Teen Pregnancy, Hypocrisy and Immaculate Conception

May is apparently Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month. At least, that's according to the Candies Foundation, who are currently running a huge, celebrity-endorsed, campaign to decrease teenage pregnancies. There are numerous problems with this US-based campaign, which went global with #noteenpreg hashtag on Twitter. The fact that the Candies Foundation do believe in abstinence-based education which is the least effective method of preventing teen pregnancy. They do also teach "safe sex" but, let's be honest here, safe sex is almost always based on heteronormative penis-in-vagina sex and fails to acknowledge both the full spectrum of sex and sexuality but also is almost always directed at teenage girls. The Candies Foundation haven't strayed far from this construct.

Basically, the campaign is lacking in any real analysis of the causes of teenage pregnancy. The fact that the organisation, who aren't exactly pro-choice, have managed to line up a bunch of celebrities to "endorse" them proves nothing. After all, there's no such thing as bad publicity even if you hire Chris Brown, a young artist with a conviction for domestic violence and a penchant for bragging about having sex as a teenager to endorse your campaign. I'm not quite sure what Chris Brown's involvement is supposed to prove: that it's wrong for teenage girls to get pregnant but it's okay for teenage boys to seriously physically assault their girlfriends? 

It's yet another scare-tactic campaign that ignores the social and political realities of the lack of sex education, access to contraception and abortion, poverty, education, class and race. It focuses on shaming teenage girls instead of examining the lack of a welfare state and the lack of universal healthcare in the US. It ignores the fact that abstinence-only education is increasingly common in US schools. It ignores the lack of access to contraception. It ignores the lack of access to abortions.  It ignores the lack of affordable childcare. It ignores the pornification of culture which tells teenage girls that their only value is in their "fuckability".    It ignores the realities of the lives of teenage girls.

What this campaign really lacks, and what all campaigns to end teenage pregnancy lack, is any mention of teenage boys. The last time I checked, there's only been one recorded case of Immaculate Conception and even that one's fairly controversial. Yet, these campaigns invariably focus on teenage girls ruining their lives by having babies; ruining their lives by being unable to attend university or hold down a job. There is no mention of teenage boys being unable to attend university or hold down jobs. There are no mentions of teenage boys being required to pay child maintenance to financially support a child they helped create. Instead, the focus is on shaming and blaming teenage girls for having the temerity to have sex and get pregnant.

We already know the causes of teenage pregnancy and, yet, the UK is following the US's path with parents demanding the right to prevent their children learning about real sexual education. The destruction of the welfare state and universal healthcare will have serious detrimental effects on families. The failure of colleges and universities to be family-friendly will prevent teenage girls from attending university as does the lack of affordable childcare. 

Teenage pregnancy is only a problem if we create it as one. No one wants 13 and 14  year girls to get pregnant because of the physical damage pregnancy can cause on such young bodies but teenagers have sex. It doesn't matter how many times we tell them not to, teenagers still have sex. Shaming them with huge celebrity-endorsed campaigns which ignore teenage boys won't change that.

We need to fundamentally restructure our country and rebuild the welfare state and the NHS. We need nationalised daycare. We need a child maintenance enforcement program that actually works since one of the biggest indicators of child poverty is being raised in a single parent household where the other parent, invariably the father, refuses to pay child maintenance. 

We don't need to shame teenage girls. 

We need to start talking about sex properly and, not letting men with convictions for domestic violence teach our daughters what "safe sex" is a good place to start. 

We need to start talking properly to teenage boys about sex and parenting; not just teenage girls.

Read More

Vagenda, Anal Sex and Missing the Point Completely

*I am aware that Vagenda is claiming that the article on anal sex is meant to be a satire of Cosmo sex tips. The problem is that that is not how the article reads.


I have a love/ hate relationship with Vagenda. When they are on form, they are just bloody brilliant but when they miss, they do so spectacularly. Today's piece on anal sex was well past missing the point completely and into shaming people who like non-PIV and teaching women how to avoid anal rape.

Now, I self-identify as pro-radical feminist so I am highly critical of the focus on the male orgasm as the defining moment in sex as if everything up to that point, including making women cum, is just making out. The obsession with heteronormative constructions of sexuality are deeply damaging to women and make women responsible for contraception, pregnancy, STDs and making boundaries. Sex education in this country is a joke. I also think pornography is incredibly harmful and deeply destructive. I am anti-prostitution and support the criminalisation of men who purchase sex and those who profit from selling the bodies of other people. I also support the Merseyside model which labels the rape of prostitutes a hate crime. I am against the heteronormative construction of sexuality which uses and abuses the bodies of women and children for male pleasure.

