Thursday, April 19, 2012

Anti-Vagina Brigade

The world is depressing me today.

I have read about school girls being poisoned, having acid thrown in their faces and receiving bomb threats for daring to get an education. Apparently educating women is anti-Islamic and vulgar. Because educated women are harder to control or something, I don't know. It's ignorant, anachronistic thinking that needs to be done away with.

This is so upsetting to me that I went right through 'rage' and into 'depressed at the world for being such a shitty place'. They are targeting children. For wanting an education. They are specifically targeting schools for girls because they think women should be confined to the home and exist to obey their husbands. And they feel so strongly about this that they are blowing up schools and poisoning people! Lots of schools! This is not an isolated incident. How do you justify that to yourself? What fucked up sense of morality do you have to have to think blowing up children is better than women being allowed out of the house?

They're looking at the bigger picture, you see. Like typical bullies, if they make enough of a scene and scare enough people they expect to get their way. So they blow up a bunch of schools to scare parents into keeping their kids at home and run up a huge bill for the government to rebuild ($220 million at last tally). The children living in the middle of all of this are incredibly brave. They want to be educated. They want to learn more about the world and how to make their home a better place. How dare those self-righteous bastards get in the way of that?

Ok, I may have worked myself back up into rage-mode. Because it is infuriating to see children, especially young girls who are finally getting a chance at education, being treated this way. Extremist groups always seem to make controlling the women a priority, and I am sick of feeling like I have a target on my uterus. I may not have to worry about my school being bombed, but does anyone really feel safe anymore walking into Planned Parenthood? With the protesters and demonstrators and threats? Just this month there was a bombing at a clinic in Wisconsin.

It's the same battle. Women want to be able to control their own lives? To leave the house when they want and have the jobs they want and have babies when and if they want? Can't have that! Let's force them into staying at home and destroy their access to education! Let's pass legislation restricting birth control and abortion access! Let's do everything we can to maintain that a woman's importance and value is based on their looks and desirability, but shame them into submission if they dare to express their sexuality for themselves or show signs of having a healthy sex life!

And here in the US things are getting worse, not better. More and more legislation designed to control women's bodies keeps popping up...and it is passing! Make no mistake, control is what this is about. If it were really about women's health, then they wouldn't be trying to force unnecessary, invasive procedures onto women seeking abortions. They wouldn't be forcing doctors to lie or withhold information about a woman's health if it might encourage her to get an abortion. They would be lauding Planned Parenthood, provider of free women's health care, rather then cutting its funding and closing clinics. If it was about protecting children then at least some of this effort would be put towards caring for children after they've been born. But no...improvements and funding to social services, adoption agencies, foster programs and education are distinctly absent from the onslaught.

I understand that some anti-abortion advocates truly believe that abortion is murder. And they believe that for a reason...because that is what they were taught, by people who misrepresent the facts and manipulate the difficult emotions associated with abortion. That emotional reaction obfuscates the real issues and fuels the controversy. Meanwhile, real women are having their rights debated by men who know nothing about women's issues. It is infuriating.

It's a cycle of shame. You don't need birth control. Only sluts have sex, so if you just keep your legs closed you'll be fine. You got pregnant? Guess you shouldn't have been such a slut. You're not gonna make that innocent baby pay for your mistakes, are you?

Nowhere in that dialog is there room for a woman's right to live her life how she wants it. You want a career and the ability to choose when you have children? That's not allowed, you whore. You should be staying home and making babies. Even if you just made a mistake once, that doesn't matter. Should have been more responsible, now live with it. Who cares about what you want to do with your life. Get yourself sexually assaulted? You were probably asking for it. Now spend the rest of your life taking care of this baby.

This is bullshit and I am sick of it. Sex is normal and healthy and awesome...not something to be ashamed of. It does have consequences, and the availability of birth control and safe, healthy abortions have finally given women the power to control those consequences.  It has revolutionized a woman's place in the world, and the same anachronistic thinking that believes women shouldn't be educated at all is trying to take that away. Seriously, fuck those guys.

1 comment: