Week 9: "Dear Mr. President"
Please watch Pink "Dear Mr. President" Such a great song!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eRApNHSRRk
Discussion Prompts (follow prompts or respond to other aspects of the readings):Did you attend abstinence-only classes and what did you think? How can we get the word out in our communities and beyond that abstinence-only education teaches more than "don't have sex"- but sexist gender roles? How do you think the purity myth manifests itself in violence against women? In what ways can we use dismantling the purity myth to also fight back against rape culture? What are some tangible ways we can change the culture of virginity fetish? You must reference and integrate the text(s) in your discussion.
Reading this week’s section of “The Purity Myth” was very informative and disturbing. I literally sat in my bed, reading the book with a pen in hand ready to make “important” notes on the margins to come back to when I was writing the blog and the only notes I could write “WTF” “huh” “Are you kidding?”. Those were the only comments that I could make because what I was reading was so ridiculous.
Reading this book as a Christian is really hard because there is some bashing on Christians in the book, but the bashing is well needed and well supported. “The Pro-Life Activist’s Encyclopedia explains that just the notion of planning a pregnancy is heresy. It is their belief that attempting to plan a pregnancy is basically admitting you don’t believe that God will provide. If you don’t believe God will provide, well then you just don’t believe. As Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, explained, “If you are using birth control stop. Let the number of children you have be decided by God. The goal of the pro-life movement is to strip us of the ability to prevent pregnancy and let the chips fall where they may (124)”. I don’t even know how to explain my reaction to this. In some ways I can see where they are coming from because as Christians we are taught that God will always provide, but come on! Using God as your excuse to judge and exclude people is sickening to me. That is not the reason why Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. These people are saying that women should not take birth control and let the number of children to be decided by God, but aren’t these the same people who look down on women because they are on welfare, with so many kids? Do they realize that some people CANNOT afford to have kids, or maybe they aren’t mentally or physically stable to have kids? Gosh, let people be. You know, I can’t understand these pro-life “Christians” or President Bush. I mean he “committed 500 million to the Healthy Marriage Initiative as part of the welfare-reform bill reauthorization.” This program told women that they should get married and that would save them from poverty (138). That 500 million dollars could have been committed to our schools, our communities, to anything else besides a ridiculous bill like that. Who honestly voted this idiot into office for eight years??? I guess the same people who lost their jobs, houses, and cars and are now thinking “What was I thinking?” Sorry for being so harsh, but in my opinion, it’s true. George Bush made it clear in his campaigns when he first started running that he was pro-choice and anti-gay marriages. Well, look at what he did for you America! I hate reading what pro-life Christians have to say about ANYTHING, because in the Bible it clearly states not to judge, and the only judge is God. So why are they even speaking? Jesus let the blind see and the mute talk. I think if Jesus was alive, he would make these so-called Christians, mute.
Ever since I was a young girl, I had the same beliefs that I have today. I am Pro-Choice. Who am I to tell another person what to do with their life? But have I been foolish to think that our right to have an abortion will always remain a right? “While many Americans believe that women’s reproductive health and rights are safe because of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, nothing could be further from the truth (124)”. I am one of those women who honestly thinks that there is no way that it can be overturned. Am I wrong to think that? Or am I right for having hope?
I think we all take things for granted in our lives, and as women living in the Central Florida area , do we all realize how lucky we are? We can go down the street to get an abortion, and as college students it would only cost us $25.00 if we called an abortion fund. Other women are not so lucky. “A woman in South Dakota who wants to get an abortion, for example, is subject to so many hurdles-geographic, financial, and legal-that getting an abortion is near impossible. Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, says that in her region, the obstacles make some women so desperate that they take matters into their own hands (125).” Reading that broke my heart. I cannot even imagine that feeling of hopelessness as a woman in 2009.
I was so appalled by some laws that were trying to be passed or had already been passed that were written about in this book. Hearing about the Virginia lawmaker that sponsored a bill that prohibited women from getting artificially inseminated was disgusting to me (126). I just wanted to scream out, “Who do these ‘men’ think they are? “ I guess they are the same men who come out very loudly stating that they are pro-choice, a Christian, and a loving husband and father, but they are the same men who months later after expressing how perfect they are and how perfect their families are, they are now on the front of tabloid magazines “having fathered a child with the woman they were having an affair with”. These men are the lowest of the lowest. Who are they to judge?
