debilitating. (I had to be told to stop looking at videos of narcoleptic goats partway through writing this, if that gives you any insight as to how short my attention span is.) I had every intention to talk about Primoratz’s arguments about pedophilia and ethics. The good thing about a blog is that it will be here tomorrow, waiting for more things to be said. I will get to his definition of pedophilia and his critiques of our discourses surrounding it

I shouldn't be posting this, but it appears that I am

Peter was nice to me, but he scared me. I don’t want to slip him into a box and pretend that’s all he is, especially considering my desire for other people not to label me, but his homophobia scared me. Obviously there’s much more to him than “homophobe”, but the glimpse I saw of that identity upset me.

While we both agreed “homophobic” was often an inaccurate word to describe someone, and he didn’t identify as homophobic, I feel like most people would disagree. He said he wasn’t afraid of gay people; he didn’t have an unexplained phobia of homosexuals or bisexuals. Now, I’m not one to tell someone they’re something they don’t identify with, but in my mind and within the gay allied community, I would call him a homophobe. He doesn’t run away screaming when he sees gay or bisexual people, but he actively opposes to our right to be in schools and public as ourselves. 

He said our schools promote homosexuality by including it in our sex education programs and as part of our everyday curriculum. No, Peter, just no. Inclusion does not mean influence. They might give homosexuality a shout-out in some classes, but it’s always regarded as a “special interest”, or as an alternative to the norm. We’re thrown into a couple history lessons or someone mentions same-sex sexuality in sex education, and homosexuality is being “promoted”? That’s really not how that works. If the schools start encouraging children to attend same-sex orgies in the gym, that’s promotion. We’re not a fucking cult you self-righteous knob, we don’t have sign-up sheets in a secret lair somewhere.

Do you know what scares me about Peter? He’s the mostly kind, intelligent type of homophobic person. With people like the Westboro Baptist Church, most people accept them to be batshit crazy homophobes who hate literally everyone. And that makes them less dangerous in a way; they have no real influence within the general public. But Peter, and people I know who shared the same ideas of gayness stand a chance at harming opportunities for equality. He’s the type who will politely tell someone they are going to rot in hell, and present them with an argument as to why. The argument might even make sense if you believe in his god.  

The world just isn’t black and white; very seldom can something be labelled right or wrong without there being a list terms and conditions to its rightness or wrongness. I cannot for the  life of me see life in a binary, and I have a fairly useless analogy as to why this is, but I wrote it in the back of my notebook so I figured I would post it.

You know when you’re looking at an optical illusion, and you can’t understand it for the life of you? But then something clicks and you see it, and your mind can’t go back to not seeing it. Your brain can sometimes flip it back and forth between sides of the illusion until it eventually it becomes a blurry mess. Take that idea and throw it towards sexuality, gender, and anything else someone tells you is a binary. You thought there were two genders and two sexes, and that they were always perfectly aligned. But then you take women’s studies (this is the click) or step into the real world and see that this is not true. You begin to see that gender and sex don’t necessarily coincide and that they are not natural identities set in stone. You begin to understand the “illusion” set in front of you from multiple perspectives, shattering the idea that the image is only ever one thing. And if you begin to look at (deconstruct, examine, and analyze) gender for any amount of time, it becomes blurry and distorted. You give your head a shake, realizing that there are always multiple perspectives to any image, problem, illusion and identity and that it doesn’t hurt to question the world around you. Your brain becomes trained to deconstruct and think critically about identity and culture at all times .This is when you fall in love with women’s studies.

**I PROMISE the next post will be something someone with some kind of intelligence might post. It's going to be about definition, intergenerational sex and this really awesome book I've been reading. But now I have to study, so I copied and pasted this from a word document because life got in the way of blogging.** 

I'm in love with women's studies, but we're not putting a label on our relationship.

