Of all the Dystopian lit I've read of the years, the one that always fills me with the most dread is Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Not on a personal level, mind you. As a loudmouthed fat woman, I expect to be shot. Actually, with most other dystopian stories, I expect that too . . . and often in life the way some people act, but more so from the Atwood story.
Back when she wrote this, a lot of people thought it was reactionary and needlessly shocking. Nothing like this could ever happen. Women had achieved more freedom and were now taking care of themselves.
The thing about stripping people of their rights, however, is that it is best done slowly, and under the proper context. A grand example of this is the religiously based abstinence movement. While on the surface it proclaims to promote the welfare of the young people, at its core, one finds a very dark stain of traditional patriarchal views.
Fortunately, most of us have something on our side. I like to call this the DAMN! THAT IS CREEPY reaction. This usually happens when we see something that looks innocent but is rather wrong and nasty.
Look at the basic pledge asked of young people from the True Love Waits program.
"I am making a commitment to myself, my family, and my Creator, that I will abstain from sexual activity of any kind before marriage. I will keep my body and my thoughts pure as I trust in God's perfect plan for my life."
The pledge is far cleaned up from its original versions, or even later versions that got kind of crazy, but it still has its roots in fairly oppressive language.
There is nothing wrong with making a commitment to self. That part, I am not upset about, however, the rest?
I will state this hear and now, just in case for some reason people don't grasp this, being overly concerned about or overly controlling about your child's sex life is creepy. The idea that you would ask your child to COMMIT to you about their sexual activity is emotional incest. This goes for any deities out there as well. If they are overly concerned with people's sex lives, that's also creepy.
Look, I get the basic idea that what they're trying to achieve here is some level of thought process before 14 yr olds go hoping into bed with everyone. That can lead to a lot of problems, hurt feelings, babies, and diseases.
However, having them make a pledge that strips them of basic sexual autonomy is not the answer. This pledge takes their sexuality away from them, tying it to their parents and to a deity. The subtext suggests they have no exclusive ownership to their own sexuality, rather is is something to which all the mentioned parties have rights.
If you follow this path, you'll find yourself not too far away from cultures where parents decide who their children marry, ones where women can be killed for the "impurity" suffered after rape, and ones where mutilation of genitalia is seen as an acceptable practice in curbing female sexual appetite.
However, True Love Waits is a feminist ANTHEM compared to this crap.
Okay, so this pledge is to the girl's father, her future husband, and her creator. Not to herself. Not even to her mother, just her father, and then to the husband and the deity.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
The funny part about this whole issue, for me, comes back to the fact that all of the people I know who could be sexual but choose to stay virgins, are NOT religious and NEVER took a purity pledge. They are people who simply choose to abstain from the whole relationship thing. They have watched their families and everyone's families and everyone's relationships and decided it wasn't for them. Sexuality isn't that important.
I asked them why they felt that way when I was thinking about this post. The consensus seemed to be that the whole thing was never presented to them by their parents or others to be something so forbidden and urgent.
All of them were taught it was something they could control with ease, could make their own decisions about, and would never be judged by their loved ones if those decisions weren't the ones they (the loved ones) would have chosen. They were told about the consequences, were told how to prevent them, and even allowed access to the methods used to accomplish this. In other words, it wasn't forbidden. But it was demystified.
Of course, I suppose for some religions, the last example is even worse than people having sex before marriage. People choosing of their own free will to opt out of the whole relationship/marriage/sex/baby thing scares them. They WANT people to be virgins, but they mostly really want them to be virgins until they getmarriedhavebabies. Failing that, they want them to not be virgins, have sex that makes them feel bad about themselves, and then find (or refind) religion and getmarriedhavebabies.
In the end, purity pledges are about one thing and one thing only. Control. The social group (church/school/society/whathaveyou) trying to control the bodies of other people, to control the activities of said bodies, and control the minds and mindsets connected to the bodies. "No sex until marriage" has the implied concept that marriage will (and must) happen. "Sex is there for bonding couples, but mostly for making babies" implies that children should be seen as a certainty.
And more children born into the group means more members to control. And the beast keeps feeding itself.
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