I Can’t Believe It, Either

By Maria Padhila

Are you part of the huge crowd who’s been going around saying ‘I can’t believe it’s 2012 and we’re still talking about contraception’? I’m one of them, too. But on further thought, I realize what I can’t believe is that we believe we’re talking about contraception, when what we’re really talking about is control.

And I don’t mean birth control. I mean woman control.

When a woman has control over whether she gets pregnant or has to worry about getting sick, she gains a lot of freedom. One way to gain this freedom is through abstaining from sex with men. Another is to use birth control and disease control. This means being honest to yourself and to partners that you are having sex for reasons other than reproduction. Those who want to control contraception want to control women’s freedom and everyone’s pleasure.

What this has to do with polyamory is that this relationship form is impossible to live out without using birth control, which can also in some cases be disease control. What this has to do with it is that this life can’t be lived honestly without being up-front about having sex for pleasure.

It’s pretty much acknowledged that in polyamory, women have a lot more control over the relationships and the choices than men do. I don’t know if this is right or fair; it’s just how it works out in America, at least. Women, particularly bisexual ones, tend to call the shots. But without access to birth control, there goes that freedom.

I actually think that people who are poly would find a way to make this work — that the men would open up even more, that there would be more acceptance about people with different diseases, and that people would become less concerned about whose DNA is in whose baby and just raise the kids.

But I’d rather not test my theories. I’d rather have the same or more access to reproductive and disease control.

I’m afraid; of course I’m afraid. I’m afraid when someone (Rick Santorum) who could be our next president says things like contraception is “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale. I know that for many women in the world, what they can’t believe is that I’m allowed to walk into a drugstore and buy a condom, much less that I still have a clitoris. Of course I’m afraid that we’ll end up with a repressive religious rule making the calls on every move a woman might make. I can’t believe that so many don’t realize we’re already there.

I’m hearing voices I can’t believe, ones that say ‘oh, you’re just mad because you might not be able to do all those sex things you people want to do all the time’.

Well, yeah. And what would be wrong with that, exactly? I’m actually in polyamory for the love, not so much the sex. I love romance and being really close and sharing deep cosmic feelings and having someone I can whisper jokes to. But even if I were into it only for lots of sex, what the hell is wrong with that?

I don’t believe condoms are disease eradication, by the way. I said disease control. I can’t believe I’m still answering the same questions about diseases and children and it’s been a year. I can’t believe there aren’t longtime poly people who have stopped being poly just so they don’t have to listen to that question anymore.

Here’s how it works. Poly people have boundaries and make rules. One of these is often called “fluid bonding,” meaning there are only certain people with whom you exchange certain bodily fluids. (Some even draw lines about kissing.) My husband and I are fluid-bonded, for instance. Yes, I realize that doesn’t keep you safe from everything (that’s why they call it safer sex, not safe sex). Yes, I do realize there are other ways you can get a disease, but now we’re starting to venture into killer toilet seat territory, and I can’t believe there are still people out there who are still stuck in the urban legend version of public health.

And if you break the rules? There are consequences. If you sneak around and break them, you’ll lose the relationship. If you break them and tell the truth, there are other consequences. Just recently I heard the story from a woman whose husband was involved with another woman (who seemed like trouble for a lot of reasons — not respectful of the wife or the relationship) with whom he had unprotected sex. The wife almost ended the relationship, but these are people who work on relationships, and they didn’t want to give up. But even given that, the reality of testing meant the husband wasn’t going to have any sex at all of any kind with the wife until the six-months-clean-and-clear mark had passed. She wasn’t playing around — literally or figuratively.

This is also interesting in that it illustrates the difference between bringing home the reality that life has consequences vs. forcing shame and punishment. Most fairly sane people learn to do this with their kids. Forget your homework folder at school, and you’ll have to stay in at recess the next day and do the homework you missed. That’s a consequence. But you don’t make your child stand on a chair with a sign around her neck that says “homework forgetter” until she’s ready to drop (like something out of Jane Eyre, my favorite book since I was a child). That’s shaming (and sadistic).

Have unprotected sex with someone random? Wait til you test clean before you come near my vagina again. That’s a fair consequence. When a woman decides to get an abortion, she’s facing the consequences of something that’s either happened to her or something she’s done. That’s fair. She’s handling things in the best way for her at that time, according to the laws of the land.

But last week, Virginia — a state only aping other states, such as Mississippi, known for their intelligent, thoughtful and unbiased legislation — tried to push through a law requiring a woman to get a trans-vaginal ultrasound before having an abortion, so she would be sure to hear the heartbeat, see any movement, etc. So she’ll really know what she’s doing, because of course her pretty little slut brain couldn’t ever comprehend the terrible enormity of what she’s about to do. This is forcing shame and punishment.

