Conversations and Politics around Sex

Conversations and Politics around Sex

I will be the first to admit that I do not have any personal opinions on the topic of sex and sexuality but I hear great things about it.  Before college classes on gender and women, all I knew from various discussions and media about sex was that men would like to have more sex and many types of protection allow men to have more without the consequence.  The types of protection are birth control and condoms, and the consequence is a pregnancy.  Oh how naive I was to the politics of sex and what it meant.  I still do not know but now I know a little more.

From the various reading and discussion, I know that women in general take the most responsibilities resulting from sex.  What is interesting is that even though women have to take most  of the responsibility from engaging in sexual activities, the ones who lead the discussion about women’s bodies are men.  Roxane Gray would say that “I have to make sure I am not, in fact reading The Onion. We continue to have national and state debates about abortion, birth control, and reproductive freedom, and men, mostly, are directing that debate. That is the stuff of satire” (Gay 267).  I would have to agree with the statement that the debates are like satire but it is truly scary since this satire does not seem to stop.  I said it does not seem to stop because I hear about abortion during the second wave of the feminist movement where Roe v. Wade gave women the right to have an abortion and during the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  When would the national debates about abortion stop because it should not be discussed by the public since it is a personal and private decision a woman has to make.  Even the man who would be the father should not control whether the woman has an abortion since she is making the difficult choice of keeping the fetus or letting the fetus go.  I could only imagine a woman finding out about the pregnancy, finding out that she had no way to support the baby, and finding out that she could not stop the pregnancy from happening, all because her state politicians made it impossible for an abortion clinic to be accessible.  What kind of world do we live in where people control women and their bodies, making the lives of poor women and their children, for the lack of a better word, shitty.  That's right the world we live in is where "women are mere 'beauties' in men's culture so that culture can be kept male" (Wolf 59). I said poor women before because those with the privilege of flying out to a different country without losing anything to get an abortion do not have the shackles of capitalism.  It must be nice to be rich.  Any way, back to the debates and restrictions of reproductive rights, which I assume encompass abortion rights, do not really protect the majority of the United States population since women would try anything to stop the pregnancy.  Some of “these methods of self-abortion resulted in injury; sometimes they caused sterilization, or, worse yet, death” (Nelson 9).  One has to ask who would create this environment that is riddled with sexism and death.

There is no one answer to the person or organization that has devalued women over and over again. The messages taken from these politics is that women are secondary to men since some of them made it clear that they could control women’s bodies through legislation and that women are secondary to the potential baby. What is evident is that "the U.S. is the only country among 41 nations that does not mandate any paid leave for new parents" (Livingston). Taking away reproductive rights seems like politicians are restricting women from being sexually active.  Could it be that those men only care about getting reelected or could it be that they just do not care about women in their lives.  Until I know more about the reasons why there are still discussions about abortion, I would have to conclude that the goal of the barriers is to control and take away the rights of women.  I am reminded of the election race which Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump because the barriers for women are clearly shown.  It is a way to show that the barriers for abortion are just one aspect of the sexist society we live in.  The media reiterate this sexism when it talks about the clothing Hillary Clinton wore and not her policies.  The reiteration of abortion in the media is secretly enforcing the sexism in our culture.  Hillary Clinton is very strong in the sense that she was very close to the highest government office after all the choices taken away from women. The media treats Hillary with double standard but the fact that Hillary Clinton made it so far give me hope to a better society where men and women respect one another.

From Article from Washingtonpost.com. How the United States does not have paid maternal leave compare to other countries.

Work Cited

Gay, Roxane. The Alienable Rights of Women.

Livingston, Gretchen. Among 41 nations, U.S. is the outlier when it comes to paid parental leave. Pewresearch.org . 2016.
Nelson, Jennifer. Abortion to Reproductive Rights.
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. Chatto & Windos. 1990.