Notes From A Pro-Choice Doula

Over at Feministing there's a brief essay from Miriam Zoila Pérez, who recently attended the National Advocates for Pregnant Women’s Summit.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had erroneously assumed that pro-choice and birth advocates would be on the same page about some issues. Even though one group fights for the rights of birthing mothers, and the other fights for the rights of women who don't want to be mothers, the central focus of their efforts are on the health needs of women.

Intellectually it makes sense that there's some tension between the two groups. However, despite what pro-lifers might like you to believe, being pro-choice doesn't mean anti-child. It means putting a value on women's lives.

I'm really glad that the National Advocates for Pregnant Women’s Summit was able to bring these two groups together an create space for discussion. They each have the same goal of improving the range of medical options for women, and they both can use all the help they can get.

A Smart Blonde Joke

I was looking at some of the search results for this blog, and one of them was "blonde jokes feminist misogyny".

I don't know if this person was looking for feminist critiques of blonde jokes, or feminist jokes about dumb blondes, but either way it was interesting.

So here's a joke about a smart blonde and dumb guy:

An attorney and a blonde are sitting next to each other on a flight from Los Angeles to New York. The attorney asks if she would like to play a fun game. The blonde is tired and just wants to take a nap, so she politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks. The attorney persists. He explains how the game works..

"I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me, and vice-versa."
Again the blonde politely declines and tries to get some sleep. The attorney figures that since his opponent is a blonde he will easily win the match, so he makes another offer.
"If you don't know the answer, you pay me only $5.00, but if I don't know the answer, I will pay you $500."

The blonde figures there will be no end to this torment unless she plays, so she agrees.
The attorney asks, "What's the distance from the Earth to the moon?"
The blonde reaches in to her purse, pulls out a five dollar bill, and hands it to the attorney.

Then she asks the attorney, "What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down with four?"
The attorney is puzzled. He uses his laptop to search for references. He taps into the air-phone with his modem and searches the Net and the Library of Congress.

Frustrated, he sends emails to his co-workers and friends. No luck. After an hour, he gives up.
He wakes the blonde and hands her $500.00. The blonde politely takes the $500.00 and turns away to get back to sleep.

The attorney, who is going nuts trying to figure it out, wakes the blonde and asks, "Well, so what goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four?"

The blonde reaches into her purse, hands the attorney $5.00, and goes back to sleep.

Harlot Entices Golden Boy News At 11

Boston is buzzing with the news that star quarterback Tom Brady's ex girlfriend is three months pregnant with his child.

And it's stupid.

I'm not sure which is worse, the people accusing his ex-girlfriend of somehow "tricking" him into knocking her up, the people saying they "have" to get married, or the people who still get woozy at the thought of a child born out of wedlock.

They dated for three years, I might not be a therapist, but chances are they broke up for a reason. I thought we were passed the days of staying together for the children's sake, but I guess not.

You can view the carnage here.

Romance takes one to the head

There's an old saying that nothing sells like the death of a pretty young woman. And Hollywood knows this. Flip through the channels, rent a movie, or finger through the pages of Readers Digest and you're bound to run into a damsel (preferably white) in distress. The dramatic motif of fatal attraction with a side helping of sex and violence is nothing new. Guy wants girl, guy stalks girl because he just "loves" her so much, then tries to "convince" her through non-consensual sex that she really feels the same way about him. Or guy finds girl attractive, guy drugs girl, has non-consensual sex to punish her for leading him on. The list of ways perpetrators of violence try to explain away their transgressions as a show of some deeper affection goes on and on. And screen writers have brought just about every combination of excuses to a silver screen near you.

I though I had seen just about everything, until I happened upon a disturbing episode of Law And Order: Criminal Intent.

The killer (played by Neil Patrick Harris no less) hideously brain damages women because he's.....lonely. Harris' shy, withdrawn and overly sensitive character can't find the gentle romance he seeks. So he drugs women, kidnaps them, performs primitive home lobotomies on them by pouring a bit of boiling water over their brain (via a small whole drilled into the skull), then dotes over their helpless babbling forms. Do you have a case of the warm fuzzies yet?

This bizarre and upsetting story line is par for course in the Law and Order series, especially the Special Victims Unit spin off, but the really creepy part of the episode is the main detective's sympathy for the suspect.

Harris' character feels the only way he can have a relationship with a woman is if she's brain damaged, and totally reliant on him. He has an inability to be with a woman who's his equal. And while the detective might not whole heartily agree with Harris' methods, he feels the same discomfort about feeling vulnerable.

The detective views the killer's actions through his own fear of intimacy and tries to play down the seriousness of his crimes. Instead of wanting a comatose sex object, the killer wants a living doll he can take care of. To the detective these acts are somehow more noble than your usual assault and kill. Yes, he might be permanently brain damaging young women, and accidentally killing a few, but aww shucks, he doesn't mean it.

Instead of a crime of passion, the audience is asked to believe this is a crime of romance, not an act of animal desire, but aching love. Which is just as bad if not more dangerous. After decades we're just now starting to accept that sex and rape is more about power than physical attraction. But we still refuse to shine a light on the arcane mechanics of western heterosexual romance. If we ever did, I'm sure the diamond industry would collapse in matter of hours.

But engagements rings and make up sex aside. We all get lonely from time to time. We all have obstacles to finding compatible romantic partners. But most of us don't attempt to solve these problems by sauteing someone's head meat, or construct elaborate trial defenses around the psychological burden of datelessness.

This Valentine's Day I'm keeping a close eye on my drink, pepper spray in my pocket, and pair of brass knuckles in my bag so no one tries to say "I love you" with first degree murder.

Dead Hooker Storage

Sorry about the lack of posts folks. I've been busy getting ready to adopt a cat. But don't worry, a flurry of posts is headed your way starting with Dead Hooker Storage.

In a sea of distasteful jokes, questionable public image galleries, and ridiculous Internet handles, Dead Hooker Storage on MySpace really stands out. And they shouldn't take that as a complement.

This group goes way over the line. The concept of a storage facility that specializes in the containment of dead sex workers is kind of gross, but an interesting acknowledgement of danger this group faces on a day to day basis. It could be considered dark humor, which I'm a personal fan of. However, the blood leaking out of the storage unit, the picture of alleged street walkers with the text "Little does she know I'm behind her with a gun", and the accompanying manifesto that describes how the founders are dedicated to their "cause" of killing hookers is beyond horrible.











Sex workers, especially street prostitutes, are an extremely vulnerable population. Not only because they routinely interact with strangers, but because they as seen as disposal by the population at large. A string of missing person reports in Atlantic City went un-investigated by the local police because the people in question were hookers. The police consider sex workers a transient population whose disappearances aren't worth investigating. It wasn't until bodies starting turning up and relatives of the missing started complaining (yes hookers have families too) that they realized the city had a serial killer on its hands.

So what exactly is funny about killing hookers? And more importantly, why do these people think it's awesome to pretend to kill hookers, and encourage others to take part in such a juvenile and depraved fantasy? Is there something in the New Jersey water?