Sex is Not the Same as Parenthood: The Abortion Debate Revisited

Whenever there's some young girl who gets knocked up after having "too much fun," a the pro-lifers say she should have thought about that before she had sex. They say it's unfair for her to have all her fun without a care in the world, but then act like she can't take responsibility for the child that is the natural product of all that fun.

I'm surprised that this argument isn't laughed out of the room more often. Since when does ANYONE, even the most orthodox of religious nuts, have sex for the procreation only? Clearly what's on you're mind when you decide to have sex is a very different set of thoughts from when you're picking the best preschool education for your child on your budget. They are apples and oranges. It would be like making someone take responsibility for, I don't know, stealing, by learning how to waterski.

To society's credit, we are at least consistent with this principle. When a man has sex for fun, we expect him to pay for the child that comes out of that fun. I guess the idea is that he was careless and if he had any presence of mind, he would have used a condom...

Aside: incidentally, it makes no sense that we expect the guy who's too irresponsible to care for a condom to care for a human being. That kind of logic would make sense only if we were PURELY INDIFFERENT to the kind of human beings who were being raised into our society.

But I digress. I was going to point out that the case for "taking responsibility" becomes much less clear when the man in good faith believed he was doing just that. We feel a lot more sympathy for the guy - let's say he's a rich and widely respected guy, like a politician or an athlete - if some no-good golddigger got him drunk and lied to him about being on the pill, only to get pregnant purposely so that she can milk child support from him for the next 18 years. Under the law, it's not much of an argument that the man was tricked. He still has to pay regardless, for the sake of the child, but we as a society are a lot more confused about we might feel about that obligation as a form of punishment for the man.

I mention this gray area because it seems like for men we're at least a little closer to understanding sex as something different from parenthood. For women, we're a lot farther away because we don't think of the obligation to raise a child as punishment or responsibility, but rather an affliction, a condition of helplessness and dependency. "If you can't raise the kid yourself, put it up for adoption." As Cephalopod pointed out in an earlier post, it's sort of unacceptable that women should expect to rely on alms and welfare when it's eminently practicable to make the choice to be in the driver's seat oneself. The logical response should be, "If you can't take responsibility for a child, don't have a child." It's an attitude pays due respect to the woman's ability to accept consequences for her actions and to be held accountable for her choices. I think once we come closer to thinking of sex as a genre of life choices for women, the closer we'll be to accepting that the choice to have sex is not the same thing as the choice to have a child.

Dude blogs...

This Is Lady Gaga, People Are Sick Of Her

I just thought that this was somehow appropriate, I don't know why, really. I guess I like seeing the myth of GaGa busted, in whatever fashion, because I'm tired of her being the "thinking woman's pop icon" (see post waaay earlier). But I think also it's really funny that this post about gay icons and gender boundary pushers should appear on a site that is WAY sexist and often pretty racist, but really kind of indifferent (beyond the pretty tame sissy jokes) to gays. Whatever. And yeah, I do find these dude blogs entertaining. I don't think they promote healthy images of women, but still, they're a guilty pleasure. You know what though, I did notice that, during the Rihanna getting beat up by Chris Brown (punk ass bitch) uproar, the most vehemently anti-Brown posts were from these dude blogs that I visit (wwtdd.com and IDLYITW). The male bloggers at these sites had so much hatred and anger for what Brown did, and for men who would lay a hand on a woman in violence, that I was kind of stunned. Especially since like, 60% of their posts has some kind of borderline rough sex joke. I guess I should feel heartened though, by the fact that even these guys are like, fuck no, there is no excuse to beat a woman ever.

Olivia Munn: "Walk it off, bitch, walk it off"

http://www.hollywoodlife.com/2010/06/24/olivia-munn-daily-show-women-comedy-central-g4-attack-of-the-show/

In the linked post, Olivia Munn talks about her new "Senior Asian Correspondent" gig on the Daily Show, and on how (I'm paraphrasing her own words, so if it reads kind of stupid, well...) she's out there, trying to make it, like everyone else, and that people who say that she got her job because she's a woman are setting women back by insisting on dividing humanity into "man" and "woman". Munn says that when she's competing for jobs, she doesn't think about being a woman, just about being recognized for her work. She tells bloggers who would question the connection between her gender and her career to "turn off the computer, take the sandwich out of her mouth, and go outside for a walk. Just walk it off, bitch, walk it off."

