when the status quo frustrates.

Make Your Case

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

I’m Agnostic, and have been for quite some time. I don’t think that God exists, but I’d be willing to look at any new evidence.

Right now I’m reading “Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement” by Katherine Joyce, and I keep running into a problem- I cannot understand these people at all. I can understand them as well as I understand gyroscopes: I can describe to you what they are going to do, but for the life of you I can’t wrap my mind why.

For those of you who don’t know “Quiverfull” is a blanket term regarding people who are believers in a Biblical Patriarchy (women submit to their husbands or fathers- and I do mean “submit”), and more importantly, who are staunchly anti-birth control; no condoms, no pills, no sterilization, no rhythm method, nothing but “God’s Will”. The phrase comes from Psalm 127:5 “Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them(children). They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.” Quiverfull people believe that they are in a cultural war with liberal secularists, and they intended to win through demographics alone. They believe that these roles and behaviors are “god’s will” and that they are on the side of righteousness. Frequently, they are into seriously modest dress and homeschooling.

I keep running into the same problem with these beliefs- I don’t understand why they would want to worship this god. I’m fairly anti-authoritarian: I want to choose which authority I follow, and at the end of the day I think I am ultimately responsible for any action I take, whether or not someone in power over me told me to do it or not. I don’t want to risk my health and my life. I am drawn towards debate, and I am occasionally smarter than my husband. These proscribed roles, in other words, would make me MISERABLE (and my husband miserable too). So, if the Quiverfull people are correct, and there is a god, and he made me the exact opposite of what I’m supposed to be (indeed, a lot of Quiverfull talk about how women have an inherently rebellious nature because of Eve), which sounds like a recipe for misery, then god’s a dick. Why should I worship a dick? The general answer of “because of heaven and hell” is 100% unsatisfying to me- I’m supposed to toady up to a bully just to avoid getting beat up? That’s not moral- that’s cowardly.

So, this post is for any lurking Quiverfulls. Heck, if you’re just a person who thinks god cares more about what we do with our genitals than whether or not we hurt people, you can post too. I’ll leave off the “prove that god even exists part”- for this exercise I’ll just go with it for now. I need support for “if god exists, why should we worship him?” Make your case.

EDIT: Like all things I want to know, I had to search google to see if it had any knowledge. The first website had a post that made exactly zero sense to me, but the answer was

We worship Him because He commands it. We worship Him because He alone deserves it, knowing what He is and what He does. We worship Him because without so doing we cannot rise to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

So…yeah, worship a bully because a bully says so? Even though he’s a bully? And I don’t want to be a bully?

I really wish I knew someone in real life who held these views and would talk to me. I’m missing something important here- something that’d snap it into place.

21.07.2009 Books, Culture, Family, Fetii, Godbaggery, Moronic Religions 21 Comments

Rarely have I read an article where a reporter from a national mainstream magazine was so blatantly creaming in his jeans over the awesomeness that is teen parenthood.

Monday, September 1st, 2008

This was hard to believe. I had to check twice to make sure it was really Time magazine and not some clever decoy, you know, like “crisis pregnancy” centers like to pull when they set up facilities next to a Planned Parenthood clinic and call themselves something like “The Planning for Parenthood Center” to fake legitimacy and trick people who are looking for actual reproductive health care into their clutches. But no, it is Time magazine, and the guy who is writing the article is named Nathan Thornburgh. Actually, I was so underwhelmed by this article that I decided to do a quick search on this guy’s name to see what else he might’ve written out there, and apparently, this is but a second of a series of articles he has produced about visiting Alaska in the light of the Palin veep announcement. The other one, entitled “Where Palin Made Her Name,” opens with the following gem:

It’s Friday night, and there have got to be 500 people packed into the Sluice Box, a beer-soaked clapboard honky-tonk at the Alaska State Fair – the state’s biggest event all year – just down the highway from Governor Sarah Palin’s hometown of Wasilla. The legendary Hobo Jim, Alaska’s official state balladeer, the guy who has opened sessions of the legislature with a song, is onstage, working blue.

“Here’s to the girl from the great Northwest,” he sings, “with tits as hard as a hornet’s nest.” The crowd whistles its approval.

For the record, he’s not singing about Palin, though the curvature and comeliness of McCain’s surprise vice-presidential nominee pick are brought up by just about everyone here, man and woman, in a way that would make lower-48 liberals and feminists cringe.

