Stephenie Meyer is an anti-feminist, no-talent-hack. November 17, 2009

*This post contains spoilers*

Bella Swan stars in four anti-feminist novels, the Twilight series. She and the other main characters are gender stereotyped to a fault. Abusive misogyny and an embracement of lookism run rampant throughout the 500 pages of the first novel, Twilight, and her experiences with teen romance and/or love are truly a masterpiece on how to have an unhealthy relationship.

Her story is simple enough. Bella is an average teenage girl. She moves to Forks, Washington during her junior year of high school to live with her dad after her mom remarries a traveling baseball player. Bella gets situated at school where she meets Edward Cullen, a disturbingly beautiful and strange boy. He is initially hostile but warms up to her after a while, though his moods swing wildly between tender care and open aggression. In the first half of the story, he saves her life twice, both times by exhibiting extraordinary abilities—super human speed and strength and apparent clairvoyance.

After hearing an ancient Quileute legend about a group of “cold ones” who drank animal blood instead of human blood and went by the name of Cullen, Bella realizes that her gorgeous hero is a vampire. Instead of deterring her from pursuing a relationship with Edward, Bella realizes that nothing, not even the threat of death, could make her life worth living if Edward weren’t in it, and yet the reader is left wondering what exactly it is about Edward that Bella finds so captivating beyond his good looks. Stereotypical teen infatuation and simple physical lust seem to be about it.

Edward, despite repeatedly telling Bella he’s no good for her, is unable to stay away. He find the scent of her blood so alluring that it is a constant temptation to kill her. When she responds to his kisses with equal or greater passion, he draws away least he be overcome with temptation and kill her. Despite this obstacle, the two quickly fall in love and in short order, are professing their undying (?) love for each other.

When a conventional vampire sets his sights on ending Bella’s life, Edward and the entire Cullen family spring into action. Bella is whisked off to safety with Edward’s “sister” and her husband, while Edward, his brother, and their nearly four hundred year old father set a trap for the hunter. The hunter is able to trick Bella into leaving the relative safety of Alice and Jasper’s care. Bella meets the hunter in an abandoned dance studio (claiming he has her mom held hostage) and she is almost killed before Edward and company show up to save the day.

She returns home with a well fabricated cover story and the stage is set for them to live happily ever after…provided Edward is willing to turn her into a vampire so she can live forever with him.

The story is simple enough. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Girl (i.e. damsel) is in distress. Boy (i.e. knight in shining armor) comes to the rescue. Happily ever after.

Unfortunately, for readers, there is a dark undercurrent that flows throughout Twilight. Earlier, I wrote that Bella was “an average teenage girl.” I say “average” because there is nothing to set her apart. She is not especially smart or dumb. She is not particularly ugly or beautiful. She has no particular talents or shortcomings (aside from being chronically clumsy). Bella’s physical appearance is not described, aside from making note that she is about 5′4” and weighs about 110 pounds. In fact, Stephenie Meyer, the author of Twilight, purposefully wrote Bella as a mostly undefined character so that, as she said on her website, “the reader could more easily step into [Bella's] shoes” (www.stepheniemeyer.com). Meyer’s intent, then, was for the reader to put themselves into Bella’s place, which is understandable. I think most writers want their readers to be able to do the same. What is insidious is that, after carefully not defining a character so the reader is more easily able to insert herself into the story, Meyer’s main characters unapologetically promote traditional gender roles, blindly accept society’s unrealistic expectations of feminine beauty, and condone abusive and controlling behavior.

As Leonard Sax, writing for the Washington Post, said, “the girls are still girls, and the boys are traditional men…The lead male characters…are muscular and unwaveringly brave, while Bella and the other girls bake cookies, make supper for the men and hold all-female slumber parties.”

Traditional gender roles are assigned to the main characters from the book’s beginning. The story opens with Bella’s move into her father’s home. Within the first 48 hours, she has assigned herself to kitchen duty as her father can’t “cook much besides fried eggs and bacon” (p. 31). Bella comments on her father being aware of the upcoming school dance; “Only in a town this small would a father know when the high school dances were” (p. 81). Bella fully embraces the stereotype that social events such as dances are the realm of mothers (females) and not fathers (men) even though it would make perfect sense for her father, the chief of police, to be aware of an upcoming teen gathering. Bella makes this even clearer when she tells her dad about an upcoming shopping trip…which is the only time she spends with female friends outside of school, by the way. Bella, explaining that even though she isn’t attending the dance, she is helping her friends pick out dresses, thinks, “I wouldn’t have to explain this to a woman” (p. 149), embracing the idea that men could not possibly understand the female mind while a woman would naturally have an intrinsic understanding of all things “feminine.” Her father quickly embraces his own gender stereotype. As he turns back to the television, Meyer writes, “He seemed to realize that he was out of his depth with the girlie stuff” (p. 149).

Bella’s shopping trip with her friends supplies more gender stereotypes. Bella wanders into a dangerous neighborhood, distracted by the wallowing despair she finds herself in over not having seen Edward in two days. She runs into one group of people—four men. And naturally, these men are rapists who quickly scheme together to lead her away from the more populated areas so they can gang rape her. Edward shows up in the nick of time and saves the day, playing the part of the knight in shining armor to Bella’s damsel in distress who forgot her pepper spray at home.

Edward then takes Bella to a restaurant where he dazzles the, naturally straight, waitress with his unbelievable good looks. He asks Bella how she’s feeling, explaining, “I’m actually waiting for you to go into shock” (p. 168), because, naturally, that is the first reaction a female has to physical danger.