[Note: I promise to you this entry has a point. The “introduction” to it is me professing my love of women’s studies, but then it starts to make more sense to those of you who have never taken these kinds of courses before. Also, I was going to publish long before now. This confirms my first argument: I am a disorganized fool at best.]
I am actually horrible at staying on top of this. An organized person would have set days that they would post and update... unfortunately for myself (and sometimes for  those in my life), my mind is a disorganized jumble in which I can barely complete a thought that doesn't run into 6 more ideas before the first one is finished. So this is what's up: midterms. I know I've been in university for the last 3 years, but I don't know that I've ever actually had these things people complain relentlessly about. The more sciencey courses I'm in this year have them, and I have less papers. I like papers a lot more, because I'm awful at studying. I can think of 1000 other things while I am looking at my notes or the text book, or just hate reading the exact same thing over and over again so I can prove that I understood things for the two hours it takes to write an exam.
Women's studies doesn't have exams. I've had tests, but only when they're cross listed with sociology courses. Women's studies isn't about "let's memorize this equation and theory and see how you can create a graph as it relates to the square root of the left side of your brain". I'm not even rereading that to see if it made any sense. Women's studies has theories, but they always seem more relevant to everyday life and interaction. I don't think I've ever screamed "when the fuck am I ever going to use this after I graduate?!" or "why the fuck should I care?!" at my women's studies text books or articles. Yes, I do curse at my other text books. Especially if no one else is around.
Women's studies is epic because is actually is more relevant to everyday life. We look at what can be considered the most basic structures, traditions, institutions and god knows what else, and analyze, deconstruct, examine and theorize until  the science majors have long since gotten pissed off and decided to go split atoms or whatever it is that they do. Women's studies takes nothing for granted.
Last week in sex and culture class we were supposed to do a few readings about marriage within a North American context, mainly from the mid to late 19^th century until present day. These readings are what make women’s studies wonderful- the authors understand nothing as being natural or normal, and they complicate notions that suggest otherwise. I want to just throw some of their ideas in the air, and see how they interact with each other.
Hunter’s article “Change and Continuity in American Marriage” discusses the privilege of heterosexual marriage. Partly because it’s been ingrained as a “tradition” for so long, and largely because our society shapes adulthood around the idea that one man and one woman will live forever in a legally binding relationship, heterosexual marriage often comes off as “natural”. Of course it’s not! Any identity or practice that offers privilege to some should not be considered “natural”. Instead, it is a construction within culturally specific times and contexts. Marriage is not a “right” when it is only offered to one man and one woman, it becomes a privilege. And when marriage is constructed only for monogamous heterosexual couples, their “rights” are honoured at the expense of others who do not have the option of marriage.
Hunter explores how marriage has changed through time in North America, stating that it is a constantly changing institution, where meanings are never inherent or stable. Once upon a time in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, marriage was a practice for economic growth and development of the family and societies. Men and women got married to “support the farm” and procreated to employ children. The practice served as a way to regulate gender, keeping men in the public, dominant sphere, and women in the private, passive sphere. As time wore on, individualism from the family units brought more choice to which one might marry and neither gender nor who one married was determinate of their future. Marriage, through time’s changes, is no longer a “necessity” for one to survive economically and socially.
Ingraham writes an article titled “One is not born a bride”, in which she explores the construction of weddings and heteronormative structures in our society. Heteronormativity is what makes heterosexuality the norm in our society, but it is also more than that. To be heterosexual isn’t necessarily to be heteronormative. To obtain this “status”, hetero couples should get married, with a “traditional” wedding. The bride wears a white dress, the groom throws on a suit and they begin their life of reinforced gender roles as outlined in their wedding ceremony. After the parents “give the daughter away” into her “new family”, the bride promises to be loyal and obey her husband. The groom “receives” her into his family, and she is passed from one patriarch to another in front of her closest 356 friends and family.  (I hate using the term patriarch, but I think that’s a whole other blog post. The word never does all the power imbalances that occur at once, intersecting and interacting with each other at all times. That’s the incredibly short version of that. ) If a couple perhaps dares to “think outside the box” and live in defiance of gender roles, telling marriage to shove it and perform their lives away from expectation, they risk “losing” their heteronormative “status” despite their heterosexuality.
One is only a bride for a day, but arguably one might fill this role everyday if we consider Ingraham’s concept of “heterosexual imaginary”. She is quick to point out that she doesn’t mean “imaginary” as in “false” or less real, but rather as a way to describe the romanticized notions of sexuality and social institutions such as marriage and weddings. By “heterosexual imaginary”, she means that we often fail to see how marriage and sexuality regulate and control our lives, thus leading to vast inequalities. By regulating and controlling them, weddings, marriage and sexualities seem “natural”. This can be destabilized when we recognize Ingraham’s argument that “one is not born a bride”, rather we are constructed and shaped by our culture and its practices. 
It’s easy to get caught up in labels when considering heteronormativity, weddings, relationships and the institutions we’ve constructed. We begin to have a long list of labels to suit the needs of the people around us. If every identity such as “single”, “married”, “common-law”, “co-habiting”, “dating”, “it’s complicated”, “we’re fucking but no one knows”, “confused”, or maybe “straight”, “gay”, “bisexual”, “asexual”, “queer”, “bored”, “polygamist”, “monogamist” gets its own label or box, have we made things less constricting? Maybe, but maybe we have to question the point of the boxes and labels at all, because by the time we’re done, everyone is going to fit in their own individual box, thus defeating the purpose of the “unifying” label. The more boxes and identities we create to go with practices, the more we are trying to force people into the boxes that we’ve constructed.  
My god I wish I lived in some of these arguments, where I could actually practice a label-free existence. It would be like a “practical application of women’s studies”. And that would be fucking epic.