I am really concerned about the normalisation of pornography in our culture and the increasing pressure on young women to have anal sex. There is increasing pressure on young women to preform sex acts which make them uncomfortable or cause them physical pain otherwise they are labeled frigid. We need to be having this discussion but Vagenda hasn't started a conversation. Instead, they seem to have published an article written by a teenage boy with boundary issues. FGS, who actually says "I’m a woman and I like what I like when it comes to the party in my pants" who isn't in a really bad hiphop video produced by Playboy? And, what type of conversation were they planning on having by calling anal sex "bum funnery" and "rump ranging" I'm not even going to go into how angry this sentence makes me: "Now, I know that a few of the ladies out there are total arse-penetration converts, I do." This basically states that women who choose to have anal sex and who do it are actually lying about both.

There are women who genuinely enjoy anal sex and there are women who feel pressured into doing so. We need to be having a conversation about the second group of women, especially young women who are being raised in a culture which sublimates their sexual desires. We need to talk about how women are expected to be the arbiters of sexual boundaries. We need to talk about living in a rape culture where the word no is apparently non-existant in the vocabulary of an ever-increasing number of young men. We need to talk about how we are raising girls to believe that their orgasms aren't really all that important as long as men have one. We need to talk about raising a generation of young boys and girls in a pornified culture and the harm that is causing them. Let's be honest here, the Vagenda article was talking specifically about heterosexual relationships as if they were the only possible kind.

We do not need more infantile articles blithering on with childish language. We do not need more articles yelling 'yay, anal sex is awesome' or more yelling 'it's disgusting'. We need to be having actual adult conversations about having sex in a positive and loving manner, by which I don't always mean within a relationship. Sex without respect, even with a partner you never plan on seeing again, is not good sex.

What really worries me about the Vagenda article is this paragraph:

I have a lovely man in my life that seems to really enjoy my pant party to which he is now the only man invited to. I want to make him happy all the time above and below the sheets, but surely playing Backdoor Buddies isn’t the answer (I’ve forever believed the answer was bacon, but apparently I’m wrong about that too.) He loves the bum: he’s so fascinated by it you would have thought he had been born sans derriere - but there’s no hiding the fact that every time a finger so much as wanders over into that forbidden territory, I suddenly turn into a bucking bronco, jumping six feet in the air like a scaled cat screaming out an appropriate rendition of Meatloaf’s ‘I would do anything for love’, emphasis on: ‘But I won’t do that.’

If you are in a long-term relationship with someone and you have to keep telling them that you do not want anal sex, either with penis, finger or object, then you aren't actually in a very respectful relationship. If your partner respects you, you talk during sex. You should not ever have to repeat that you don't want to engage in one specific sex act, whether that be anal sex, oral sex, or whatever. If you've said no once, then a partner should respect that. If they don't, well I'm sorry, but a sexual partner who repeatedly tries to transgress sexual boundaries is not someone you should be having sex with.

Telling a sexual partner that you do not want to engage in a specific act should not be difficult. If it is difficult, then you should not be having sex with that person/ persons. No one should ever have to use this line to describe their sexual relationships: "(i)n the last few years, I’ve been remarkably creative with ways to avoid posterior decorating out of sheer necessity." You should be able to say no and that word be respected. If your partner doesn't respect that word or keeps asking or keeps trying, then you aren't in a healthy sexual relationship. You aren't in a healthy relationship.

A partner who does not listen to you when you say no is a rapist. You do not need tips to avoid having anal sex if you do not want too. A good partner should respect your decision. Crotchless panties shouldn't be used as a defensive weapon against the possibility of being anally raped. If you like wearing them during sex, wear them. But, do not wear them as a way of trying to focus your partner away from doing something to your body that you dislike. If you have to bargain with other sexual acts to prevent someone doing something you dislike, you should not be having sex with them. You most certainly should not be in a relationship with them.

The entire Vagenda article was basically an instruction manual on how to avoid anal rape. It puts the onus on the female partner, instead of expecting the male partner not to be a rapist.

Women don't need a guide on how to avoid anal rape. Men need to stop raping.

Correction: It has been pointed out, via twitter, that I am implying that it is easy to just walk out of an abusive relationship. I am very sorry. I do know how hard it is to leave an abusive relationship and I should never have made that implication.