As mentioned earlier, Bella assigned herself kitchen duty for the duration of her stay in Forks. After school and obsessing over Edward, cooking is the only other activity the reader regularly sees Bella engage in. Bella listens to music in passing, reads a bit in passing (romances such as Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice), but she has no other hobbies. She doesn’t paint or write. She doesn’t scrapbook or play an instrument. She doesn’t play video games or read voraciously. She doesn’t talk on the phone or play a sport. She thinks about Edward, talks to Edward, schemes to be with Edward, does some homework, and cooks for her dad, who is largely ungrateful as he watches sports on television and goes fishing on the weekends.

Besides promoting traditional gender roles, Bella fully embraces society’s current standard for female beauty. Bella observes Rosalie, one of Edward’s “sisters,” narrating, “The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room” (p. 18). Three paragraphs later, she remarks, regarding why she couldn’t look away from the five “siblings,” “…their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine” (p. 19). Bella believes that beauty is found in the glossy pages of mass media and nowhere else. There is no place for the beautiful, full figured woman, or the beautiful woman who looks like a human. Nor is there a place for the physically unattractive person who is still valuable. Bella’s only definition of beauty is that which conforms to the airbrushed models found in fashion magazines. Over seventy times, Bella mentions how beautiful the vampires are, in one way or another. Often it is in reference to Bella’s reaction to Edward’s “outrageous perfection” (p. 322). Other times it is within the context of Bella’s perceived plainness in comparison. Bella’s view of herself and her value has been completely and totally shaped by modern definitions of beauty, shallow as they are. As such, she sees herself as plain and therefore, without value.

As disturbing as Bella’s embracement of gender stereotypes and feminine beauty are, what is truly disturbing is her apology for abusive and controlling relationships. As Wendy Nosid of community.feministing.com said, “Bella’s choices are troubling, sure, but it’s the blatant romanticism of what she and [Edward do], excuses of him doing these things “out of love” and “to protect her” that makes her an anti-feminist figure” (http://community.feministing.com).

When asked if Bella is an anti-feminist heroine, Meyer, believing the accusation springs from Bella’s choice to marry early and carry a unexpected and life threatening pregnancy to term, argues that the accusations are invalid because Bella exercises her right to choose—the right to choose that feminists have fought for. Meyer says, “I never meant for her fictional choices to be a model for anyone else’s real life choices…she’s in a situation that none of us has ever been in, because she lives in a fantasy world.” (www.stepheniemeyer.com)

Meyer is correct. Bella does live in a fantasy world, filled with vampires and werewolves. However, if the vampire and werewolf aspects are removed from the story, you are left with a story which fits the description of an abusive relationship: “a pattern of abusive and coercive behaviors used to maintain power and control over a[n]…intimate partner” (http://stanford.edu/group/svab/relationships.shtml). Stanford.edu gives sixteen “signs or ‘red flags’ to assist people in identifying a potentially abusive person” (http://www.stoprelationshipabuse.org/signs.html). Edward exhibits 13 of the 16.

Rachel Allen, a California mom, whose daughter defended Twilight with the “it’s just a fantasy” argument, writes, “[T]he thing is, the romance is not really the fantasy part. The romance is presented as the realistic part.” (www.canow.org)

And therein lays the danger. Feminists have fought for women to be free to make their own choices, even if those choices are not perhaps the wisest. Bella, however, is not really free to make choices. She has been so convinced that she is unappealing that when an attractive boy shows her the slightest attention, she swoons completely. She spends the entire first novel marveling that such an attractive boy would deem her worthy of attention, much less love. She is utterly convinced that she has so little value that she believes it will hurt her parents less to lose her completely than to experience even a modicum of danger. She spends most of the second book (2006, New Moon) in the depths of depression (for which she receives no professional help) because Edward has left her.

It is only when she becomes a vampire herself, gaining the beauty and strength she so admired in Edward, that she gains any value (in her own eyes). Instead of working hard and making choices to better herself, Bella waits for Edward to “rescue” her from her humanity (and its inherent plainness, clumsiness, and fragility) by turning her into vampire.

Again, while no reader can make that exact decision, ten minutes flipping through a stack of popular magazines or surfing through television channels will reveal many other “miracle” cures. From diet pills, hair care products, teeth whiteners to Wonder bras. The “cure” to all of a girl’s problems is just waiting, furthering the belief that something outside oneself can fix the inside.

It is not Bella’s decisions to choose a “traditional” role that makes her an anti-feminist heroine. Meyer’s is mistaken if she believes that is the root of the issue. The root of the issue is the glorifying and romanticizing of gender stereotypes, cookie cutter beauty standards, and abuse. These are what makes Bella Swan an anti-feminist heroine and Twilight inappropriate reading for…well, everyone.

 

 

References

Allen, Rachel. (2008, November 24). Feminist mom talks Twilight. California National Organization for Women. Retrieved November 6, 2009, from http://www.canow.org/canoworg/2008/11/feminist- mom-talks-twilight.html

Meyer, Stephanie. (2005). Twilight. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company

Meyer, Stephanie. (2009, August 28). Frequently asked questions: Breaking Dawn. Retrieved November 6, 2009, from http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/bd_faq.html

Nosid, Wendy. (2008, September 20). Stephenie Meyer side-steps anti-feminist allegations. Retrieved November 6, 2009, from http://community.feministing.com/2008/09/stephanie-meyer-side-steps-ant.html

Sax, Leonard. (2008, August 17). “Twilight” sinks its teeth into feminism. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 6, 2009,, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503099.html

 

After all that, I found this video and it’s just too perfect to not share. Enjoy!

I love my car November 16, 2009

Last summer, my husband bought me a car. Yes, we discussed it before hand but, recognizing his superior knowledge and intuition regarding automobiles, he had the final say. And I am, oh, so glad he did.

Last Saturday dawned as the four days before it had–gray, cloudy, foggy, dreary, depressing, oppressively depressing, gray, blah, foggy. Get the point? Jael and I had a lunch date with some friends so continuing to hide out in the house was not an option. We got into my Volvo V70, with the five-cylinder turbo-charged diesel and five-speed manual transmission, and headed for the base.