I've seen Olivia Munn on Attack of the Show, and she's kind of funny in a geeky smart way. I've seen her, on AOTS, dressed as Wonder Woman, in a bikini, and in some kind of mud wrestling match, in addition to reporting on the latest video games. I have to say, I've never seen her cohost on AOTS, Kevin Pereira, doing skimpily dressed segments. Olivia Munn, though not super famous, has a pretty high profile out there in the 18-35 male demographic that Attack of the Show targets, as evidenced by her presence on dude blogs such as this post:

Olivia Munn Does FHM
And this post:
olivia munn is a good model
And this post:
Hot Woman Jumps Into Giant Pie

These photo shoots and segments are obviously part of Munn's brand building, and I guess what one notices is that her brand is built on something very specific. No, not her tech savvy...no, not her goofy humor...no, what is it? Oh yeah, the fact that she's cheesecake.

Despite Olivia's pin-up portfolio, I don't think that she got her gig on the Daily Show because she's a woman. I think she got it because she's Olivia Munn, who has a big following among the 18-35 year old males that happen to be Daily Show's core audience. Since her job is as the DS senior Asian correspondent, I wonder if she was up against the hilarious Bobby Lee (from Harold and Kumar, the overeager Korean student). And, I just watched her DS segment, and it was about her being part Vietnamese and being maybe but maybe not the new hot "newsbunny". So, she didn't get the gig because she's a woman, but maybe because she's a part Asian woman, I guess. Either way, it's about aspects of her identity that are easily appraised by the naked eye, so far. So maybe Olivia Munn needs to settle down about her humanity being divided.

And a final thing, I think it's interesting that her response to criticism is to tell female bloggers to take the sandwich out of their mouths, because her haters must be fat and unattractive. Way to not set women back, Olivia! Go you!

The Karate Kid and girls in 80s movies

So, I don't know if this counts as feminism, or whatever, but I noticed, during a recent viewing of The Karate Kid (the 80s one, not the one with Will Smith's kid) that Elisabeth Shue's character, Alli, is a really cool chick. She's totally into Daniel-san, and flirts with him, like love interests in all teen movies do. But she's also cheerfully assertive in a way that I found pretty awesome. Alli follows up with Daniel-san, blithely moving on from her breakup with the evil Johnny in a healthy, carefree way. Daniel-san worries about it to the point of avoiding her even though he likes her, but Alli is all about "dealing with it." And, Alli invites herself to sit with Daniel-san at lunch, and to the arcade, where there's a cool game she wants to show him. Alli is totally taking the lead in the relationship, which is really nice to see. She sticks up for herself with Johnny too, telling him to buzz off at the beach, and getting in his face about his aggro tendencies. When Johnny kisses her at the country club (why is there a country club in Encino?! and is Encino any less bad than Reseda?) to humiliate Daniel-san, Alli punches him in the face and tells him to drop dead. Good stuff. What really impressed me is how, during the climactic karate tournament, when Daniel-san is like, "what is going on? I'm dead for sure", Alli is the one who explains the rules and point system to him, calmly and efficiently, because she's GOT THIS.

I feel like I don't really see many characters like Alli. Love interests in movies about male friendships tend to be visions of perfection who glide through the movie in soft focus, giving the hero small acknowledgements before he somehow gets her in the end, with the help of his buddy. But Alli is her own character, and despite the fact that she's the third wheel to Daniel-san and Mr. Miyagi, it's still really clear that she knows what's going on and has her own motivations and personality. I wish they had kept her around in the sequels, especially in the third one where the girl character was so very very superfluous. I haven't watched any teen-marketed movies for a long time, and I wonder if there are more or fewer Allis now. I hope there are more.

One last thing thing I noticed about Alli is kind of superficial, but I think not really. Elisabeth Shue in that movie was really pretty, but looked like a real girl. She didn't look like a sex doll like Megan Fox, or like some fake-wholesome Miley Cyrus. Elisabeth Shue was also healthy and athletic looking--not the tiniest girl you'll see, but definitely one that could hold her own in say, a pickup soccer game with Daniel-san. In other words, she looked like a normal teenager. Why can't girls look like that in movies now? Why do even the "nerdy" ones like Needy in "Jennifer's Body" have to be Amanda Seyfried, that is, bombshell behind glasses? I think I'm showing my age here, but damn it, why can't girls in movies look like normal people like boys do? I think I'm also reminded of this because I recently watched the "Flowers in the Attic" movie again, and noticed that Kristy Swanson was kind of chubby in that. In a baby fat way. But she was still cute, like a normal teenage girl. No way could a girl like that be in a movie nowadays. They'd have to be very thin, with big glossy lips, and around 8 lbs of hair extensions. That sucks.

