“I’m laying there, scared enough, not wanting this done, telling her I didn’t want it done. All of a sudden I smell something burning. If I could’ve moved my legs I probably would’ve kicked her.”- Brenda Pelletier on being sterilized against her will
Brenda Pelletier checked in to Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon five years ago to give birth to her baby girl. She left, with her tubes tied. The tubal ligation procedure happened, she says, after she was pressured into it by hospital staff, while she was in a vulnerable state.
And as a Métis woman, Brenda Pelletier’s experience appears not to be an isolated case.
At least three other aboriginal women have come forward to say that they too were pressured to be sterilized at the Saskatoon hospital in recent years.
Ok but this is true!!! I was 19 years old when i went into the hospital to give birth to my first child and while i was laying in bed reading and signing consent forms i came across one that woukd give them.permission to tie my tubes. The nurse kept telling me i didnt have to read them all that they were all about my stay in the hospital and intake forms and when i began to read that particular form the nurse came to me laughed nervously and said well we put that in there just in case you wanted to get your rubes tied. I then asked if they always gave them to woman giving birth she said no, the doctor had asked for thematic be put in there “just in case” I didnt want any future children. The nurse then went on to ask me about my future and if i was really sure i wanted to have more children or not. Until my mom came intimate room to check up on me and the nurse then took all the papers from me and left. For the rest of my delivery the nurses refused to give me medication for the pain or an epidural saying it was too early for that and it might stop my labour. I honestly think they withheld pain medication and the epidural to show me how hard child birth can be. Afterwards when they were releasing me the nurse asked me again if i was sure i didnt want to get ny tubes tied. Which i said no to. She then went on and explained thaf if i did i woukd just have to make an appointment with my doctor and i would be in and out in no time at all. That is my experience with the Canadian healthcare system and being a native woman. It is wrong that anyone would try and force something like that on a 19 year old. Please share. Let it be known what is happening to native woman. We have rights just like any other woman and shouldn’t be pushed into suxh decision at such a young age.
Hey white folks with uteruses who do not want or should not have kids,
you know how you’re outraged about how hard it is to get a Doctor to agree to sterilize you even to save your life?
Guess what else they do? Double your outrage.
And those two issues are not unrelated. White supremacy pushes an idea of who should be having kids and who shouldnt. White, abled women are prioritized especially ones who arent poor, they should have many kids, to further white supremacy, while those deemed “undesireable” (people who arent white, people who are disabled, people who are poor and uneducated and especially people who are more than one of those things) should be kept from having children for the good of society.
So when doctors refuse to sterilize white, educated women who want it, they are functioning within the same thought process as when doctors sterilize non-white women against their will.
Since this article came out in 2016, a class action lawsuit has been filed by two of the victims.
I’m excited for a sambucky show but I’m not excited for this fandom to act like it’s just a Bucky show and make 80,000 gifs of him breathing while ignoring that Sam is even there
Guys who complain about the friendzone often don’t care about their female friends’ personal boundaries, forcing their female friends build more walls up. A good cartoon.
– submitted by Gene
why is he tearing down a wall with an axe
i hate it when your put in the friendzone and made to tear down a wall
Mr. Gorbachev…tear down this friendzone
how you gonna draw some shit that makes you look like Jack Nicholson in The Shining and still feel like you’re the victim
I DON’T *CHOP* UNDERSTAND *CHOP* WHY *CHOP* YOU CAN’T *CHOP* JUST *CHOP* LET ME *CHOP* BONE YOU *CHOP* ON AN INDEFINITE *CHOP* EXCLUSIVE *CHOP* BASIS *CHOP* WHEN *CHOP* I’M *CHOP* SO *CHOP* NIIIIIIIIIIIICE *CHOP*
“I’m going to wall you up now, Fortunato.”
“Ha ha, and then what? 😉 ”
“For the love of God, Montresor!” -Cask of Amontifriendzone, Edgar Allan Poe
Incessantly, I heard a smacking, as of some entitled dipshit whacking, whacking on my chamber door.
Resignedly, I placed another layer, voicing a quiet, repeated prayer, “This dude thinks he’s a player, but I am not a point to score, he should fuck off and bother me no more.”
Quoth the friendzoned, “Fucking wh*re.”
– The Craven, by Edward Allen Bro
As I read my feed of tumblr
Often I will see a grumbler
(Who I think could be much humbler)
Who can’t do more than moan
Because he cannot comprehend
That being valued as a friend
Is not some sad or bitter end
Or some unpleasant “zone.”
He thinks he’s some beleaguered victim–
as if it’s like a woman kicked him–
simply ‘cause she hasn’t picked him
As someone she would bone.
“UNFAIR!” he cries. “It’s cold as ice!
After all I’ve paid the price
of entry just by being nice!
I should be getting blown!”
“You fool,” I really want to say,
“You’re not entitled to a lay,
and if you really think that way,
no wonder you’re alone.”
This is a parody of Poe, but it’s a work of Shakespearean beauty
It’s time to bring an end to the Rape Anthem Masquerading As Christmas Carol
Hi there! Former English nerd/teacher here. Also a big fan of jazz of the 30s and 40s.
So. Here’s the thing. Given a cursory glance and applying today’s worldview to the song, yes, you’re right, it absolutely *sounds* like a rape anthem.
BUT! Let’s look closer!
“Hey what’s in this drink” was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that there’s actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.
See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude’s house. In the 1940’s, that’s the kind of thing Good Girls aren’t supposed to do — and she wants people to think she’s a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what she’s really concerned about: “the neighbors might think,” “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious,” “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow.” But she’s having a really good time, and she wants to stay, and so she is excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior (either to the guy or to herself) by blaming it on the drink — unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all. That’s the joke. That is the standard joke that’s going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says “hey, what’s in this drink?” It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped. It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency.
Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are expected to reject men’s advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore it’s normal and expected for a lady’s gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because he knows she would have to say that whether or not she meant it, and if she really wants to stay she won’t be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than “I’m staying because I want to.” (That’s the main theme of the man’s lines in the song, suggesting excuses she can use when people ask later why she spent the night at his house: it was so cold out, there were no cabs available, he simply insisted because he was concerned about my safety in such awful weather, it was perfectly innocent and definitely not about sex at all!) In this particular case, he’s pretty clearly right, because the woman has a voice, and she’s using it to give all the culturally-understood signals that she actually does want to stay but can’t say so. She states explicitly that she’s resisting because she’s supposed to, not because she wants to: “I ought to say no no no…” She states explicitly that she’s just putting up a token resistance so she’ll be able to claim later that she did what’s expected of a decent woman in this situation: “at least I’m gonna say that I tried.” And at the end of the song they’re singing together, in harmony, because they’re both on the same page and they have been all along.
So it’s not actually a song about rape – in fact it’s a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so. But it’s also, at the same time, one of the best illustrations of rape culture that pop culture has ever produced. It’s a song about a society where women aren’t allowed to say yes…which happens to mean it’s also a society where women don’t have a clear and unambiguous way to say no.
remember loves: context is everything. and personal opinion matters. If you still find this song to be a problem, that’s fine. But please don’t make it into something it’s not because it’s been stripped of cultural context.
This is actually really interesting. I’ve never known a lot of the background to this song.
Smile It Won't Suck Forever 