I was very surprised to know that the FDA approved Plan B in 1998 (128). I thought Plan B was something new and recent, at least within the past few years, but I was wrong. I can’t believe there has been such a fight to stop the use of Plan B, when it would end the amount of abortions that had to be performed, because these women did not have access to emergency contraceptives and got pregnant.
Getting into the chapters of the book that were about rape, were very hard to read. Being raped is probably one of my biggest fears and I was alone in my apartment reading this, so scared that a man was going to jump through my window or break into my apartment and rape me. Why should I even be scared of this happening to me? I am a college student, from an upper-middle class home, who is just trying to get by in life. Why should I be scared that a man is going to take away something so special from me; my peace.
Chapter 7 was just heartbreaking for me to read. From the introduction of the gang rape of the California teenager (145) to the women who was “raped by the state”, it makes me so sick and scared. Why should we have to fear for our lives, our dignity, or our peace? In 2007, why would a teenage girl be refused treatment for a rape just because she “appeared intoxicated” (146). Are you serious? And why would a sheriff “refuse to administer a rape kit” because he didn’t believe she had been raped (146)? Who cares what you believe? You are in the sheriff position to help people. START HELPING THEM!!!!
As college students, most of us can relate to nights when we just got so wasted and blacked out and couldn’t’ remember the night. But how horrible would it be, if we woke up to find out that we had been raped and that people would think it was our fault that we got raped. Idiot Katie Roiphe wrote a book in 1994 titled, “The Morning After” Fear, Sex and Feminism”. She “questioned whether date rape really existed and argued that women are in part responsible if they are forced into having sex after drinking or using drugs (150)” Is there not a little thing called consent anymore? I wonder if her feelings would change if her mother, daughter, niece, cousin, etc. was raped? Have these women been through what a raped woman has? Do they even know what they are talking about to have the ability to publish a book?
Reading “The Purity Myth” was not very interesting for me the last two weeks because I had to read about virginity something I wanted to forget about, but I am so glad that this book was included in this course. It made me want to take action for these woman who were really hopeless and being held down by the government and society. It’s sickening. Thank God for classes like this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eRApNHSRRk
Discussion Prompts (follow prompts or respond to other aspects of the readings):Did you attend abstinence-only classes and what did you think? How can we get the word out in our communities and beyond that abstinence-only education teaches more than "don't have sex"- but sexist gender roles? How do you think the purity myth manifests itself in violence against women? In what ways can we use dismantling the purity myth to also fight back against rape culture? What are some tangible ways we can change the culture of virginity fetish? You must reference and integrate the text(s) in your discussion.
Reading this week’s section of “The Purity Myth” was very informative and disturbing. I literally sat in my bed, reading the book with a pen in hand ready to make “important” notes on the margins to come back to when I was writing the blog and the only notes I could write “WTF” “huh” “Are you kidding?”. Those were the only comments that I could make because what I was reading was so ridiculous.
Reading this book as a Christian is really hard because there is some bashing on Christians in the book, but the bashing is well needed and well supported. “The Pro-Life Activist’s Encyclopedia explains that just the notion of planning a pregnancy is heresy. It is their belief that attempting to plan a pregnancy is basically admitting you don’t believe that God will provide. If you don’t believe God will provide, well then you just don’t believe. As Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, explained, “If you are using birth control stop. Let the number of children you have be decided by God. The goal of the pro-life movement is to strip us of the ability to prevent pregnancy and let the chips fall where they may (124)”. I don’t even know how to explain my reaction to this. In some ways I can see where they are coming from because as Christians we are taught that God will always provide, but come on! Using God as your excuse to judge and exclude people is sickening to me. That is not the reason why Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. These people are saying that women should not take birth control and let the number of children to be decided by God, but aren’t these the same people who look down on women because they are on welfare, with so many kids? Do they realize that some people CANNOT afford to have kids, or maybe they aren’t mentally or physically stable to have kids? Gosh, let people be. You know, I can’t understand these pro-life “Christians” or President Bush. I mean he “committed 500 million to the Healthy Marriage Initiative as part of the welfare-reform bill reauthorization.” This program told women that they should get married and that would save them from poverty (138). That 500 million dollars could have been committed to our schools, our communities, to anything else besides a ridiculous bill like that. Who honestly voted this idiot into office for eight years??? I guess the same people who lost their jobs, houses, and cars and are now thinking “What was I thinking?” Sorry for being so harsh, but in my opinion, it’s true. George Bush made it clear in his campaigns when he first started running that he was pro-choice and anti-gay marriages. Well, look at what he did for you America! I hate reading what pro-life Christians have to say about ANYTHING, because in the Bible it clearly states not to judge, and the only judge is God. So why are they even speaking? Jesus let the blind see and the mute talk. I think if Jesus was alive, he would make these so-called Christians, mute.
