Growing Up Enough To Remember To Wear Rubbers All By Ourselves
Photo by Flickr user Kriegerinhummel's. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Bean of the political blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money says about the recent increase in teen pregnancy...
[T]eenage sex rates have risen since 2001 and condom use has dropped since 2003. Abortion rates have held steady for a decade, although numbers from 2005 and 2006 are not available."
So, abortions hold steady, condom use goes down and sex rates are up. Seems like a no-brainer that such a situation would lead to more pregnancy.
But it's not...
Because, despite the Democratic Congress, the U.S. still spends about $176 million annually on abstinence only "education" programs that don't work. Abstinence only programs don't keep teens from having sex, and, what's worse, they leave kids (who are still having sex) without the tools to prevent pregnancy and STDs.
...The Heritage Foundation helpfully calls blaming abstinence only education for rising teen pregnancy rates "stupid" (they prefer to blame the women themselves).
Right. Because the Heritage Foundation, like nearly all organizations dedicated to perpetuating male superiority, hold *actual men* in such contempt they feel they/we can't be trusted to be responsible for *anything,* let alone be responsible for contraception.
I swear if conservatives, men and women alike, don't have this bizarre, incest-related notion that women should all behave towards men as if they were instead doting, indulgent, sacrificing mothers spoiling their kindergarten-age, center-of-the-universe-ly self-centered little boys. "Don't fuss, mommy will put the condom on you, honey. Ooh, honey doesn't like the nasty condom? Mommy won't ask him to wear it again. Ooh, mommy got pregnant so now honey will have to share Mommy? Bad Mommy! Slut Mommy! Mommy's so sorry, honey, let me suck-um's little dickie."
Geee-rossss!
And yet *feminists* get blamed for being man haters?!?!? Uh-uh, it's the opposite, isn't it? Unlike conservatives and other anti-feminists, feminists want men to be *men!* Real men! Real *adult* men! Men with brains who know how to use them. Men with cocks who know how to use them, and when.
And, if I may push from a direction feminists haven't been going lately, a lot of women, especially non- and anti-feminist women, need to grow up and (paradoxically) stop parenting their partners!
Contrary to the Heritage Foundation, the Abstinence-Only movement, and the general impulse to blame women for men's misbehavior, choosing to have or not have sex is *not* 100% your responsibility. Contrary to anti-feminists everywhere (and even some feminists), contraception is *not* 100% your responsibility, nor, in particular, is it *at all* your responsibility to suck it up, count backwards from your last period, and hope and/or pray that this time it's "safe" to "let him" do it without protection. But the very real existence of such men in no way should condone (let alone excuse!) similar deference to the majority of non-violent, but no-less responsible men.
Yes, sometimes some women are too in thrall, or too much in very real danger from their partners to dare say no to anything, but I'd like to propose that a man who's partners daren't risk his tantrums is merely on the far end of a Bell curve of Heritage-Foundation-sanctioned, contemptuously infantilized expectation of men.
Real adult women (i.e. feminists) don't want or need men who can't rise above that level of expectation. Real adult men (i.e. we don't really have a inclusive name for it yet but for the moment it probably starts with an "f" and ends in "ist") don't need that level of expectation either.
In fact *real* adult men ought to resent it bitterly! Resent it enough that *even if there were no women working on feminism to encourage us we'd *still* want to do something about it.
[Note: When I talk about women needing to stop "mommying" their partners I'm expressly *not* trying to write a new chapter of Phillip Wylie-style "momism," which was, after all, just *another* way to blame women. --fl]
Many of the things that the patriarchal society says about men - they are irresponsible, fragile creatures who might turn into raging rapists at the drop of a sock, so if we take them home we have only ourselves to blame - are portrayed as what feminists think of men. Actually, some of us do think that about a number of men, from bitter experience, but we would dearly like to know more men who aren't like that.
[Agreed, it's one of those areas where Freud hit the nail on the head: just as ; people tend to punish most harshly those crimes they would themselves commit, we also tend to accuse others of that which is most true of themselves. Thanks, Lalouve. --fl]
I posted something similar to this, back in September I think:
Teenagers and Men
Here's the conclusion I wrote:
"I guess this is a plea for men to be allowed to be adults, instead of being cast in exactly the same light as teenage boys; and, of course, a plea for teenage boys to be judged individually, on their merits (or lack thereof) instead of judged collectively by "moral panic". Men, and teenagers, really, honestly, can be good, honest, examples of homo sapiens. Honest!"
In that post, I missed the analysis that the stereotyping comes at least as much from the patriarchy as from the feminists, and I think there's probably an interesting analysis to show why the language should seem so similar at times, but that will be something for another time.
["...a plea for men to be allowed to be adults, instead of being cast in exactly the same light as teenage boys..." and "...the stereotyping comes at least as much from the patriarchy as from the feminists..." Yup. Consider, if nothing else, that the stereotypes pre-date feminism by sometimes thousands of years! And goodness yes, that men should be held to the standards of boys is just... um... boggling. Especially since boys want to be *what* when they grow up? I mean, how's *that* supposed to work? (Like kids who start smoking to look "grown up" when, in fact, grownups who smoke almost all began as children!) Thanks, SDE. --fl]
Sometimes I think the best thing that ever happened to me was that I hung out with a bunch of gay men, one of whom was HIV+, when I was in my late teens, early 20's. "No glove, no love." Sorry. It's basically a case of "You don't think enough of me you aren't willing to wear a condom? Don't want it, don't gotta have it."
People just don't get it ingrained in them. We'd go to parties, bars... THERE'S a bowl of condoms.
I'd say I had a date. I'd get handed boxes of them. I'd hand them out, too. The formal education I had was kind of a joke (here's a condom, here's a banana, here's how it gets put on), but it was at least some kind of education about it.
And yes. Women need to take a stand. Women need to accept responsibility for their own actions. But I don't think today's young women are getting an adequate education, at least not enough of an education to say "I am a thinking, breathing, living person and I have a say in what happens to my body so give me full information."
I don't think anyone is, nevermind gender.
[And the way I'd put is *nobody* is getting an adquate education... which is why blaming just one or the other gender isn't just unhelpful, it *makes the problem worse!* Thanks, DN! --fl]
I just brought up part of this issue as one of many central issues per teen pregnancy rates here (and at my journal, as well).
Glad, as ever, to see you bring these things up!
[Yes! You're defiinitely one of the good 'uns when it comes to shared responsibility, Heather. Thanks! --fl]