2000 Volvo V70

While I detest weather such as we had that day, my car loves it. Never does the Volvo sound happier, shift smoother, and purr more contentedly than when the weather is crushing my soul. This is a good thing, as I absolutely LOVE driving the Volvo when it sounds like that and it has an enormous effect on my mood.

From the deep growl of low RPM’s to the throaty purr of high RPM’s (assisted by the turbo), the car wants to fly down the road. Only on foggy, dreary days do I have a hard time keeping it under 100 (kilometers per mile, about 60) on the way to base. On foggy, dreary days, I find myself flying along at 110-120 kph. As a ticket would NOT help my mood, I am constantly having to break the rhythm of the car’s song.

But even with the speed limit cramping my style, I arrived at the post office/meeting place with a happy heart. My morning funk had been completely dissipated by the joy of driving such an incredible machine. Better than Prozac.

“Thundering Hooves” where are you? October 21, 2009

I had a book when I was a young girl, twelve or so. It was called “Thundering Hooves.” It was about a girl who loved horses. She lived on a farm with her mom, dad and brother. She had had a young horse who threw her dad, who broke his arm, lost his job and subsequently, she was forbidden from having another horse. Her neighbor gets a new horse, an Arabian, and our heroine falls in love with it. She gentles the horse, who had been traumatized by harsh treatment. Her neighbor then sells the horse to the rich snotty girl, who is completely inept when it comes to handling the spirited horse. The heroine goes through a number of schemes trying to raise the money in order to buy the horse but things always seem to fall apart. But when the spirited horse freaks out during a parade, the rich girl is more than willing to trade our heroine her spirited but uncontrollable horse for the heroine’s more docile horse. Everyone’s happy.

Except me. Because this book doesn’t exist. Yeah, it really doesn’t.

*********

Until today when I realized that the book was titled “Pounding Hooves.” It was written by Dorothy Grundbock Johnston. Right there on Amazon. I’m seriously retarded. I’ve been looking for this book (mostly just because I couldn’t ever find it) and the whole time I was looking for the book by the wrong name. No wonder I couldn’t find it, eh?

Such is life.

Women’s Studies: What is it? October 17, 2009

“What is women’s studies?” you ask.

In short, women’s studies is the study of women – their lives, their works, their struggles, their accomplishments, their desires and fears, their future. In length, it’s much, much more – at least for me. Women’s Studies is the rejection of eighteen years worth of indoctrination. It is the shedding of a decade of willful ignorance.

I was raised believing that a women’s place was in the home. No, my parents would never have said, “A women should be in the kitchen bare foot and pregnant” but their disdain for working moms and feminists was clear. I was also raised in a Christian home where the man was head and the woman was submissive. “This models the church’s submission to Christ and to act any other way is a sin,” I was taught. Women were not allowed to preach or even lead prayer in church, teach to a co-ed group nor have any say in adult leadership (women were free to teach and lead male children). My exposure to feminism was through my Christian school, Focus on the Family, and people like Rush Limbaugh. Needless to say, my views were really skewed.

Even though I had a negative view of feminism, I couldn’t have given a definition if I’d been asked but I’d certainly not have guessed it to be anything like the one bell hooks gives in Feminist Politics: “[F]eminism is a movement to end sexism, sexual exploitation, and oppression.” If you had told me that was feminism in a nutshell I would have agreed wholeheartedly. But I didn’t know that definition (nor any other) and, as far as I’d been taught, there was no need for feminism any longer. Women had been “given” the vote, we’d complained enough that we’d been allowed into previously all-male schools and careers and now all was equal and fair. There was nothing left for feminism to do.

Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards’ essay, A Day Without Feminism, revealed to me how wrong that line of think is. No child care? I stay at home with my daughter but I can’t imagine a world where there is no other option. I was appalled to find out that the National Honor Society will rescind a girl’s membership if she gets pregnant. (What happens to a boy if he fathers a child?) The Pill’s side effects were horrifying. The double standard of curfews for college women but not for men made me furious. I was fascinated by the fact that women weren’t the only disregarded ones. Baumgardner and Richards write, “The absence of women’s history, black history, Chicano studies, Asian-American history, queer studies, and Native American history from college curricula implies that they are not worth studying” (A Day Without Feminism, in Women’s Voices Feminist Visions. 2009). I was shocked by what they said about newspaper want ads being divided into “Help Wanted Male” and “Help Wanted Female.” The restrictions placed on a married woman’s ability to secure financial services was mind-blowing.

By the end of the article I was furious. Furious that my mom had never talked to me about this. Furious at myself for never questioning the status-quo. Furious at society for making this information so easy to hide. Furious at the universe for being indifferent. Furious at the fact that change happens when people make it happen and those people are people like me.

Then I got scared. I realized then what Women’s Studies meant to me. Women’s Studies was going to be my own personal revolution. My world was shifting and I didn’t know what was going to happen and I didn’t know how it was going to look when it was done and I didn’t know if I was ready but more than anything, I knew that this was the right road. I knew that hiding from the truth was not the answer. I knew that facing this thing head on was the only way to be true to myself and all that I hold dear.

Women’s Studies is the study of women – their lives, their works, their struggles, their accomplishments, their desires and fears, their future. I am a woman and therefore, Women’s Studies is the study of me – my life, my work, my struggles, my accomplishments, my desires and fears, my future.

