Not to pick out Cable Man, but his list is a great place to start that shows why I have trouble getting my head around this:
A. Boyfriends(selfserving) encourage abortion.
B. Some parents(selfserving) encourage abortion.
C. Planned Parenthood buying billboards that try to convince that abortion is healthcare and how they will be non judgemental about their healthcare.
D. Parents not teaching/showing kids to value life.
E. Educators pushing "safe sex" policies rather than abstanince policies.
F. Men in the playboy world learning to look at women as toys and not as future wives or some mans daughter.
G. Men not being trained to protect women from harm.
H. Men not learning to be effective leaders.
I. Increasing demand for human research material will cause megabucks to be spent keeping abortion legal. (I talked to my son about carrying a sign that said, "I could have been sold for parts!". He wouldn't do it.)
J. Hardened women that shout, "I can do what I want and needn't give a damn about anything else, Fuck you!"
A:
Why are boyfriends so self-serving?
B:
Why are the parents in question so self-serving?
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My question here is whether or not the status quo is the best we can expect. After all, if there is something we can do to abate this self-centering trend, we ought to try it.
C: Political arguments do nothing to address the reasons for having political arguments. That abortions exist is not the fault of Planned Parenthood; that women choose, by necessity or desire, to have an abortion is not the fault of Planned Parenthood. Every child
should be a wanted child; take it from one that wasn't. But there's a traditional
Angel of Abortion (named "Kasdaye") in Judeo-Christian literature; that's how long abortion has been around. That the 20th century entity of Planned Parenthood is responsible for the current "crisis" (is that set around a raw number or a per capita rate?) ignores the colonial period of the United States--a period long trumped by Christians as the founding of a "Christian" nation--and the ridiculous abortion rate among young women.
D: I agree that parents don't do enough to create a proper respect for the value of life. That, however, is symptomatic. If parents knew, oh, maybe
why they were having children ...? Because the dog's just not enough fun isn't a good reason. Again, if every child was a wanted, planned child ....
E: Right ... so scaring the hell out of a young woman on her wedding day is the best thing to do? Look ... sexual impulses hit kids starting between 11 and 13. Lysander Spooner once noted that parents like to keep children ignorant in order to maintain a state of virtue. Of course, in his day, the age of consent for sexual activity was 10 years old for females, so it wasn't so hard to maintain that state of ignorant virtue until
wham!, welcome to the woman's world, honey. "Soon enough, you'll be
taking the trade, too." Guess what you're advocating? What do you honestly think the result will be of demonizing or suppressing natural processes in young people?
F: Men in the playboy world ... are you referring to the world of
Playboy magazine? In that case, I must protest. But, if you're referring to the playboy attitude that has possessed maledom from that first differentiation of gender, then I have no choice but to agree.
G: Men trained to protect women from harm? Suddenly I'm wondering if Sartre really did write
Le Nausee, or if de Beauvier penned it for him. Who, exactly, are we protecting women from? Other women?
H: Effective leadership, by any gender, is useful. Of course, people don't need as much leadership if they're educated properly. That is, if their education doesn't revolve around trumped-up standards and illusory virtues.
I: Well, I think we see the kind of mentality that worries about point #I. Should I carry a sign that says, "My mother was raped, and the law forced me to be born"? Of course not. Slogans of such inflammatory design are useless. Spare parts ... can he spot you a conscience? It reminds me of protesters outside a concert by Poison and Tesla. Their children holding signs begging legislators to "Protect me from the Devil." Watch a wartime protest: children on both sides will be holding signs their parents made for them. To continue the war is to protect the children. To end the war is to save the children. Whatever.
But the market demand is a well-placed concern. However, even a cursory survey of biomedicine and genetics shows that as soon as all of the capitalists iron out their ethical problems, such ideas as fetal harvesting become less necessary, and suddenly the bitter taste such necessities leave in our mouths become overwhelming.
J: Why do we always blame the women? And, incidentally, they can, they need not, and that might be good advice in some cases.
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The purpose of the above is generally to counterpoint the simplistic, moralist approach to a complex problem. Moralism doesn't always work, especially when issues like economy and infantile pride get in the way.
A, B, and D are directly educational issues.
C is not what I consider a valid point because it presupposes a false beginning to the problem. The problem is quite ancient. Such a presupposition as point C, I believe, ignores the real issue. I mean, sure, I understand that people have problems with Planned Parenthood; so do I, but for different reasons. However, they did not invent this problem.
