Men Know Best?

Satirical outlook on who really has control.

      In the patriarchal society we live in, the choices we make are often already chosen for us. This is even more true for women. From the moment a little girl is born, it is already decided that she has to live her life in a manner that is least threatening to men, as well as accept titles and stereotypes that are placed upon her, no matter how unjust those titles may be. As a woman, you're expected to be seen and not heard, to appear, as men are allowed to act (Berger,47). It is with these predisposed notions that society feels it can strip away a woman agency and police every sanction of her life. A major issue that has been debated for decades, is the issue of women’s bodies and birth control. For some reason society feels it should have a say on what and how a woman decides to utilize it, whether it be by choosing to procreate or taking advances against that. Ironically enough, it’s men who feel they should have a say on which decisions should be made regarding a women’s body, since they can relate so much to being a female, but I digress. In any event, by society denying the rights of a woman, and allowing men to make that choice for them it shows who really has the power.

Display of double standards

    There are so many legislation, policies and barriers set in order to enforce the policing of women’s body. The greatest debate on these type of policies and barriers would be those concerning birth control. “A woman should always have the right to choose what she does with her body. It is frustrating that this needs to be said, repeatedly” (Gay, 273). Unfortunately, once a woman does choose what to do with her body, she’s garnished a “slut”, “thot”, or a “pop”, while a guy is called a “playa”, a “pimp” or “the man”. It’s not accepted by society for a woman to come out and say “‘I’m on the pill because I like dick’” (Gay 276). But why? What is society so afraid of? Roxane Gay justifies that “birth control and reproductive freedom continually force the female body into being a legislative matter because men refuse to assume their fair share of responsibility for birth control.”  In my opinion, shouldn't society be elated that women want to take responsibility over their bodies? If thats the case, these laws restricting a woman’s right to birth control and abortions should be as complicated as it is now. In many states, women wanting to pursue an abortion, have to go through a court hearing…against her fetus; in many cases oddly enough, the woman usually loses. It’s scenarios like these that deter any growth in the way woman are valued and viewed in society. These kind of barriers exude the message that women’s right really don't matter especially in matters involving birth control or not.

Looking from the outside in, it’s as if women who do or don't decide to abort or take the pill all live by the same motto or “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. As the issue of birth control has been an issue dating back to the 60’s, society has also taken upon itself to decide who should reproduce or not. Sterilization is a process by a woman’s reproductive sex organs are removed so that they cannot reproduce. The problem with this however, was that many clinics were performing this procedure on women without their consent. As Jennifer Nelson discusses in her book Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement, sterilization became an evasive procedure that sought to make sure that women of color, as well as poor women, could not reproduce. “The 1973 sterilization of Minnie Lee Relf, an African American teenager who was sterilized without her knowledge or consent at a federally funded health clinic in Montgomery, Alabama, demonstrated when it became a public scandal that contraceptive providers judged women of color ‘incompetent’ to make decisions about their reproductive lives” (Nelson, 4). By these contraceptive providers, who are mostly ruled by white men, felt they had a right to strip away another humans’ rights because of their orientation and ethnicity, its such another setback demonstrating how little society trusts women, and their decisions.

Media as in everything plays a very pivotal role in the way these issues are viewed and discussed.As it’s said that there are three sides to every story, when it comes to the media, where men are the prime rulers, only one side is usually demonstrated. Media is the driving force by which demonizing and sexist misrepresentations are imposed in society. By making sure that women are objects and need to be controlled and cannot think for themselves, help further the misguided minds of young men in the future, as well as young women who learn early on that what they say or feels mean nothing. However, more recently with the help of different media outlets, women and male supporters  have been able to use the media in order to combat these negative views of women. By using various social media outlets to voice these grievances, women have made it, so that these issues wouldn't be ignored without someone hearing them. Until men become pregnant, this policing of women’s body may never end. But, with more women and sane people running the media and filtering what knowledge we obtain, more progressive steps to women making their own decisions and trusting those decisions might become a reality.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/news/birth-control-debate/

Works cited

Gay, Roxane. "The Alienable Rights of Women." New York: Harper Perennial, 2014. 267-79. Print.

Nelson, Jennifer. "Introduction: From Abortion to Reproductive Rights."Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. New York: New York UP, 2003. N. pag. Print.

Berger, John. Ways ofor seeing. London: Penguin,1972.37-64