THE OTHER day, I started watching “Anne with an E” on Netflix. (I’m happy that I am little by little crossing shows off my checklist.)
The second episode focuses on Anne in school. She happens to catch her female classmate and a male teacher alone in a stockroom getting a little too close to each other.
Since Anne comes from an abusive household, she knows exactly what the two are up to. She innocently tells her friends about it and talks about the “pet rat” that every man has inside his pants.
She also mentions that the two may be “making a baby”.
When word of this reaches the parents, the one that is blamed and deemed a pervert is Anne. She is condemned for spreading dirty rumors, instead of the teacher for behaving inappropriately towards a young student.
Anyone watching a scene like this knows and can’t help but feel enraged due to how stupid the people were. Even the “forward-thinking” feminist mothers looked at Anne with disgust, only because she simply told the truth.
It was eccentric conservatism that led to so many young women being abused and kept ignorant of their rights.
Sad to say, however, even now in the 21st Century this way of thinking still exists. It may not be as bad as it was before, but it negatively impacts the lives of many people. An example of this is the issue of legalizing abortion. Those who are against it view it as the murder of an unborn child. Those who are for it view it as giving the mother a chance to make a choice, especially in cases of rape and unhealthy pregnancies.
I admit that in the beginning, I was one of those “abortion is the worst crime” kind of people. I would always use the cases of aborted fetuses found in toilets or trash cans as examples. Why would these women get pregnant, only to kill their baby and dump it somewhere?
Later on I realized that the reason these women were pushed to do this is because they never probably had access to birth control, or even education of any form about the implications of unprotected sex.
In “religious” countries, talk of sex and contraceptives is taboo.
When we are children, our private parts are looked to as dirty words. At a young age, we are pushed to develop a fear of knowledge of reproduction and this results in ignorance of our body when we are older.
Birth control pills are hard to come by. People who keep condoms are perceived as vulgar.
“Planning” a family is viewed as going against the Church. We aren’t taught that you have the right to choose to be celibate or not, and that you must take precautions when you choose the latter.
This fear of sex or anything related to it has brought about young people who don’t know how to take care of their reproductive health, or that they even SHOULD. It’s strange because during ancient times, talking about our bodies wasn’t considered dirty. We even have knowledge of certain herbs and apparatuses for birth control passed down by our ancestors.
Somewhere along the line an eccentric conservatism emerged. Hopefully, now that people are more open-minded, we will accept that our knowledge of reproductive health and family planning doesn’t make us perverts or sinners./PN
