The Sexual Counterrevolution January 8, 2012 Jill A very good article by Tracy Flory-Clark about the GOP’s war on sex — as we’re all getting more liberal in the bedroom, conservatives are trying to turn back the clock. It’s what Susan Faludi was talking about 20 years ago.
I thought you might like this… http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?FBLike=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/savageminds/~3/_Ntn2DK0BMg/
The combination of posts and links makes an impressive case, reading between the lines, that much of the anti-sex rhetoric could be a rooted biological alpha response to keep the mating pool under the control of alphas. The Pat Schroeder quote makes me love her all over again. The humanoids, without their twin social tools of slut-shaming and gay-baiting, will be forced into open violence to satisfy their warped souls, risking arrest and ostracism. The GOP knows that bullies of any age and their posses are a significant voting bloc. Thus, sex phobia becomes a voting issue.
My two cents on the relationship of conservative ideology to unwanted pregnancy and infection is longer than the average two cents. Quotes from de Beauvior and Firestone.
…yet while this has been blatantly going on under everyone’s noses and in plain view of their eyes since Jan 2011, we continue to be dismissed as hysterical little ladies when we point out the obvious anti-sex, pro-death-by-disease ideology of the anti-choice extremists who now define the mainstream GOP. What’s it going to take for folks to make the damn connection?
I always thought this article encapsulated the sexual backlash– basically, more abortion and more young women keeping their kids isn’t so good for those who are rich, white, Christian couples who *deserve* the babies. Sometimes I think it’s hard to argue that these people want to create/maintain poverty through anti-abortion, anti-sex ed policies, but I think this article illustrates it beautifully! (Thanks Ross Douthat!) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/opinion/03douthat.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
What amuses me about Santorum–OK, the latest of the many things that amuse me about Santorum–is his attempt to walk back his comments on birth control. His latest spin is, Oh yes, states should have the power to ban contraception, but that doesn’t mean I think it should really be banned. That’s a little like the people who say, Yes, racism is bad, but the federal government overriding state segregation laws is worse.
What amuses me about Santorum–OK, the latest of the many things that amuse me about Santorum–is his attempt to walk back his comments on birth control. His latest spin is, Oh yes, states should have the power to ban contraception, but that doesn’t mean I think it should really be banned. Y’know…I could buy that argument from someone else. I’d think it was asinine, but I can wrap my head around the theory which would lead someone to believe that states should have the power to ban birth control but shouldn’t actually exercise it. Think is, how do I put this delicately, motherfucker wrote a book about how freedom was hurting America. Still, I’ve got a habit of jumping to conclusions and casting aspersions. I shoot from the hip and sometimes end up looking like an asshole. Maybe we should give the guy the benefit of the doubt, maybe he changed his mind. People do that, right? Not this backed up asshole.
I have low expectations of the NYT these days, but what the what?! “would-be adoptive parents face a waiting list that has lengthened beyond reason” OMG the poor people are not having enough babies* for the rich people to adopt!!!! *white, neurotypical, actual babies instead of five-year-olds Seriously if there are no people for you to adopt one of two things has happened. Either we have fixed the problem (spoiler: no, we have not) or your criteria and possibly motivation are wrong.
Either we have fixed the problem (spoiler: no, we have not) or your criteria and possibly motivation are wrong. OK, actually? Rather than impugning the motives of adoptive parents, you might acknowledge that given the legality of abortion, the accessibility of contraception, and the much lesser social pressure–to say nothing of actual coercion–forcing young women to give up their babies has indeed dried up the supply of babies going up for adoption. And that’s a good thing. The problem has been ameliorated, though not fixed. There is nothing particularly wrong about acknowledging that you’d really like to raise a baby whose issues are as yet unknown rather than take on a five-year-old with attachment issues and developmental disabilities. Cross-racial adoptions were discouraged by social services for quite some time, so claiming that white potential adoptive parents who are seeking white kids have lousy criteria is rather simplistic. And I did a search recently on the public website of the NYC foster care system regarding kids who are up for adoption. There are, in NYC, about 7 kids under the age of 10 up for adoption, all of whom have severe developmental disabilities, as in, are, for example, 7 years old and cannot talk or dress him/herself. Wanting to have a baby is not the same thing as wanting to adopt a fifteen-year-old, and it’s not the same thing as wanting to take on an older kid with significant disabilities, and claiming that those who want the first but not the other two have “wrong criteria” is bullshit shaming. Wanting doesn’t mean getting, but neither does it mean that wanting is wrong.
What’s nice about folks like Santorum is that they’re bringing to light the long-hidden fringe beliefs that have driven conservative extremists for years. Why bother citing the views of influential-but-obscure far-right figures known only to political analysts and advocates, when we have this Santorum fool spouting the Christian Taliban party line ad nauseum? He doesn’t even bother using coded language like “states rights” to hide his contempt for sending kids to college or for women working outside the home.
There is nothing particularly wrong about acknowledging that you’d really like to raise a baby whose issues are as yet unknown rather than take on a five-year-old with attachment issues and developmental disabilities. Thank you. The thing about a child with issues is that, if you raise the child from infancy or even from toddlerhood, you grow into those issues with the child, and you adapt to them, and they adapt to you. I have a teenager with no sense of smell and severe ADD, and a seven year old who’s legally blind and has ADHD. I’ve been dealing with their issues, in the teenager’s case since he was 3, in the seven year old’s case since his birth, and I’ve learned, and they’ve learned how to handle *my* issues. I’m sure there are children who’d think I was the Worst Mom Ever because I sleep in on Saturday instead of getting up at the crack of dawn to make eggs and bacon; my children would probably freak out at anyone, however well meaning, who tried to demand that they live their lives on a rigid schedule and adhere blindly to traditions because “that’s how things should be done.” So if you adopt an older child or teenager, even if they *don’t* have serious issues, they just don’t know or trust you, and you don’t know them and haven’t adapted to their quirks. It’s not like it can’t work, and sometimes it can be wonderfully successful, but it’s not even remotely the same thing as adopting an infant. And frankly I find it appalling that people who would be horrified at the Nice Guy presumption that just because a guy deserves a date, you should date him because you’re a heterosexual woman who likes dating men, don’t recognize that the statement that because a child deserves a loving family, you should adopt them just because you want a child to adopt is *exactly the same thing.* Both are dictating that you take to your heart and love a person on the basis of how much that person needs love, not how much *you* want to love that person. I feel bad for people who want to adopt a baby and cannot because there are no available babies, but I don’t agree that the solution for them is to adopt a special needs teenager instead; this is like going out to buy a motorcycle and coming home with a Dodge Ram pickup truck because they’re both vehicles. Of course, the solution is also not for them to steal other people’s babies or to shame young women into hating themselves for having sex so much that they’re willing to give up their babies or to make it economically impossible for young women to raise their own babies. In fact, there probably is no solution, because adoption has never been a good thing. Adoption, like heart bypass operations and kidney transplants, is a treatment for a bad thing, and if the bad thing — women who are unable to raise their own babies because of societal pressure — goes away, the need for adoption to exist does as well. Of course, this is unfortunate for the parents who want to adopt, but hey, people having healthy hearts would be unfortunate for the wallets of heart surgeons and no one thinks it would be ok for heart surgeons to promote unhealthy lifestyles just so they can do more bypass operations.