Mmm…you know, there are certain things that people who don’t like a certain other set of people say that are red flags cluing one in on the fact that that person, indeed, does not like them. The above is a great example of that. It’s interesting that some journalists appear to believe that the spirit of the supposed ideal of journalistic neutrality is fulfilled by passive-aggression–frankly, I’d prefer that they just openly said fuck the whole ideal! and engaged in outright aggression. It’d leave less of a greasy aftertaste.

At any rate, it’s a strange article. He begins by stating that he thinks that Sarah Palin’s underaged daughter’s pregnancy is nobody’s business but her and her family’s, which makes the fact that he’s writing an article about said pregnancy in a nationally popular magazine rather odd. Would he like us better if we quit reading his article right then in solidarity? He then goes on to describe how they’re all real men in Alaska–hunting is apparently not something they do in any of those other 48 states, you know, the ones occupied by liberals and feminists, and Alaska also has people who’ve lost family members to industrial accidents and that go serve in Iraq, which again sets them quite apart from the 48 Contiguous Pussy States where that shit apparently hardly ever even comes up. The naturally flowing conclusion that he draws from all this is so that really, it is SO not a big deal to be an underaged mother. (You can almost hear him shout Isn’t this REFRESHING, readers??)

Yep, it gets even more unreal than that–don’t believe me? Here ya go:

The fact is, regardless of what you will hear over the next few days, Bristol [Palin]‘s pregnancy is not a legitimate political issue. Sarah Palin is a longterm member of a group called Feminists for Life, which is not opposed to birth control. So you probably can’t tag her for consigning young people to unwanted pregnancies.

Oh, my. You most certainly can, including that of her own daughter, unless you’re trying to stretch reality even further and claim that Bristol Palin is having a planned pregnancy. Let’s see, for instance, what Feminists for Life actually does have to say about contraception:

What is Feminists for Life’s position on contraception?
Feminists for Life’s mission is to address the unmet needs of women who are pregnant or parenting. Preconception issues including abstinence and contraception are outside of our mission.

Erm, but they DO have a stated position on, for instance, assisted suicide, which seems to be a leetle further afield from the topic of pregnancy than contraception is…come on, what’s the REAL reason—?

Some FFL members and supporters support the use of non-abortifacient contraception while others oppose contraception for a variety of reasons

Translated: not all of us have multiple kids, making indelicate questions about our contraceptive status unavoidable if we were to outright oppose it.

FFL is concerned that certain forms of contraception have had adverse health effects on women.

Translated: But if we can find a health link, no matter how dubious, we’re primed and ready to jump on that bandwagon at the slightest moment’s notice!!

But how about Sarah Palin herself?

Q. Will you support the right of parents to opt out their children from curricula, books, classes, or surveys, which parents consider privacy-invading or offensive to their religion or conscience?

Sarah Palin: Yes. Parents should have the ultimate control over what their children are taught.

Q. Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?

Sarah Palin: Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.

You know, sometimes it is useful to actually get to see, so CLEARLY illustrated, where the fervent support of the above positions lands the daughters of those who practice said preachery. No theories or opinions here, folks! Real-life consequences of real-life philosophies.

And after all this, here is the conclusion that Nathan Thornburgh says he’s come to:

As for the idea — sure to be floated—that the avowedly anti-abortion Palin may have pressured her poor daughter to ruin her life by carrying an unwanted baby to term, I wouldn’t bet on it.

Is my favorite part of the above sentence the pooh-poohing of the idea that having a baby at age 17 might be quite life-altering in a negative way or that any girl forced to do so is a sarcastically pooor weeeetle thaaaaang, or is it that he thinks that it’s even possible that Bristol Palin was presented with all her choices in a rational and unbiased fashion?

(sigh) I’ll let you know when I figure that out…

01.09.2008 Contraception, Fetii, Media hackery, Mutterings Of The Disturbed, Remember November, Reproductive Rights 9 Comments

The Details of Desire

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Bowflex Boy! Oh, my God, I hadn’t thought about him in YEARS..!

(insert shriek, squeal and giggle)

It all started when I saw this post title on Hugo’s blog: ““Bowflex Boy” and Kristy McNichol: desire, celebrity, and the sexiness of earthy reality.” I didn’t immediately cotton onto the meaning of “Bowflex Boy,” and I think Hugo and I must be separated in age by at least a few years ’cause Kristy McNichol is a very vague childhood memory of mine. But further down in the post, Hugo says:

If you remember the ’80s, you remember the ad. I’ve done a Google image search, and can’t find it, but the picture is indelibly carved on my brain. A young, dark-haired man is pulling off his white t-shirt, lifting his arms over his shoulders. His body beneath is tanned and spectacularly toned.

