It was recently announced that Plan B will soon be available to 17 year old girls without a prescription…
And surprise! the misogynists of the country have been spewing the usual crap about it ever since, which boils down to: “Now our womens ain’t gonna be nothin’ but a bunch of sluts!” whilst the usual double-standard stage-whispers from between the lines: “Condoms should be available for free to 17 year old boys because, well, boys will be boys, you know? But girls will be virgins, dammit!”
So the articles are pretty much run-of-the-mill, yawn-inducing claptrap… except the one by CNN commentator Mike Asshat Galanos. His seriously creeps me out.
Oh, most of Asshat’s comments are the usual asshattery, ranging from the simply duhduhdumb…
Timing is essential to the drug’s effectiveness, Plan B supporters say, so getting parents and doctors involved would unnecessarily delay the teen’s ability to pop the pill the “morning after.” Does it really take that long to get a prescription?
[Uh, yes, it can, especially when some pharmacists are refusing to dispense it.]
…to the willfully ignorant:
Think of a 17-year-old girl. Most of the time she’s a high school senior, still living at home with Mom and Dad. She still needs her parents in the tough times. But they will be cut out of a traumatic situation.
[I know you might find this hard to believe, Asshat, but choosing to prevent a pregnancy is often not traumatic for women! And when trauma is involved, such as in the case of rape, I'm pretty sure most women think that bearing the child of their rapist would be A HELL OF A LOT MORE TRAUMATIC than taking two pills.]
But these comments just rouse a kind of good-natured “what an idiot” reaction. This is the comment that actually creeps me out:
We are making it available to high school girls. We’re enabling teenagers to act carelessly with an easy way out. [...] With Plan B, they can do it now and deal with it later.1
A chill went up my spine when I read that, and not for the reasons Asshat was hoping.
Lets not for a minute assume Asshat’s use of the word “teenagers” includes boys. The article never once discusses the male’s role in the need for Plan B. This missive is clearly about high school girls.
So essentially Asshat is saying, “We cannot allow girls to get away with sluttish behavior. If she has sex and gets pregnant, she deserves all the life-destroying consequences she gets. We as a society need to enforce that.”
Asshat. Listen. You need to look at your desire to ensure that women suffer when they do not conform to your own ideas of morality. Don’t take the easy way out – don’t put the mask of Concerned Elder on your head and stick it in the sands of righteousness. Deal with your sadistic misogyny now.
Technorati Tags: slut-shaming, Mike Galanos, sadism, Plan B, birth control, morning after pill
- Ignoring for now the fact that this statement completely contradicts his earlier argument, as “trauma” is rarely premeditated. [↩]
