Gay couples more socially acceptable than single moms.

In a Recent survey, “The Decline of Marriage and the Rise of New Families.” Of the 2,691 Americans who took this survey, 43 percent considered an increase of gay and lesbian parenting to be ‘a bad thing’ while 69 percent thought the same of single mothering.

WHUT DOES IT MEEEEAN?

so obviously, as the writer points out, this is raced and classed from the get. The gay couple featured is white and male. Single moms are predominantly women of color in the US.

As long as you are white and rich, you’re okay? Or that people value the ‘normalcy’ of 2-parent households, whiteness and middle-class-ness more than they understand/respect/whatever the situation or role of single mothers? plus the implied racialization of “single mothers” as women of color turns this into a telling example of how strong the notion of “woc = poor, bad mothers” still prevails.

and the idea that cismen can just do it better, queer or otherwise?  If I recall correctly single dad households weren’t targeted in this dialogue. It seems like in addition to considering white, wealthy, two parent households the “norm/ ideal/ best/ etc” there is this implication that not-men can’t parent unless there is a white, wealthy cisman involved.

Yuck-o.

Pew’s executive summary tells us, point blank, how these attitudes shake out:

“Where people stand on the various changes in marriage and family life depends to some degree on who they are and how they live.

The young are more accepting than the old of the emerging arrangements; the secular are more accepting than the religious; liberals are more accepting than conservatives; the unmarried are more accepting than the married; and, in most cases, blacks are more accepting than whites.”

Full article here

more on MALE SABOTAGE of birth control, the myth of the “femme fertile”

Leyla W. couldn’t figure out where her birth control pills kept going. One day a few tablets would be missing; the next, the whole container. Her then-boyfriend shrugged and said he hadn’t seen them. She believed him—until she found them in his drawer. When she confronted him, he hit her…

Despite his role in getting her pregnant, when Leyla decided she did not want to have an abortion, her boyfriend did a 180, screaming at her belly that he didn’t want the baby to live, threatening to “kick the baby out” of her stomach and even, one day, pushing her down a flight of stairs…

— From a really fascinating article over at the Nation,  “When Teen Pregnancy is No Accident”. Artfully shows that this insane abusive practice of sabotaging birth control is NOT about becoming fathers even at all! but about “control”:

Their goal: not to settle down as family men but rather to exert what is perhaps the most intimate, and lasting, form of control. (“Control” may also include attempts to force both pregnancy and abortion, even in the same relationship.)

It seems like this sets in relief really one of the biggest and most difficult questions for those of us trying to systematically understand patriarchy (that is, racial, patriarchal capitalism, or what have you) — how incredible it is that a social system can produce with such consistency these kinds of individualized control practices – can so regularly create men who are compelled to exert this kind of control in the most intimate of realms on women in their lives. It is not natural, it is not biological, but nonetheless has structured our lives so, so, so meticulously.

Leyla’s story turns a modern fable on its head: that of the woman—call her the femme fertile—who conspires to get pregnant, perhaps by “forgetting” to take her birth control pills, as a way to “trap a man” and force marriage—or at least keep him in her life. In reality, experts researchers on dating violence and unintended pregnancy say, it’s Leyla’s version of that story is all too common. Two new studies have quantified what advocates for young women’s health have observed for years: the striking frequency with which it is in fact young men who try to force their partners to get pregnant.

ALSO,
quite convenient that there hasn’t been made the FUCKING OBVIOUS connection between the abortion/reproductive rights crap and this crap. Like its always about ‘women dont have access to contraception or sex ed” and crap like that, but what about straight up male sabotage? that doesn’t sound so Planned Parenthood quotable.

fucking crap.

finally: this article barely mentions race&class, and  implies that perhaps this practice is cross-cutting and not confined to any particular demographfuckitic group. noteworthy

 

Comrade Suzyx comments further here.

Jobless recovery for women, not men… USA to the Middle East

So recent data coming out showing that burden of unemployment are heavily borne by women. In the article about the “Arab world”, the trend is explained as follows: “Experts attribute this to social barriers and lower education levels.” In the US, it seems the cause is the male breadwinner stereotype. Hm.

In the US, out of every 5 people who lost their government jobs this year in the US, 4 were women!!! Yow! that makes 202,000 in total. And of all (nonfarm) jobs added to the US economy between Jan 2010 and Jan 2011, more than 95 percent went to men!! DIZAMN! “Even in the service sector, where women are overrepresented, only 99,000 new jobs went to women in the past year, while nearly 800,000, or eight of every nine, went to men. Women have lost 59,000 retail jobs since last year, while men grabbed 147,000”

Interesting is thiat in this article, the only speculation as to WHY this is the case is the following:

“These companies would rather lay off a woman whose husband is working than a man who’s a sole provider,” Serdjuk said. “I always felt like I was perceived as having a working husband, and throughout my working career, I’ve heard that remark.”

The Nothing just read Assembling Women by Teri Caraway, who analyzes economically how women are pushed in and out of work much more easily than men, and specifically shows how this kind of thing is how women are pushed out of higher-paying, more secure jobs. If women are able to enter a well paying, secure industry, when things get rough all the women are just fired, and men stay.

In her explanation of why, we see Caraway getting hte most foucaultian-discourse-y, because she argues that it is the sexist belief structure around jobs and employment held by employers that really makes the difference. While some of us nothings prefer not to explain things with discourse, clearly there is something to be understood here…

Read more Here.

And for article about Arab Women and unemployment, which gives unemployment stats for women vs. men in a series of countries, click here.