Girl Scouts October 15, 2009

My daughter joined the Girls Scouts this last week. Most would not consider this that noteworthy. After all, 3.4 million girls and women are members of this “world’s preeminent organization dedicated solely to girls.” Over 50 million have passed through the ranks of the Girl Scouts. They were one of the leading organization on desegregation. They supported the war effort after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by growing victory gardens, operating bicycle courier services, and more.  Prominent women such as, Barbara and Laura Bush, Tipper Gore, and actress Debbie Reynolds have been involved in the Girl Scouts. Their website claims: “In partnership with committed adult volunteers, girls develop qualities that will serve them all their lives, like leadership, strong values, social conscience, and conviction about their own potential and self-worth.”

What’s not to like, right?

Until I sat down last week and did some research, the only thing I knew about Girl Scouts was what I had “learned” growing up in a Conservative Christian home. And that was that the Girl Scouts were evil. They were partnered with Planned Parenthood, encouraged teen sex, promoted abortion and lesbianism and were all commies. Of course none of this is true nor was it taught to me outright. I can’t honestly remember having any conversations with anyone about the Girl Scouts and yet, I had these impressions.

It is always strange to question things you’ve grown up with, beliefs so deeply ingrained you don’t even realize they are there until you are blindsided by it. And I was completely blind-sided. When Jayme invited Jael to Girl Scouts my first reaction was to smile and nod and get away from this psycho as quickly as possible. Obviously she was evil and would work to corrupt my daughter if she had access.

And then I realized, wait a minute. What do I really even know about the Girl Scouts? … They sell cookies.

That was it.

They sell cookies.

That’s what I knew about the Girl Scouts, all nicely summarized in one sentence. They. Sell. Cookies. More research was needed and that’s what we did. We started with “What’s the big controversy regarding the Girl Scouts?”

Shirley Dobson says: “Jim [Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family] is also determined to protect children from indoctrination by “politically correct” ideas that are promoted by…homosexual activists who want to manipulate young minds …within the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.”

James Dobson himself said, in a 2002 letter to his followers, “[indoctrination] is what is behind the massive effort to install homosexuals and their influence into the Boy Scouts organization. The Girls Scouts have already been invaded, and now, according to one report, a third of Girl Scout leaders are lesbians.” This quote is followed by a little number 20 which, if you click on it, takes you to the reference which is one Kathryn Jean Lopez’s article, “The Cookie Crumbles” from National Review, 23 October 2000, p. 30.

Alrighty. Let’s find this report. Some time on UMUC’s library database and I’ve got it. Culture Watch is the column (which I think is an opinion column…of course, I think that National Review is largely an opinion publication anyway), Kathryn Lopez is the author and here’s what she had to say:

The Girl Scouts’ leaders hope to make their youthful charges the shock troops of an ongoing feminist revolution. It’s been a long slide…they dropped “loyalty” from their oath…in favor of “I will do my best to be honest and fair.”…[The Girl Scouts] executive director, Marsha Johnson Evans, has impeccable feminist credential: She had a 29-year career in the Navy, during which she earned the title of rear admiral, only the second woman ever to do so…she was the mother of the 12-12-5 affirmative-action policy, a mandate to make the Navy look more like America: 12 percent African-American, 12 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent Asain/Pacific.

Wow…I didn’t realize that being successful at your job gave you “impeccable feminist credential[s].” And shouldn’t we be proud of Evans for being only the second woman to become Rear Admiral? Isn’t that something to be proud of? I guess not.

Lopez goes on to say that the Girl Scouts advocate for sexual equality in sports (GOOD GOD! Girls playing sports! The horror!) and that the Girl Scout constitution has a “ringing endorsement of affirmative action in ‘recruitment, hiring, training, and promoting.’ Girl Scout moms are anti-gun…” Wow…I had no idea I was anti-gun. Huh. Who would have thought their mind control devices were so strong that with the signing of Jael’s registration form I became anti-gun.

In this same negative tone Lopez continues writing. She writes, regarding a Senior Scout resource book:

Some activities “you can do as a Girl Scout to address contemporary issues” include “organiz[ing] an even to make people aware of gender bias” or “help[ing] organize an Earth Day celebration.”…Girl Scouts can now earn the “Ms. Fix-It” badge for learning how to fix a leak, rewire an electrical appliance, or re-caulk a window, and the “Car Care” badge for checking fluids, filling tires to the proper pressure, and performing safety checks…Victimization is central to the Girl Scout worldview…

I’m confused. So, the Girl Scouts are bad for encouraging girls to learn how to take care of themselves and then they are bad for talking about victimization? Which way do you want it, Lopez? Oh…you just want to pretend that victimization just doesn’t happen. After all, we are in a post-feminism era with no further need of equality, right? Must be nice to be you.

Now Lopez brings out the big guns. Lesbianism. The Girl Scouts have them. She quotes from a book titled On My Honor: Lesbians Reflect on Their Scouting Experience. It is a collection of memoirs from lesbians who were in the Girl Scouts. Lopez writes, “Girl Scout staffers writing in the book claim that roughly one in three of the Girl Scouts’ paid professional staff is lesbian.”

And that’s it. That’s Dr. James Dobson’s “report.” Wow. A collection of memoirs, in which someone NOT speaking for the organization, claims that 1/3 of the paid professional staff is lesbian is a “report.” Reeeeeeaaaaaally? Also, “paid professional staff” and “Girl Scout leaders” are two VERY different things. When someone says “Girl Scout leaders” you think “troop leaders,” which are ALL volunteer, spend a lot of time with your kids and are NOT paid professionals. Holy. Freaking. Cow.

I’ve got other things to work on (like my first assignment in Women’s Studies…hmmm. Maybe Girl Scout people are raging feminists…)

Dragon Journal October 8, 2009

First of all, I want to apologize for my serious lack of posting. I have been struggling with depression, or rather, since I’m no pyscologist, despondency. Each day has been hard to get through and at the end, I had nothing left with which to post. Not that I didn’t have things to say. I simply lacked the emotional strength to put them onto paper…as it were.

Anyway, I have TONS of pictures to post. I am going to start with the most fun ones. The ones that are easiest to get motivated to do.

