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No such thing as “safe sex”

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I like Dr. Miriam Grossman. I’ve heard her speak and she’s quite no-nonsense, unemotional and smart. She’s the author of Unprotected which highlights the many myriad ways women (girls) are suffering on campus the result of the hook-up culture. She has a new pamphlet coming out called Sense and Sexuality. “It’s not a guide to ‘safer sex'”–she says, which is good, since “safe sex” doesn’t really exist and said “guides” exist by the hundreds already and yet are failing our women on campus right, left and centre. I don’t know what the complete pamphlet will say–here’s a link to a teaser.

I’m aware that saying there is no such thing as “safe sex” will be controversial to many. What are you saying, Andrea–that sex is dangerous in and of itself? Pretty much–I believe it to be emotionally risky even where made physically safe. The only sex that is made something close to safe occurs in marriage, I think, where the risk or fear of betrayal and abandonment goes down–you can be sure your partner knows your name, is unlikely to mix you up with someone else, and will be there in the morning, and the following evening, even…

More to the point, even in serial monogamy, it is very, very hard to make sex physically safe. This makes all these agencies working toward “safe sex” into something of a charade. And given that women react differently to casual sex than men, generally more negatively, once again, women are harmed by these groups that pretend to help.

Dr. Grossman takes steps to eradicate some of the misinformation. And thank God–or Mother Earth or whoever–she does so, especially because she’s not a radical, right-wing Christian. (Those people are very, very scary.)

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Andrea updates: Oh dear, oh dear. That last line was sarcastic. I don’t find right-wing Christians scary. I write everyday, and some days one can have more success, other days less, in conveying tone. Given the comments I have already received, I’ll assume today is a day for less success in conveying sarcasm. Radical right-wingers of the Christian persuasion, your views are welcome here! (I thought that to be quite obvious. What might be less obvious is that radical left-wingers who are pro-life–or want to be– are equally welcome here.)

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Rebecca adds: This reminds me of something I read a few years ago, the title and author of which, of course, elude me. The point was that by permitting and even encouraging teens and young adults to have serious relationships that involve sex, varying levels of less-than-marital commitment, and even cohabitation, we are creating adults who have been through the collapse of a major relationship several times by their late 20s. The scars of breaking up with a high school lover, a university boyfriend or girlfriend with whom you set up housekeeping, or a partner you dated for years to no particular end may not be as bad as the scars caused by divorce, but they’re still damaging. The net effect of this is a legion of men and women in their late 20s or 30s who very much want to make a marriage, but must contend with the emotional and spiritual damage of a series of failed relationships of their own, and of their potential partners.

 

Building a solid marriage is a task of Herculean difficulty under the best of circumstances. Saddling a budding relationship that might be headed for marriage with baggage of past pseudomarriages doesn’t make a happy, lifelong union more likely.

A touching letter

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In today’s Ottawa Citizen:

Re: The shortest life, Margaret Somerville, Aug. 5.

I wept the whole time that I read Margaret Somerville’s opinion article.

Seven years ago I was pregnant with our first born, a son Darren. When I was 24 weeks pregnant, we found out that he had a rare congenital anomaly, a diaphragmatic hernia. They told us that his chance for survival wouldn’t be good at 50/50.

The first thing that they offered us also was to terminate the pregnancy. I went into hysterics that this was the only option they were offering us.

We didn’t know anything about what he had. To us it seemed that if this is what they are offering, it must mean he doesn’t have a hope at all to live.

My husband and I had discussed before we even thought about conceiving that if ever there was anything wrong with our baby, that depending on the severity of it, we would continue on in the pregnancy no matter what.

We chose to continue with the pregnancy because there was a chance things would be fine in our mind with the chances we were given.

The doctor was so casual with his comment that “so folks are we going to terminate this pregnancy today?” That was before we knew what a diaphragmatic hernia even was. Our son only lived for six days and we decided to remove treatment as he got worse over those six days. We had no regrets, for it had ultimately been our decision about his care and to this day I am thankful for the decision we made.

I had a lot of “issues” to deal with about our care and how we were treated but we have made it through that chapter of our lives and have had two beautiful children since then. Thank you to “M.G” for writing your story as it brought back a lot of memories for us. We are glad that people are getting to hear the other side of the story.