E, G, and H are chauvanist, in my humblest opinion. Well, E and G, for sure. H is included because I don't see why men,
per se have to be the effective leaders.
Point I contains an aspect I generally let slip by, since I focus on the idea of education. But it's a valid commercial concern, on the one hand, and something that won't be so much a concern in the future, when people are educated against factors like greed which make ideas like genetic manipulation and cloning appear so insanely dangerous.
Point J, simply, I find laughable.
* * * * *
So now that I've retorted ... are there any real answers?
I still say, "Education, education, education."
It's about people doing what's best for their own self. Not in the capitalist manner, nor any incarnation of pious prudism.
Why education? I recently (like, two weeks ago) met a twenty-five year-old Kingdom Hall member who still believes that you can't get pregnant if A) it's your first time, or B) you're raped. (I've heard both before: A from thirteen year-olds, and B from conservative politicians arguing for the passage of anti-abortion laws.)
It's like HIV education in that sense. I knew a handful of young women who firmly believed that you cannot contract HIV via oral sex.
What happens when people want to do the best thing possible, but are educated solely to measure things in terms of how an event or idea affects
that individual exclusively? Take a look at how many stupid ideas we foist onto children. The importance of money. The importance of traditional marriage. The importance of being morally upstanding ... it's all lies. When they hit the real world, they'll find that money causes more problems than it solves, that marriage is a lie, and that morally upstanding people either get stepped on or are not as upstanding as we think.
Why does this happen? Well, look at an educational idea: Imagine that you believe in the Devil. There's two-thousand years of relevant devil-ideas, right? But if one never learns about those, they go forward with seemingly intellectual notions about the Devil and his doings that have been covered, dismissed, or even outright rejected for their incompatibility with God's glory. But it's not that individual's fault, and ... what? It's not like that individual's moral perceptions are going to affect his actions? What are moral perceptions for?
Hot damn! Therein lies the crux: What are moral perceptions for if they have nothing to do with morality?
Take point J, for instance. Maybe if morality hadn't boxed women into the roles of accessory, trophy, breeding machine, and chronic marital-rape survivors, they wouldn't be so hardened and defensive about their bodies. I will remind you that it was the 1990's before our upstanding British cohorts figured out that a wife is not the real and physical property of a man. Did you know that it used to cost $1200 in Alabama just to prove that you'd been raped? Just to demonstrate it well enough to warrant police or DA involvement? Any bright mind with the will to learn and adequate resources to survey will discover that such moral boxes have horrible implications. Education shatters bad moral ideas. Education offers people the tools by which to compare their morals and the goals of those morals.
If we constantly remind people that they are sinners, that they are pathetic in the eyes of God, that they are incomplete, that they are hopeless,
ad nauseam ... eventually they will believe it.
Prudism might work, but only if the prudes are prudish for the right reasons. Not having sex when you're thirteen and a girl is a good idea based on medical evidence available. However, reminding your daughter that sex will make her the "town slut" pretty much guarantees a moral battleground that the parent might win in principle, but will lose in practice.
My college girlfriend graduated from a rural high school. Two years later, I attended the graduation of her little sister. Half of the women in the sister's class were pregnant, had children already, or were engaged to be married over the summer. If subsistence living and unchecked reproduction are the best we expect of women, then we're bringing about problems for everybody.
Men and women is a BS division. It only matters when it comes to reproduction. Given that reproduction is the future of our species, I would be more sympathetic to the anti-abortion crowd if their philosophy didn't go hand in hand with the idea of warping people's ideas about reproduction.
As far as abortions go, I would say that women don't stand a chance coming out of the gate. From the word go, little girls are dressed up, indoctrinated, touched, prodded, and abused in a manner that suggests the benefits of marriage, and advocates the use of sexual wiles to achieve marriage, as well as several other standards. It's nice that women are making their way into the world, but you'll still see a large number of those MBA's wanting a "family", wanting "security", and generally taking part in the marriage/reproduction debacle. (For the present purposes, would it be acceptable to say I am not simply discounting the male's role in this, but since we're all aware of how badly men screw up the world ....)
Anyway ... I stopped making sense days ago.
thanx,
Tiassa
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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.--Denis Diderot
[This message has been edited by tiassa (edited October 03, 2000).]
