10.31.06
Posted in arrrrgh, outrage, patriotism, politics, sexuality, women at 11:59 am by Hanne Blank
… because that day is creeping closer and closer.
I wanted it to just be some crazy Hallowe’en stunt, but it seems not. Courtesy of the Kaiser Daily Women’s Health Policy Report:
Newly revised federal guidelines have expanded the scope of the $50 million Title V abstinence education grant program to include unmarried adults up to age 29, USA Today reports (Jayson, USA Today, 10/31). …According to Wade Horn, HHS assistant secretary for children and families, the revised guidelines for 2007 are aimed at people ages 19 to 29 because recent data show that more unmarried women in that age group are having children. “We wanted to remind states they could use these funds not only to target adolescents,” Horn said. The revised guidelines stipulate that states applying for the grants are “to identify groups … most likely to bear children out of wedlock, targeting adolescents and/or adults within the 12- through 29-year-old age range.” (Kaiser Daily Women’s Health Policy Report, 10/27).
Yes, that’s right. Abstinence-only sex education is being encouraged not only for public-school-aged students (no, I will not say “public-school-aged children” because for a bunch of reasons, I do not think that’s an appropriate term to use when referring to adolescents — and neither does the U.S. government, apparently, since they think high school is old enough to expect students to sign up as part of the Junior ROTC and learn how to be good little soldiers for the Shrubbian jihad) but for people who are legal adults, technically entitled to the freedoms of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The official rationale is that single women under the age of 30 are having more children out of wedlock.
(Shock, horror, general alarum. General failure to notice that everywhere else in the industrialized world, women are increasingly choosing to bear at least their first child as unmarried women. This is particularly true in northern Europe. In Sweden, for example, 70% of cohabiting couples who have a child have the child first, then marry within five years of the child’s birth. I note that Sweden is still trundling along just fine, churning out those cunning little flat-pack Ikea dining room sets just like anything. And interestingly enough, Sweden is officially a Protestant country.)
The real rationale is that the Shrubbian jihad isn’t only being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, folks, it’s being fought right here at home and one of its goals is to bring your lives in line with someone else’s patriarchal repressive fundamentalist Christian version of where, how, and with whom you should be having a sex life.
If you live in one of the states that accepts Title V, Section 510b funding — and unless you live in California, Maine, New Hampshire, or Pennsylvania, you do — get off your duff and start writing some snarly letters to your congresscritters. I would, personally, suggest that when you do, you call for the firing of HHS assistant secretary Wade Horn, who may be only a figurehead but still needs a swift Doc Marten to the buttcheek for form’s sake if nothing else. Regardless of where you live, letters to your congresscritters and to Mike Leavitt, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services are definitely in order (the HHS address is: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services · 200 Independence Avenue, S.W. · Washington, D.C. 20201).
I have never been a fan of abstinence-only “sex education.” It is one of the few things for which I will never forgive Bill Clinton (the legislation that provides funding for it was first enacted during his administration, in 1996). But there is a big honking line between directing your tiresome (and ineffective, and inaccurate, and po-faced, and hypocritical, and farfetched, and…) propaganda at minors in public schools, where state governments do indeed have the right to require whatever curricula they deem appropriate are taught, and deciding that it is appropriate to go out and flail the same tiresome bullshit at legal adults.
The federal government has no business telling you what you can and cannot do with your consenting adult genitals. They want very badly to change this. This is how they’re getting their foot into your bedroom door.
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10.30.06
Posted in Renaissance men, art, domesticity, impossible, polymaths, women at 9:05 am by Hanne Blank
During my convalescence I have been pondering a great many things, chewing on them idly like a sleepy dog, then picking them up later on after a nap and a shower. Among them has been the topic of the “Renaissance man,” of being a polymath.
Most people aren’t polymaths. This has to do partly with native intelligence and ability, because the raw capacity to perform at a high level in multiple fields of endeavor, let alone to excel in multiple fields of endeavor, is simply not all that common. But it isn’t just smarts and capability, because there are plenty of people who could be polymaths who aren’t. Some of them simply prefer to specialize; some of them don’t see the point; some have enormous abilities and little curiosity. Many of us have the experience of being forced to specialize more than we’d like to by simple virtue of logistics: no matter how much of a polymath one is, one still is unlikely to be able to be in two places at once doing two entirely separate things, and scheduling can be a regular nightmare.
Some have had the tendency toward being a polymath drubbed out of them by teachers chanting “you don’t want to end up a dilettante” or “a jack of all trades is a master of none.” Some would rather not stick out so much: being highly competent at even one thing tends to make you the object of others’ attention in ways that can be bad or unpleasant as well as enjoyable or good.
And then there’s the problem of supply and demand. The more you can supply, it is often demonstrably true, the more people will feel entitled to demand of you. Being highly competent in two or more things just multiplies the problem. Some people also feel like being a polymath just ups the ante, and that the more of a polymath you are, the more people expect you to be able to do, both for them, and just generally speaking: if you are so talented and smart as to be a notable mathematician and a good public speaker and a graceful ballroom dancer and a fine cook, why can’t you also fix the car and paint pictures and remember all the Latin names of trees and build boats and repair the leaky skylight and cure Aunt Lilibet’s gout? And even if you could, there is the sneaking sense that Aunt Lilibet would then say “Thanks so much, I feel ever so much better now. Hey, do you think you could see about that back porch? It’s half-rotted through and you’re so good at fixing things, I just know you’d know how to go out and rip the old one down and put a new one up.”
I think, too, that a lot of us polymaths–I am one, it’s not tooting my own horn, it’s just the way it is–and particularly women who are polymaths, have it drummed into us over and over again that it isn’t seemly to be too good at doing too many things. That it is intimidating to others who cannot do all the things we can do, and thus bad. Specifically, in my case and in that of many other women I have known, we are told, or it is at least heavily implied, that men will be intimidated by us and our polymathic abilities, and that this is categorically bad. It’s the old “you don’t want to seem smarter than he is” thing, multiplied by the factor of the “nerd girl” stigma, to the power of the lingering old crusty sentiment that it is categorically wrong for anyone, and particularly women, to do things that will draw attention to themselves.
I will continue to wrestle with the subject of being a polymath, I expect. I have only begun to think about it seriously, and in truth, I am still not yet running on all cylinders after this bout of Variegated Complaint. But I do know that it took me a lot of years to acknowledge that yes, indeed, having been (and in varying ways and amounts continuing to be) a professional musician, a professional writer, a professional historian, a professional educator, and a professional activist and public speaker did qualify me as a polymath. I avoided applying the term to myself for a very long time because I didn’t want to seem conceited. It was only when I realized that it wasn’t a conceit, and it was accurate, that I was a polymath whether or not I called myself one, that I started to become even remotely comfortable assuming the term. Even so, I am not in fact what I think of when I think of “a Renaissance woman.” She’s much more successful, prettier, more athletic, and better able to pass for normal than I am.
And that’s a kettle of fish best left for another day. Sheesh.
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