(this is where the shriek, squeal and giggle came in)

Oh hell yes, I remember Bowflex Boy! Now, I had no idea that poster was some kind of nationwide sensation, not at the time nor at any point since–as a matter of fact, all my little friends had their walls plastered with big hair band icons–I was the only girl I knew who had, of all things, a home gym equipment advertisement on my wall.

Hugo goes on to talk about how insecure Bowflex Boy’s amazing abs made him feel when hanging over his head as he was naked in college and trying to make out with some chick and (I think) by extension how this makes him empathize with women who feel stressed by the nonstop avalanche of perfect female bodies plastered on every available wall, billboard and media device. (I say I think because I had a hard time focusing on the rest of his post–I kept getting lost in fond reveries of Bowflex Boy.) I did manage to gather, though, that another of his points was that, while perfect bodies cause us to feel lustful, we shouldn’t trouble ourselves because we can and do feel as much or more lust for the imperfect bodies of the real people we find ourselves in bed with.

The thing about Bowflex Boy, though, was that it actually wasn’t his aforementioned awesome abs, or pecs, or biceps, that made me fall in lust with his poster at age sixteen. They were very nice, but honestly, Bowflex Boy wasn’t THAT muscular. He was well-defined, but actually on the slim side, and you could tell from his proportions that he probably wasn’t a particularly tall guy either. What got me going, and has definitely been a trend ever since, was the subtlety of the sexuality presented.

(Oh, yeah, SUBTLETY! Some dude taking his shirt off is SUBTLE?)

Yeah, really. This is what I remember of the poster: The lighting is dim–not dark or fuzzy, just a low quiet illumination. His shirt is halfway over his head, hiding his eyes and most of his nose. His head is inclined down and his mouth is relaxed, neither smiling nor frowning–just calm. Motion is implied, but smooth and gentle motion, without aggression or haste, but without production, either.

(Warning: The rest of this post may contain Too Much Information. Proceed at your own risk.)

(more…)

30.07.2008 Dudes, Fetii, Sex, This Thing of Ours 4 Comments

Pro-Life Organizations

Sunday, July 27th, 2008

After many failed attempts on trying to upload images to this blog, I’m just going to assume I have a computer competency level that rivals John McCain, and say screw it. The images that show which pro-life organizations do what is at my Teller of Truths blog, and there will be links going to the relevant graphs. I am sorry if this is somewhat unwieldy for people.

When investigating Pro-Life Organizations, I choose to focus on 6 factors: are they secular or religious, does it appear to be women leading the organization, do they support sexual education, or contraception, or welfare for new mothers, and are they violent or peaceful?

At each link, there is a brief description of how I came to where to classify each organizations. I tried to stick straight to what the organization itself said. For some organizations (like Libertarians for Life) I am sure that do not support welfare, but that organization does not address anything else besides abortion, so I left them at “does not address welfare”.

The information is not surprising for any feminist. The organizations are overwhelmingly run by men, Christian, and anti-contraceptive. Beyond that, most of them are either against comprehensive sexual education, and welfare, or do not address it at all. Thankfully, most of the organizations are not violent, but there are enough that are violent or connected to violence to have a chilling effect.

For my next few blogposts, I’d like to go into some detail to some of these organizations. I plan to cover the most popular one, the national Right to Life Committee, but I will leave up to the readers to decide which organizations they would like some more details on without actually wanting to read their sites.

27.07.2008 Punkass!, Contraception, Fetii, Soapbox 20 Comments

Pro-life, unless it’s the lives of poor people

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

Just completely gross.

Short version: Sarasota Planned Parenthood and Habitat for Humanity team up with a plan that will help Planned Parenthood with some zoning issues and help Habitat get some almost-free land. For their altruism, they’re repaid with the nastiest of the nasty anti-choice contingent:

“We could have put up any building we wanted,” said Barbara Zdravecky, president of Planned Parenthood. “We wanted to donate the land so Habitat could build more attainable housing.”

But after Habitat donors learned about it and complained, Habitat International told the local board to drop it. The local Habitat board dropped the deal Tuesday night, less than a month before it was set for a final vote by the city.

…

The barrage of e-mails started with James Sedlak, vice president of the American Life League, a Virginia-based group that has led protests at Planned Parenthood offices in Sarasota. They said it showed a cozy relationship between Habitat and Planned Parenthood, which the league has accused of pushing pornography to children, among other things.

The American Life League must be so pleased. They’ve managed to screw over woman and poor people in one fell swoop.

Donate to Habitat, but let them know how you feel about them caving to pressure from anti-woman nutjobs.

Hat tip: nom_de_grr.

