Public figures reinforce cultural attitudes about women, rape and birthcontrol

                                    Iranian woman who offers an image to say "my body, my choice"

Carol Forsloff---In the United States a former Presidential candidate and preacher, Mike Huckabee, believes, in reference to women and contraception, they can control their impulses without having government-sanctioned birth control methods.   In India a woman politician offers the statement that women are the cause of rape, defending her statement as "her opinion."  How do attitudes like this influence our culture and patterns of behavior?

Asha Mirje, the woman politician in India, was quoted by the press as saying women were "responsible to an extent" for rape.  She went on to add their "clothing and behaviour" played a part in what happened to them.

Human rights activists as well as the opposition party to that of Mirje were quick to respond that Mirje"s comments were "unacceptable".  Mirjie's defense, however, was to state that this had been her "personal opinion."  Nevertheless, her opinion was public; and the consequences to the culture in a country where a rape is said to be recorded every 22 minutes is disturbing, counter the activists.

Huckabee's remarks brought an outpouring of discussion about his attitudes in reference to giving women access to no-co-pay birth control under the Affordable Care Act.  His remarks, "they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government,"offered an example of opinions that are pervasive in reference to women and sex.  Some members of the Christian right were quick to defend Huckabee's remarks, while some in the Republican party were also said to want to distant themselves from those remarks.

In the United States women are divided on the issues of contraception and abortion.  References to women's sexual responses as something they should just control in order to prevent unwanted births reinforces attitudes about sex and women's issues that have influenced the culture in negative ways, according to experts on sex, reproduction and psychology.

Ms Mirje later apologized about what she said, maintaining it was her "personal opinion." Huckabee defended his remarks by pointing to the press as being responsible for the firestorm along with the political opposition.  “I'm always flattered when people on the far left manufacture a new version of being ‘offended. They can be quite creative in finding something that hurts their feelings,”  he was quoted as saying to a Fox News host.

Experts on the matter of unwanted pregnancies maintain the burden of preventing unwanted pregnancies is a shared responsibility.  Furthermore, even though abstinence is the method of 100% guarantee as offering birth control, the shared responsibility presented includes methods of contraception as well.  But the notion of pregnancy being the woman's fault continues to be offered as the foundation for focusing on women in counseling and birth control forums.

Rape is known to be an act of violence, not of sexual response.  It is that violence that is said to be at the heart of the problem, and the lack of knowledge of what rape really is and its long-lasting impact on the woman's life and the life of her family but also on the community as a whole.

Public figures offer pronouncements that often reinforce prejudgments and lack of knowledge about sex and women, as each culture struggles with accepting responsibility for the outcomes of those remarks and women become the target of the negative impact they can bring.

Tying the knot... but where?

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Ernest Dempsey - In Pakistan, the tradition of marriage and the expectations that arise from it cause problems for the country and its poor.

Tradition can be your ultimate sickness in the long run. At least that is what you experience in poor, developing (used only for the lack of a fitting alternative) nations like Pakistan. Take marriage, for example. When one grows up in a society where marriage is the only acceptable form of sexual gratification and very few, if any, channels of actualizing your creative energy (read ‘principle’ if traditional taste prevails), wedding is considered a great achievement. It’s like winning a right to enjoy sex and reproduce. Sadly, this is often attempted blindly and with damaging effects in a country where birth control is still a ‘no no’ and the inflation rate is cruising ahead of the earning potential of millions.

Lately, the media has been publishing news of poor couples getting married through the financial support of non-government organizations (NGOs). In Swat, for example, 45 couples tied the knot early this year with the help of an NGO that paid for the wedding ceremony. A similar case was reported from Punjab and then more recently one from the Sindh province. There may be others of the kind, all sponsored by NGOs. Young, non-or-poorly-educated, and lacking any reliable financial means, these citizens of the country are not sure how they will manage their finances after marriage, especially after the kids arrive (and that of course happens almost every year till the couples get sexually exhausted or the doctor alarms them). They don’t know whether they’ll be able to educate their children, buy them medicine if need arose, or even feed them properly. In many cases, the children born in masses out of these mass weddings end up in labor, some begging on the streets at an early age, not to say those who will fall into criminal hands.

All this happens in the first place not only because the tradition, rooted in religion, assures the masses that marriage is a sacred duty to be performed at the earliest, but also because it discourages its followers from practicing birth control (though opinions vary according to various Islamic interpretations). Children are considered divine blessings not to be missed, no matter how large their number against however few means of nurturing available to the family. Both man and woman in wedlock are under social pressure, internal as well as from outside, to procreate, at least as far as they can. In particular, the more sons (future workers) they get, the better their elderly years will go. By the time, the sons and daughters get in their mid 20s, they themselves have become parents after getting wed with loans or, if they happen to be lucky, with financial aid from NGOs. Tying the knot repeats itself timelessly!

Media meanwhile continues to play the ocean of propaganda for promoting thoughtless obsessions of tradition. The quoted sources are just a few cases in view. The mass weddings are reported with credit going to the NGOs that are financing the poor to get married. Virtually no pen-holder spares time or cares enough to critically look at the toll it takes on the life of individuals, the nation, and the human race in the long run. Or else we would be hearing questions like ‘How much financial aid will these same NGOs spare each family with the birth of every new child?’ and ‘Do these NGOs ensure that the couples will not produce kids that they can’t bring up as independent and useful citizens of the state?’ The apparently charitable act of supporting poor masses to satiate tradition has dismal fallout for the families and the nation at large. For the NGOs, however, it is instant publicity, meaning prospects of getting more funds and hence more profit for these so-called ‘non-profit’ bodies.

Currently, Pakistan has to support about 180 million people while the country is plagued with poverty, terrorism, corruption, mismanagement, and lack of resources and technology for developing its industry and export. Do poor Pakistani couples care? If they don’t, then maybe it doesn’t matter for them to tie the knot. What does it matter if they don’t know that the knot they are tying today is going to grow tight around their neck, and that of their nation.