And another
Jun. 30th, 2008 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenHere's some actual news: the next time you hear something that sounds like an urban legend with the names/places changed, assume it is one. I'm looking at you Time Magazine.
Most of the people who read my journal are smart. You are, so give yourselves a hand. And the majority of you are very young indeed. Meaning that most of you are not so far removed from high school that you have forgotten how tough it was. Meaning that if you heard someone say that girls at a high school got together and formed a clandestine pact to get themselves pregnant on purpose, you'd laugh harder than you did at the person who believed the sperm-on-the-cheek-swab story was true for a friend's classmate. I think I was that person, actually, and even I'm not dumb enough to buy the bullshit about teenaged girls forming a coven of sperm-seeking mommy wannabes.
Especially not when the principal who "reported" this "pact" to the "press" points to one person in any sort of authority to back him up and that person says that his pearl-clutching media moment was the first that she'd heard of it. His only other sources are anonymous, uncited folk talking in hallways. Because hallways have never been known to distort facts. Facts being factually reported have never lost accuracy as the message moved from one mouth to one ear and back in crowded, noisy places. Apparently, neither this principal nor the ace reporter has ever played a game of Telephone in their entire lives. I'd pity them, but they're smearing teenage girls' names in the mud, and if the resignations over the principal's refusal to allow the nurse's office to stock contraceptives is any indication, he's fixing to do worse.
It's the set-them-up, knock-them-down strategy in one fell swoop. He denies them contraceptives, the sex-ed is nonexistant, the girls get knocked up because HELLO THEY ARE ONLY HUMAN BEINGS AND THEY ARE PULSING WITH HORMONES, and he gets to pretend they did it on purpose because they should have known better (how if school won't teach them?) and they could have protected themselves (without knowing how? without access to means?) but they didn't, so obviously they chose pregnancy (they're not human? they're not fallible? they don't forget? they always use the contraceptives they don't have perfectly accurately?).
And his bullshit, not the corrected story (i.e. that he is full of shit) is what will be used as a weapon against girls and women having control over their bodies. Well done, you magnificent asshole.
Most of the people who read my journal are smart. You are, so give yourselves a hand. And the majority of you are very young indeed. Meaning that most of you are not so far removed from high school that you have forgotten how tough it was. Meaning that if you heard someone say that girls at a high school got together and formed a clandestine pact to get themselves pregnant on purpose, you'd laugh harder than you did at the person who believed the sperm-on-the-cheek-swab story was true for a friend's classmate. I think I was that person, actually, and even I'm not dumb enough to buy the bullshit about teenaged girls forming a coven of sperm-seeking mommy wannabes.
Especially not when the principal who "reported" this "pact" to the "press" points to one person in any sort of authority to back him up and that person says that his pearl-clutching media moment was the first that she'd heard of it. His only other sources are anonymous, uncited folk talking in hallways. Because hallways have never been known to distort facts. Facts being factually reported have never lost accuracy as the message moved from one mouth to one ear and back in crowded, noisy places. Apparently, neither this principal nor the ace reporter has ever played a game of Telephone in their entire lives. I'd pity them, but they're smearing teenage girls' names in the mud, and if the resignations over the principal's refusal to allow the nurse's office to stock contraceptives is any indication, he's fixing to do worse.
It's the set-them-up, knock-them-down strategy in one fell swoop. He denies them contraceptives, the sex-ed is nonexistant, the girls get knocked up because HELLO THEY ARE ONLY HUMAN BEINGS AND THEY ARE PULSING WITH HORMONES, and he gets to pretend they did it on purpose because they should have known better (how if school won't teach them?) and they could have protected themselves (without knowing how? without access to means?) but they didn't, so obviously they chose pregnancy (they're not human? they're not fallible? they don't forget? they always use the contraceptives they don't have perfectly accurately?).
And his bullshit, not the corrected story (i.e. that he is full of shit) is what will be used as a weapon against girls and women having control over their bodies. Well done, you magnificent asshole.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-01 09:17 pm (UTC)My God. I want to hear him start telling women not to babysit for fear of the upstairs caller. At least if this man were some kind of credulous maniac, I could write him off. But this is a guy who thinks he hob-nobs with the students to a degree that they tell him the absolute truth always, always, always. And that kids are never mean about one another. He is a credulous maniac. And he needs to be nowhere near kids. He needs to be fired. And sued. The girls he's smeared need to step up and sue him and this stupid reporter for assuming malice where there was only ignorance and strength. (Apparently, as far as a "pact" goes, the girls in question got pregnant and decided to work together so they could all finish school. The pact came after the pregnancies so they could work despite them. The pregnancies weren't the promise; graduations for all of them were.)