05.06.2008 Bodily Autonomy, Fetii, Moronic Religions, Reproductive Rights, Shame on you for being a woman, Shame on you for not being rich white and privileged, Wankers 2 Comments

The Medicalization of Childbirth

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

Last week, I finished watching “The Business of Being Born“. Ricki Lake did this documentary to highlight the differences in treatment she had with her two children. One was done at the hospital, and ended up as a Cesarean. One was at home, with a midwife, and it was videotaped.

Interspaced between this was some history of childbirth, particularly in the United States. Starting at around the turn of the century, births shifted from something that was at home, to something that was done at a hospital. This shift was not because medical science was particularly good at childbearing (or really, because it was even as midwifery) but because an interesting intersection that we all know and love: capitalism, sexism, and racism. Doctors at the time went on a massive advertising campaign, aimed at telling women that other women were not as good at delivering babies as they were. That these Russian, German, and other immigrant women just wanted your money, and you were a bad mother if you didn’t go to the hospital to get a delivery done there. Interestingly enough; it was not actually safer to go to the hospital, if you were in labor. Midwifery had been around for awhile, women knew how to deliver babies. They, at the very least, knew that you washed your hands before you went to the next birth, something that doctors at the time considered immaterial. Midwifes also knew to listen to a pregnant women when she was in labor, as opposed to putting up a sheet and ignoring her. They also knew that squatting, or in water, was an easier and safer way to give birth then lying on one’s back, where you have to not only have to work against your body, but gravity (but hey, with your legs like that, it was easier for the doctor).

It then went on to talk about “twilight sleep” or “zombie sleep”. For those of you who are unfamiliar (and I certainly was before I saw this) twilight sleep was when a women came to the hospital, and then was injected with morphine and scopolamine. Now, supposedly this was to kill pain; but what it really did was put pregnant women into an alternate state of mind, so that they forgot the labor pains. They also forgot the labor. And how to control their own body. Women had to be tied down to the bed, (with sheepskin, so that they wouldn’t leave big bruises or scratches). Watching the videos were again horrific: a women, tied to a bed, thrashing about, with a curtain at her midsection, and four white guys staring intently at her uterus. For something that is normally held as one of the most feminine of experiences, it was eerily impersonal.*

The movie then continued to show the difference between medical birth and midwifery. For one thing, the births done with a midwife seemed a whole lot less painful. The midwife was there the whole time, as opposed to a doctor who showed up at the last second. The position seemed more comfortable as well; if the woman wanted to get up and walk around, she was allowed to. If she wanted to squat, she squatted. With a midwife, they listened to what the women said she wanted. With the doctors, it seemed as if the doctor told her what she wanted.

Not to say that the movie was Luddite, at all. Every midwife there said that she was grateful that there was the knowledge of obstetricians out there, for the complicated births. But they all made mention that, 9 times out of 10, women did not need to go to the doctor. That first and foremost, those doctors are surgeons, and sometimes do unnecessary cesareans out of misplaced concern, or because of time constraints, that is not actually healthy for the mother or the new baby. They compared infant mortality in the United States with other countries in Europe where it was far more common to have a midwife, and lo and behold, the US has more infant deaths then Europe. However, they never proved a causal relationship; there are a variety of reasons why that might be.

Among the problems of medicalization they talked about, one was talking about how the introduction of medicine was playing weird problems with women’s hormones. First, a women is given an epidural, for the pain. But an epidural numbs more than just pain, it also makes it more difficult to have contractions. So then, a women is given pitocin, which is a synthetic form of oxytocin (the birthing hormone). Pitocin has some major problems though: first, the contractions it causes are longer, and stronger (and therefore more painful). Also, it can constrict bloodflow to the uterus, so that the fetus has less oxygen flowing to it. So, to numb the pain, they give the women another epidural. And this starts the cycle again, until the fetus goes into distress (and the mother is also pretty distressed at this point as well). At this point, they rush the women to get a Cesarean, leaving a scar in the women, an increased risk of infection, and a now-distressed baby.

A few things struck me watching this film, in no particular order:

1) Why does any women ever (well, with Tom Beatty make that any person) ever get and stay pregnant long enough to give birth? Seriously, even with the midwife, water births, were it just seemed like a grunt and slip, and “ooo, baby” it still seemed painful, long, and full of viscera. This movie made me hug my orthotricyclin like no one’s business.

2) This movie was far too crunchy for my tastes. I can see why childbirth is a unique experience for women, because it is generally just women that can do it. But seriously, I prefer the ideas they mention at the end a lot better: where hospitals have birthing centers, where midwifes work. You can have your birth in a water way, or at the very least squatting, but you are still at the hospital if you are that 1 in 10 case that needs emergency help.

