20. University third-year. I identify as a human, a feminist, an artistic individual, a Latina, and a music lover. I'm also a huge Disney fan. XD Mostly reblogs and fandoms, and some social issues. :P // Dauntless. Ravenclaw. District 5.
A few weeks ago my mom stapled pages of a story in one of her women’s magazines together and handed it to me. She gave it to me pretty much with the tag lines “for your feminist blog” and “something new to consider.” Indeed it was; she knows me well.
The story is titled “I was forced to be pregnant.” With a title like that, reading it was actually not on the top of my to read list. I thought it was about women not exercising their right to choice. I was very, very wrong on that one.
Have you ever heard of Reproductive coercion? It is a term that was quite recently coined by the advocates against domestic violence to describe a certain type of abuse some women face. It occurs when a man pressures their partner to have kids and/or impregnates them against their will. Reproductive coercion comes in three different types: 1. Emotional pressure that turns into verbal and physical abuse. 2. Sabotaging birth control 3. Marital rape Over 75% of women 19-49 who reported once experiencing domestic violence also endured some type of reproductive control by men. It’s all about control and domination over a woman’s body.
The first story in the magazine is about a woman who got married around 36 years of age. After a few months of dating her boyfriend talked excitedly about having children. After he proposed he began calling her “The Babymaker.” She then confided with him that one of her fallopian tubes was blocked. He in return insisted she see a fertility doctor. She recounts, “I had finally met a great guy who was eager to start a family with me. What woman wouldn’t fall for that?” Soon after her honeymoon he persisted on in an obsessive manner, but his efforts had to be temporarily halted as she had to get emergency back surgery. Alas, 6 months into recovery he was back to pressuring her again. She was in much pain at the time due to her back, but she agreed to In Vitro Fertilization. She then became pregnant, but soon miscarried. In response, her husband grabbed her by the neck, choking her. He apologized, blaming his outburst on his grief and had her sign up for another round of IVF. And then a third round. She tried to put him off with the excuse that she needed to weigh more before she could take treatments, her husband forced her to get on the scale often and filled the fridge with fattening foods. “It hurt that all I was good for was getting pregnant.” She recounts. At the end, he screamed at her, threatening to replace her with a maid if she couldn’t get pregnant and she told him she no longer wanted to have his child. He destroyed bedroom furniture, pushed her down the stairs and threatened her with a gun. She fled to a domestic violence shelter.
The second story was about a woman who faced marital rape. This woman was 40, had a then boyfriend and two children from a previous marriage. After telling her boyfriend she did not want any more children, her boyfriend refused to wear a condom and began to rape her.She then became pregnant with her third child. Birth control was never an option for her because she couldn’t hide pills anywhere for he went through all of her belongings. Three months after giving birth, he raped her again, impregnating her with twins. She lost the twins in a physical fight with him, but soon became pregnant again. During her recovery she begged her obstetrician to remove her ovaries and devise a lie to tell him; that she had cancer. After a decade of sexual abuse and violence she was able to get a job that kept her out of the house and often times traveling.
One in four callers to the National Domestic Abuse hotline said that their partners had tried to force them to become pregnant. Why? As one woman stated, “Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.”Having a baby is the perfect tie that binds. These type of abusers want to create a circumstance in which their partner is dependent on him.
WHAT’S THAT HAVE TO DO WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD?
Many voters never consider how defunding these clinics could hurt victims of domestic violence who turn to them for counseling as well as pregnancy prevention. Abused women will turn to health care providers long before they will turn to domestic abuse hotlines and organizations. Many women in abusive relationships rely on life saving, affordable care programs such as Title X. It is critical that such places are open and operation when women and children need them so desperately.
holy fuck im crying.
I know I’ve told this story before, but my abusive ex refused to let me take birth control. I was on the pill until he found them in my purse.
I went to the Student Health Center—they were completely unhelpful, choosing to lecture me about the importance of safe sex (recommending condoms) instead of actually listening to my problem.
Then I went to Planned Parenthood. The Nurse Practitioner took one look at my fading bruises and stopped the exam. She called in the doctor. The doctor came in and simply asked me: “Are you ready to leave him?” When I denied that I was being abused, she didn’t argue with me. She just asked me what I needed. I said I need a birth control method that my boyfriend couldn’t detect. She recommended a few options and we decided on Depo.