People force shame on their kids when they’re too attached and see them as an extension of themselves — so if the child doesn’t do everything right, he or she ‘needs’ to be shamed and punished. If you know you’re an adult, it’s not that big a deal if something goes wrong. This is not to say you never say no, or never get exasperated. But you’re letting them get the consequences so they can learn from them. You never learn anything from shame, except that the shamer is weak. Using shame is a benefit to the shamer, not to anyone else. Shame is just an attempt to get control.

I’m going to go way out on this one: These people don’t care about my immortal soul, or yours. Give me a break. They’ve just got to fuck with someone so they’ll be able to lose themselves for a few hours, or kid themselves into thinking they’ve done something virtuous. And the control-trip is very hot, isn’t it, friends? When you try to outlaw contraception, you’re not doing it because you think it will make me a more moral person and begin to form a society of more liking to Jesus. If you wanted a society in imitation of Christ, you’d imitate him better.

Honey, you’re just a deeply shamed person who’s looking for someone to push all that bad baggage you’re carrying onto. The worst of it is for me that I don’t dare show any compassion for you, because we’re in a war zone.

(Go back a few pages in the blog with this link to see what the ever-perceptive Fe Bongolan wrote about this issue earlier this week. She pointed out the truly sick responses among some of the law’s supporters who said, basically, ‘well, if you’re pregnant you’ve had a dick in your vagina, so why should it be any big deal if you also put a probe and/or the Commonwealth’s entire house of delegates up there, too?’ I, too, find this has Inquisitional overtones.)

The assumption is that a woman would have a medical procedure as casually and thoughtlessly as getting a latte, and that politicians, most without any scientific or medical knowledge and many without much education at all, are just the ones to set her straight.

Activists helped get it killed by comparing the ultrasound procedure to rape and showing scary photos of the vaginal probe — in short, by showing the legislature the terrible enormity of what it was about to do.

‘Virginia is for lovers’? Eh, not so much.

But after looking at all the articles and commentary and video, I can’t believe it was a true victory. I have this strange sense that they killed it for all the wrong reasons — which means we’ll have to look at it again, just morphed into a different form.

I think the turning point came because media and more kept showing that big dildo-looking thing and people kept using words like “vaginal probe,” “trans-vaginal,” and “vaginal penetration.” I don’t think backers backed off because they suddenly realized what they were forcing on women, either. I think they let the bill go because they couldn’t stand having that picture and those words flashed around so often. I have an image of Virginia Republican men flinching every time the picture of the ultrasound “wand” came up or the word “vaginal” was spoken: Oh my god stop SAYING that! PLEASE! I’ll do anything! It’s so icky! Just shut up and I promise I’ll withdraw the bill!

They don’t want to know the realities of medical procedures or of women’s anatomy. The desire to shame women and to get a Kodak moment with the fetus is no match for having to think about something other than the dick god gave you penetrating a woman’s vagina, not with the lights on. Though actually, in the many, many trans-vaginal sonograms I’ve had (fibroids, tubal pregnancies, adhesions, ovarian cysts and more!), they’ve always lowered the lights discreetly (because it’s hard for them to read the screen otherwise).

Through some kind of right-wing ninja triple reverse, they have backed off shaming women for having abortions and instead gotten most of us to buy in to being ashamed of having trans-vaginal sonograms. And women went into double-down denial, fiercely protesting as if someone accused them of having that thing put into them for fun. Joan Walsh of Salon, for instance, used the word “creepy” twice in one article to describe the procedure, not the people trying to require it. It’s like calling an appendix operation “creepy.” Now waking up in a bathtub full of ice with a scar on your stomach, that’s creepy — and that’s the point. It’s the lack of consent and necessity and the presence of ulterior motives that make it creepy.

All the same, women were talking as if a medical procedure really only as uncomfortable as a Pap test is something that’s going to ruin you for life.

The intra-vaginal sonogram is not going to ruin your life. In fact, it has saved mine, twice. What’s going to ruin all our lives is having someone who is not a doctor dictate medical procedures.

Actually, this is already going on, with the commercial health insurance we have. They’ll decide, for instance, that your depression should be treated with pills rather than therapy, because that’s cheaper for them, even though cognitive behavioral therapy is the only evidence-based treatment that has been shown to work and most pills have been shown to be ineffective.

Anyway, they said ‘shame’, and we said ‘vaginal’, and they said ‘OK we’ll stop if you stop SAYING that WORD’. But I can’t believe that tactic could work more than once or twice.

I also can’t believe that all this noise is really about birth control, or woman control, or sex control. When I look at the trans-vaginal ultrasound dildo, I see a flagpole, with a big false flag at the top. What are we missing while they’ve got us distracted by waving that thing around?