3) What is it with some guys and their seemingly uncontrollable urges to take women’s experiences and define them/ control them? First you have medical doctors saying that women don’t actually know what’s going on for pregnancy, and then you have guys making laws about when it’s okay for us to have an abortion, and guys who think that birth control is emasculating, and guys who seem to think they know what happens during PMS better than women. It’s really annoying; I don’t assume to know what it’s like to have blue balls, why should they assume they have any IDEA what it’s like to go around in a feminine fleshy meatbag?

This movie is one that I think people should definitely watch** (if you have a netflix account, it’s instantly downloadable, by the way). It shows a very interesting perception of childbirth, from women’s point of view.

*Interestingly enough, the feminists at the time held up scopolamine as a liberation. The movie made mention that at the time, childbirth was still thought as something that should be as painful as possible, for the “curse of eve”. The feminist at the time, saw this as an opportunity to not have to suffer through childbirth, and jumped on the opportunity to show that no, childbirth was painful because there wasn’t the medicine to fix it, not because of any Biblical curse. Next time an anti-choicer shows up saying that early feminists were against abortion (which they should have been, because at the time an abortion had more of a chance of killing you than childbirth), point out that they also supported drugging women during childbirth. We are all a part of the time we grew up in, bound by some of those mindsets and technologies.

**If you’re like me, you’ll watch most of this movie through slits in your fingers. Seriously, think horror movie viscera, and then imagine in that in your most sensitive parts.

27.04.2008 Punkass!, "Science", Bodily Autonomy, Fetii, Health, Historical Wankery, Reproductive Rights 13 Comments

Horton is not sure why all these people are yelling at him

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

Anti-abortion activists sometimes use a tactic I call “WTF.” What the fuck? protesting involves going to a place where nobody in their right mind is thinking about abortion, or any sort of hot button issue, and then ruining everyone’s good time by screaming about abortion. You’ve probably run into this: dismembered fetus posters at the farmer’s market and a plane towing a banner for no discernible reason are two examples I’ve run into. I’m not sure what they think they’re accomplishing, but most people look at it and go “What the fuck?” before getting away from those psychos as fast as possible. Sometimes, they’ll get into a confrontation with people who were not planing on explaining D&X to their pre-school children that day, and now have some interesting questions to answer and tears to dry, but that’s about all they can expect out of that.

These people have apparently decided that Horton Hears A Who’s message of being nice to small things is the perfect opportunity to remind people that abortion is wrong. Because there’s nothing people respond to better than having their leisure time hijacked by barely-coherent protesters.

All hell broke loose at the Hollywood premiere of “Horton Hears a Who!” today when a group of pro-lifers infiltrated the screening, then chanted anti-abortion slogans after the flick.

The theme of the movie is based on the motto: “After all, a person is a person, no matter how small.” So the pro-lifers thought it was a good idea to use this theme to their advantage — even though their complicated message was falling mostly on the ears of children.

But hey, at least they made a difference:

Shouts of protest were returned by some in attendance, including, “This is a kids premiere,” “How dare you,” and “Do you really care that much about this?”

I’m reminded of that Dilbert cartoon in which Dilbert explains that reality is defined by the craziest person in the room – these people have to know that this intrusive, in-your-face form of protesting with its tenuous relation to whatever the situation is and its bizarre symbols (seriously, wtf is up with that red tape?) doesn’t win any converts, but it does piss people off. Do they really think they’re getting something done or are they just creaming their jeans at how rebellious and brave they are, confusing the public’s justified anger over the inappropriateness of the display with Satan-inspired anti-Christian persecution?

09.03.2008 Punkass!, Fetii, Godbaggery, Reproductive Rights, Wankers 9 Comments

You think you know Roe?

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

Some mystery organization, which only wants us to know the truth, has put out a handy-dandy Roe V Wade IQ test, 12 simple questions designed to test your knowledge of the 1973 Roe V Wade judgment. Alternately, this quiz will also test your understanding of what exactly judges do when they issue a ruling. For example, question 6 asks:

6) At what age does Roe require minor girls to have parental notification before an abortion?
Parental notification is not required
Girls 18 and younger
Girls 16 and younger
Girls 13 and younger

Picking answer 1 shows that not only do you know Roe, you are also probably aware that the question of if minors require parental notification before getting an abortion was not included in the Roe v Wade case, and that lawyers for both sides, only having a half an hour to actually make a case, probably stuck to the issue at hand. Roe was over 18 when she tried to get that abortion, and the Supreme Court is more famous for refusing to hear cases than for randomly throwing extraneous legal issues into the ones they do hear.

