#unit post

[ronaldreagansux-blog]

Unit Seven Post: “Like Totally Whatever” by Melissa Lozada-Oliva

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Unit six post: “To JK Rowling, from Cho Chang” by Rachel Rostad

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Unit Three post: “What Kind of Asian Are You?” by Alex Dang

(TW: Slurs used & description of violence)

[ronaldreagansux-blog]

Unit One post: “Feminism” by Ashia Ajani, Tolu Obiwole, Abby Friesen-Johnson, and Alexis Rain Vigil

[alexpopculture-blog]

Unit Post: Purity

My mother’s famous line for pretty much anything me and my sister would do was: Don’t come home with no babies. As soon as we hit puberty, this was pretty much said every time we left the house without the accompaniment of her watchful eye. But why couldn’t I come home with a baby? Obviously God thought I was ready for kids, isn’t that why I got my period.

Now in actuality, obviously no 13 year old is ready to have a baby. Even though my mother and I both knew this, why did she fill the need to constantly warn me of the dangers of sex? Well, in this unit of purity and teenage pregnancy we learn from the documentary The Virginity Myth that in society the morality of a woman is solely held between her legs. One night with a man and a girl is considered loose, immoral, and a slut. In our society whether a woman is considered to be a “good girl” is based on if she has had sex and if so,  with how many guys. So basically, all virgin women are saints and all sexually active women worship the devil. Ok, well maybe not that extreme.

Now I ask the question, are men judged along the same lines? Of course not, silly. The character of a man is built upon the good deeds he has done and his personality. A ‘good guy’ is honest, courageous, and heroic. None of these things are determined by what dangles between their legs. Furthermore, when a guy is judged off of his sexuality, he is seen as something to be laughed at and ashamed of if he is a virgin.

When virgin women are seen as the purest and most precious commodity and virgin men are seen as just weird, it is no wonder that the push for abstinence is primarily targeted at girls. Abstinence teachers use threats like: sex will kill you and abstinence is the only true way to not catch an STI to scare girls out of their sexuality. However, the problem with this is IT DOES’NT WORK. Instead, what it does do is leave sexually active teens uneducated on ways to have safe sex. Our society needs to move away from the abstinence only mantra and start educating people so that they can make good decisions about what they want to do with their bodies.

[popwhatnow-blog]

Unit Post: Purity

Let's talk about purity. Purity is an interesting concept. There are these ideas in our society that a woman's sexual purity is extremely important. This is so true that women are often valued and judged solely on their sexuality. A woman's virginity is thought to be something that should be protected. This takes a woman's own sexuality out of her control.

In the documentary The Purity Myth we see many cases of this. Young women are flooded with information about how precious their virginity is. Sex is taught to be a strictly negative thing if it happens outside of hegemonic heterosexual marriage. Most of these talks are full of misinformation. Some data is skewed to seem threatening and some things are just all out lies. Our government spends insane amounts of money on promoting these abstinence only scare tactics, despite the fact that the don't work. In addition, these messages focus almost solely on young women while ignoring the part young men play in teen sex and pregnancy. Despite it being clear that society doesn't think that women should have control over their own sexuality, they certainly take more than the fair share of the blame.

Since woman simply cannot control their own sexuality, we also have events called purity balls. Purity balls are dances where young girls (sometimes far too young to even begin thinking about sex at all) make a pledge to save themselves for marriage and maintain their purity. The fathers of these young girls then pledge to defend their purity. Because, you know, a girl's purity is constantly under attack.

Yeah. Keep in mind that there is no male equivalent of a purity ball. Young men don't pledge to save their innocence while their mothers vow to fight off any young lady suitors. That is because we don't define men purely on their sexuality. We also trust them to handle their own business. Women are rarely afforded this trust.

So what's the bottom line? Women are defined by their sexuality. Whether that is a pure innocent maiden or a sexually aggressive vixen, it doesn't matter. Women aren't treated like the multidimensional people that they are. We can't boil them down to one element and then take control of that element away from them. That makes women less than human and that leads, as we've seen throughout the year, all sorts of trouble.

[tianareed1]

Unit Post: Teenage Pregnancy and Purity

            Even though its 2013 women still seem to have this extreme importance tied to their virginity where it seems men do not. You always hear about whether a woman can wear white on her wedding day and girls getting abstinence rings from their fathers, but have you ever heard a guy asked if he could wear white at his wedding and “really mean it” or seen fathers slapping purity rings in their son’s finger. We live in a male dominated society that basically allows men to have as much sex as they want, whenever they want without any fear of persecution. But women on the other hand have an extremely regulated sexually identity with little room to explore their sexual selves, and if women do explore their sexuality they often times get (mis) labeled as whores. Does that seem fair that my male counterpart gets to explore his sexual self while I’m ridiculed, forced, or bullied into staying pure?

            The importance put on women and virginity shows that our male dominated society still dominates that way women look at themselves and their sexuality. This idea of purity balls (a formal dance where fathers and daughters pledge to each other that the daughter will be pure till marriage) and purity rings seems aimed more at control of women’s sexuality and not this wholesome idea of purity, because if purity was the main focus then fathers and mothers would preach the importance of purity to both their sons and daughters. But in most situations purity balls/rings are given to daughters by their DADS in hopes that they will save themselves for their HUSBANDS, and the daughter is just caught in the middle of the two men as if her only purpose is to please the men in her life and she has no say in the matter. And I understand fathers wanting to protect their daughters but it shouldn’t come at the expense of the daughters say in the matter and the freedom to make her own decisions. I have no problem with virginity or purity balls/rings as long as you’re the one making the decision and you know you have other choices and if YOU want to save yourself for marriage I have no problem with that, because it’s your decision.