Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Bon anniversaire? Hard to wish that for this book in particular.

Living together, as opposed to marriage, puts women at increased risk of abuse. As such, Carolyn Moynihan asks whether it would be reasonable to warn women and men of the consequences. She asks this in the context of Reeva Steenkamp’s death, at the hands of her boyfriend Oscar Pistorius.

Why do we accept this trend? Why do we not warn young women and men of the downside — and the downright dangers — of giving themselves bodily and emotionally to someone they barely know? Why do we not give them the dismal statistics before they start experimenting, and the values and character training that will set them on the path of real friendships and marital commitment? Social silence on this matter means social guilt.

What do you make of this? I think it’s an interesting point. I don’t think living together killed Reeva Steenkamp. I do wonder, more generally, why we are happy to teach young people to engage in risky behaviour with regards to sexual ethics. It’s a long road to freedom for every single one of us on those thorny questions, and it might help, as a starting point, if we didn’t teach that sex is consequence free.

We don’t know our abortion rate. So any commentary declaring sex education to be working because of fewer abortions is just guesswork. That’s just one example for the implications of the lack of data. Thanks Pat Maloney for drawing attention to this.

I think pro-lifers and pro-choicers have to consider the difficult cases and in this story, we have one.

I make the point on occassion that abortion given or abortion denied, most often, does not address the actual circumstances facing the mother. This is another such case. Abortion is wholly legal in the UK (yes, they have a restriction, but it is very high at 24 weeks, I believe, and furthermore, women can get around that in certain circumstances.) She had access to abortion. She had one scheduled. But she hung herself, three days before. A total and utter tragedy.

The scheduled abortion clearly did not alleviate her feelings of despair. And neither would have an abortion fulfilled.

You can go and get an abortion, but you’ll still meet your very same problems on the way home from the clinic. In this case, this poor woman met her problems just before going to the clinic.

I wish someone had been able to reach her in time.

I go to the movies often enough because good friends ask and it seems sociable to say yes. I generally have a running commentary going on in the back of my head that goes a little bit like this fake trailer. And I truly couldn’t stand The Notebook. Enjoy.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gv-AMiofEI]

This is a little funny in places. I have a problem with commercialism of all kinds, around most every holiday, including Valentine’s Day. (Don’t read me wrong, however, I would graciously accept flowers of any kind, any day of the year. It just can never hurt to make this publicly known.)

I shall be spending Valentine’s Day in the pool, getting my behind kicked by a bunch of other swimmers who are far better than me, but I was placed in their lane because I worked overzealously hard to swim super duper (yes, super duper) fast upon entering the swim club. This was a mistake because now, thrice weekly, I have to keep up this same unnaturally speedy clip, having been bumped up a lane beyond my true capacity. Having seen that “if I push myself, I can do it” the coach has chosen, rather ungraciously, to not allow me to return to my lazy ways. And so it goes, and so it goes. Wish me luck!

I agree, and this is information young women must hear. Makes me sad. These words, so neatly typed on the page, spell the personal unhappiness of so many.

However on this:

That is not what girls want. For girls, sex without affection is hollow and eventually degrading. (To understand the soul-deadening effects of male-female relations without moral constraints, watch the unutterably sad TV series Girls.) Elevated rates of cutting, burning, binge drinking and anorexia amongst girls — not boys — suggest that today’s cultural trends are harmful to girls.

I would nuance it, a bit. I understand she was speaking to an audience of girls. But trends toward casual sex and a lack of commitment have led boys down a thorny garden path too, filled with porn, prostitution, poor habits, lack of motivation, laziness and general immaturity.

So while we tend to (and I tend to, simply because I am a woman) focus on the negatives for girls, there are negatives for boys, too. Of course, this makes sense, and I doubt very much that Barbara Kay would disagree–it just wasn’t her focus for this short piece.

I have been reminded lately of the fact that regardless of what I personally make, I am very rich. In contrast with the rest of the world, I am supremely wealthy. This story drives that home. It is a different culture and era, but still, I don’t think many of us would think ten kids, two bedrooms and no car sounds comfortable. We’d probably launch some sort of anti-poverty campaign to “improve” his (perfectly happy) childhood.

Read about this sad case, here. A 29-year-old mother dies when she goes for a late-term abortion at 33 weeks.

The abortionist who did this is featured in a recent documentary called After Tiller. Jill Stanek rightly says, “That documentary’s credibility has now gone up in smoke.”

Savita’s sad case also comes to mind. There was media uproar over that death. Why not here? Are pro-life activists not doing their job in raising it enough? Or does the media turn a blind eye because they want to protect the current legal-on-demand status for abortion?

You’ll recall there was a bizarrely inappropriate tribute to Roe v Wade making the rounds, not too long ago. I posted it here, but the video has since been removed.

Now there’s a parody of that horrible “tribute.” Here it is.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=JNU7RB_QdOI&NR=1&noredirect=1]