Why is it surprising, or even interesting that Bristol Palin has sex – I mean pregnancy is generally the sure-fire way to know that one is having sex, which is really why this pregnancy is show-cased. The real news here is that the daughter of moral values America is having premarital sex (along with 40% of American teenage girls). The official statement by Sarah Palin actually suggests that Bristol might be having a shot-gun wedding – Morally Majority indeed!

Bristol Palin is not the only daughter of the Moral Majority who is engaging in premarital sex – She however, will be the only one on cable news, the only one that requires official statements. Her body is not hers anymore, it belongs to body politic and for this I am incredibly sad, and sadder still because the bodies and sexualities of young women are routinely co-opted because they are universal targets that are made to bare opposing ideology upon their shoulders.

The sexuality of young girls is always understood as someone’s failure. For the progressives Bristol’s pregnancy is the failure of the abstinence only sex ed. For the abstinence camp, by having the baby she is taking responsibility for the moral failure to closing hers legs tight, until she sells the right to her sex to some dude. Either way, what is going on here is a failure.

There are no interviews anywhere to be found, no statements of any kind from Bristol herself – we are told she choose to have the baby (choose!!), we are told she will marry the father. Her voice is gone. The image of her holding her baby brother – is shockingly prophetic, and thus ironic. I wonder why she was holding her brother (the woman & future mom) instead of Sarah Palin’s husband.

Is it always a failure for someone to fuck? - Young women, poor women, drug addicted women, retarded women, genetically inferior women, lesbian woman all these women ought to keep their fucking secret and never ever, flaunt it in the face the body politic by actually becoming pregnant, and continuing their pregnancy to term – there is no greater sin against the social order.

In this way, abortions (while must absolutely remain legal), are actually not some radical departure, abortions are maintaining the social order. Bristol only has only thing going against her – age, and thus while scandalous, we can forgive her the pregnancy, if of course she promise to marry the father and thus her sexuality will again be safely possessed and controlled – if her parents couldn’t keep her chaste, perhaps her husband will achieve the proper results.

Now Imagine that Bristol is not only young, but she has one or two other notch from the list above. Better yet, imagine it was not a mistake, imagine that Bristol (still 17) paid one of her high school friends for his sperm, and injected herself with the sperm, or better yet her lover injected herself with that sperm. Then what would we think? Abstinence Sex ed. cannot be blamed any longer, nor the promiscuity of the youth. Who will we blame then for the radical act that is pregnancy.

However, for the women that are the opposite of the list above – older, educated, health, wealthy, and wise – for them the failure to conceive is just as heretical as is the choice to be pregnant for other women.

The pregnant body is the most political image on earth.

I’ve always been a pick-you- gyno –out-of the-yellow-pages kind of girl, since all I needed was the birthcontrol prescription, and the gyno was the gatekeeper of the goods. At my University Health Center, the kind nurse- practitioners understood this truth and happily forked over the birthcontrol prescriptions and answered any questions I had.

After, I graduated and moved to DC, it was time to go to a grown-up gyno, and I simply called a few random ones and picked the one that had appointments available. Low and behold, I stumbled on Doctor Constance Bohon, who decided to discuss my fertility and the way its being destroyed by my fat, issues I did not ask anything about. When she brought up her “concerns” I told he that I appreciate the information; however, I was comfortable with my body. The Good Doctor, actually went to tell me that, it is a major problem that when I look in the mirror, I think ‘this is me” and I am ok with it. She knows some older women who are like that, but me at me young age, I can still change, thus I should not accept my body.

In the process of my short visit she also managed to mention that she has “friends” who do not accept pregnant patients who smoke tobacco… I am surprised the doctor accepts patients who are fat, but then, I guess it’s an economic necessity.

I also did a bit research to see what everyone else thought about Bohon, and following bit of medical wisdom was attributed to her by the Washington Post:

“In pregnancy, the uterus weighs a lot more, and jogging puts extra strain on the ligaments around it. So that can start to drag the uterus down”

The general guidelines of this topic seem to be, if you used to run, nothing wrong with continuing to run during pregnancy. Don’t believe me, give it a google.  And, the uterus will just have to learn to catch up!