Question 9:

9) Which of our nation’s founding documents contains the phrase “right to an abortion”?
Declaration of Independence
U.S. Constitution
Bill of Rights
None of the Above
All of the Above

It’s true that every last right we have is enumerated in great detail in the Bill of Rights, which is actually 50,423 pages long and explicitly states that if it’s not in there, you ain’t got a right to it. This is why the Supreme Court has to make up work for itself; everything is so clearly written out that there is no need for a court devoted entirely to Constitutional matters.

Question 12:

12) Under Roe, which of these are allowed to perform abortions?
Licensed physician
Nurse practitioner
Resident assistant
Registered nurse
All of the above

And hidden question 13:

If Roe wasn’t keeping states from banning abortions outright, which of the following would you find performing abortions in areas where it was illegal?
Doctors, if you can find one
Nurses, ditto
Midwives, ditto
That woman that that woman in your sister’s office heard about
The pregnant woman herself, via something she read on the internet that she hopes is true
The pregnant woman’s boyfriend, via blunt force trauma
Fake doctors who will fill the void as options one through three are thrown in jail
Abortions will actually disappear, being replaced by abandonment and/or infanticide, which will offer a lower maternal death rate than coat hanger abortions

Just joshin’ – there is no question 13.

12.12.2007 Fetii, Godbaggery, Reproductive Rights, Rights? What rights? 7 Comments

A nice thought, but what I could really have used was a DentistMobile

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

We’re barely into the first week of classes and already a thrilling novelty gas-guzzling vehicle is on it’s way and the air is crackling with excitement. Can you guess who?

WMside

Pfft, I wish! The Weinermobile, how cool would that be? No, our visitor is more controversial.

GGW.512

No, they usually show up right before break, and stick to the bars off campus. Come on, guess!

It’s the Busybody ‘Christian’ Ultrasoundmobile! Squeeeee!

newrv3

That’s right, my school is one of three (count ‘em!) universities to be on the Ultrasoundmobile’s exciting three-county, semester long tour! I can’t wait to get my unnecessary ultrasound! Girls from all over campus will flock to get free quasi-medical attention from the inside of an RV, which would save them the arduous walk to the student clinic or the even more torturous journey to the local Planned Parenthood.

I might go and get mine this week, since things should be quiet at the begining of the semester before the girls have had a chance to get their bearings and start slutting around. Another month or two and they’ll be mobbed so I’d best get mine while the getting is good.

The Fetus Pictures RV’s website promises a comprehensive set of services:
(more…)

28.08.2007 Edumakashun, Fetii, For the ladies, Godbaggery, Reproductive Rights 14 Comments

It’s an accessory, not a choice.

Friday, July 7th, 2006

MSN hits all the targets of bad taste when it asks the question, “How on Earth did it get so cool to be pregnant?” and then titled their answer “Hip to be Round” complete with a 15-year retrospective of pregnant celebrities.

Speaking of pregnant celebrities…satire, meet reality. You two have more in common than you think.

sculpture.jpg spears.jpg

Anyway, enough scariness, back to the article-mocking.

Maybe there’s something in the water. Even the most casual pop-culture consumer has probably noticed that the latest must-have celebrity accessory is, apparently, a belly. Check out the July 10 issue of Star magazine. It features the “Hollywood Bump Brigade” with pictures of preggo Jennie Garth, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Sofia Coppola. Britney Spears channeled her inner-Demi Moore by posing naked with her bump on the cover of this month’s Harper’s Bazaar. Angelina Jolie took it all to a whole new level by commandeering a coastal African country for her delivery.

Unless the water of New York and California is filled with radioactive super sperm , I highly doubt the water is what is causing this red-hot trend. But I’m not a doctor, I’m just someone who gets annoyed when people who are paid to write start off with a lazy inappropriate cliche.

Ok, for starters, Britney Spears has no inner Demi Moore. Britney Spears has a worthless husband, suprise second pregnancy, poor parenting skills and a need to stay in the spotlight so her career doesn’t fade any more rapidly than it was before she starting churning out K-Fed spawn. She needs a divorce lawyer and some decent advice on everything from hair dye to childcare. Bazaar making her look all cute and toned and airbrushed on the cover of a magazine like everything in her life is OK, enviable, even, is not helping. Bazaar, stop enabling Britney Spears!