Thank you Ms. Somerville for sharing the e-mail. It is appreciated. It helps to know that other people, as sad as it is, have been asked the same questions and sadly treated the same way.

LUCY HONSINGER, Nepean

Where are the women?

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Why is it Morgentaler–that infamous champion of “women’s rights”–who is challenging New Brunswick’s abortion laws? Why not find one of those many women supposedly denied access? Could it be that those women don’t exist–or perhaps on the flip side, they now have a child and don’t really regret that lack of access after all?

The province had argued Morgentaler could not have standing because only a woman who needed to use the clinic had the right to challenge abortion policy.

Morgentaler: Profit (in 2002 the paper Le Droit revealed his gross annual revenue was $11 million) seems more of a motivation than “women’s rights.” Honestly. Where I generally have no problem with men fighting to defend women, this is one case where I’d rather the women fought for themselves.

Thoughts on jogging alone

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A woman is sexually assaulted on the NCC bike paths and people discuss why women can’t choose where they go and when. In fact, women are free to wander at dusk on secluded pathways. Only, they might be violently attacked and raped as a consequence for that choice. Some choice. Now I feel liberated.

In August 2003, Ardeth Wood disappeared while biking on the National Capital Commission (NCC) bike path where I did my daily jogging. When she was found forcibly drowned in a creek off the pathway, I stopped jogging on NCC paths. Aside from being devastated by her death, I was also annoyed to be confined to residential streets for my exercise. The NCC’s stretch of land bordering the Ottawa River in Ottawa/Orleans is a gorgeous and inspiring place to run. As a taxpayer, shouldn’t I be entitled to the same enjoyment of crown land as my male counterparts? Maybe, but as long as some freak will think himself entitled to the use of my body for sexual gratification, my entitlement to run alone on a secluded pathway is tainted by some serious “what if’s?”

Earlier this summer, I went jogging along the river with my son in the jogging stroller. The path ran behind a row of houses and I felt relatively safe until the path veered away from the residential area and into the deeper wooded area where Ardeth Wood met her killer. I tried to reassure myself that this was the afternoon, that the paths were well-traveled, that I was aware of my surroundings and able to defend myself but I couldn’t shake a deep feeling of fear for my safety and that of my son. I returned to the inhabited area and later learned of Pamela Kosmack’s murder on a west-Ottawa bike path. I have now reluctantly accepted that in this crazy world, single women should always be within line-of-sight and earshot of someone else. Violence against women makes us all victims.

Interesting how we don’t hear cries to protect sexual assaulters’ reproductive freedoms, or their ability to do what pleases them with their reproductive organs. No calls for women’s groups and crime-fighting organizations to get their noses out of assaulters’ crotches (you think I’m vulgar? I’m just quoting pro-choice writers who link to our website). Quite obviously I might add, since it’s been long accepted that freedoms cannot be exercised violently over other people’s bodies. Or your reproductive freedom stops where my body begins. But this short foray into the nature and limits of freedom illustrates once again to what extent the acceptability of abortion hinges on dehumanizing the fetus. Because if the fetus is even remotely human abortion becomes the violent exercise of one’s freedom over the body of another. At this point, we can clearly see why abortion advocates must oppose any effort to assign any value to any fetus – as in bill C-484 – lest it opens people’s eyes to what abortion really is. As for me, it is obvious that if the fetus wasn’t human, women wouldn’t need to abort it. Really. The reason why women feel the need to dispatch their unborn babies and the reason why others oppose abortion are one and the same: because it is a baby. And I have yet to understand why women’s reproductive freedom extends over the bodies of their infants.

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Andrea hesitates to add this: but men are also attacked–so the question is not of “a woman’s right to use the NCC paths” but one of understanding that this is indeed a dangerous world we live in… She trails off and vows not to run with headphones on again. Sad.

