Santorum versus the Slayer

(NB: If you are reading Buffy Season 9 or plan on it, avoid this post. There are spoilers. If you do not care about Buffy and are turned off by this, keep reading, because it makes a larger point.)

"Into every generation a slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a chosen one. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number. She is the Slayer."*

So, here we have Buffy.

As most recently seen on the cover of the most recent issue.

The Slayer. The Slayer of Slayers. Bad ass. Saved the world countless times (or in the show, one of her tombstones said, "She saved the world...a lot.") and even though she is extraordinarily powerful, she is a hot mess. She cannot hold a job, she dropped out of college...she is a women in need.

She, Buffy made a mistake. Buffy is pregnant. Buffy needs to make a choice.

Now, Senator Santorum would say that Buffy does not deserve a choice. That Buffy made her choice when she decided to have unprotected sex and now must live with the consequences.

Well, what are those consequences?

Buffy is the SLAYER. Yes, there are the Slayerettes and the Scooby Gang and the various other groups that fight the things that go bump in the night, but Buffy is their leader, and the best of the best. In all of recorded history, Buffy has no equal and she cannot be the Slayer and a mother at the same time. They are mutually exclusive. One is founded in love and the other founded in rage and fear. There is no overlap in that Venn.

Buffy can put her effort into being a badass or she can put her efforts into being a mother. (Yes, I know that second wave feminism says that you can have it all but when trying to have it all, sometimes things suffer.) If she fails to put her efforts into being a Slayer, we know what could happen. Another rotation in the cycle of poverty and early motherhood, even with the support system that Buffy has built around her. If she puts all her effort into being a mother, the world could end again.

In things like parenthood or saving the world, half efforts are bad.

Now, Senator Santorum will argue that the choice is not hers. The choice belongs to society where the life of Buffy's unborn child outweighs the almost-literal weight of the world that Buffy carries on her shoulders. Buffy's career does not matter.

But, much like Buffy, Senator Santorum does not exist in the real world.

Buffy does make her choice.

I know that Senator Santorum will disagree with this choice, but then again, that just proves that the Senator is on the side of the demons, vampires and things that go bump in the night. The strong young women of America deserve better.

(See io9 for better images from the comic.)

*Quote via Wikipedia

Half Formed Thoughts

(All of these deserve their own post, but I do not have the motivation to put them out there as fully formed essays.)

1) The Hunger Games Discussion

2) Old White Guys and Reproductive Rights

3) Food Fascism

4) Zombies, The Upcoming Apocalypse and Sexual Violence

1) The Hunger Games Discussion

TEA and I have been talking about going to see The Hunger Games and I have been insisting that he reads the books before he sees the films. I called up TEA's mom (who is a great mom and an awesome person and while we are having a disagreement, at no point do I want to suggest that she is wrong, rather, we are of differing opinions) and talked with her about this. She was against TEA reading the books last year, while I thought TEA could handle them. Being a year later, I thought that TEA's mother would be more amenable to the film and book. I was wrong. She was concerned because she is understanding that it is "children hunting children" and while there is some of that, there is a lot more to the stories. However, you cannot say that to someone who has not read the books. They just would not understand. Taking a different tact, I asked her if she would be against TEA being assigned "Lord of the Flies" which she said that she would not be. She made some very legitimate arguments about why she did not want her child to see the film or read the book, throwing around the word barbaric, and wondering about the state of mind of anyone who would be interested in this series. So, I am not going to take TEA to see The Hunger Games and I do not suppose that he is going to read the books. It is disappointing that he is not going to be able to take part in this shared cultural event.

2) Old White Guys and Reproductive Rights

I have had a couple of conversations over the past week about reproductive choice and I made the statement that I have no right to an opinion. This is not to say that I do not have an opinion, (Safe, legal, rare.) but that my point does not matter. I am a single (and sterile) man. I am not getting anyone pregnant (nor do I want to...after a certain age, having babies is redacted----------------------------------------------------redacted. Sorry, if that offended you, but it is how I feel.). However, there are a bunch of men (and some women) who are elected to office that believe that their G*d has told them that the rights of a collection of cells outweigh the rights of the person that is acting as their incubator. That is their right. They are elected and the presumption is that they will vote according to their conscience in order to serve those who elected him.

