Pacific Views

Sex and Oppression

Jacqueline Passey explores the issue of sex in a post on why sex is better than asexual reproduction, and power in relationships by talking about what it's like to be a woman and why men should care. Finally, she points to what was apparently a very popular LiveJournal post, the Stop F*ing Him Manifesto.

Juan Cole writes persuasively on how the Terri Schiavo case and the treatment of Iraqis are tied in to the patriarchal dominance mentality of the Christian right, emphasis mine:

... Anti-abortion activism is essentially patriarchal. It insists that the woman's egg, once fertilized, is immediately a person and that the woman loses control over her body by virtue of being impregnated by her husband's sperm. It is men who dictate to the woman that she must carry the fertilized egg to term, must be a mother once impregnated by a man. For extreme anti-abortionists, even a woman who has been raped or is in danger of losing her life if she tries to give birth must be forced to bear the child. A rapist can make a woman be a mother whether she likes it or not, because his maleness gives him prerogatives not withdrawn by his mere criminality. ...

Sexual reproduction may be a heck of an evolutianary leg up on being able to split off clones at will, though as Elayne Riggs has been highlighting recently, having gender poses a knotty set of its own problems. Among them, as Morgaine notes, the existence of 14-year old prostitutes whose societies have no use for them after getting raped and abandoned to sell themselves for $1.

Posted by natasha at April 4, 2005 12:40 AM | Human Rights | Technorati links |