by Amber Rhea
No, the future of sex is not using MMS to send a mobile phone video of you whacking off to another mobile phone video that you ‘accidentally’ post to that Tumblr blog you forgot was auto-crossposting to Facebook and Twitter.
It’s what you do with yourself after everyone sees it.
And when someone returns the favor.
ARE YOU SHITTING ME.
Totally amazed and freaked out now.
Everyone’s really, really, really hooked on the idea that Duggar is taking “irresponsible risks with her health”, meaning, of course, her uterus and vagina, and furthermore that this is our business. Really, folks? Aren’t there any balls we could play, here?
Poking our noses into people’s reproductive choices on the basis of whether or not we consider them “healthy” is not ok. This is a bit of a pro-choice trial by fire, I think. There are lots and lots and lots of valid critiques of the Quiverfull movement. LOTS. The idea that a particular woman, who gives every appearance of having made a free choice to use her uterus and vagina in a particular way, should not do so simply because she might wet her pants now and then, or because a future pregnancy might be “higher risk”, even though she is fully aware of and accepts these risks, is not ok.
Can you see the similarities here? Do you really want it to be ok to hate on people who choose pregnancy despite having had a previous C section? Do you want it to be ok to hate on people who choose pregnancy despite having a disability? Do you want it to be ok to hate on people who choose pregnancy even though their fetus has, or might have, a disability? Do you want it to be ok to hate on people because they choose pregnancy even though they are over 35? Do you want it to be ok to hate on people who make a free, informed choice to say “no” to obstetric procedures, or “no” to contraception, or “no” to sterilisation? Does “no” really mean “no”, does “yes” really mean “yes”, to you? Or do you place limits on that? Do you think people’s reproductive autonomy is none of your business only right up until a certain point, with that line being drawn at “the health of the mother/fetus”?
Because all these choices, and all these “no”s, have been used as excuses to perpetrate hatred, and discrimination, and State- and medical-sanctioned violence upon marginalised bodies. Do you want to be part of that?
I draw a radical distinction between the symbolic and the substantial. As a critical supporter of Barack Obama, engaged in over 50 events for him from Iowa to Ohio, I knew that at a symbolic level something could happen that was unprecedented. And it did happen. At that symbolic level, I can understand the tears, I can understand the jubilation, I can understand the euphoria. But I always knew there was a sense in which he, now heading the American empire, was tied to the shadow government, tied to CIA, FBI, tied to the establishment waiting to embrace him. It was clear when he chose his economic team, when he chose his foreign policy team, he was choosing, of course, the recycled neo-liberals and recycled neo-Clintonites, that substantially you’re going to end up with these technocratic policies that consider poor people and working people as afterthoughts. Beginning with bankers, beginning with elites.
Please god no not another round of “you can’t be a feminist if you believe in capitalism.” I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK TO WOMEN’S STUDIES 101!