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Véronique begs to differ: Men are also attacked, granted. And I think that if we look at crime stats, we would quickly find out that it is generally riskier to be a guy than a girl. But I don’t think that we can simply compare statistics on violent attacks and say “there, it is more dangerous to be a guy” — we also need to look at the reasons underlying violent attacks. I am no criminologist but I would venture that women are violently attacked because they are women. Ardeth Wood would not have died had she been a guy. The latest victim of sexual assault on NCC property would not have been assaulted had she been a guy. In fact, how many guys probably passed by unfeathered on both occasions before these women were assaulted? The criminals who thought themselves entitled to the use of both women were specifically and anonymously looking for women. Any woman. And that what makes a woman’s right to use public spaces more qualified than a guy’s.

I won’t look, I won’t discuss–I approve!

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Abortion is best approved of in the dark, not in the light of day, where full and open debate might turn the public against it.

This article discusses Democrats versus Republicans–Barack Obama and Catholics–on abortion. Abortion is not like war, or capital punishment, says the author. He also highlights Obama’s position:

In the particular case of Barack Obama, their case is an even greater mess. Bill Clinton, the last Democratic president, frustrated the will of the U.S. Congress by refusing to sign legislation outlawing partial-birth abortion. Even though this procedure means — just before a full delivery — puncturing the head of the infant so that the brains may be suctioned out, Obama, as an assemblyman in Illinois, took the same position here as the Clintons did: in favor of this grim procedure. Worse still, Obama strongly spoke out in opposition to legislation to disallow abortionists from putting to death infants who survived a first attempt at abortion.  

How do you soften that position–make it more palatable? You can’t.

Declining rate of Kodak moments

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In case no one has noticed, I haven’t been blogging as much lately. The photo biz is partly to blame for it all.

I capture milestones people want to remember. That’s my self-imposed day-job (besides raising my daughter full-time, that is). I get called on mainly to shoot engagements, weddings, pregnancies, babies, children, and families.

Analyzing stats like these ones here makes me realize: people know what their best memories are – their moments worth capturing in time – yet we insist on having less and less of them.

Funny how that works.

Wow, really?

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‘Supermom’ increasingly considered unrealistic:

LONDON — The enthusiasm for juggling high-powered careers and motherhood is on the slide in Britain and the United States as support for stay-at-home moms appears to be growing, a major study showed yesterday.

The study, by Jacqueline Scott from the University of Cambridge, suggests that growing numbers of people are concerned about the impact of working moms on family life.

[…]

“It is conceivable that opinions are shifting as the shine of the ‘supermom’ syndrome wears off, and the idea of women juggling high-powered careers while also baking cookies and reading bedtime stories is increasingly seen to be unrealizable by ordinary mortals,” Prof. Scott said.

It’s not like saying one should not, or could not, work outside the home and raise a family. But you can’t do both full-time, at least not for very long, and trying to do so anyway has a cost. The key is to have goals and ambitions that are reasonable and achievable, and that’s something each family has to figure out for themselves.

When winning means losing

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We are really awfully close to Newspeak around here, where government agencies claim you won even when you have, in fact, lost something. Talk about doubleplusungood.

Ezra Levant:

Some 900 days after I became the only person in the Western world charged with the “offence” of republishing the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, the government has finally acquitted me of illegal “discrimination.” Taxpayers are out more than $500,000 for an investigation that involved fifteen bureaucrats at the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The legal cost to me and the now-defunct Western Standard magazine is $100,000.

[…]

And if I had been a defendant in a civil court, the judge would now order the losing parties to pay my legal bills. Instead, the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities won’t have to pay me a dime. Neither will Syed Soharwardy, the Calgary imam who abandoned his identical complaint against me this spring.

Both managed to hijack a secular government agency to prosecute their radical Islamic fatwa against me — the first blasphemy case in Canada in over 80 years. Their complaints were dismissed, but it is inaccurate to say that they lost: They got the government to rough me up for nearly three years, at no cost to them. The process I was put through was a punishment in itself — and a warning to any other journalists who would defy radical Islam.

[…]

Of course I’m glad to be done with this malicious prosecution — though my antagonists can still appeal my acquittal.
But two years ago, the HRC told me if I paid a few thousand dollars to my accusers and gave them a page in our magazine, I’d be set free. Most victims of the HRCs accept deals like that, and it’s certainly cheaper than a 900-day fight. But getting the approval of the HRC’s censor is morally no better than their shake-down attempt. Whether I have to pay off a radical imam or appease a meddling bureaucrat, it’s still an infringement on our Canadian liberties.

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