Is “Dear Future Husband” Sexist?

In a word, Yes.

Megan Trainor, as all who love to bob their heads and snap their fingers along to her music know, hit it big with “All About That Bass” before releasing her debut album earlier this year. Included was the track “Dear Future Husband,” a litany (that I assume is supposed to be, like, cute, or something?) of requirements for any suitor to succeed in having and (especially) holding her for all eternity.

Upon my first listen, I sort of huffed at the more blatantly sexist bits. Lines like “After every fight just apologize…even if I’m wrong / you know I’m never wrong,” and of course “Just buy me a ring, buy / buy me a ring” sort of got my goat from the start, but the tune was catchy and I liked “Bass” well enough to forgive what seemed to be a few lines poorly considered but mostly harmless.

Well, then I saw the video. It’s her usual so-vibrant-you’ll-burn-your-retinas set, 1950s-retro-ish vibe and choreographed storyline. The video itself isn’t awful for the most part: She requires her future man to roll in with a constant stream of gifts as well as be physically strong to the max (one possible suitor at the carnival tries his hand at the Strongman Game, only to fall short of the bell at the top, which, apparently, is absolutely disgusting and unacceptable. *initiate Valley Girl voice* FAILL!).

And that’s not the worst. Somehow for me, watching music videos makes me understand the lyrics more clearly, even when they’re muddled in my ear up till that point. So the first line that I had heard as, “Take me on a date / I deserve to pay” and had struck me as a compromise with some of the worse lyrics, actually goes “Take me on a date / I deserve it, babe.” Which is funny, because she quite literally goes straight into a (perfectly reasonable) point about how because she works a 9-to-5 just like him, she won’t be “home and making apple pies.” So, they both make money, but he is the only one who should spend any.

Huh?

Then I noticed the line a bit more than halfway through about how “And we’ll never see your family more than mine.”

Seriously?

As someone in a relationship in which both of our families live several hours away in opposite directions, this is a very real issue, and this line will probably keep me from ever listening to the song again. For a long time, we did visit my family a lot more often, mostly because of convenience and because we had specific reasons to go to Baton Rouge over Tuscaloosa —  not really because of any requisite that my family see more of us than his. Lately, we’ve been seeing much more of his family. And that’s important: We both love our families dearly and miss them when they’re not around, we both value our relationships with our parents and siblings, and we have to work to make sure we see everyone on a regular basis.

So for this lyric to pop up at all, but certainly as some requirement or demand for a lasting, loving relationship with this chick, infuriates me.

I could go on to talk about her lines that treat sex as a bartering tool, but you know what, I don’t live that way, but it works for some people. What. Ever.

What’s worse is the overall message outside of individual lyrics just exudes “I’m better than you.” As I mentioned before, she works and makes money, but expects the dude to pay for everything, including “flowers every anniversary.” She knows that if they ever argue, it’s his fault and he should just accept it *z-snap*. Lines I had taken in jest before seem a lot more malicious now with some of the others thrown in the mix.

Why is it alright for women – and this song particularly – to pick and choose the qualities of the men they want in their lives, but if men do the same thing they’re chauvinist pigs? I, for one, think it’s perfectly natural to have some preferences, both physical and otherwise, when it comes to your partner and your relationship. I have a thing for guys with long hair, for instance, and I always believed I’d end up with that quintessential “nerdy guy” in every college movie ever. I don’t like to cook, so a dude who would cook for me has been a plus but certainly not a requirement. Boyfriend prefers blondes and women between a size 8 and 14 (approximately), and he wanted to find a woman who is physically affectionate with hand-holding, shoulder rubs and kisses. And that’s fine. People can’t be attracted to everyone all the time – that’s insane.

What’s even more insane? People are calling this video (video, not song) sexist, but not because she puts down men…But because she’s scrubbing the floor and “implying that all women should be domestic housewives.” To me, I hate the reasoning that because women were stunted into those roles in the past, to encourage those roles at all is therefore sexist and antifeminist. If M. Train wants to be a housewife, who is anyone to say she’s wrong for that? I’ve been told many times that because I want to be a wife and mother (in addition to having a career), I’m antifeminist. I don’t care that she’s at home cooking or cleaning: Maybe that’s what she wants in life, and that is okay. What’s not okay is that apparently, she demands that her future husband worship her and pay for everything while being a subservient, apologetic lump. That expectation is ridiculous, and I hate that people have completely glossed over it.

I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it many more before I’m done: Sexism is a two-way street, and to ignore half the problem gets us as a society absolutely nowhere. People absolutely lose their minds over any song by a man that has even a hint of sexism, but blatant sexism like this goes unchecked because it came from a woman. That is unacceptable, and there are two ways to change this: Either ease off on the ridiculous criticism of men in regards to (mostly imagined) sexism, or amp up the criticism of women who behave the same way.

Only by addressing problems faced by both sexes (and all genders) can we, as a global community, actually improve the problem. Until then, well, at least there’s some catchy music to listen to, right?

I Don’t Care Where You Stick It

Formerly “I May Be Going to Hell”

DISCLAIMER: I am no theological expert. My knowledge comes from very informal research, reading what interests me, and talking with and listening to people. Feel free to let me know if I have misunderstood something or not added enough nuance. I love learning and I’m not afraid to say I was wrong. Okay, let’s go.

