Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Falling pregnant

Apparently, in Memphis, high school girls are falling like birds from the Arkansas sky. Falling pregnant, that is. Which is something I was not previously aware you could do. But apparently you can and they are. All by themselves, from the look of it. You can google this news story all day and not find a single one that mentions the boys (men?) who are participating in the impregnation of the teenage uteri.

However, you can find plenty of speculation about why these (mostly disadvantaged) youngsters are turning up pregnant at such a high rate. It seems that they can't say no. Because everyone knows that that is the sole responsibility of girls/women. Boys, with all that testosterone and peer pressure, cannot possibly be expected to abstain, the poor dears. And we all know that the only way to prevent pregnancy is to abstain entirely from sexual activity. Having comprehensive sex ed that teaches about contraception wouldn't help. Talking honestly with girls about relationships and sex and how to set boundaries and require condom usage and withstand pressure/walk away from a boy who's acting coercive wouldn't help. Talking with girls about life choices and reproductive choices and educational opportunities wouldn't help. No. The only thing to do is tsk tsk about the high teen pregnancy rate and yammer on about how to get those slutty girls to just say no. Cuz that's been working so damn well...

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous1/20/2011

    I saw this story covered on an ABC affiliate and they pretty much said the same thing. Casually throwing out there that girls aren't saying no seems pretty routine, and nobody even seems to notice the total lack of responsibility on the boys' end.

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  2. My guess is that the journalists presenting the story are so thoroughly embedded in the abstinence only/woman-blaming culture that it would never occur to them that it's odd to leave the boys out of the equation.

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  3. And the majority of the girls in that school are minorities, right? Everyone knows that the brown girls are oversexed and dangerously seductive, so it just can't be the boy's fault.

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  4. *ahem*
    That was sarcasm, by the way.
    Just in case...

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  5. Yeah, the "fell pregnant" thing seems really...weird. I've never heard anyone say it before.

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  6. Lizzay1/20/2011

    It's like "falling ill." Except not.

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  7. well it does take two people i think socitety as whole is a bit backward at the moment and i think there is a lot of lack of education people in the uk kids when they leave school they dont even have an idear of what work is tihngs could do with changing a bit

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