Our Bodies, Our Crimes: Baby Killers

This book has brought up many points that I've never considered before, especially the chapter on infant abandonment. I had never heard of "safe havens" for women who want to abandon their children  and was surprised that they aren't better advertised as a last-resort option for women who have unintended pregnancies- especially considering the high rate of neonaticide.

Flavin did a great job of showing the complex issue of neonaticide from many different angles. While it is easy for most of the world to condemn women who kill their children as merciless, cold blooded baby killers, she explains the different facets of these women and the complex emotions that they feel. It was also interesting to me the way that women who kill their babies often serve much lesser sentences in prison that those that kill their children or other adults. This suggests that newborn babies are not considered as "people" as others are. This leads to the question of when "personhood" happens for a human life. It seems that Flavin does not see fetuses or even late-term fetuses as people and wants all women to have the option to abort whenever they feel they want to- but when do you draw the line for those that have been born?

One topic that I was surprised Flavin didn't discuss further was that of adoption. With so many men and women faced with infertility, as well as an increase in the number of gay and lesbian couples that want children, adoption seems like it would be a very viable option.

Women who want to give up their babies for adoption also have a large amount of control over the family their child will be raised by.

However, when I looked up statistics, it seems that many women with unplanned pregnancies do not choose this option for their children. In 2006 and 2007, only 136,000 children were adopted in the US according to a report by the Child Welfare Information Gateway.  There was a 5 percent decrease in the number of adoptions per 100,000 adults between 2000 and 2008.

You Throw Like a Girl: Sex, Gender and Sports

I thought our guest speaker on sex, gender and sport this week was really interesting. The topics we discussed related very closely to topics I covered in my paper about how gender is demonstrated and "done" at the Rec Center.

After talking about the different stereotypes that are attributed to women in sports, such as women not being athletic or strong, or that only homosexual women play men's sports, I tried to do a little bit of research to dive deeper into why this was the case. In class we discussed historical factors and the "psychology of the uterus" as factors in why we attribute different behaviors to different genders.

Outside of class, I found a few interesting articles that try to give physical explanations for this. Most of them recognize that there are far more similarities between men and women than there are differences, and that biological factors cannot explain the vast differences in stereotypes concerning sport. However, many studies suggest that men and women display different throwing patterns at a very young age.

While the common phrase "you throw like a girl" can be seen as offensive, this may be a contributing factor to this stereotype. This particular graphic was taken from a 2010 Washington Post  article that summed up various studies on throwing styles of young girls and young boys. The author also makes the argument that boys are taught to throw at a younger age and in a different way than girls are, which could also be a factor. However, to decrease this for the sake of the study, they also studied aboriginal boys are girls who are both taught to hunt and throw in very much the same way. This study also concluded that boys threw "better" than girls.

Our Bodies, Our Crimes?

I am 37 pages into "Our Bodies, Our Crimes" by Jeanne Flavin, and I am already frustrated with this book.

In the introduction, Flavin condemns everyone from abortion activists who focus too much on abortion when it comes to rape and harm of the mother all the way down to members of the judicial system who attempt to combat the problem of fathers who don't pay child support by issuing "pay up or zip up" orders. She says that "incarceration punishes women not just for their crimes but for their perceived shortcomings as women and mothers" (Flavin 4).

This frustrated me not because I completely disagree, but because, as in many sociological readings and articles we have been assigned, she presents one side of the issue with a universal look on an issue as a whole- and offers no explanation for a way that these problems could be remedied or fixed. I agree that women  who are pregnant in prison do not receive adequate care for their unborn children- but wouldn't the mother's addiction to drugs, mental instability, or violent tendencies be more than "perceived" shortcomings? Flavin addresses this by saying that the government should not have a right to limit a woman or man's reproductive rights, even when they are "perceived" to be unfit mothers or fathers. If we go with this logic, is it not the government's right to limit a person's freedom because they are "perceived" to be criminals because of rape or murder?

I do agree with Flavin on a few points. She talks about the problem of "reproductive rights" being reduced down to simply pro-choice or pro-life abortion stances. While I feel that the topic of abortion is a very important and very divisive issue that is still at the forefront of society today, reproductive rights should also include things like the right to pre- and post-natal care.