Flowers in the Attic

As a fun summer reading project with my friend Anne, I've decided to reread V.C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic. This book (or perhaps the movie with Kristy Swanson that was on TV a lot when I was young) was part of the adolescence of many a young girl in the 80s and 90s. There was a time when you couldn't go into the grocery store or the Target without some kind of V.C. Andrews book on the cheap paperback rack, and the whole shebang started with Flowers in the Attic. This story, of stern grandmothers, selfish mothers, sexual daughters, and--most infamously--lustful brother, occupied a place for many girls that (I believe)is the same place that "mature" manga held for boys; that is, a piece of fiction that had a story and characters, but fascinated above all for its depictions of relationships between men and women outside of what was available on regular TV, or at school, or from your parents. This book touched and lingered on growing up and emerging female sexuality in a way that many of its readers sort of identified with, but magnified it and distorted it within a context of imprisonment and incest, with which its readers (I really hope for real) couldn't identify. The mixture of these things, the weirdness of the story and the writing, and the age and impressionability of the readers probably translated into some attitudes that lasted until adulthood, or college, when life experiences supplanted those gleaned from lurid, secret novels. Revisiting this book now as an adult, having kind of forgotten it for a long time, I am picking up on things that kind of bothered me before (like the atrocious writing) and REALLY bother me now (the depiction of rape) or just kind of confuse me (the author's views on the importance of independence for women). I'll be writing about these things, with my friend Anne (who contributed the razors post here) on The Gray Taffeta Files on Blogspot, but I'll also be writing some things here. If you haven't read this book, I recommend it as a fun way to pass a day, and also as a crazy document of sexual attitudes. Sadly, some of those attitudes seem to be making a comeback in pop culture, and I'll be touching on that in my next couple of posts.

Why do I feel less able to play this game than Mafia Wars?

A new game called "Sorority Life" on the Facebook

I was not in a sorority when I was in college, so I have no experience of Greek life, but I am still surprised at how alien I find this particular game. As a female, shouldn't I be able to relate to experiences of groups of young women? Perhaps the trouble comes in the "losing body fat as you grow your sorority numbers" aspect of the game. Or, the "people can vote whose avatar is hottest after a face off on the runway" part of the fun. I can't relate to that. I have a suspicion that this game capitalizes on the assumptions of most people about what life is like in sororities, and assumptions of what popular and pretty girls must be like (petty and mean), rather than reflecting the real sorority experience. I mean, I know people who were in sororities, and they're not mean or bitchy or petty. So, what's up with this game?*

The image of sororities being perpetuated by games like "Sorority Life" is hard to reconcile with recent news items about sororities (all in Ohio) having disgusting, absolutely gross piss-and-shit-and-vomit-everywhere-formals in public places. It was shocking to read about young people (the girls AND their dates) who thought it was okay to act like that anywhere, much less in public. But this kind of news also makes me wonder about the freedom of these girls to act like beasts, and whether any of these girls see themselves as feminists, and if they thought that the freedom to act like utter fools was one of feminism's goals. The equal license to be disgusting is, some might argue, a step forward from when young women were supposed to be prim and proper. But I always thought that if women were going to rowdy, there should be a legitimate reason for their rowdiness. I certainly think way of men; if they're going to be loud and aggressive, there'd better be a good reason for that behavior. Hmmm.

Anyway, are there any sorority ladies who could enlighten me on this Facebook game, or on why these Ohio girls turned into shit-throwing chimps at the zoo?

*I also wonder why I, at least initally, found it so much fun to do hoodrat stuff vicariously via Mafia Wars, but I think that's explainable by mass exposure to action movies about the mob.

Sarah Palin Will Probably Be President Soon

I had this horrible thought today while reading a few opinions by Justices Marshall and O'Connor. The following captures my deductive reasoning:

1. America was ready for a black Supreme Court Justice before it was ready for a female one.
2. But the female Justice didn't come too long after the black Justice.
3. The black Justice was wonderful, one of the best. He was the culmination of true social change.
4. The female Justice was a nightmare and a disaster. She was the product of the conservatives trying to prove something.
5. Our first black President seems pretty good so far, and because he's got that JFK charisma, he'll probably be remembered even more favorably by history.
6. Our first female President will be a nightmare and a disaster, a product of conservative tokenism.

Ergo:
7. Sarah Palin will be our first female President.

AHHHHHH!