Quinn Jenkins
Cary Academy '12
"trust your heart if the seas catch fire,
live by love though the stars walk backward."
-ee cummings
"The unexamined life is not worth living". -Socrates
you have to suppress your anger when your carnist friends get all teary-eyed when they hear about abused pets or beached whales and “how sad it is that an animal died because of humans”, while they stuff their face with dead animal carcass.
Yeah - I’m a fucking vegan.
Contraception. The topic has become controversial in recent years. But should it be? Melinda Gates believes that many of the world’s social change issues depend on ensuring that women are able to control their rate of having kids. In this significant talk, she makes the case for the world to re-examine an issue she intends to lend her voice to for the next decade.
Melinda French Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
tw: abuse, rape, domestic violence
A few weeks ago my mom stapled pages of a story in one of her women’s magazines together and handed it to me. She gave it to me pretty much with the tag lines “for your feminist blog” and “something new to consider.” Indeed it was; she knows me well.
The story is titled “I was forced to be pregnant.” With a title like that, reading it was actually not on the top of my to read list. I thought it was about women not exercising their right to choice. I was very, very wrong on that one.
Have you ever heard of Reproductive coercion? It is a term that was quite recently coined by the advocates against domestic violence to describe a certain type of abuse some women face. It occurs when a man pressures their partner to have kids and/or impregnates them against their will. Reproductive coercion comes in three different types:
1. Emotional pressure that turns into verbal and physical abuse.
2. Sabotaging birth control
3. Marital rape
Over 75% of women 19-49 who reported once experiencing domestic violence also endured some type of reproductive control by men. It’s all about control and domination over a woman’s body.The first story in the magazine is about a woman who got married around 36 years of age. After a few months of dating her boyfriend talked excitedly about having children. After he proposed he began calling her “The Babymaker.” She then confided with him that one of her fallopian tubes was blocked. He in return insisted she see a fertility doctor. She recounts, “I had finally met a great guy who was eager to start a family with me. What woman wouldn’t fall for that?” Soon after her honeymoon he persisted on in an obsessive manner, but his efforts had to be temporarily halted as she had to get emergency back surgery. Alas, 6 months into recovery he was back to pressuring her again. She was in much pain at the time due to her back, but she agreed to In Vitro Fertilization. She then became pregnant, but soon miscarried. In response, her husband grabbed her by the neck, choking her. He apologized, blaming his outburst on his grief and had her sign up for another round of IVF. And then a third round. She tried to put him off with the excuse that she needed to weigh more before she could take treatments, her husband forced her to get on the scale often and filled the fridge with fattening foods. “It hurt that all I was good for was getting pregnant.” She recounts. At the end, he screamed at her, threatening to replace her with a maid if she couldn’t get pregnant and she told him she no longer wanted to have his child. He destroyed bedroom furniture, pushed her down the stairs and threatened her with a gun. She fled to a domestic violence shelter.
The second story was about a woman who faced marital rape. This woman was 40, had a then boyfriend and two children from a previous marriage. After telling her boyfriend she did not want any more children, her boyfriend refused to wear a condom and began to rape her. She then became pregnant with her third child. Birth control was never an option for her because she couldn’t hide pills anywhere for he went through all of her belongings. Three months after giving birth, he raped her again, impregnating her with twins. She lost the twins in a physical fight with him, but soon became pregnant again. During her recovery she begged her obstetrician to remove her ovaries and devise a lie to tell him; that she had cancer. After a decade of sexual abuse and violence she was able to get a job that kept her out of the house and often times traveling.
One in four callers to the National Domestic Abuse hotline said that their partners had tried to force them to become pregnant. Why? As one woman stated, “Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.” Having a baby is the perfect tie that binds. These type of abusers want to create a circumstance in which their partner is dependent on him.
WHAT’S THAT HAVE TO DO WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD?
Many voters never consider how defunding these clinics could hurt victims of domestic violence who turn to them for counseling as well as pregnancy prevention. Abused women will turn to health care providers long before they will turn to domestic abuse hotlines and organizations. Many women in abusive relationships rely on life saving, affordable care programs such as Title X. It is critical that such places are open and operation when women and children need them so desperately.
holy fuck im crying.
I know I’ve told this story before, but my abusive ex refused to let me take birth control. I was on the pill until he found them in my purse.
I went to the Student Health Center—they were completely unhelpful, choosing to lecture me about the importance of safe sex (recommending condoms) instead of actually listening to my problem.
Then I went to Planned Parenthood. The Nurse Practitioner took one look at my fading bruises and stopped the exam. She called in the doctor. The doctor came in and simply asked me: “Are you ready to leave him?” When I denied that I was being abused, she didn’t argue with me. She just asked me what I needed. I said I need a birth control method that my boyfriend couldn’t detect. She recommended a few options and we decided on Depo.
When I told her that my boyfriend read my emails and listened to my phone messages and was known to follow me, she suggested to do the Depo injections at off hours when the clinic was normally closed. She made a note in my chart and instructed the front desk never to leave messages for me—instead, she programmed her personal cell phone number into my phone under the name “Nora”. She told me she would call me to schedule my appointments; she wouldn’t leave a message, but I should call her back when I was able to.
And that was it. No judgment. No lecture. She walked me to the door and told me to call her day or night if I needed anything. That she lived 5 blocks from campus and would come get me. That I wasn’t alone. That she just wanted me to be safe.
I never called her to come to my rescue. But I have no doubt that she would have come if I had called. She kept me on Depo for a year, giving me those monthly injections in secret, helping me prevent a desperately unwanted pregnancy.
