A woman’s right to choose - Caitlin Moran
‘Women still die in childbirth. Not as many as used to
– but notably more than die while receiving other “gifts”, such as scented candles’There’s something disturbing about the idea of someone pressing something unwanted – wholly unwanted – in your hands, saying, “It’s a gift! It’s a gift!”
And you demur, politely at first, saying, “How lovely, but no. I do not want this gun/modern sculpture too large for my house/sack of oysters – to which I am allergic – thank you. It is lovely that you thought of me, but no.”
But the insistence increases. “It’s a GIFT,” they insist, forcing it into your palm. “A PRESENT. YOU MUST HAVE THIS GIFT.”
And now your hands are bleeding, and you’re truly alarmed, and you try to back away. But you find that the law has changed overnight, and you are legally obliged to take this gift – even as you stand there with your hands torn, saying, “But surely a gift is something wanted? Something suitable? A stranger’s hand putting something into my pocket is the same as a stranger’s hand taking something out of my pocket. Really, there should be no hand there at all.”
And the gun goes off, and the sculpture is wedged in the doorway, immovable, and the oysters leak, slowly, onto the floor. Things that would have been wanted elsewhere cause chaos here. They do not fit, and they cause grief. And the stranger walks away. Having pressed his gift upon you, his work is done.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s comment that, if his daughter were raped and became pregnant, he would not want her to have an abortion – but think of the baby as a “gift” from God – has been one of the defining quotes of the year.
As contraception and abortion become, yet again, controversial – the UK facing the second proposal, in as many years, for pro-life organisations to counsel women wanting an abortion; in the US, Santorum and others speaking out against contraception, even for married couples – the idea of babies as a “gift” becomes a pivotal one.
“Gift” is a key concept. If all babies are a “gift”, then a pregnant woman seeking abortion becomes unforgivably “ungrateful”. Similarly, contraception is bad, because it is the rejection of yet more “gifts”.
Let us think of all the inferences of “gifts”. If I give you a gift, it is usually a surprise. It is probably something you would not have got for yourself. And after I have given it to you, I would not see it again. I leave you with the gift. Gift-giving leaves the person who receives the gift essentially powerless – not a problem if it’s a brightly coloured wristwatch, a great deal more so if it’s a human being you bear responsibility over for the rest of your life.
Babies being “given” to women as gifts makes the women sound powerless. Just something that a present was put into, like a cupboard or a shelf – rather than a reasoning adult who decided they were ready to be a mother.
Calling a baby a “gift” also sounds – let us be honest – like the phrasing of someone who has not spent much time bringing up children. It seems unfair to use visceral language to describe parenthood – but as anti-choice, anti-contraception campaigners are quite happy to use visceral language themselves (“slut”, “prostitute”), I have to presume they would be all right with it.
From the shop floor of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood, here’s what that gift can entail: tearing, bleeding, weeping, exhaustion, hallucination, despair, rage, anaemia, stitches, incontinence, unemployment, depression, infection, loneliness. Death. Women still die in childbirth. Not as many as used to – but notably more than die while receiving any other “gifts”, such as scented candles, or minibreaks. Additionally, “gift” sounds hopelessly inadequate to describe your children, whom you inhale like oxygen, swoon over like lovers and would die for in a heartbeat. I have never done this over a foot spa, book token or vase.
The worry of the anti-abortion and anti-contraception campaigners is that women rejecting these “gifts” are rejecting the gifts of Nature, or God. But Nature, of course, turns to contraception and abortion all the time: the diseases that make you barren; the sperm counts that fall to zero. Blocked tubes, blown wombs and the thousand sorrows of the infertile. The one-in-three first pregnancies that end in miscarriage – miscarriage which is just like abortion, a potential life ended, except miscarriages are unwanted, and often dangerous, while abortions are safe, and wanted.
Nature also, clearly, believes in non-procreative sex: for 27 days a month, sex is non-procreative. Sex after the menopause is non-procreative. Statistically, most sex is non-procreative. Clearly, sex isn’t just for procreation: it’s also for the creation of happiness, or excitement, or contentment.
Those things really are gifts, and are always wanted. Those things do not scare me, when pressed upon me.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/magazine/article3348848.ece
(Bolding mine)
Babies being “given” to women as gifts makes the women sound powerless. Just something that a present was put into, like a cupboard or a shelf – rather than a reasoning adult who decided they were ready to be a mother.