Ever since I was a young girl, I had the same beliefs that I have today. I am Pro-Choice. Who am I to tell another person what to do with their life? But have I been foolish to think that our right to have an abortion will always remain a right? “While many Americans believe that women’s reproductive health and rights are safe because of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, nothing could be further from the truth (124)”. I am one of those women who honestly thinks that there is no way that it can be overturned. Am I wrong to think that? Or am I right for having hope?
I think we all take things for granted in our lives, and as women living in the Central Florida area , do we all realize how lucky we are? We can go down the street to get an abortion, and as college students it would only cost us $25.00 if we called an abortion fund. Other women are not so lucky. “A woman in South Dakota who wants to get an abortion, for example, is subject to so many hurdles-geographic, financial, and legal-that getting an abortion is near impossible. Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, says that in her region, the obstacles make some women so desperate that they take matters into their own hands (125).” Reading that broke my heart. I cannot even imagine that feeling of hopelessness as a woman in 2009.
I was so appalled by some laws that were trying to be passed or had already been passed that were written about in this book. Hearing about the Virginia lawmaker that sponsored a bill that prohibited women from getting artificially inseminated was disgusting to me (126). I just wanted to scream out, “Who do these ‘men’ think they are? “ I guess they are the same men who come out very loudly stating that they are pro-choice, a Christian, and a loving husband and father, but they are the same men who months later after expressing how perfect they are and how perfect their families are, they are now on the front of tabloid magazines “having fathered a child with the woman they were having an affair with”. These men are the lowest of the lowest. Who are they to judge?
I was very surprised to know that the FDA approved Plan B in 1998 (128). I thought Plan B was something new and recent, at least within the past few years, but I was wrong. I can’t believe there has been such a fight to stop the use of Plan B, when it would end the amount of abortions that had to be performed, because these women did not have access to emergency contraceptives and got pregnant.
Getting into the chapters of the book that were about rape, were very hard to read. Being raped is probably one of my biggest fears and I was alone in my apartment reading this, so scared that a man was going to jump through my window or break into my apartment and rape me. Why should I even be scared of this happening to me? I am a college student, from an upper-middle class home, who is just trying to get by in life. Why should I be scared that a man is going to take away something so special from me; my peace.
Chapter 7 was just heartbreaking for me to read. From the introduction of the gang rape of the California teenager (145) to the women who was “raped by the state”, it makes me so sick and scared. Why should we have to fear for our lives, our dignity, or our peace? In 2007, why would a teenage girl be refused treatment for a rape just because she “appeared intoxicated” (146). Are you serious? And why would a sheriff “refuse to administer a rape kit” because he didn’t believe she had been raped (146)? Who cares what you believe? You are in the sheriff position to help people. START HELPING THEM!!!!
As college students, most of us can relate to nights when we just got so wasted and blacked out and couldn’t’ remember the night. But how horrible would it be, if we woke up to find out that we had been raped and that people would think it was our fault that we got raped. Idiot Katie Roiphe wrote a book in 1994 titled, “The Morning After” Fear, Sex and Feminism”. She “questioned whether date rape really existed and argued that women are in part responsible if they are forced into having sex after drinking or using drugs (150)” Is there not a little thing called consent anymore? I wonder if her feelings would change if her mother, daughter, niece, cousin, etc. was raped? Have these women been through what a raped woman has? Do they even know what they are talking about to have the ability to publish a book?
Reading “The Purity Myth” was not very interesting for me the last two weeks because I had to read about virginity something I wanted to forget about, but I am so glad that this book was included in this course. It made me want to take action for these woman who were really hopeless and being held down by the government and society. It’s sickening. Thank God for classes like this one.
Comments
First off I would like to say I enjoyed the video. There might be some aspects I did not agree with but overall it was really touched my heart.
I agree that reading this book as a Christian was hard at times because there is some bashing, but it is well intended in a way. The idea of having lots of children without preventive methods scares me, but I also realize that this is important to some women. I guess I view it as if you have the money and love to take care of them have as many as you want. But, three will be my max. The way we live our lives is far different than the Bible times and it is not so easy to provide nowadays with our debts and materialism. I was infuriated when reading the chapter that talked about rape being something women had coming and the insane laws passed that agreed with this notion.