All hail Margaret Atwood
If you haven't yet read A Handmaid's Tale, now is the time. (If you just can't read right now because you're blinded by rage, I understand - rent the movie and you can just listen.)Apparently now all women need to be treated as if in a state of pre-pregnancy. (Unless, you are medically not able for whatever reason. Probably because you're a heathen and God hates you and has stricken you thusly.)
Are you kidding?! PRE-PREGNANCY. As is my womanly destiny, my life should be in constant preparation for the moment of pregnancy and birth.
Federal guidelines. Not just a pamphlet with a smiling head of lettuce on the front.
(here's the article)
There. are. just. sooooooo. many. things. wrong. with. this.
A healthy lifestyle is a good idea for everyone, and if they were just saying, here are some ways we can all be healthier, great. But that's not what this is. To couch this in federal guidelines that categorize women as baby factories is infantilizing, degrading, patriarchal bullshit.
Can we just think for a second: 1) Not everyone will choose to have children. 2) Not everyone is having hetero-babymaking sex. 3) Hijacking a woman's body to say the government has juridiction to categorize it as "pre-pregnant" essentially makes her a minor under the law, taking away her ability to make decisions about her own body. which brings us to 4) Hello! Choice, anyone? Millions of people make choices for their own lives to decide when and if to have a kid, and if carrying a pregnancy to term is the right decision for themselves and their families, in a country that pretty much gives her the finger (regarding assistance) after the kid is born. 5) No guidelines for men - because their junk has nothing to do with the process?
Just go read the book/watch the movie. The scariest thing about Atwood's books is she says that she never entirely makes it up. While all the details might not be happening in the same place at the same time, all the topics are based on reality. And even scarier than the scariest thing, is that they keep coming true.
(And if you're not sure where you stand on this issue, the movie gives you some things to think about...)
Just tell me I'm not the only one who's infuriated by this. And even more scared of my government.
(They've been gunning for me/lotsa people pretty consistently since, lessay... January of 2000??? Somebody make the bad man go away...)
posted by Halley @ 4:08 AM
6 Comments:
I think I'm going to be sick.
Oh, HELL NO!
Even scarier? Didn't she write this, like, more than 20 years ago?
oh man halley I can hear the tick of your biological clock all the way over here...
Oh god, I clean the litter box twice a day and have since I was old enough to have chores. As soon as I finish typing this, I am going to call my mom and tell her that she can't bank on grandchildren because she never treated me as if I was pre-pregnancy. Honestly, we aren't factories and as a woman who has been told since the age of 16 that I may not conceive, I have to ask: am I less valuable because my body turned on it's own organs once? When I go for my yearly exam, are they going to tell me to smoke all I want and clean up all cat feces since I'm probably never going to produce little humans for the government to abandon, neglect and take valuable educational programs from so they can pay for a pointless war? Perhaps they'll tell me to turn my head and cough on accident!
I dunno, Halley... calling my guy parts 'junk' is pretty offensive. Thick skin and everything.
The irony of the situation is easily seen when we compare the united States to, say, France.
Where tons and TONS of people smoke, a class of wine with dinner is a civilizaed requirement and lots of people have lots of pets. And where birthrates are astronomically better.
I wonder if the States ever thought about the fact that so many of the countries with better birth rates offer universal prenatal care to all citizens because there's universal health coverage... But why would the fact that women get medical care mean anything? Nope, it must be that no one in countries like France drinks, smokes or have cats.
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