A number of months ago, I signed up for a “Dragon Journal” swap. The instructions were to decorate a journal with the theme of dragons. This was what I came up with:

Cover

Bookmark inside front cover

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Pages 6 & 7 -- closed

Pages 6 & 7 -- open

Page 8

Page 9

Page 10

Page 11

Page 12

Page 13

Page 14

Page 15

Page 16

Page 17

Page 18 -- closed

Page 18 -- open

Inside back cover

Back cover

And there you go. That’s my dragon journal. Which cost me $30 to send to England. Kind of sucked but I hope my partner liked it even though it was a month late.

Parental Rights in the Forgotten File October 6, 2009

We finally got an external hard drive so I can clean out the old computer and we can put on a new operating system. As I am going through my old files, cleaning out the junk and finding the good, I am stumbling across half finished almost blogs. I think, since I lack the motivation to do more, I am going to post them as they are.

The following was written almost two years ago. It just kind of ends at the end so…feel free to finish it.

I have a problem. A friend sent me a link to a group which is rallying support for a Constitutional Amendment to protect parental rights from government intrusion without due process of the law. I researched it (I am still in the process but had to get some thought out of my head and onto “paper”) and while I agree in part, I disagree in part as well.

I don’t even know where to begin.

Here’s the part I’m currently upset at:

There is only one solution to this approaching storm: a constitutional amendment that places current Supreme Court doctrine protecting parental rights into the explicit language of the U.S. Constitution. This amendment will shelter the child-parent relationship from the coming storm, ensuring that parents have the right to direct the upbringing and education of their children.

No government, regardless of how well-intentioned it might be, can replace the love and nurture of a parent in the life of a child. Parents care, not because their children are “wards” for whom they are responsible. Parents are willing to brave danger and sacrifice, hardship and heartache to ensure the best for their kids. (the last two paragraphs from ParentalRights.org’s website two years ago.)

I want to draw your attention to a couple of phrases.

“There is only one solution”

Really. Only one. And you’ve discovered it. I am suspicious when anyone or any group claims to have THE answer. Sometimes there is clearly only one answer. In this case I see many answers. Not included in these viable answers are the movement they are fighting against nor the movement they are promoting. More on that later.

“This amendment will shelter the child-parent relationship from the coming storm, ensuring that parents have the right to direct the upbringing and education of their children.”

Um, last time I checked, there were numerous Constitutional Amendments that are currently being violated. Why would this be any different? Also, as I said in my previous blog (read it here), “[t]he only thing that guarantees a right is the willingness to fight and die for those rights.” An amendment is going to do jack-shit until parents are willing, when the government ignores the constitution (Privacy Act anyone?), to take up arms and have their last act in the world be dying for their children or leaving their cushy jobs and McMansions and fleeing the country, provided of course that we’ve not locked ourselves in with a giant wall across our borders. Until parents believe in their rights enough to do that, their rights cannot and will not, be protected.

“Parents care, not because their children are “wards” for whom they are responsible. Parents are willing to brave danger and sacrifice, hardship and heartache to ensure the best for their kids. “

Yeah, and I know a lot of people who aren’t this “model” of a parent. I’ve started meeting some people who aren’t from my church. Yup, I’m 27 years old and I finally have friends that don’t profess the exact same things I do. I’m growing as a person and it’s absolutely blowing my world apart. There are parents out there who are absolutely not “…willing to brave danger and sacrifice, hardship and heartache…” to ensure even the mediocre for their kids. There’s a gal I know who despises her kids. You can see it on her face when they whine at her. Total disgust. She pawns them off on sitters and nannies, refuses to instill the simplest rules or boundaries and then wonders why they are whiny little rotters. She’s not going to fight for her “rights” as a parent and when enough of people like her have allowed the government to roll over them, the government will realize it can do whatever the hell it wants, just like it’s been doing for a century.

Point Two with this group: The first story they present as precedent of the “dark clouds on the horizon” is the story of Rolin and Laura Sumey and their daughter, Sheila. By the time Sheila was 15, there had been numerous “problems” between her and her parents, resulting in Sheila running away a number of times. Extensive counseling was tried but ultimately failed.

In June, again conflict arose and Mrs. Sumey fearing her daughter would again leave home, called the police and they placed Sheila in a receiving home (I have no idea what a receiving home is and a cursory investigation has not provided results. If someone knows what they are, please share your knowledge), preventing her from running away. DSHS (Department of Social and Health Services) began to provide crisis intervention services (as is no doubt law when a parent calls the police on their child). Mrs. Sumey signed consent for Sheila to be in receiving care.

DSHS counseling did not result in reconciliation between Sheila and her parents and within a month, “Sheila filed a petition for alternative residential placement with the Pierce County Juvenile Court…A hearing on the petition was held, and the juvenile court concluded that: the family was in conflict; prior counseling and crisis intervention had failed to remedy that conflict; the conflict could not be remedied by continued placement in the home; and the reasons for the alternative residential placement were not capricious. The court approved the petition for alternative residential placement and ordered that Sheila be placed in a non-secure licensed facility. The court provided for rights of visitation for Mr. and Mrs. Sumey. The case was set for review in 6 months to determine what had been accomplished in resolving the conflict and reuniting the family.” (excerpt from the Law Offices of David S. Vogel, P.L.L.C.)

This is not the story the Parental Rights organization tells you. Here’s their story:

In the early 1980s, a landmark parental rights case reached the Washington State Supreme Court. The case involved 13-year-old Sheila Marie Sumey, whose parents were alarmed when they found evidence of their daughter’s participation in illegal drug activity and escalating sexual involvement. Their response was to act immediately to cut off the negative influences in their daughter’s life by grounding her.

