My mother got pregnant with me in a small, rural town. My biological father was married with 8 kids. She was so ashamed -- and so worried her father would become violent with either her, my biodad, or both -- that she kept her pregnancy a secret until Labor day. I was born in late September, pre-Roe.
She worked three jobs, so was never home anyway and when she was, she just wore very baggy sweatshirts that were in vogue at the time. I'm sure it was also easy for people to deny reality simply because they didn't want to know.
when my mother told me about the circumstances of my birth, she pointed out that she shouldn't have been so afraid. As soon as people learned she was pregnant, an entire rural support network kicked in that helped her as best they knew how. That didn't mean much, of course, since they were poor people an help meant I had my own wicker laundry basket instead of bassinent, and I slept in a dresser drawer instead of a crib.
But, they were there for babysitting and hand-me-downs and casseroles.
They were there, of course, because unwed mothers got pregnant back then, as you point out.
And, btw, I should add that both my mother and I are ardent proponents of full Reproductive Rights for *all* women -- contraceptives, birth control, health care, and support for pregnancy and protection from forced sterilization or birth control.
My mother considered both an illegal abortion and adoption, deciding not to go through with either.
Bitch/Lab--
Thanks for sharing that story. I can't help but thinking that legalizing abortion did more for lowering abortion rates than any other social movement or practice. Not because it made it easier to get an abortion. But, because it signaled to the world that the times had changed. No longer did women need to live in the same intensity of shame that they did before. I don't want to suggest that there is no shame operating in our culture and particularly disciplining women. But, it cannot be as intense as it was pre-Roe and pre the Second Wave.
Oh, and, btw, I intend to do your Book Meme. I have just been busy thinking about this abortion story.
No worries on the meme. It took me almost three weeks before I did it b/c I was so busy.
These are interesting issues, in general. I happen to also come from the town where most of the action took place in the real life events that formed the basis of Theordor Dreiser's An American Tragedy.
The class issues that were so obviously involved, then, where sex was something young men had with women of a lower social class are somewhat different than they are today. I think class is still involved in an odd way, just buried underneath layers of normalness that makes it hard to see.
I definitiely think shame is going on now. the interesting thing is that, while it might have been more one-sided then, it's got this double-sidedness to it, now. On the one hand, there is the shaming of women and the desire to make that shaming even more powerful, WRT to any type of sex out of the confines of marriage. That kind of shaming comes from the right in obvious ways.
But then there is the more subtle shaming that goes on among ourselves, where we recognize the acceptability of women's sexual freedom, but want to draw some sort of boundary. This kind of sexuality is 'OK' and this other kind is not OK.
Which can be pretty confusing, I suspect.
On Feministe, Piny mentioned a thread that angered him, it was about transfolk, particular MtF. There was a lot of talk about how the MtF males just didn't understand what an acceptable display of femininity was: they dressed "too trampy" and "too trashy" and had no class or taste.
Interesting stuff!
Then there are women coming foward to talk about how they feel shamed by 'raunch culture.' That is, they feel if they don't wear midriff baring clothes, etc. then they will be called frigid prudes.
As an older woman who doesn't at all feel the pressures of contemporary culture, I've been tryng to understand that one. I don't see the young women in my lives feeling that pressure at all, but they are most working class and poor women. I think their struggle is probably very different than what it might be for white, middle class women.
One thinks of the 50s as an age of sexual repression, but the mores of the time included plenty of 'thou shalts" to go along with the "thou shall nots,' which is why, for example, young women routinely dressed in elaborate, fetishistic gear that one only sees in porno movies these days. It was the era of ballistic bras, tight skirts, fuzzy sweaters, high heels, nylons, and garter belts. It was also a time when mainstream magazines evinced at least as much concern about frigidity as about promiscuity. (I know my point is hardly original, and I don't want to go all Foucault on the discussion; but maybe it's worthwhile to notice that the story isn't simply about repression.)
A social scientist must always consult data rather than personal experience, so I popped over to the Kinsey Institute website (http://www.indiana.edu/~kinsey/research/ak-
data.html#Scope), where I learn that Kinsey's 1948 and 1953 surveys found that:
50% of females had pre-marital sex
19.1% performed oral sex before marriage, 48.9% during
6-14% of females had "more than incidental" homosexual experiences
Half of married females slept nude
69% of females reported erotic fantasies about males (and 2% had achieved orgasm during these fantasies "without tactile stimulation")
21% of married females reported extramarital sex
55% of females reported responding erotically to being bitten (!)