Hello World!

After five days without internet, I am back. My anti-virus program decided to fight itself to the death, ending my internetting privileges. But thanks to computer help guy in the library, all appears to be well. I've got at least two posts for tonight and I told myself I need to have another finished before Tuesday.


Also, there is going to be a conference at UPEI in January for interdisciplinary studies in gender and sexuality... want to join in the fun? Creep us on facebook: Blurring Borders and Building bridges or email blurringborders2010.2011@gmail.com for more info.

Abortion Miniseries: Won't sombody please think of the children?!

Abortion is a topic I would hesitate to bring up with young kids. It probably just isn't part of the "sex talk" I'd be willing to explain to a child under 10. Not that I frequently tell children about sex or abortion. Parents would be out their minds to allow that to happen. But if a 8, 9 or 10 year old asks me what abortion is, I'd hesitate. And then run away. Anyway. Back to the conversation with a person who doesn't approve of abortion within any circumstances. A quick recap: I talked to a guy named "Peter" who is against abortion and wishes for it to be illegal under any circumstances at an anti-abortion rally. He sees the world as being very black and white, and likes it that way. 

Peter argued that there were 100 kids "missing" from this provinces grade one classes this year. I’ve heard a similar statistic in the documentary “Jesus Camp” (2006), in which children are told that one third of their friends are not there that evening, because they never had the chance to be born, due to abortion. The numbers and ratios aren’t the same, but the message is still there: people who have abortions are kidnappers and murderers.

 At the age of 7 and 8, children most likely don’t understand conception, pregnancy and birth- how can we expect them to understand just what abortion is? We can’t! Even if we put it in the simplest terms possible, something is going to get lost in translation. If all we tell them is “those people over there murdered your friends” (or some variation of this sentiment), their concept of these complex ideas gets turned around into “those people are wrong, we are right.” This is why it scared me a little to see young kids running around at the “People who wish to have abortion made illegal under any set of circumstances” rally. Do they understand what they’re rallying against? Can a child grasp what an abortion is? They have no idea of the social anguish and heated debates the very concept brings. They are fed an "us versus them"  version of the many sided debate. They are taught that people who fight for choice are wrong under all circumstances. Most people will say that parents have the right to teach their children whatever they please. But when those children are too young to even understand what they're rallying against, that's just not fair.

 Children in the Jesus Camp documentary, are taught that there is a person formed from the time of conception until they die a natural death. I suppose if you believe that, that’s up to you and your family, but why the lies about how a fetus is biologically formed? Lou Engle, the man spouting the “facts” about the development of the embryo/fetus? He has these kids thinking that if one were to cut open the womb of a pregnant person at any time, they will see a child, ready to play and be friends with the Evangelical Christian children awaiting its arrival. And that's just deceiving.

Maybe for a real project I'll try to come up with an explanation of conception, abortion and birth that I'd be willing to present to a 10 year old.