Secondly, Jolie’s sealing up an entire nation so she can have a baby was one of the greatest abuses of power ever in history orchestrated by a someone who was not royalty. That’s not a “whole new level” that is a “shameful act for which she should be smacked about the face and head by the very human-rights organizations that she has helped in the past.” She’d thank them later. Also, please note that that baby was all of 7 days old before the grocery store headlines went from “Oh gurgle gurgle look at the sexy awesome family” to “Baby ruining relationship, oh my God! It’s all over!” so maybe you don’t want to draw any more attention to them in this article seeing as…

You’re point seems to be that a properly cared for an Pilates-ed up “bump” is an accessory, when in fact it is a fetus, which turns into a baby, which is a whole nother thing entirely and which should not be taken lightly as it is a life changing event that can not be sent to the thrift store once it is no longer fashionable.

Julia Beck, founder of Forty Weeks, a marketing company that studies expectant and new parents, says there has indeed been a bump in the number of visible bumps. The culture of pregnancy, she says, is undergoing something of a rebirth. What was once something to be endured—a practically taboo means to an end—has become the end in itself. It’s hip to be round.

Let’s try that again, with honesty this time:

Julia Beck, founder of Forty Weeks, a marketing compnay that studies expectant and new parents, says that there has indeed been a bump in the number of visible bumps. As it turns out, she says, pregnant woman are a rich, wonderful, almost mouth-watering market who until recently were swaddled in tents of such embarassing colors and patterns that they could hardly be seen outdoors. If we can show them sexy pregnant celebrities wearing sexy expensive maternity clothes, then we can tap into their deepest insecurities at a time when their hormones are doing most of the work for us and get them to spend sooo much money, oh, god, it makes me want to orgasm just thinking about it….what? Oh, yeah, printable quote…uhhh, culture of pregancy, hip to be round, something like that ok?

That seems a bit more like it.

So Julia’s totally plugging the baby-industrial complex here. She’s not even trying to hide it. There are a bunch of wonderful ways to snark this article, but I think it’s best to watch Julia machete her way through this infomercial with all the grace of those Disney Ballerina-Ostriches.

NEWSWEEK: It seems like pregnancy is almost hip right now.
Julia Beck: It is definitely hip to be pregnant right now.

Why is that?
I think what we’re looking at is a shift from pregnancy simply being a means to an end—in other words, it was a 40-week obligation, there was a gestational period going at the end of which that’s when the fun began. The exit strategy was literally a baby’s entry into the world. So we shifted.

When did that start?
The major shift was about five years ago. It became much more experiential. People began to see pregnancy as a major accomplishment and they really began to think about it as the moment itself. So you then began to see products that are answering that call.

That’s right, pregnancy is cool now because we got all introspective – and everyone knows you can’t spell “introspection” without “complete range of new products and services – ask me for details!” Well, you can’t in American English, anyway.

What kinds of new products and services, you ask? Well…

First of all this whole notion of being very pleased with your pregnant self, this notion of finding ways to celebrate pregnancy by having very interestingly themed baby showers or very well-thought out nurseries or a higher standard of baby carriage.

Finding ways to celebrate services! And products of a higher standard! What is a pregancy without an interestingly themed baby shower or a monster freaking expensive baby carriage?

No, really.

Yeah, higher standard of baby carriage, but some of them go for $800 or more. It also gets to the edge of ridiculous.
It does get to the ridiculous. But at the same time it’s all about range of option and the one thing you can’t argue with is more options. More women are able to really find what they want and parents are able to find the right parenting tools for themselves. Before we had a really, really narrow field. I have an 8-year-old and I couldn’t decorate that nursery in anything that wasn’t really typical duck and bunny look. But then people came out like Amy Coe and she started to infuse vintage-inspired fabrics into a nursery. More sophisticated, more elegant

Julia’s loathe to agree that an $800 baby stroller is silly, because she is focused like a laser on her message (Message: Any money spent on goods or services to make your pregancy perfect is money well spent. Ask me how!). What it’s about is options! Wealthy self absorbed pregnant women can’t have too many options, you know. The non-wealthy ones, eh, fuck ‘em, they hardly pay for goods or services at all. As a marketing executive, Julia can’t even see them. Sometimes she actually sits on them on the subway because she honestly thought the seat was empty.

I’m not a parent and hardly a pregnancy expert, but I have to call bullshit on the idea that decorating for a child in a way that won’t drive you insane requires the help of Amy Coe. My mom did it on her own. The walls were yellow. The furniture was wood. And the decorations were toys. Done and done.

Are you a new mom? You need Julia. Are you the type of woman who generally feels like she’s in charge of any situation? Then you just need to hand Julia a blank, signed check right now.

