womens bodies as something to be consumed. that about says it all.
as most people probably know by now, we are are predicted to hit the global population milestone of 7-billion on 10/31/11. will anyone remember those digits like we remember 9/11? will this ruin anyones halloween? doubtful. although imagining the standard halloween fare playing out this year, whereby so many men dress up as women and women dress like “sluts” does kind of put an ironic point on it. as if “mens gender role” and their alleged inability to escape it in real life is of any concern to anyone, rather than the fact that male-bodied persons are sticking their dicks into women around the globe with full entitlement and no remorse. and as if womens “prudishness” in real life and womens timeless, global resistance to PIV is a hurdle to be overcome, when PIV is known to cause unwanted pregnancy and women around the world report that their resistance is largely ineffective anyway, where men do whatever they want to women no matter how the women feel about it. dont mind me, i surpassed mere cynicism 3 days ago. every once in awhile we abuse “irony” and go right to living in a cartoon.
in its own reporting on reaching the 7-billion mark, msnbc asked several experts to “identify some major problems — and potential remedies — confronting a world with 7 billion inhabitants.” out of all the experts, not a single one identified PIV or PIV-as-institution as a problem, preferring to skirt around the issue and make it all about womens reproductive organs and controlling what comes out of them, instead of what goes in. of the experts who identified “too many children” as the problem, access to “abortion and contraception” was named as a solution. what would the solution look like, however, if the “problem” were identified as too many unwanted and ambivalent pregnancies, rather than too many pregnancies brought to term? they dont say, but clearly “abortion” becomes a non-answer when one changes the question even slightly. and if the problem were framed as “trying to squeeze female-bodied persons into a male-centric sexual model” anyone with eyes would be forced to see that “contraceptives” would not be the solution, but rather would only reiterate the problem. the people who are asking the questions are doing it wrong, and they are ignoring an obvious solution that would produce real results — namely, putting an end to the PIV-as-sex paradigm. the intellectual dishonesty there is stunning, but not surprising.
interestingly, the new york times reports that in some countries in africa, an initiative has been underway which has been somewhat successful in reducing the birth rate there. where a decreased birth rate has coincided with the increase in womens cultural and interpersonal “voice” the issue has been framed as an issue of “spousal communication” and the “individual human voice” has been identified as the solution:
These powerful findings hint at a deeper phenomenon. Being able to express oneself and exchange ideas without fear of reprisal may be the very essence of empowerment, and potentially more important to lowering birthrates than money or access to health services, or even education. The individual human voice, a tool available even to the poorest people, may be the key not just to population control, but to Africa’s broader political and economic development as well.
that sounds good, but theres quite a lot packed into that conclusion: earlier we are told that traditionally, women who dared discuss “family planning” with their husbands, used contraception covertly or refused to submit to PIV on demand on mens terms were beaten, and the women themselves concluded that even discussing it would be “foolish” where male violence was the predictable response:
“If the man’s penis is up,” explained one, “unless it enters into the vagina, it won’t lie down. So allow him to have his sex and only then can you be free. Is it not better to have the sex than to have the beating?” When asked about family planning, another woman said, “If you talk about such issues, you are a fool.”
so, in addition to increasing womens voices in these communities, another initiative was launched:
Dr. Phillips’s team also recruited male scouts to keep an ear to the ground for gossip about men who beat their wives, and to then visit them and urge them to stop. According to the forthcoming journal article, since the start of the program wife beating has declined and the fertility rate has fallen to 3.5 children per woman, a drop of more than one birth.
well isnt that interesting? where women are allowed to refuse PIV or use contraceptives without being beaten or killed by men, they are refusing it, and they are using it. where the hell does this “human voice” and “spousal communication” rhetoric come from? jesus fucking christ, people. and because i dont believe for an instant that anyone writing an op-ed for the new york times is a complete idiot, the only reasonable conclusion here is that they are spinning politics or outright lying when they use those words, instead of acknowledging whats really going on: that when women have the slightest choice in the matter, and where PIV-as-institution isnt backed up by the reality of male violence and rape, women refuse to have PIV, and they refuse to become impregnated by PIV. they decline to be semen receptacles for men, or mens sexual and reproductive slaves. and the birth rate correspondingly declines.
clearly, then, its PIV-as-sex and the male violence and threat of male violence backing it up that needs to be identified as the problem here, when discussing “population” and overpopulation, so we can start working on a real solution. it really could not be more obvious (although its often deliberately obscured, as in the mainstream reporting above) that PIV-as-sex is an institution of men that supports male power, that its a harmful cultural practice that benefits men at womens expense, that its destroying the planet, and it would be the first thing to go if women were truly free.