Read More

On Compulsory Heterosexuality by Michele Braa-Heidner

(Image from here)

The following was written by feminist Michele Braa-Heidner. I came across it on my FB feed. It is one of those pieces of feminist theory which was uncomfortable to read the first time but I've been rereading. I find all of Braa-Heidner's writing thought-provoking, inspiring and, frequently, a giant kick in the ass: 

If heterosexuality was expressed in a non patriarchal, male dominated scenario, heterosexuality may have merit, but as it stands, existing within the confines of patriarchy, we must question it completely. Why do women want to be with men knowing what we know about men? Knowing that all men disrespect and hate women most of the time? Seeing the devastating results of male violence against women historically and currently? Seeing men dominate, oppress, violate and murder women? We must ask ourselves is our heterosexuality healthy or is it an adapted survival behavior in response to male violence against females? Since we don't have any frame of reference for healthy heterosexuality where women and men are both respected free and equal human beings, we cannot say with any conviction that patriarchal heterosexuality is normal, healthy or natural. Since we don't have any frame of reference of a type of heterosexuality that exists without the component of male violence against women, we cannot come to the conclusion that patriarchal heterosexuality is normal, healthy or natural.

When women against all logic and evidence, continue to have relationships with men, regardless of how they treat us, we must conclude that there is another mechanism in play here. When we begin to question heterosexuality, I mean really question it and dismantle it within the patriarchal confines, we expose the insanity of women "choosing" to be with men on male merit alone because the hard truth of the matter is that men don't deserve women on merit alone. Consequently, this insane need for women to be with men begins to reveal itself as a symptom or reaction to the conditions of female enslavement and victimization. A means for surviving male violence. This becomes even more evident when you read the symptoms of oppressive/dominant relationships and how the behaviors of subservience are exactly the same behaviors as femininity. That even men display "feminine" behaviors when they are being dominated. What if women have adapted to male domination and violence by "sleeping with the enemy"? By getting close to their captors in an effort to be able to control their environment or to curtail male violence? We need to start asking ourselves these questions so that we can begin to analyze our relationships with men if we ever want to have healthy ones or further, decide not to.

If we do this, analyze our desire to be with men, we may find that there is no good reason. That our relationships are not based on reciprocal respect, but instead based on our own terror. Our individual man could be to us, a life preserver amongst a sea of potential male predators. We may find that on the surface we kid ourselves into believing that we need them or want them but underneath this surface level, we see that this is just a band-aide covering up our terror from the inherent memory, cell memory, of our violent enslavement at the hands of men. There is ample evidence that connects feminine behaviors especially in our relationships with men that mimic the behaviors of victims of Stockholm's Syndrome.

Another factor involved here is that most male violence against women including rape is done by the men that women know or have relationships with, not by strangers. The nuclear family is the playground for male violence due to the isolation of women under the roof and control of individual men. We are constantly inundated with threats of violence from male strangers, but the truth is this compared to non stranger male violence is rare. I believe the reason for this that patriarchy has a stake in keeping women terrified of the strange man out there, outside our safe homes, because this terror keeps women in their place, within the confines of the nuclear family, the individual man and of patriarchy on a societal level. Women then cling to their "men" in an effort to stay safe from the strange violent males--out there. Women stay in abusive relationships because they have Stockholm's syndrome, not because they are stupid or because they like it. She is merely trying to survive violence in the best way she knows how.

Women learn to see themselves as inferior and men superior because they must put themselves in their captors shoes to be able to feel safer to be able to figure out when an if he will be violent and try to curtail his violence. This is why women tend to dislike themselves and other women because they are seeing themselves through the dominant male eyes. Women then see themselves and other women as weak, stupid, petty and deserving of male punishment, yet another reason why women tend to like men over women. And this is also why women tend to compete with other women when it comes to male attention. Patriarchy teaches women this lie, that men are important and women are not; therefore, to be important, women must be with men thereby getting attention or importance through osmosis. All of these factors play into what we know as "heterosexuality" and all of these factors also play into the reasons for why we think heterosexuality is necessary. If we take these factors and or reasons out of the equation, would we be heterosexual? Would women want to be with men?

Read More

How to Tell When You Need to Invest in a Divorce Lawyer and a Vibrator

(Image from here)

This morning I awoke to this utterly brilliant piece by The Kraken Awakes on Paperchase's unbelievable misogyny. You have to read Kraken's takedown of these cards because it is just brilliant. 

There is nothing I can add to the Kraken's smackdown except to say that if you receive one of the following from your male partner, you need a divorce lawyer and a vibrator* because he's an arsenugget and you are worth so much more than him.

(Well, actually, being on the RadFem spectrum, I think women should spend more time learning how to pleasure themselves without the use of sex toys. After all, learning to love ourselves is an important part of feminism and that includes sexually. I'm not against sex toys. I just want women to feel comfortable and sexual  within their own bodies without needing external options. But, definitely, the divorce lawyer is needed.)

Read More