Fuck you moments: bridal wear

I'm watching "Say Yes to the Dress" on TLC. This episode is part of a new series- it's still in New York at Kleinfeld's, and is still about "finding that perfect dress, that you know is yours" and blah, blah, blaaah. But it's about "plus size brides". I'm not sure what qualifies as "plus size", in terms of clothing sizes for Kleinfeld's, but apparently the brides are like another species to be studied by all those "normal" or "skinny" types.
As someone who identifies as big and has to wear "plus sizes" especially when it comes to wedding attire, I say FUCK YOU to this show. Yeah, I should eat better and do more physical stuff... and I might be thinner, I'm not "the other body". My body is mine, and does not need to be constantly compared to "normal" sizes when I go shopping, or try on clothes. And yeah, it is condescending, rude and hurtful when someone says

"We have to be really super sensitive of their feelings"
,in regard to body size. Since when did my or any other person's body come with inherent meaning? You're a fucking dress consultant, Randy, you should always be considerate of people's feelings when they're on that pedestal, analyzing every single part of themselves. And even if they aren't absorbed by their own reflection, it's common human decency to be nice to people. Especially when those people are in your store and are potentially buying something expensive from you.
I should probably point out that yes, I know I'm not on this show, but it's something I relate to and feel comfortable putting in first person, no hiding behind academic topics or words. I type for myself, but maybe others are with me. I'm not looking for confirmation on this, I'm just saying. Fat people aren't these delicate china dolls that need to be handle with special care. My weight doesn't make me have fragile feelings, I'm a God damned human being, I should be treated like I have feelings, regardless of the numbers on the scale.
Randy says that among the number of "plus-size" brides they serve, only one or two are comfortable with their size, happy to try on and wear the dress they picked. And it's demonstrated as like this fucking fairy tale, victory for the underdog when a plus-size, fat girl, big, bigger is happy. It's like she's supposed to be happy in spite of her weight. Maybe more women would be happy with their dress shopping experience if we weren't pitied when we have the audacity to walk out the door.

Abortion Miniseries: the language edition

There are going to be a few posts about a conversation I had with a man, whom I’m going to call Peter, as sort of a series. He knew when I initiated the conversation that I was a women’s studies student writing a blog from a strong social constructionist perspective, largely influenced by feminisms. What that meant to him, I have no idea. People just seem to take what they know or think they know about these kinds of perspectives and relate them to the current interaction. Which is fine, we all do that all the time. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that he and I were not spiritually, religiously, academically on the same page. We read from different books entirely. The dialogue surprised me, in a good way. Our opposing sides didn’t seem to affect the conversation we held for over an hour.

The conversation that Peter and I had was so involved with what I want this blog to be about; he was honest, respectful and was bold in his responses to my (at times invasive) questions. Our relatively short conversation, I think, will be interesting if it is analyzed, questioned and deconstructed for the sake of the blog. He was at an anti-choice, pro-life, right-to-life rally downtown. He didn’t know I would be there, I just found myself approaching him and asking if I could ask him a few questions about the rally with my notebook in hand. Peter was nice and consented right away. He said the opinions he was giving were commonly held in the (Catholic) church and members of the Right to Life organization in the province.  I don’t take anything he said as anyone’s official opinion but his own.  So that’s a little of the back-story for this miniseries.

 Language and identifying through language is important to all of us. Language is one of the best ways we have of communicating our thoughts, emotions and ideas. (I don’t just mean spoken and heard word; when I say “language” I mean for it to be inclusive: speaking, writing, hearing, reading, signing, watching, and any other means of communication that we may use to express ourselves.) If you’ve noted above, I said I met Peter at an anti-choice, pro-life, right-to-life rally downtown.   This isn’t because I’m confused about the ongoing debate- I know where I stand. But each of the names says something. As always, it most likely communicates more about those saying it, rather than those who they are labelling. Perhaps the easiest way to explain this is to go through each label, putting them in conversation with each other. 

Pro-choice: This is the movement that wants to have comprehensive sex education in school systems. They want kids, teens and adults to know about safe, effective and often affordable birth controls and contraceptives as well as information about sexually transmitted infections. They are trying to help prevent people from getting pregnant who do not want to get pregnant.  In the event of pregnancy, the pro-choice movement wants pregnant persons to know that there are a variety of options on how to proceed, including but never limited to abortion.

Pro-choice individuals don’t like abortion and to suggest such a thing is absurd. I don’t know that I have an argument to point out just how preposterous of an idea that it. I don't know anyone who likes abortion, but if you're out there, fine, but I'm positive that is not the message of the pro-choice movement is. Rather they wish that there were adequate education and support before a pregnancy could occur. But yes, in the event of a pregnancy that is unwanted, unplanned, the result of rape, incest, and/or any set of circumstances... yes pro-choice movements think pregnant people deserve access to safe, legal and affordable abortions, should that be what they choose.

