I’m a 20 year old GAY member of the NAVY and I happen to be on BIRTH CONTROL. I’d like to be able to keep all 3.
What, so the president determines your sexuality? And there’s really no reason for someone who’s gay to be on birth control, unless they actually just mean they take the same hormones for a different purpose, in which case, it isn’t *birth* control; birth control is an ends, not a means.
A president doesn’t determine one’s sexuality but having a president in office who is supportive of the GLBT community DOES matter. You are missing the point. The point of the original poster’s statement is that because of President Obama and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell she can both be opening gay and serve in the Navy. Before, she had to choose one or the other.
The way you question why somebody is on birth control just based on her sexuality is just condescending. Birth control is a colloquial term for any hormonal treatment that alters a woman’s reproductive cycle, which has many effects and benefits to the female body in addition to prevention of pregnancy. The difference you are pointing out is just semantics. Republican hostility toward birth control access does not discriminate between those who use it to prevent pregnancy or for other purposes (which are not mutually exclusive). How is birth control only an ends? People don’t take a pill every day at the same time just because they like the taste or undergo surgery for a contraceptive implant just to do so (both of which cost money before President Obama’s birth control mandate). How is taking birth control for the purpose of not being pregnant, not having debilitating cramps, averting anemia from abnormally heavy menstrual cycles, etc not a means to an end? Not to mention that 1 in 6 women have been victims of rape or attempted rape and birth control is one way to prevent unintended pregnancies in that case.
If Obama gave a rat’s ass about LGBT rights, he would have dismissed all charges against those dismissed dishonorably from service under DADT and would have immediately repealed DADT. I don’t know how many times I’ve written this.
Oh, I understand that all of those are legitimate health concerns, from personal experience. So are prostate-related and otherwise man issues. Calling something ‘birth control’ implies that controlling the incidence of babies is its function. Hormones can do that. Hormones can also do a lot of other stuff. Implying there is only one purpose of hormone treatment, which the blanket term ‘birth control’ does, equates transexual hormone treatments (which would be for those who are, by definition, not biologically female) with oral contraception (which isn’t just ‘hormones which alter a women’s menstrual cycle’—they’re pretty much all just estrogen; the altered menstrual cycle is an effect, not a definition), which are not the same thing. Not at all. The link above is to a post which I had in my queue; I posted it for the purpose of expanding upon my problem with the politics surrounding the oral contraceptives debate (since apparently no other form of birth control exists), because I think it’s important to recognize the consequences of using the catch-all label of birth control (as well as having it by prescription-only, in the first place) and having totally arbitrary definitions of which organs receive preference. The whole debacle is extremely objectifying and anti-feminist; I really don’t understand it.
Also, that very last part was deeply disturbing to me. I’m assuming, since you’re generally using ‘birth control’ colloquially, as in to mean ‘oral contraceptives’, that you’re saying women should take oral contraceptives ‘just in case’ they get raped. Which would be the equivalent of saying we should all walk around in bullet-proof vests ‘just in case’ we get shot. Condoning a culture of fear does more harm than good; we should be more concerned with the incidence of rape itself than the resulting sperm. If the latter is a concern—which it should be, just certainly not a primary one—Plan B is a more concentrated, chemically identical form of The Pill, designed precisely for the purpose of impeding impregnation after-the-fact.
thecheekylibertarian 