I am an old white guy, I am past my breeding period, and it is none of my business to tell (or to preach) other people what to do with their bodies. Am I wrong for this belief or are those who are elected wrong?

3) Food Fascism

I have opinions about food. I am a huge fan a locavorism and knowing who you are buying your food from. If I ever spent the time working on this, I would talk (at greater length than I have already) about the necessity of an area having great farmers' markets. I have been to places that have Markets that people rave about (links withheld because I do not feel like being any more of a passive aggressive douchebag than I already am) that make me laugh with the paucity of selection. Yes, they are opinions, however, they do have some basis in fact. Food is a matter of choice though and people are entitled to their choices.

Then there are people like Mark Bittman who is actively asking for the government to interfere in our food choices. (For the record, I am so over Bittman and his sometimes peculiar obsessions with certain things. Yes, some people love him...I am not one of those people. If I want to read a pedantic douche write about food, I will read Alton Brown. At this point, I prefer Michael Ruhlman to either of the previous guys.) This strikes me as...less than sane. (Also, this was something that irked me yesterday, and then when Reason (yes, Reason) has something about this...well...fascism...I felt like I was going to burst with rage.)

I do not eat a lot of sugar and I do not eat a lot of processed food but I am not going to ask my government to insert themselves into my pantry and 'fridge. Most of the sauces that I make and love are full of butter and salt and tastier for it and if I were to have it every day, I would be horribly obese (instead of the moderately obese that I am now), but I do not because I have been educated on what is right, proper, and tasty.

Therefore, Bittman's obesity epidemic is not a problem with sugar so much but with education, and that is another topic for another time. However, Bittman is a fascist and his food is (and this is worse than than being called a fascist) largely boring for the bourgeois with little authenticity and less heart.

4) Zombies, The Upcoming Apocalypse and Sexual Violence

Are you over zombies yet? What about apocalypse scenarios? I have been continuing my obsessive consumption with "end of the world" scenarios and every one of them has the "rape gang" and I am wondering why.

Why at the end of the world would a group of men who is struggling to survive a sh*tton of other issues decide to use sexual violence to persecute their war on the survivors? There has to be a reason for this trope to be so common, and if I had the time and inclination, I would investigate it. My hope is that if the end of time did come among us, the rape gangs would be one of the things that the storytellers overestimated in the first place.

What is the meaning behind this?

Earlier in the day, in a conversation with a friend about the childfree movement, carbon taxes, and sustainability, I brought up that when talking about population explosions, one had to look at the impact of modern medicine in LDEs, where the rate of children living had skyrocketed because of things like antibiotics, sanitation and vaccinations, and not because people were breeding more. It is just that more children are living, and then asked, very snarkily (hey, I was cranky), if they would prefer the situation where modern medicine was removed from the "redacted" so that more of their children would die.

Why am I bringing this up, and why did I use such an awful phrase as "redacted"? For the same reason? Because while we were talking about policy issues from a fifty thousand foot view, we were also dealing with the metric of death. Who has the right (and the luck) to live and who is going to die?

It is a craptacular argument and hard to have.

Then, while watching the Mets game, I saw the below commercial.



This commercial makes no argument about being both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice.

What? How is that?

Watch it again?

Pro-Choice groups are not always Pro-Abortion, they are for reproductive freedom and they refusal of intrusive government rules and mandates on what should be a private medical decision between a patient and their medical professional. What it comes down to is a privacy issue...but...I have gotten waylaid, which is easy to do when talking about this topic.

Anyway, this commercial states that HIV is not a death sentence for a fetus, which means that if you were going to justify your choice of aborting your pregnancy only because you did not think that you could deal with a HIV+ child, you don't have to.

This commercial gives answers to both sides, that both sides can embrace.

Anyway, regardless of what side you are on, and regardless if you do not like children, you should go to One.org, sign your name, because no child should be born with HIV. Life is difficult enough, around the world, for children. Why make it harder than it has to be?