When I asked Peter about what he thought of the label “pro-choice”, he said that to him, it sounded vague about the politics behind the movement. His opinion was that the movement never wants people to know that they’re “pro-abortion”, that the term avoids the “fact” that abortion “ends life”.  I get the sense that he feels the entire pro-choice perspective is selfish and deceitful, but more on that later, I promise!  Regardless of the non pro-choice side, they don’t appear to have their own label for the pro-choice side, so it’s very difficult to talk about pro-choice from a pro-life/anti-choice perspective without getting completely confused among the terminology. Let’s move onto the next term, shall we?

Pro-life: is the movement that doesn’t distinguish between lives, and has an incredibly wide definition of the term “life”. Peter gave me what he thought was the official opinion of the Catholic Church and the Right to Life organization of the province: in no cases is abortion ever the spiritually and religiously acceptable option to pregnant persons- even in the case of rape and incest. The logic goes that the circumstances leading up to conception do not negate the life that is formed. Factually, scientifically that is true.

(With the term “pro-life”, whose life are we in favour of? My mind can’t help but focus on the NO ABORTIONS, NO EXCEPTIONS. That scares me a little. As if a woman hasn’t had enough control and agency taken away from her by being raped, the church is telling her she is morally obligated to host to her rapist’s cells for nine months. This is probably where it has become very apparent on how I “really” feel. And I’d apologize for my lack of discretion, but this is my blog, my rules. )

Peter and I talked about the dichotomy that seems to exist between the abortion debates, between lots of debates. Deconstructing dichotomous thinking is huge in women’s studies, and many of my courses. I sense it will be discussed in detail several times over by the time I’m done with this blog. Dichotomies are limiting- only allowing two sides to every issue is most often not giving enough people with “gray area” opinions enough credit. It doesn’t allow for compromise or understanding of any kind between two groups. Peter and I agreed on one thing, that there was never much real, productive communication between two (and certainly not the only two) sides of the abortion debate. I think he likes it that way. It certainly makes believing one’s own opinion easier, if there’s never interaction between sides; one never has to doubt their group’s opinions. He thinks of the world as black and white, right and wrong, this or that, and by no means am I putting words in his mouth. There will be much more about the specifics of “right and wrong” later in the series.

And is it just me, or is this a childish way to interact with the world? Refusing to look at the world from any other angle, understanding it only within one’s own terms, never communicating with people that opinions that vary (a little or a lot) from  your own? If nothing else, it makes me sad that more people aren’t constantly questioning the world around them, wondering why things are the way they are and how might we make things better? Or at least less worse.

Anti-choice: In terms of the goals, “anti-choice” is the same as “pro-life”. Read: this group doesn’t want abortion under any circumstances.  The only difference is the label. From pro-life a perspective, they value “all” life from conception to natural death, thus identifying as pro-life. 

Looking at the same side of the debate from another perspective, we come up with the label “anti-choice”. The anti-choice group is still the one that opposes abortion under any circumstances, but by labelling it “anti-choice”, it is apparent that the label is being given by people who believe in the right for pregnant persons to choose abortion if they want., “pro-choice”. Even if we acknowledge that these two opinions of one side of the debate co-exist, we can tell that arguments are seldom a dichotomy. There might be two sides, but within those two halves are multiple, sometime conflicting, but always interacting (either passively or actively) angles. However, there are very seldom debates that have just two major sides. 

Thanks to my lack of discretion above, I think I’ve presented some of the pro-choice’s outlook on anti-choice’s opinion when I question the value of dichotomies and what they mean for our societies. Although this was supposed to be a short post, I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain these thoughts, no matter how clear they were in my head. Language is always important. It tells much about who we are from the labels we give other people, and from the identities we claim through words. Language gives us power to say what we mean where otherwise our peers would be clueless as to our outlooks of an issue. And although “pro-life”, ”anti-choice” and “right to life” all mean “we don’t find abortion to be acceptable under any circumstances”, when we question who is doing the labelling and naming, we find that there are differences in so called synonymous words.

So depending on which perspective I’m talking from, the words used to describe a group of people who don’t want any abortions ever, might just be called “People who wish to have abortion made illegal under any set of circumstances”.. How creative, I know. But in the rare moments when I’m pretending I’m not a biased, social constructionist, raging feminist, I feel like I need a term to mean “anti-choice, pro-life” groups, rather than typing both of them all the time and having to make the socially constructed difference clear every time.  

Next in the series: what abortion means to kids