“In life there is no real safety except for self-belief.” – Madonna.
This quote really resonates for me and is the core theme in a piece of writing I just submitted. But the whole speech from Madonna is worth hearing here.
Archive for the ‘feminism’ Category
On risk-taking for women
Posted in feminism, pop culture, rape/sexual abuse, sex of the icky parental kind, Uncategorized on December 11, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
On the idea that men should be able to ‘opt out’of parenthood
Posted in fatherhood, feminism, feminist motherhood, motherhood, motherhood sux, politics, pregnancy and birth, Uncategorized on December 4, 2016 | 1 Comment »
This article by Catherine Deveny on the ABC called “Financial abortion: Should men be able to ‘opt out’ of parenthood?” is infuriatingly limited.
I have recently come to the conclusion that, as a feminist, I support men being able to opt out of fatherhood early in a pregnancy via what is known as a financial abortion.
I believe a woman should not be forced to become a mother any more than a man should be forced to become a father. If a man has not said, “I want to have a child with you now-ish”, it is fair to assume he doesn’t, and therefore should be able to legally withdraw from becoming a parent.
It would also be less traumatic for children, and more empowering for women.
A financial abortion (also known as a paper abortion or a statutory abort) would essentially enable men to cut all financial and emotional ties with a child in the early stages of pregnancy.
Men can ‘opt out’ already. Don’t have sex with women, get a vasectomy, take lots and lots of responsibility for contraception. Oh.. you mean not that kind of “control over reproductive choices”.
Men can have more control than they do currently over whether parenthood happens (see my paragraph above), but just like women they don’t have full control over conception. Pregnancy is not something you can ‘make happen’.. you can provide circumstances that will facilitate pregnancy or which won’t… but conception is a biological action that happens outside of women’s and men’s control. We all need to carry responsibility for that.
It is not something one can ‘opt out of’ if you, like me, happen to enjoy the act of putting sperm near eggs inside women’s bodies.
What certain men are seeking to ‘opt out of’ is not whether parenthood can occur, it is the responsibility of parenthood. How very user choice, what part of reality might possibly be missing from this?
The parent with the ability to decide to carry a pregnancy to term (or not) is the one whose body has a foetus inside it. If we lived in another reality where men could choose to carry a foetus in their body to term then they could opt out of doing so.. and I am sure many women would be content to concede that right to men.
And of course on the wider issue of opting out, as someone said on my Facebook page, is this…
“In practice men do have this choice: courts won’t demand men conform to care and contact agreements & DHSCS has a poor record of enforcing compliance with child support assessments/ agreements. Women’s access to abortion remains practically constrained and single mothers a group at high risk of poverty – these remain the bigger issues than further expanding masculine financial & paternal discretion.”
The pleasures of ordinary devotion
Posted in ableism, economics, feminism, feminist motherhood, GLBTI, motherhood, motherhood bliss, re-partnering, sex of the icky parental kind, Uncategorized on November 27, 2016 | 1 Comment »
I feel I can give you everything without giving myself away, I whispered in your basement bed. If one does one’s solitude right, this is the prize.
[Yet] dependence is scorned even in intimate relationships, as though dependence were incompatible with self-reliance rather than the only thing that makes it possible.
I know now that a studied evasiveness has its own limitations, its own ways of inhibiting certain forms of happiness and pleasure. The pleasure of abiding. The pleasure of insistence, of persistence. The pleasure of obligation, the pleasure of dependency. The pleasures of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one’s work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again—not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life.
Perhaps it’s the word radical that needs rethinking. But what could we angle ourselves toward instead, or in addition? Openness? Is that good enough, strong enough? You’re the only one who knows when you’re using things to protect yourself and keep your ego together and when you’re opening and letting things fall apart, letting the world come as it is—working with it rather than struggling against it. You’re the only one who knows. And the thing is, even you don’t always know.
From Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts.
I inherited two traits from my grandmother
Posted in feminism, me, motherhood, motherhood bliss, Uncategorized on November 20, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
Prominent canines (fangs) and the desire to strike a pose in front of the camera.
I get the impression had she been born now the woman would have liked taking selfies.