But when Sheila went to her school counselors complaining about her parent’s actions, she was advised that she could be liberated from her parents because there was “conflict between parent and child.” Listening to the advice she had received, Sheila notified Child Protective Services (CPS) about her situation. She was subsequently removed from her home and placed in foster care.

Her parents, desperate to get their daughter back, challenged the actions of the social workers in court. They lost. Even though the judge found that Sheila’s parents had enforced reasonable rules in a proper manner, the state law nevertheless gave CPS the authority to split apart the Sumey family and take Sheila away.

Not quite the same story, it it?

Let’s take a look at the other stories they have on their website:

A thirteen-year-old boy in Washington State was removed from his parents after he complained to school counselors that his parents took him to church too often. His school counselors had encouraged him to call Child Protective Services with his complaint, which led to his subsequent removal and placement in foster care. It was only after the parents agreed to a judge’s requirement of less-frequent church attendance that they were able to recover their son.

After much research and an email to the lawyer who started parentarights.org (to which, when we asked for verification, he said, “I was the lawyer on the case), and then more research, armed now with the lawyer’s name, we were unable to find independent verification that this case ever existed anywhere outside of this lawyer’s mind. This is the story as he put it in another source. The boy’s parents wanted him to attend three church services a week and he wanted to attend only one. The judge ruled that once a week is enough church for a thirteen year old boy. I hate to agree but I must.

If a thirteen year old is being forced to go to church against his will, he is not going to be changed by anything he hears or sees there. By the time a child is an adolescent, the groundwork of character development is complete and it’s just polishing from there on out. Forcing him to attend church three times more often than he wants is going to hinder, not help, his “religious education.”

A West Virginia mother was shocked when a local circuit judge and a family court judge ordered her to share custody of her four-year-old daughter with two of the girl’s babysitters. Referring to the sitters as “psychological co-parents,” the justices first awarded full custody to them, only permitting the mother to visit her daughter four times a week at McDonalds. Eventually she was granted primary custody, but forced to continue to share her daughter with the sitters.

When her case finally reached the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in October 2007, the beleaguered mother was relieved to finally be granted full custody of her daughter.

In their October 25 opinion Supreme Court justices wrote that they were “deeply troubled by the utter disregard” for the mother’s rights. One justice referred to the mother’s right as the “paramount right in the world.”

Chief Justice Robin Davis summed up the case in one simple question.”Why does a natural parent have to prove fitness when she has never been found unfit?” he asked.

This one is a bit more serious. Misty, the mother in this story, had primary custody of her daughter, Senturi. Joshua, the girl’s biological father, had one day a week visitation and was to be paying child support. Christopher and Tanya, the babysitters, were his cousins. They watched Senturi frequently, though how frequently I’ve been unable to ascertain. They were paid for at least a portion of the time they cared for Senturi. When Misty decided to move to Texas to be closer to her family, return to school, and seek better employment, Christopher and Tanya, along with the father, Joshua, went to court. They claimed they’d cared for the child for months on end but I’ve been unable to find record of that claim being investigated. They claimed they were Senturi’s “psychological co-parents.” They were awarded complete custody for a while, then custody with visitation for Misty, then partial custody. When Misty appealed to the supreme court, they reversed the orders of the lower courts and returned full custody to Misty.

So the story as ParentalRights.org presented it was fairly accurate. The problem I have with them using this story as an example is that justice was done. Yes, the mother was deprived of her daughter and the daughter of her mother for a couple of months and that’s regrettable. But the court system did what it is supposed to do. When Misty was unhappy with the results of a lower court, she took it to a higher court and eventually, justice and reason prevailed. Do I think the lower courts were in the wrong? Of course! Do I think a constitutional amendment is the answer to some judge making a bad judgment? Absolutely not!

So the first story they present, they present falsely.

The second is apparently pretend. Maybe I’m being judgmental but if I were a lawyer and someone asked for verification of a case, I would do more than tell them I was the lawyer on the case. I’d give them a link to a court record or a newspaper article or something besides, “I was there. It happened. Take my word for it.”

The third story was a case of a court disregarding parental rights but then in the same court system it was resolved. The child was at no time in the care of someone whom the mother had not already approved. After a couple of months, it worked out. The lower courts were wrong but it’s not an amendment worthy wrong.

The next thing ParentalRights.org petitions against is the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The UNCRC is not something I want the U.S. to ratify but it’s not something that needs an amendment to stop. The reason that the U.S. has not ratified the convention is because it already contradicts U.S. Law. …

American Government Class September 27, 2009

For American Government, I had to write a comment about our two-party system. This was what I wrote:

The Constitution of the United States was a revolutionary work when it was written. The fact that our country has the longest history of uninterrupted democracy points to the quality of this first among many. Our constitution is also the shortest and as such, there are many things it does not mention. Political parties is one of them.

In order to make changes to our current two-party system, we must first make changes to our electoral system. Single-member-district-plurality (SMDP) leads, almost without exception, to a two-party system. Canada, with its unique population conditions, is the only major exception with five parties. However, as party choices on a ballot increase, as happens with proportional representation (PR), participation decreases, especially among lower income voters. The best solution is to combine the systems and use the strengths of each.

Congress should be elected using PR; the president with SMDP. The presidential election should be decided using one of the voting systems which fall under the heading of Condorcet method. In Condorcet voting, voters rank candidates in order of preference. “A particular point of interest is that it is possible for a candidate to be the most preferred overall without being the first preference of any voter. In a sense, the Condorcet method yields the “best compromise” candidate, the one that the largest majority will find to be least disagreeable, even if not their favorite.” (Wikipedia. September 22, 2009.) Example: Suppose 51% of the voters chose Candidate A as their first choice and 49% choose Candidate B. Under normal SMDP, Candidate A would win. However, if 75% of the voters chose Candidate C for their second choice, than Candidate C, being more agreed upon, would win. There is a lot more to it than I’ve described here but that’s the real basics.