I cannot thank Planned Parenthood enough for the work they do.
The following day, I attended a workshop about preventing gender violence, facilitated by Katz. There, he posed a question to all of the men in the room: “Men, what things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?”
Not one man, including myself, could quickly answer the question. Finally, one man raised his hand and said, “Nothing.” Then Katz asked the women, “What things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?” Nearly all of the women in the room raised their hand. One by one, each woman testified:
“I don’t make eye contact with men when I walk down the street,” said one.
“I don’t put my drink down at parties,” said another.
“I use the buddy system when I go to parties.”
“I cross the street when I see a group of guys walking in my direction.”
“I use my keys as a potential weapon.”
The women went on for several minutes, until their side of the blackboard was completely filled with responses. The men’s side of the blackboard was blank. I was stunned. I had never heard a group of women say these things before. I thought about all of the women in my life — including my mother, sister and girlfriend — and realized that I had a lot to learn about gender.
Yesh.
I believe it was “slut” was the term he used, or maybe it was both. Either way, he’s an idiot.
(Source: lickystickypickywe)
Who’s using birth control? Oh, right, almost every single woman in America.
The only difference is that the religious women are shamed for using birth control — same for sex. Most people have sex, the only difference is that religious people feel shamed when having sex.
We need to change how we view sex as a society. Not as something that is shameful and dirty, but something that is beautiful and natural (as long as it’s consensual and safe, of course!).
Response to Madonna’s half-time show was ageist
(from Forbes.com) The talk in the press today, the day after the Superbowl, is all about musician MIA giving the middle finger to America during the half-time performance. But the talk DURING the halftime performance was all about Madonna being old, a trend I find disturbing and lame given that on any other year, it’d be Tom Petty or Garth Brooks, or a middle-aged male musician whose appearance would not elicit ageist remarks. But in spite of the fact that Madonna is 53 year olds and lept from a kneeling position to standing, over and over whilst wearing spike heels (go ahead, try it, and when you’re done icing your knees, read on) and keeping pace with her twenti-something backup dancers, the focus was on her age. ‘Least it was, overwhelmingly, on my social media feeds. And no, I’m not just friends with jerks.
During her performance, I logged in Twitter to find at least a dozen varieties of the same joke, that went something like “Nice halftime show (insert name of old person here.)” Comedians I admire had their turns at her: Steve Martin said Maggie Smith. Michael Ian Black said Joan Rivers. Friends of mine mentioned “grandmother” and “melting skin.” So, while the facts –i.e. the performance that, according to Deadline Hollywood, 48.1 million eyes beheld — suggest that Madonna is quite vital, the jokes suggest that people watch her and they found her laughably old. What’s so funny about a 53-year old woman performing the half-time show? Tom Petty was 57 and Bruce Springsteen was 59 when they did their respective halftime shows. Must be the ‘woman’ part of the equation, huh?…And it’s a world where we cut down an uber-successful female entertainer because she dares to entertain at the age of 53. It’s a world where every darn TV pilot season, I read the same words “our female lead, (Name), age 28.” Twenty-eight. Were you solving crime, busting terrorists or performing heart surgery at 28? I sure wasn’t. But women on TV have to be young. Women romancing our leading men in the movies have to be young. When I read about Clint Eastwood’s latest film starring himself and Amy Adams, I half-expected she’d be playing his wife (well, he DOES have a thing for redheads).
What does any of this matter, apart from the icky burst of mean spiritedness? It matters because your wives and daughters and sisters and mothers are gonna get older, too, y’all, and they’ll take those kind of cracks seriously. It matters because this ageist mentality translates to the images we send out into the wide world in TV and film, and where we disproportionately prioritize youth we send the message to our young women that they are relevant only briefly and superficially, like shooting stars. Or like pop stars.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizgarcia/2012/02/06/response-to-madonnas-half-time-show-was-ageist/
“Forget pink. The decision by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation to stop funding affiliates of Planned Parenthood has unleashed a red-hot response among women who had once been Komen supporters.
Komen announced late Tuesday it would no longer fund Planned Parenthood affiliates because the organization is under congressional investigation. It’s a major blow. Planned Parenthood received $680,000 from Komen last year, according to one report. That money enabled it to provide breast cancer screenings for thousands of low-income women who might not otherwise have access to preventive care.
And why is Planned Parenthood under investigation? Congressional Republicans are probing whether the organization’s federal funding in any way enables it to administer abortions, which would violate the Hyde Amendment.
…The Komen foundation put its stamp on breast cancer research with its pink ribbon campaign and other events, raising funds and consciousness about the disease. It created a community of women and men with a single goal: to find a cure. Breast cancer strikes everyone, no matter your race, ethnicity or political affiliation.
Now that sense of unity has evaporated. People are taking sides. Many who once supported Komen say they’ll take their donations elsewhere and plan to drop out of other Komen activities.
It’s hard to see who the winners are in this mess. As so often happens when their bodies become a political battleground, women ultimately lose.”
From http://www.nj.com/njvoices/index.ssf/2012/02/komen_decision_to_defund_plann.html
I’m just so impressed by the variety show…everyone is so talented! Now, struggling to study stats and stay awake. Tomorrow, friday and then ski trip!
‘If A Tree Falls’ snags Oscar nomination
The environmental documentary will compete for the grand prize this February.
“Send me a law that gives [foreign students] a chance to earn their citizenship. I will sign it right away”
“Women should earn equal pay for equal work” CROWD GOES WILD!
YAY! GO OBAMA!