Thinking again about blogging
Posted in feminism, motherhood, motherhood bliss, motherhood sux, pop culture, Uncategorized on November 15, 2016 | 2 Comments »
Each blog has its own life cycle too. Those that came into being to chronicle a particular life arc –moving to a new place, divorce, illness – reached a natural end point as circumstances changed. Speaking to my former blogging friends about why they stopped, a number of crunch points emerge: children get older and their privacy becomes more important. Break-ups are often too raw to chronicle online. Family and neighbours discovering her blog had a radically stifling effect on what one friend felt able to write. Another, a schoolteacher, says, “I hated finding out colleagues were reading it and I hated the self-censorship it imposed. Many people simply reach the point where they aren’t comfortable with the level of exposure blogging brings – some miss it, some don’t.
I know these crunch points intimately. I have spent an excruciating afternoon cringing as the not-remotely-amused HR manager in my office read extracts of my blog back to me (pro tip: don’t describe your workplace as “the corridor of ennui”). My husband finds the blogging impulse baffling and unhealthy and we’ve clashed over it, often. Our teenage sons have no desire to serve as entertainment for my readers, so their lives are now off-limits. Neighbours sometimes comment on things they have read on my blog, which is a discomfiting experience even though rationally I know it’s inevitable when I put my personal life out in a public space. I have certainly felt queasily over-exposed at times. When I started writing, I was unhappy at work and at home, living abroad, missing family and friends. Blogging was a lifeline; a reminder that I could be funny and interesting.
From Emma Beddington of Belgian Waffling at The Pool with “Personal blogging has declined in popularity but it will never be obsolete”.
Oh yes, oh yes. The list I could write you of readers I’ve discovered over time that leave me exquisitely uncomfortable. Oh my lord.
Incidentally, I am reading Beddington’s memoir at the moment and it has sparked my interest in blogs again, so I am also re-visiting mimi smartypants. Her posts about her daughter and husband are my favourite and predictably, I recently read that she is beginning to shy away from writing about her daughter now because of her child’s privacy… just when it is getting complicated and interesting and relevant. But, of course, I understand given I have made the same decision.
I also hugely miss Yet Another Blooming Blog. Does anyone know if she still writes?
And while we are talking blogs…. lovely round of good feminist blogging here at No Award or the Down under Feminist Carnival 102..and thank you for including some of mine.
My latest article was about escaping violence
Posted in arguments with your partner, economics, feminism, motherhood sux, politics, Uncategorized, work and family (im)balance on November 15, 2016 | 3 Comments »
And it was published in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Have you ever run with a baby? You’re up, you scoop, you leap. Bone against bone, you and the baby in your arms knock against one another. But within two of your running strides, the baby knows to fold herself into you, she tucks under your chin and presses against your chest. Two strides, heart pounding, and you both find flight.
Babies must know, somewhere primitive in them, how to be held by someone running. Because two strides and the instinct awakens, they’re suddenly weightless in your arms, moulded against you.
to have voted for your own lack of conscience
Posted in feminism, politics, pop culture, race/anti-racism, Uncategorized on November 15, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
These are your heroes, your American Snipers and Captain Americas in all their syphilitic charm. This is your oblivious entertainment and the parade of your own lack of imagination. This is the girl on the back of your motorcycle, your cardboard sexy. This is the bullshit you worship.
How far gone you must be. How lost in your own fantasy and privilege. How determined you must be to maintain your bubble. How unaware of your place on this planet, in this climate, of your voice and power (lived not assumed. imposed) must you be to have voted for your own lack of conscience?
We who are not immune to your nasal vocal fry, who hear your raised voice and bombshell laughter, who recognize the twang of your guitar and that robotic twist of hip are very clear on what we’re seeing. The profane mascot on your cap and shirt, rather than remove and burn, you have chosen to present to the world as a mask. You have elected a caricatured mascot. A totem to your ignorance.
Here is the proof of the internal battles you have not fought, the lines of credit you have not questioned and never intended to pay back. The thin man you saw in the forest. The clown that kept popping up in the shadows. The chair that rocks that no one is sitting in. This is your haunted house built over our graveyard. The car that won’t start. The murderous ski mask. This is your cop drama, your cowboy fantasy, your bed sheet cape and plastic boots. Your fears, fantasies and entertainment all wrapped into one high-strung effigy whose burning fire you will not be able to contain.
You have proven your enemies right.
– Saul Williams. (Credit for the image to Xoaquín Torres and Reuben Weinzveg)
Breathtaking!
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