That said, there are benefits to having only two strong parties. There is less to consider when heading to the polls. A voter’s choices are A and B. If all else fails, flip a coin. As Mr. Park said, a voter has a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right. The choice is not so easy when dealing with a multi-party system but a voter is more likely to find a party that actually represents her rather than a party that sorta-kinda-better-than-nothing represents her.

When there are only two parties, one is going to have the majority of the seats in the legislature. With proportional representation, there may not be a party in majority and it may be more difficult to get laws passed if cooperation between the groups does not exist. The flip side is that laws favoring one group over another are harder to get passed and the laws that do get passed are more likely to accurately represent the American people, their needs and desires.

Political parties that spring from a coalition of like-minded interest groups definitely have a place in proportional representation. The Green Party is a party gathered around the common interest of protecting the environment. The Christian Right Party would undoubtedly contain members of current Christian interest groups just as the Secular Humanist Party would contain members of the American Atheists and the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers.

Despite the struggles a change would require, changing to proportional representation in the legislature is something we should be fighting for. If we believe in a government of the people, by the people, than we must have proportional representation and the increased choices that goes along with it.

Wikipedia. Retrieved on September 22, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method

YAY FOR LADY REBECCA! September 25, 2009

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/racing-lady-luck-smiles-on-rebecca-1149063.html

Abstinence-Only Education is No Education At All August 29, 2009

Abstinence-only education isn't

Abstinence only education is insidious. It does not teach students the things they need to know but instead attempts to indoctrinate them to a religious standard through the clever use of misinformation and outright lies. Curtis Porter, writing for the Administration for Children & Families (ACF), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, laid out the guidelines for abstinence only education. These guidelines for “educating” students are an affront to progressive thinkers everywhere and abstinence-only curricula distorts the truth, bending it as far as it can without breaking it and, in some situations, snaps it completely.

Abstinence-only curriculum, according to ACF, must teach that a person’s life will turn out better if he or she waits until marriage to have sex. However, researchers Else-Quest, Hyde, and DeLamater, writing for The Journal of Sex Research, found that any attempt to form a causal relationship between premarital sex and negative life outcomes to be “unwarranted” (2005).

The curriculum must define marriage as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as a husband and wife, and the word ’spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife” (p. 1), effectively sentencing homosexual teens to a lifetime of celibacy, along with any who do not believe in traditional marriage. The “one man and one woman” definition of marriage is one of a religious sentiment and one that the Iowa courts, among others, have deemed unconstitutional.

The curricula “must teach the psychological and physical benefits of sexual abstinence-until-marriage” (p. 1), yet the National Association of School Psychologists “believes comprehensive sexuality education is essential to promote the mental, physical, academic and emotional health of our children” (2003) and Lawrence Finer, writing for Public Health Reports, has found that 95 percent of the populace has had premarital sex by the time they are forty-four years of age (2007, p. 1).

The curriculum, and its teachers, are restricted on how much information than can provide to their students. The ACF states that “[i]nformation on contraceptives, if included, must be…presented only as it supports the abstinence message being presented. Curriculum must not promote or endorse, distribute or demonstrate the use of contraception or instruct students in contraceptive usage” (p. 1) (emphasis mine). The reason for the omission of comprehensive contraceptive education is explained by abstinence-only supporter, Linda Klepacki, who says that teaching children about condoms and abstinence, sends them a mixed message. She says, “In other areas of health education as well as abstinence, the highest health standard is communicated (i.e. alcohol, drugs, cigarette use, weapon carrying, etc.) The healthiest choice for school-age youth is to remain sexually abstinent.” However, this logic falls apart when applied to other activities. There are risks to playing football or riding in a car and yet we do not teach our children to abstain from those activities. Instead, he or she is taught the proper way to wear his or her protective equipment and a passenger is taught to wear his or her seat belt. In the same manner, so should students be taught the proper way to use sexual protection. In addition, they should also be taught the “rules” of the game. They need training in making good choices, choosing quality friends, developing and maintaining healthy relationships, sexual and not.

The ACF also states that the curriculum must contain material consistent with eight principles.

A. It is essential that the abstinence education curriculum has as its exclusive purpose, teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity (p. 2).

Abstinence-only supporters claim there are benefits to abstaining and yet Alan Farnham (Is Sex Necessary?), reports that regular sexual intercourse has many mental and health benefits, ranging from decreased depression to a reduced risk of heart disease (2003).

B. It is critical that the abstinence education curriculum teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school-aged children (p. 2).

During an evaluation of five years of abstinence-only education in Arizona, “eighty percent of students reported that they were likely to become sexually active by the time they were 20 years old” (Hauser. 2004). Why is abstinence until marriage the expected standard? It certainly is not based in reality. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that over 70 percent of girls and 60 percent of boys report having had sex before they turn twenty (2009, p. 7). The expectation of abstinence until marriage is an expectation based on the morality of the religious and is, quite frankly, a ridiculous one. Time would be much better spent teaching students how to have sex in as safe a manner as possible once they choose to become sexually active; physically safe and psychologically safe as well.

C. Abstinence education curriculum must teach that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems (pp. 2,3).

Subthemes to “C” are to give students the statistics and rates of failure for condoms and other contraceptives. Representative Henry Waxman found that “abstinence-only curricula contain false and misleading information about the effectiveness of contraceptives.” Several of the curricula cite a 1993 study (which was rejected by the Department of Health and Human Services), which states that condoms only reduce HIV infections by 69 percent. One curriculum states: “[T]he popular claim that ‘condoms help prevent the spread of STDs,’ is not supported by the data” (quoted in Waxman. 2004, pp. 8-10).