When I told her that my boyfriend read my emails and listened to my phone messages and was known to follow me, she suggested to do the Depo injections at off hours when the clinic was normally closed. She made a note in my chart and instructed the front desk never to leave messages for me—instead, she programmed her personal cell phone number into my phone under the name “Nora”. She told me she would call me to schedule my appointments; she wouldn’t leave a message, but I should call her back when I was able to.
And that was it. No judgment. No lecture. She walked me to the door and told me to call her day or night if I needed anything. That she lived 5 blocks from campus and would come get me. That I wasn’t alone. That she just wanted me to be safe.
I never called her to come to my rescue. But I have no doubt that she would have come if I had called. She kept me on Depo for a year, giving me those monthly injections in secret, helping me prevent a desperately unwanted pregnancy.
I cannot thank Planned Parenthood enough for the work they do.
Taken from THIS POST from Veronica’s blogspot. Bolding is of my own doing, and what I feel are the most important ideas to be taken from the post. But do try to read the whole thing.
(Warning: Divergent spoilers in this post. Also, discussing sexual assault, which may be a sensitive topic.)
One day last October, while they were out walking, Grace Brown’s friend blurted out the story of her sexual abuse. It wasn’t the first time someone had shared such a secret with her, and, after sleeping on it, she decided to photograph her friend with a poster on which a quote from their attacker had been written. “I just thought: ‘I’ll post this on the internet and maybe more people will see it,’” she says. A week later, feminist authorJessica Valenti reblogged it and exposed the project to a new audience.
Relationships: In 2002 the UK Home Office published the findings of a British Crime Survey to which 6,944 women had responded. Nearly half (45%) of rapes reported to the survey were committed by perpetrators who were victims’ partners at the time of the attack. (As of 2010 this has now gone up to an astonishing 54%). Strangers were responsible for only 8% of rapes reported to the survey.
Drinking: Research with mock juries has demonstrated that people are more likely to blame women for rape if they have been drinking (Wenger & Bornstein, 2006).
Intimacy: A survey of 986 Scots carried out by TNS System Three in February 2008 for the Scottish Government found that if a woman was flirting before being sexually attacked, 25% of adults under 24 believe she should be held at least partly responsible, but among those aged 65 and over, that rose to 50%.
Dress: A fifth of the broad cross-section of the Scottish population (700 interviewees) who took part in research carried out by Progressive on behalf of Rape Crisis Scotland in August 2007 believed that women contribute to rape if they wear revealing clothing.
Look at these girls. Look long and hard. This is the future of your society. Girls who wanted to look sexually appealing at age 7. They cock their hips to make it look like they have curves, and they wear as little as they can get away with. They’re wearing lingerie, for god’s sake. Open your eyes. These are CHILDREN, who should be in adorable frilly clothing, bright pinks and blues and purples. They should be innocent. They don’t even have boobs yet. Yet here they are, trying to fit in to what today’s society worships. These girls are too thin, too sexy, wearing too much makeup, too young. You know what they’re going to be doing in a year? Sexually experimenting with boys- maybe even boys 2 or more years older. Girls like this feed pedophilia, maybe they’ll end up with an old man. In a whorehouse. With a madame, or maybe a pimp. Abusing drugs. Abused themselves. Missing.Dead. Is that really what we want? Is our future going to come to a point where nobody, not even a toddler, is innocent? Where there’s no such thing as purity, and the pursuit of knowledge will never be as important as the pursuit of sex? We are becoming more and more a world as Aldous Huxley described in his book Brave New World. If you haven’t read it, do. Maybe if more people would read it, we’d start raising our children the right way- instead of letting the media do it.
Take a good look at your child’s role models. Ask them who they want most to be like, and ask why. Set them straight. This is not a good road to be on.
Reblogging for the rant, not the picture. I don’t like the words they used in the picture.
^Same.
Also reblogging for the rant and not the picture/words in the picture.
20. University third-year. I identify as a human, a feminist, an artistic individual, a Latina, and a music lover. I'm also a huge Disney fan. XD Mostly reblogs and fandoms, and some social issues. :P // Dauntless. Ravenclaw. District 5.