Thank you Doctor Bohon for your good advice.

As annoyed as I was at the time, I did not bother to write this post, I just went on with my life, until today, when I needed Capital Women’s Care (a practice of many gynos, one of whom is Bohon) to call in my birthcontrol prescription to a pharmacy in New York City, which they finally agreed to do, after I lost it and screamed at them in front of my entire office.

Thank Capital Women’s Care for the excellent care you provided today.

At the end of all that, I was not able to pick up my prescription after all, because the medical insurance will not cover it until tomorrow!

And what is the point of this rant?

We need some way of knowing which doctors are going to judge us, and which doctors will treat us? If only there was some kind of forum where we could trash gynos we hate and celebrate gynos well love… is there such a thing already, and I just don’t know about it?

Some bloggers have cited parallels to eating disorders. Both anorexics and the burka women are denying their bodies in order to make them “disappear”. Both are reacting to unattainable cultural ideals, be they size-zero thinness or increasingly stringent standards of modesty in the Charedi world, by taking them to an obsessive extreme. And anorexia is often understood to be a desperate way for women to assert control over at least one aspect of their lives. Surely, wearing a burka or vowing silence can be construed similarly. Jewish Chronicle.

The assumption behind the blog I cited above is that there is a kind of modesty that is good, and thus by comparison wanting to be skinny per se, is not the problem, it is just the twisty version that becomes a problem. This analysis does not implicate the “healthy” majority in the illness of the fanatics. I, however, implicate the very notion that a woman should strive to be thin or/and modest as the fuel behind this bazaar fire.

Women who strive to be thin or/and modest are doing so (most of the time) because they believe, that they are striving for an ideal of womanhood, an idea that is directly connected to pleasing men sexually (anorexia) and following men’s rules (modesty).

Tangent: Lesbians are at much lower risk of Anorexia. Doesn’t surprise me! (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1994; 62(2):252- 260)

There is no “good” desire to be thin, and there is no “good” desire to be modest. Modesty, is a bad idea, not just at its extreme, it is a bad idea at its inception, because modesty is about women not tempting men by remaining silent and covered! Women silencing themselves for the sake of men is the very definition of patriarchy, if you ask me.

The perversion of modesty is only it progression. And anaraxia, is just the progression of the desire to be thin (aka, desirable, aka beautiful, aka for men).

Thus, the frame of reference must change. Twisty modesty is not going to disappear, until the ideal of modesty disappears, and of course the same thing can be said, and is often said about eating disorders. The change in these fields begins with a change in discourse.

Modestly aught to be a dirty word.

She blaims FASD on everything from Epilepsy to loneliness. Thus clearly it a problem if it can cause any problem, and thus you cannot prove anything because, as suprising as it maybe, even women how do not drink have children, who may at sometime be lonely. However by far, my favorite line about FAS comes from a BBC article that is supposed to tell women not to drink, even one drink from the time they start trying to get pregnant till the baby pops out; however the following sentence makes me wonder

“Light drinking is not harmful but the only way to guarantee your baby won’t be affected is not to drink at all.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/619840.stm

What does that sentence even mean? It is like saying “The only way to prevent the unborn from getting hit by cars in side their mother’s womb is to stay at home, far from cars” instead of telling women to look both ways before crossing the street.

The end on this rather morbid, but fun topic!

He admits that the statement is true (!) but because it he does not like my argument he calls it “intelectually dishonest” while what he actually means is “not in accordence with my morality,” which is actually the apposite of intelectual honoesty. Also, I’m fasinated by the link the government website that seems to offer nothing in the way of data. I challange you to find a reputable scientific source that links small amounts of drinking (up to 8 drinks a week) with any abnormalities in the child with any degree of conclusiveness. The ADD stuff seems like a huge reach considering the fact that women in the past drank more during preganancy (mostly likely since the drinking taboo in the states was not wide spread) but the rate of ADD related conditions is going up.