Why Choice Matters

Choice matters because choice is about freedom. Every day, we make decisions about our lives, our bodies, and our children’s lives. Some of these decisions are more consequential than others—like if you should buy a pair of boots vs. if you should vaccinate your child—but they all matter. Through accessing the appropriate health care and being in control of their bodies, women are in the driver’s seat of their lives; they can choose their own path. In the United States, the ongoing fuss over vaccination makes headlines frequently as outbreaks of diseases such as measles become more and more alarming. This is a health care decision that is about people’s lives, but in many places, vaccination is still a choice. Choice only seems to become a problem when it is about women’s bodies because women’s bodies are a political battleground, a site of othering, and thus they must be controlled. Restricting women’s access to reproductive healthcare and education is just one way of doing that. If women are barefoot and pregnant, they cannot dominate the public sphere.

Choice matters because choice is about dignity. Lack of choice reinforces the feminization of poverty. There is a continuing increase in single mother households in the world, which results in higher percentages of women in poverty. Different factors can be taken into account for the feminization of poverty, but one dominant factor is inadequate access to family planning. Many single mothers are not able to go to school in order to put themselves in a position to earn a decent standard of living, or access basic needs such as health care. I imagine parenting alone in poverty ridden conditions can cause emotional instability for both the mother and the child; queue the cycle of poverty. Despite what many would think, it’s not just lower pay and pensions that make women poorer than men. It’s lack of choice. Specifically, the financial and emotional consequences women pay for not having a choice over their own bodies. Feminist communities have known this for a long time: access to contraception and abortion is a vital tool for fostering social justice and reducing inequalities.

Choice matters because choice is about life and death. Although it is mainly considered a problem of the developing world, maternal mortality remains a challenge in North America as well. Given the barriers women face in accessing reproductive services and the absence of a mother-centric approach to maternity care, this information is not surprising. Low-income women living in rural spaces without access to reproductive healthcare services such as Planned Parenthood, cannot be examined by an OB-GYN to confirm that their pregnancy is a healthy one. Therefore, their pregnancy could be a death sentence and that is not a pleasant thought. The message sent here is clear: women are walking incubators and the only concern is the life of the fetus. The idea that women’s bodies and women’s lives matter is so often rejected because women’s personhood has historically been debatable. You only need to look to a few notable figures such as Napoleon, Plato and Walt Disney to understand this. Actually, you don’t even need to look back, you just need to turn on the news.

The Adultification of Black Girls

Why didn’t anybody notice? Well, everybody did notice, but nobody cared because we were black girls.

Few docuseries have captivated me as much as Surviving R. Kelly. He was invisible in plain sight. He destroyed girls and we are all guilty.

The silence, unconcern and lack of sympathy for Black girls and women when they are sexually assaulted is shocking but unsurprising. It is unsurprising because thousands of years of scientific racism (looking at you Immanuel Kant) has allowed for a general societal consensus that black females develop quicker, are more sexual and are somehow dirty. Many young black women do not know life without sexual violence. 

The adults around these young girls were silent. Some say this was the worst part. They felt Kelly was wrong, but turned their heads or walked away. That silence turned into complicity. 

The most public example of his monstrosity (I believe) happened early in his career. My immediate reaction to R. Kelly when he illegally married then 15-year-old R&B singer Aaliyah (Miss Age Is Just A Number), was nausea. She was a child. Later, Kelly would spark joy in kids' souls with his song I Believe I Can Fly, in the 1996 film Space Jam. He hung out outside high schools and in malls; he was a real Pied Piper.

Kelly himself was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and grew up in the projects. I note this because it is a historical fact, not because I think it excuses urinating in a child's mouth. 

My main takeaway from this six part series is that Black girls and women are not given personhood, value or respect in our society. Racism and misogyny have collided to create unique experiences for Black girls and women. It is also unsurprising that so few Black girls and women report sexual assault. As a society, we're much more concerned with them being "fast" than we are with the men who prey on them. 

Supporting Women In Theory Vs. Practice

Happy 2018 9 y'all aka the year the United States congress impeaches the motherfucker. Joy!

For my first blog of the New Year, I wanted to write about supporting women in theory vs. practice. I believe if you have a conversation with any random man on the street, he will most likely believe in supporting women. This is good! Most men are not misogynistic assholes. However, there is a difference between talking about equality in the abstract and taking these big "radical ideas" and implementing them into mainstream society. 

Talking about equality in the abstract is much less unsettling and does not induce the same type of anxiety about the collective action of women that seems to accompany any tangible progress on equality and women's empowerment. 

This anxiety has been most evident recently through Tucker Carlson's mindless rant about successful women ushering in the “decline of men”. He refers to present day as the "dark ages" and implies that feminism has destroyed civilization. The winding thought pattern he lays out is exactly what deters men from supporting women in practice. Because it means more than just supporting their mothers and daughters. Liberating the ladies is about radical social change and entails demolishing the nuclear family and deconstructing masculinity. Woah! Duck!

Most people dislike having their neat and tidy views disrupted. And those views are established quite early in life. It’s hard, painful work challenging yourself, confronting your own prejudices, thinking about how to accommodate your fellow citizens. Most people can’t or won’t do it. That's what makes supporting women in practice so tricky.

It is easier to sit back into the comfortable space of us vs. them, men vs. women. And Carlson does a good job of pitting men and women against each other. He uses basic talking points about false accusations, insecurity, censorship and free speech: incel porn, if you will. However, at the end of this dark tunnel, what I can see more than anything else is that he is afraid and backed into a corner. The patriarch is losing his power, congress is more diverse than ever before, and women don't give a shit about your paycheque because they have their own, and they might just even make more. Shock!