I’m not sure how to feel about that.
On the one hand, this is uncomfortably close to forced sterilization, especially since she is being rewarded for following the judge’s suggestion with a shorter sentence.
On the other hand, she has already given birth to seven children, some of which while being on drugs, and has given to parental rights to six of them. It’s possible this was voluntary. If I were her, I wouldn’t want to have more kids only to have them taken from me.
I guess I’m going to split the difference and feel my usual pity for the woman’s situation, and disgust at how the US treats drug addiction as a criminal justice issue instead of a public health issue.
On the one hand I agree with you re: weighing the issue. On the other hand, I’ve never heard of a man who had had multiple children and wasn’t supporting them have anyone in authority seriously press for a vasectomy.
Not exactly the situation you describe, but a similar rationale to this case (trying to prevent the birth of substance-addicted babies):
So if its offered to women, its fine… but if its offered to men the Judge gets reprimanded.
Fucking hell…
Yeah, that part’s definitely skeevy. The only plausible argument I can see them making for a difference between the two is that the woman wasn’t explicitly offered leniency in exchange for the procedure, but if it’s allowed to become a pattern, it doesn’t need to be explicitly stated.
Nice piece in The Atlantic critiquing Trump’s tweet (etc.) about how men are supposedly being harmed by accusations against them:
This is really really good.
Explains why “just say no” is terrible advice, and how women go to extreme lengths to avoid having to use the word “no”.
I <3 Rebecca “Men explain things to me” Solnit.
WARNING: description of an especially horrific assault.
Manne is arguing against a weighty and well-established school of thought. Catharine A. MacKinnon has posed the question: “When will women be human?” Rae Langton has explored the idea of sexual solipsism, a doubt that women’s minds exist. And countless theorists talk about “objectification,” the tendency to deny women’s autonomy and subjecthood, and to scant their experiences. Like Fiske and Rai, Manne sees a larger truth in the opposite tendency. In misogyny, she argues, “often, it’s not a sense of women’s humanity that is lacking. Her humanity is precisely the problem.”
Men, she proposes, have come to expect certain things from women—attention, admiration, sympathy, solace, and, of course, sex and love. Misogyny is the mind-set that polices and enforces these goals; it’s the “law enforcement branch” of the patriarchy. The most obvious example of this attitude is the punishing of “bad women,” where being bad means failing to give men what they want. But misogyny also involves rewarding women who do conform, and sympathizing with men (Manne calls this “himpathy”) who have done awful things to women.
Happy Valentines Day everyone!
I love the Olympics, but I also know it ain’t without problems.
Here’s one:
The anniversary of Hypatia’s death is coming (International Women’s Day, the day after my b-day).
The grace of this 23yr old woman is amazing.
I love the part where she says, “well I read”. She’s so nice and polite about it, but it’s still a burn. Because, of course, the extrapolation is that those TV people don’t read.
And she’s probably right