Daddy knows best
Wed, May 9th, 2007
While I’m no fan of Girls Gone Wild or the filthy producer who puts the videos together, I heard today on the radio that some people are pushing for a change to the law to prohibit 18-year-old women from consenting to appear in the videos. The reasoning? What seems like a great idea when you’re fucked up on “Coronas” in Cancun on Spring Break probably won’t seem so smart in hindsight. Thus, people are proposing a law to limit the ability of adults to legally consent to doing something incredibly stupid, to protect them from regret.
Interestingly, similar arguments about regret were used by Justice Kennedy in the recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld the “partial birth” abortion ban. In his opinion, he spoke of how the procedure could result in grief and sorrow for the patient unaware of the exact nature of the procedure.
Fear no more, women of America! Apparently, the state has become your new protector. Why bother with that pesky rationality yourself when you can have the state make decisions for you? Daddy does know best, and on top of that, in God he trusts! Why bother with your own decisions when Daddy can make them for you and spare you the regret later on in life? After all, Daddy does know best.
Being an adult is about making your own choices and learning from the consequences. I’ve made, to put it lightly, a fuckton of mistakes. There are things I regret, and things I wish I could take back. But only by living and making the mistakes and learning was I able to grow. It is more important to me to have the ability to screw up on my own than to have someone tell me how not to screw up, or to make it illegal. And there are a great number of ill-advised things that I’ve done that have had tremendous outcomes that I never would have guessed.
In sum, if an adult wants to appear naked on camera, that’s her choice, even if she may regret it. If a woman wants to have an abortion, that’s her choice too, even if she may regret it. And no one should have the right to make decisions for rational, consenting adults. That, my friends, is a dangerous and sexist form of paternalism that is rearing its hideous head these days in good old fashioned America.
# Comment by Alli on Wed, May 9th, 2007 at 6:08 pm:
i’m all about experiential learning. better known as wisdom.
oh, and fuckton? ;p
# Comment by jenny on Wed, May 9th, 2007 at 6:35 pm:
Wow! I’m SO lucky to be a woman in the USA - how fortunate for me that the State is looking out for my best interests.
# Comment by Drasch23 on Wed, May 9th, 2007 at 10:45 pm:
Holy shit! Holy fucking shit? I don’t even know what to say to this. It is not very often that I am at a loss for words.
Give me a couple minutes, I will go have some beers, take my top off, and say things I will soon regret.
# Comment by Edana on Thu, May 10th, 2007 at 12:03 am:
So, first this ban and next will come another ban on a specific abortion procedure and eventually it’s all gone. And then, maybe Walgreen’s won’t fill birth control because they’re christian or some stupid thing and then we’ll all be fucking pregnant and then we’ll run out of space, food and well we’ll all die!
Ok, maybe not that bad, but this does freak me out.
Or maybe if they ban abortions, women will deny sex until sanity is brought back. It’s MY fucking body.
Bush gets no nookie first. YUCK!
# Comment by Steve on Thu, May 10th, 2007 at 8:32 am:
If you were able to learn and grow from your mistakes, why regret them?
There are certainly things that I would have done differently, especially in the past year, had I known then what I know now, but I’ve never liked the concept of regret. Things always seem to sort themselves out for the best, regardless of how much planning and effort we put to the contrary.
# Comment by James on Thu, May 10th, 2007 at 2:36 pm:
This is “morality” from a judeo-chrisitan stand-point disguised as being genuinely concerned for women. What a fucking joke. I’d be willing to bet that a majority of the politicians that sign on for this (and those that don’t) own a few copies of these DVDs. Maybe they are trying to keep their daughters from doing this shit.
# Comment by vegankid on Thu, May 10th, 2007 at 6:53 pm:
While i certainly see your point and agree that wimmin (and people of all genders) have the right to do with their body whatever they wish, i can’t help but play a little devil’s advocate. That’s what i do.
For me, this story immediately made me think not of taking your shirt off, but of sex. I’m sure we can all agree that alcohol hinders your ability to think things through as thoroughly as if you had not been drinking. Which brings us to the question of is it fully consensual sex if, say, the persyn isn’t going to remember most of the night because of the large amounts of alcohol they drank?
Rape laws currently seem to work in this way: if you consented to drinking the alcohol, and you consented to sex, then its fully consensual. But if something is added to that alcohol without your consent, then the sexual act(s) is not consensual. How would this scenario play out if we were talking about someone who was fucked up on an illegal drug. Say… heroin. Is there a double standard because alcohol is a socially acceptable drug (do we really have that much respect for the law?).
I’m not really advocating for more laws. I think we need to get rid of the “law” we have before we start giving it more and more power (especially over individual liberty). But it does bring up a good discussion about the concept of consent. And if there is one discussion that our society needs to have more often… its one of consent. What vegan can argue with that?
anyway, keep up the great blog.
# Comment by SnowboardBunny on Fri, May 11th, 2007 at 1:07 pm:
Amen brother.
# Comment by James on Fri, May 11th, 2007 at 2:08 pm:
Good point. Well put.
# Comment by SallyT on Sun, May 13th, 2007 at 4:36 pm:
As the mother of a young daughter, I have mixed emotions about the notion of preventing women younger than 18 from appearing in the videos. It has to do with the fact that the penalties women face for exposing themselves are far greater than those men face for similar stupid acts. Sexual activity is expected form “boys” but young women who have any record of that activity are frequently denied employment. I read an article about a woman who said that she can no longer use the locker room at her gym because there are people with camera phones taking pictures in the locker room and posting them on the internet. It sucks. There is no equality between men and women.
I do believe in a woman’s right to make decisions about her body. Abortion should be a right–it’ll go on legal or not any way. I guess my problem with the videos is that they are a more public statement that can be more damaging to a woman’s future than she may realize.
# Comment by Annemarie on Sat, Jun 2nd, 2007 at 1:33 pm:
How about teaching females early on they are worth something? Women shouldn’t debase themselves to get attention from men. How about implementing programs to help teach young girls self-respect?