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| — | Caitlin Moran, The Times, 17/3/12. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/magazine/article3348848.ece (via buckbeakbabie) |
If someone’s an arsehole, someone’s an arsehole - regardless of whether we’re both standing in the longer toilet queue at festivals.
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| — | - Caitlin Moran, How to be a Woman (via anabundanceofphil) |
More often than not [the word fat]’s used as a weapon to stop the conversation dead: ‘Shut up you fat bitch.’ silence.
…
It’s generally regarded to be the Hiroshima of accusations -the bomb which, once dropped, calls for immediate surrender from the accused. If you can counter perfectly valid arguments with ‘Yeah well, at least I’m not fat’, then you are the allies and you have won.
The accusation is so strong, it is still effective even if it has no basis in the truth whatsoever. I have seen size 10 women being silenced by this line-as if they feel the accuser has somehow sensed that they secretly have a ‘fat aura’ or will become fat later in life, and called them out on it
…
It’s generally regarded to be the Hiroshima of accusations -the bomb which, once dropped, calls for immediate surrender from the accused. If you can counter perfectly valid arguments with ‘Yeah well, at least I’m not fat’, then you are the allies and you have won.
The accusation is so strong, it is still effective even if it has no basis in the truth whatsoever. I have seen size 10 women being silenced by this line-as if they feel the accuser has somehow sensed that they secretly have a ‘fat aura’ or will become fat later in life, and called them out on it
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| — | Caitlin Moran, How to be a Woman (via fans-of-feminism) |
Thank you for posting Caitlin Moran talking truth about sex and porn. :)
Thank YOU for reading Caitlin Moran talking truth about sex and porn. Thank you all!
This is 21st century heterosexual porn:
Once upon a time, a girl with long nails and a really bad outfit sat on a sofa, trying to look sexy, but actually looking like she’d just remembered an unpaid parking fine. She might be slightly cross eyed due to how tight her bra is.
A man comes in — a man who walks rather oddly, as if he is carrying an invisible garden chair in front of him. This is because he’s got a uselessly large penis, which is erect, and appears to be scanning the room for the most sexually disinterested thing in it. Having rejected the window, and a vase, the cock finally homes in on the girl on the sofa.
As she disinterestedly licks her lips, the man leans over and — inexplicably — weighs her left breast in her hand. This appears to be the crossing of some kind of sexual Rubicon because, 30 seconds later, she’s being fucked at an uncomfortable angle, then bummed whilst looking quite pained. There’s usually a bit of arse-slapping here, or some hair pulling there — whatever can ring in the variety in a straightforward two-camera shoot in less than 5 minutes.
It all ends with him coming all over her face, messily — as if he’s haphazardly icing a bun in one of the challenges on The Generation Game.
The End.
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| — | Caitlin Moran — How To Be A Woman (via emily-m-b) |
But that’s just the start. Imagine if pornography was not this bizarre, mechanised, factory-farmed fucking: bloodless, naked aerobics, concerned solely with high-speed penetration and ostentatious ejaculation. Imagine if itwere about desire.
Because the one thing I couldn’t find, that night, as I glided around the internet, was desire. People who actually wanted to fuck each other. Had to fuck each other. Imagine watching two people screwing at that early, white-hot stage of attraction when your pupils dilate just looking at each other, and you want to melt each other’s bones so bad you’re practically eating each other’s clothes off the minute the door closes. I can’t be the only one who’s occasionally had a fuck so spectacular, all-encompassing, cinematic and intense that, at the end of it, I’ve lain back – ears still ringing – and thought, CNN wanna get a hold of that. Now that REALLY needed a tickertape running underneath it.
In a world where you can get a spare kidney, a black-market Picasso or a ticket to ride into space, why can’t I see some actual sex? Some actual fucking from people who want to fuck each other? Some chick in an outfit I halfway respect, having the time of her life? I have MONEY. I’m willing to PAY for this. I AM NOW A 35 YEAR OLD WOMAN, AND I JUST WANT A MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR INTERNATIONAL PORN INDUSTRY WHERE I CAN SEE A WOMAN COME.
I just want to see a good time.
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| — | Caitlin Moran — How To Be A Woman (via emily-m-b) |