Uganda’s fight against the spread of HIV would suggest otherwise. Professor W. Phillips Shively summarizes Uganda’s success in Power and Choice. In 1991, the AIDS infection rate had reached about 15 percent. By 2005, it had dropped to 7 percent. President Musevini achieved this successful reduction when he began promoting the usage of condoms with his simple, straightforward plan. Titled ABC (Abstinence, Being faithful, and Condoms), his program was able to promote condom usage while embracing and encouraging the traditional values of abstinence until marriage and monogamy. Without the addition of increased condom usage, Uganda would not have seen the 50 percent reduction in HIV infection they’ve been able to achieve. (2008. pp 93, 94) Obviously, condoms work.

D. It is required that the abstinence education curriculum teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity (p. 3).

Buss and Shackelford, authors of Susceptibility to Infidelity, found that about fifty percent of married people will not remain monogamous (1997, p. 194). Marty Friedman, author of Straight Talk for Men About Marriage, cites on his website that 41 percent of the population is not married and 24 percent have never been married (2009) and yet, according to Lawrence B. Finer, PhD, 80 percent of unmarried men and women will have had sex by the time they are 44 years old (2007. p. 74). Obviously, sexual activity regulated to within only a “mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage” is not the expected norm of human sexual activity and it is erroneous to prop up an unrealistic standard for youth and expect them to meet it when most adults to not.

E. It is essential that the abstinence education curriculum teaches that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects (p. 4).

Representative Waxman found no scientific support for these statements. In fact, he writes that “one curriculum tells youth that a long list of personal problems – including isolation, jealousy, poverty, heartbreak, substance abuse, unstable longterm commitment, sexual violence, embarrassment, depression, personal disappointment, feelings of being used, loss of honesty, loneliness, and suicide – ‘can be eliminated by being abstinent until marriage’” (2004, pp. 20-21). Alan Farnham writes, “Having regular and enthusiastic sex…confers a host of measurable physiological advantages, be you male or female. (This assumes that you are engaging in sex without contracting a sexually transmitted disease.)” (2003). However, it is hard to engage in sex without contracting a sexually transmitted disease when one has had no education in how to go about protecting oneself. Abstinence-only education’s omission of education on correct condom usage is more likely to cause “harmful psychological and physical effects” than “regular and enthusiastic sex” practiced safely is.

F. It is critical that the abstinence education curriculum teaches that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society (pp. 4-5).

Teaching a student about the harmful consequences of something but not providing him or her with the resources to avoid it – resources beyond abstinence – is worse than a pointless waste of time and money, it is negligence to the extreme.

G. Abstinence education curriculum must teach young people how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increase vulnerability to sexual advances (p. 5-6).

H. It is required that the abstinence education curriculum teaches the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity (p. 6)

Some of the principles of abstinence-only education are commendable. Attaining a degree of self-sufficiency before becoming sexual active is a good goal to shoot for. However, like many goals, there may be bumps along the road that abstinence-only education does not prepare a teen to handle. Teaching teens how to avoid unwanted sexual advances is good. Teaching them that condoms are ineffective is wrong. Teaching kids about the cost of parenthood is good. Blaming mental health problems on premarital sex is bad.

While abstinence-only education may appear to be the answer to STDs and unwed teen parents, it is doing much more to exacerbate the problem than to solve it. Logical fallacies, misinformation, outright lies – these seem to be the standard for abstinence-only education. As such, abstinence-only education needs to be removed from our school curricula. It has no place there; certainly not funded through public funds. Teens need to have real information, real facts. In short, they need the truth and not a thinly veiled religious curriculum based on unrealistic expectations of morality and lies about the effects of sexual activity. Sadly, many adults are unwilling or unable to teach their children the lessons they truly need: how to choose friends; how to choose significant others, for marriage or not; how to make good life decisions; how to be themselves in a healthy and beneficial way. These lessons are not easy. They are not easy to learn nor are they easy to teach but we are definitely not going to find an answer by propagating misinformation, religious bias, and lies.

References

Buss, David M. and Shackelford, Todd K. (1997). Susceptibility to infidelity. Journal of Research in Personality, 31, 193-221

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Sexual and reproductive health of persons aged 10-24 years – United States, 2002—2007, Morbidity and Morality Weekly Report. July 17, 2009/58(SS06);1-58

Else-Quest, N. M.; Hyde, J. S.; DeLamater, J. D. (2005, May). Context counts: long-term sequelae of premarital intercourse or abstinence. Journal of Sex Research. Retrieved August 22, 2009, from Find Articles database, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2372/is_2_42/ai_n13822486/pg_8/

Farnham, Alan. (2003, August 10). Is sex necessary?. Forbes.com. Retrieved on August 23, 2009 from http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/08/cz_af_1008health.html

Finer, Lawrence B. PhD. (2007, January-February). Trends in premarital sex in the United States, 1954 —2003. Public Health Reports, 73-78

Friedman, Marty. (n.d.). Marriage and divorce statistics. Retrieved August 23, 2009, from http://www.meninmarriage.com/article05.htm

Klepacki, Linda. (n.d.). Abstinence Education: Myths and the Truth. Focus on the Family Issue Analysis. Retrieved August 23, 2009, from http://www.citizenlink.org/FOSI/abstinence/A000002153.cfm

National Association of School Psychologists. (2003, April 12). Position statement on sexuality education. Retrieved August 22, 2009, from http://nasponline.org/about_nasp/pospaper_sexed.aspx

Porter, Curtis (2006). Guidance regarding curriculum content. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children & Families, Family and Youth Bureau Retrieved August 23, 2009 from http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/fysb/content/abstinence/cbaeguidance.htm

Shively, W. Phillips. (2008) Power and choice: An introduction to political science. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill

Waxman, Henry A. (2004, December). The content of federally funded abstinence-only education programs. The United States House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform – Minority Staff, Special Investigations Divisions