And the list goes on and on. The fifties sound like swingin' times!
A social scientist must always consult data rather than personal experience
You saying us philosophers are soft on data. Grrrrr.
http://www.slate.com/id/2148264?nav=wp
What is going on here? Apparently Ortho Evra has hiked up their price for birth control pills to the point where it has left clinics in upheaval. I was so thrilled by passing of over the counter sales of the morning after pill and then this..... !!!!!
Hmm. Very interesting juxtaposition of events. Can't say I can figure out what it means, though.
I grew up in the 50's, and the lines WERE strictly drawn: there were low-class tramps and good girls, and that was it.
This setup left women like me permanently crippled sexually. And some men, too. There is a night and day difference in how my sister feels about her sexuality and how I do. She was born five years later but might as well have been born in a different generation.
I am glad to say I haven't passed all that 50's crapon to my kids.
Progress!
The 50's also had Joe McCarthy, the red scare, bondage model Bettie Paige, b & w bdsm films, the korean war and people building bomb shelters in their back yard.
The 50's were just spun differently in those dopey old reruns.
Think of how someone might view the 80's if they watched nothing but brat pack films.
Listent to that Billy Joel's "We didn't start the fire"
It was in the fifties that 'playboy' started, Kinsey did his research, sexual rock and Roll rose to popularity, the pill was created and dispensed, 'Street Car named Desire', James Dean, etc.
The sexual "revolution" clearly has deep roots in the 50's.
You saying us philosophers are soft on data. Grrrrr.
See, you're just confirming the prejudice. "Grrrr" is not empirical evidence for your point, and anyway it's anecdotal with an "n" of 1. But seriously, in what sense aren't philosophers "soft on data"? Isn't philosophy traditionally theoretical? Or is it the generalizing you object to? I know there's a kind of anthropological or historical tradition ala Foucault and there is the empirical bent in the philosophy of science that inspires philosophers to visit laboratories and conduct interviews, but that's still not quite as scientific in its empiricism as Kinsey was striving to be, or as evolutionary biologists and astronomers strive and allegedly succeed to be (Kinsey's report was criticized for being soft in it's statistical methods, and even though the critics were out to get him, I suspect they had a point, which I take it had to do with his sampling of subjects not being sufficiently random to justify ascribing hard numbers to the incidence of different behaviors across society; or maybe they didn't like the size or the way he derived his error bars, if he had any. This just shows though that you can be soft on data and still have something very important and empirical to say.)
The tail end of a comment thread is a heck of a place to try to make a serious point, but I'm moved to point out that Foucault, like a host of others, got into trouble precisely because he tried to be a philosopher and an empiricist, to speak with authority and as one of the scribes. The normal complaint about Foucault, which is perfectly well founded, is that he didn't pull off his project. His scholarship is indeed shaky; and most of what persists in his work is the ambition, not the accomplishment.
There's a Norse myth in which Thor was fooled into a drinking contest. He tried to drain a drinking horn that was actually the sea but only managed to lower it a few inches. The difference with Foucault is that he knew he was trying to drink the ocean. Whether that was an admirable plan or just a romantic gesture is a real question.
Foucault, like a host of others, got into trouble precisely because he tried to be a philosopher and an empiricist, to speak with authority and as one of the scribes.
Is this a warning I should heed for my future work on this man? I hope that I won't try to pull off a massive project like Foucault did. But, I do find this story interesting and helpful, I hope, in shedding some light on our contemporary Abortion woes.
Well, you shouldn't be a philosopher at all if you're going to insist on being intellectually respectable at all cost! Pretty dicey game.
I'm on Foucault's side mostly. Or Ian Hacking's, who's picked up the torch albeit without some of the drama. Your posts on abortion in the heartland remind me of some of Hacking's essays on the history of the psychiatric notions such as split personality.
Your posts on abortion in the heartland remind me of some of Hacking's essays on the history of the psychiatric notions such as split personality.
Or if not the essays then the would-be popular book.
I apologize for getting serious at the end of a thread. Because of my disability though it's pretty much only by the end that I ever get serious.
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