Women are waiting more often now than they used to. Why are they waiting and how does it affect their lifestyle to suddenly become pregnant?
You take a woman who has accomplished great things in the career place. She’s used to having support personnel under her; she knows how to solve problems. You’re literally throwing her down on her back at the bottom of the learning curve. What that does is open a whole new industry which is the expert baby advice, because they are less likely to go with their intuition. That is one of the elements that is the most troublesome to me.

Are you past child-bearing age, not actually a woman, or not even necessarily human, but you know someone who is or might one day be pregnant? Then you need Julia, too.

Any sense of what the next big thing is going to be?
I’m fixated on everyone else trying to pretend they’re pregnant—I call it pregnancy by association. Expectant fathers, expectant grandparents, expectant siblings and expectant pets. There’s products for everybody right now. There are diaper bags just for dad. There are “I’m a Big Sister” T-shirts. The other trend that is here but growing by leaps and bounds is the green baby. Certainly celebrities are embracing that trend, and, as always, they’re the first. They’ve been doing organic baby food on the West Coast for a while.

Julia, she’s available. Julia. With so much at stake, can you afford to not give Julia money? Call Julia now. Operators are standing by.

BONUS! Entry-level patriarchy blaming! Practice here if Twisty won’t let you comment yet!

Amanda has discussed the fixation on pregnant celebrities before, although I can only find one example of it I know she’s attacked it a couple of times.

Analyze Julia’s statements, and tell us what part of the patriarchy/conspicuous consumer culture she’s pimping for most offensively, and why. For those of you who don’t meet Twisty’s standards, this is an excellent opportunity to hone your patriarchy-blaming skills. Don’t be shy, now. There’s plenty here to work with.

UPDATED: I googled Amy Coe, and oh my jesus freaking criminey, I didn’t realize it was that bad. I must have been thinking of someone completely different – I swear to god the baby-room designer I read about in People or wherever at the laundromat wasn’t that bad. It didn’t occur to me that there could be more than one baby-room designer. I am shamefully naive. And wickedly tempted to send the link to my pregnant pending-sister-in-law.

07.07.2006 Celebrity, Fetii, For the ladies, What Patriarchy? 12 Comments

Foetus, by Calvin Klein

Thursday, July 6th, 2006

It haunted me
Then was gone.
Did I imagine it?
The creepiness of her clap snap walk
The flowers up the nose
His bangs
Those stairs…

“Save me.”
“But it’s a cash cow.”

Her kleptomania, just for the hell of it
It’s burned in my retinas
The only ad I’ll
ever fear.
Selling perfume is child’s play
once you’ve endorsed pedophilia.
Calvin Klein’s commercial
Ah, YouTube has it.

I thought his was the weirdest perfume moment I would ever know in my life. I was wrong.

(more…)

06.07.2006 Fetii, HUH!?, Humor, Poetry 6 Comments

We can talk about the sentience of pregnant women you know

Thursday, June 8th, 2006

Shorter Matt “star-toad with a thousand siblings” Yglesias-Sothoth*: “The first rule of fetus club is: You don’t talk about the women who’s bodies the fetuses have attached to against their will, and the second rule of fetus club is: You do not talk about the women who’s bodies the fetuses have atached to against their will…”

Put the Niven novel down Matt, we are not puppeteers, human females actually play a part in the gestation of their young.

However, say what you want about the uterus-less thousand siblinged star-toad, Yglesia-Sothoth highlights through tooliness a common mistake liberals of a male gender all to frequently make when playing devil’s advocate for the anti-choicers’ position: the basic supposition that fetii are people is not actually what the anti-choicers argue, it’s what they often believe, but then they are crazy fundimentalists, what generally happens however, once they start meeting resistance to the idea that fetuses are unarguably equivalent to full human beings (which, scientifically speaking, they’re not, equivalent to teri schiavio maybe, if teri had suffered from 99% of her internal organs failing entirely, swam about in a sac full of her own excretions and occasionally trod on people’s bladders) is to say that they could possibly be full humans but we’ll never know for sure, ergo we should err on the side of caution, just in case. The reason why this is very much a problem for male liberals is because it leaves the arguer focusing purely on the fetus, thus negating the extremely important role the woman who is pregnant plays in both the moral and legal deliberations regarding the debate – a mistake that seems to be routinely made when you’re not the one who’s bodily autonomy is being threatened, and you’re a humongous tool. (more…)

08.06.2006 Blogitics, Bodily Autonomy, Fetii, Reproductive Rights 1 Comment