I was watching a show about a girl who was pregnant at 13, here in the UK. In it, they discussed how, in her town, she was spat at, punched, and insulted regularly for having been pregnant so young... by adults as well as children. Her brothers were also hit with beer bottles and beaten up by people who, I suppose, thought their morals enabled them to make those sorts of judgments.

In this show, the school was pointed at as an issue because they gave out condoms, morning after pills and assistance to under-18s. The girl's parents felt this undermined their influence and wishes- as they preferred abstinence-only sex ed (and we know how well that works in the US)... the father even brought his daughter to an anti-abortion rally with her child (how messed up is that? Even while she was having contractions he was saying shit like "you going to do this again? would you recommend this? you didn't think it was going to be like this, huh?".) I was kind of shocked, not at a 14-year-old mum, but her father's insistence at rubbing her face in her experience. His lack of compassion was horrendous.

And, of course, there was the fact that the father of this baby went into hiding, didn't deal with violence, and his grandmother challenged that he was, in fact, the father, while still wanting to see the great-grandchild!

I'm surprised at how outraged I was. But I wasn't surprised when, close to the end, the young mum decided to enter the Catholic Church- the only people who were kind and not judgmental towards her and her experience.

All of this just got me thinking about how the responsibility for safer sex falls to the female, and yet how knowing too much about sexuality can label you as a tart anyway. You're the virgin mother or the worldly whore, and either way you run the risk of being beaten down. I wonder if my choice to play "worldly whore" from an early age also gave me a tougher skin to reflect the jabs and insults of others about my sexual choices.

This will, of course, run into a longer post about "what is choice, anyway" at a later point. I'm a bit too scattered to write down my thoughts about that much larger issue. It also hits on this weird thing I keep picking up- feminists saying that if I was true to my femininity or something, I would reject sexual diversity (whether that means I would be a no-penetration lesbian as "all penetration is violent", or I would reject S/m as it's degrading) or possibly sexuality altogether. I was reading one article that said women's new found sexual freedom of expression was really just women seeking to be like men.

I honestly doubt we'll be able to do much in the realm of rights for women as long as womens sexuality is placed on a pedestal so high even we can't reach it.