From Lorraine: Trivialization, Feminism, and a Movie

The one thing that riled me up when I was reading the chapter on trivialization is that historically, women's issues were considered "trivial" and that included domestic violence. The other thing that pissed me off was that again, Habermas seemed to ignore the burden of inequality between the sexes, saying that the government--a public entity--had no right to interfere with one's home life or 'private' matters...and this included a possible doing away with the 'welfare state' because the government would be able to have a say in home and private matters. This does seem evident in the United States, where Welfare has been made punitive, especially to women who didn't seem to follow the government's 'plan' (get married first, then have children. A good read on this is Nancy Rose's "Work-fare or Fair Work?") and where welfare recipients seem to live under a microscope. I guess the conundrum lies in the fact that governments have had laws and rules in place to monitor/ control female sexuality (amongst other things) for ages: Mary Magdalene was gonna be stoned to death for being a adulteress, back in the day of Queen Boadica, rape victims were deemed unsuitable for marriage (the Romans even raped Boadica's daughters after their father ceded half the kingdom to Rome to add insult to injury), and once upon a time in America, if a girl got pregnant, she was forced out of school.

I guess my argument is if one follows Habermas, then the government either needs to keep its laws and policies off of women's bodies or start regulating men's sexuality as well (stricter enforcement of child support collections, harsher penalties for rape, molestation, and incest. etc). Besides, how can anyone say that women's issues are trivial when the fact of the matter is that not only do we come from women, but when mothers probably have the biggest influence over the type of person we become?

Case in point: Plan B (or the 'morning after' pill) is now available over the counter, Plan B is just that--if used within 3-5 days after unprotected sex, it can help prevent pregnancy (the earlier, the better). The Bush Administration tried to limit its availability, stating that it would promote promiscuity (I believe they also stated the same for Guardasil, the vaccine that can prevent the more common types of HPV that can cause cervical cancer--never mind that sex isn't the only way to get HPV). It seems like a vicious Catch22: A woman shouldn't be having sex, and if she gets pregnant, she should be punished by either getting an STD or pregnant. If she gets pregnant, she should be made to have the baby, and will most likely wind up on Welfare because she can't afford to raise the child herself, costing the state a huge load of cash that could have been prevented if she had access to either Plan B (for a measly 40 bucks), or in the very worst case scenario, an abortion (according to the Guttmacher institute, 54% of women who've obtained an abortion were using birth control when they got pregnant in 2005/2006...http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html). I've noticed that those who are usually pro-life are against programs for women and children: Head Start, school lunch, assistance with day care, welfare, Planned Parenthood, etc. I also find it funny that the majority of our government is made up of MEN who have a say in what women do with their bodies and also the fact that Viagra is covered under most health care plans, but birth control for women is either not covered, or costs significantly more.

Okay, moving on...

The movie I watched was Monty Python's "And Now for Something Completely Different"--which is a movie of their best sketches strung together (and my first introduction to them). The one thing I found interesting was the fact that most of the female roles are played by the guys themselves dressed in drag. The main female role is played by Carol Cleveland (usually referred to as 'the female Python' by fans) who was also a regular in The Flying Circus. Cleveland was used in roles where there had to be smooching between the male and female characters or when it had to be obvious that it was a female body they were looking at (case in point, the "Milkman" sketch in which a milkman gets seduced and locked in a room filled with milkmen--Cleveland's character uses her half naked body to entice the milkman). I was particularly interested, though, in the way the Pythons played women: dowdy dresses, bad wigs, high pitched, screechy voices, and some unlady-like behavior...I couldn't help but to think about what this might say about either how they see women or how they are made into ridiculous caricatures...do women ever do this to guys? is there even a female comedy troupe that can compete with the Pythons?



However, one good turn deserves another...