I don’t know how to religion. I think God exists, but I don’t believe anyone can possibly know all the answers about his existence. The claim that one has figured out how God works presupposes one of the touchstones of most religions I am familiar with: that God is unfathomably great. How can any person or group know how he works? Which is why I can’t fall into the drawn out lines that religion sets. I’ve formed my own belief system with my own personal morality, and from which stems my views about a lot of issues, including homosexuality, which I find to be absolutely, unequivocally morally neutral. I’ve held these ideas for awhile, but a Facebook thread today compelled me to share my thoughts. Shall we begin?

I woke up this morning, and – as always – checked my phone before even sitting up in bed. I scrolled mindlessly through Facebook, giving my brain and my blurry eyes a few moments to say their goodbyes to dreams and slumber. As I skimmed through pointless ads and statuses I cared nothing about, the phrase “I’m so tired of the ‘gay debate'” caught my eye. Huh. So I propped myself up on my elbow to read the long rant by one of my Facebook friends, and I could feel the fires of debate welling inside me *insert dramatic gesture*. So ready was I for a good debate that I actually got out of bed and moved to my laptop for easier typing. Let the jousting begin!

To summarize, he claimed that to simultaneously be homosexual and a Christian was “oxymoronic,” that because the Bible forbids homosexuality, a Christian cannot be homosexual as these two states contradict each other fundamentally. I commented about my lack of trust in the Bible as a rulebook for daily living: what, then, of the “arcane” and “obsolete” rules we ignore – like mixed-breed dogs, polyester, haircutting, not eating shellfish or pork, tattoos, and selling your land – while cherry-picking passages like the ones that forbid homosexuality? Who picks which rules remain relevant and which fall to the wayside? And how? The whole deal makes no sense to me, to be perfectly honest.

I suspect that when the men who contributed all the various books of the Bible were writing it, that – though they may have been inspired by the Holy Spirit with the knowledge needed – they added in their own cultural ideals, norms, and biases like dietary restrictions and a fear of homosexuality. See, I don’t believe God dictated the Bible word for word, and if he did, it’s been translated hundreds of times over a millennia – what we read today isn’t the original version, even if every word was originally correct. Meaning that even more people had opportunity to insert their ideals into the text, knowingly or unknowingly, and so the weird rules we ignore – and the bigger ones we don’t – tend to crop up.

We debated back and forth a bit, finally landing on an agreement to disagree. He does not claim Christianity but just  cannot reconcile homosexuality and the faith since the faith directly denounces gayness. I believe a sin is a sin and if one person can commit any sin and still be a Christian, then anyone can, despite the sin. Christianity celebrates love and peace and forgiveness over sinlessness, in my eyes.

So, what is the answer? I don’t believe homosexuality to be a sin, in practice or theory. In fact, I don’t think pre-marital sex is a sin either. Let’s take this through its steps.

The Vatican defines moral sex as procreative and unitive. I’ll start with the second. Unitive simply means to create a union, meaning sex should bring people closer emotionally and spiritually. In my experience, this trait does not reserve itself for marriage. The Victorian era, for instance, was hugely repressive, believing sex in any form but strictly reproductive to be vile, even sex within marriage. There was no union there. In countries around the world today, arranged marriages with young girls serve only to help the man’s family and feed his sexual hunger. There is no union here. Celebrities wed and divorce according to their daily horoscope, assumedly having sex within whatever small window of matrimony they inhabit. There is no union here. Yet, no one would (possibly excepting the child-bride scenario) tell a married couple their sexual activity is immoral, even if it yielded no unity or love between the two. Today, marriage constitutes a fancy piece of paper and a public commitment that is just as easily broken as it is made and does not guarantee any degree of closeness. If that union can be achieved without marriage, then I don’t think marriage is necessary. Only the unity.

Now, procreative. This is the reason given by the Church as to why birth control is a no-no (which I heartily disagree with, as this paragraph will tell you). Historically, sex for procreation’s sake (or for the sake of makin’ babies) was necessary for the survival of humanity. At one point, there were not enough humans to keep the species alive, and so things like picking mates based on favorable features for survival and birthing as many children as possible were important. Today’s population of seven billion people makes this hardly necessary. I don’t know when the Catechism was last updated or how far back this moral trait has stretched in Catholic sex philosophy, but I would bet that it originated hundreds of years ago when man’s survival was the priority and just has yet to be revisited, and/or became a norm that hasn’t been questioned. Since our survival as a species no longer depends on the rapid reproduction of our current population, I don’t think procreative is necessary for moral sex.

So, if sex need not be procreative and if spiritual union can be achieved without marriage, then sex outside of marriage (assuming you’re not a cheating bastard) seems pretty morally neutral to me. Homosexual sex is denounced as immoral because it cannot be procreative, or so I’ve been told. But if that requirement is stripped away, then what other reason is there? The “unnaturalness” of two men or two women doesn’t seem to be solid ground to stand upon, either. We only hate “unnaturalness” when it comes to people and sex, but not processed foods, artificial intelligence, weight loss pills, medical vaccinations, in vitro fertilization, or any of the millions of unnatural facets of our everyday lives? Unnaturalness simply means that we aren’t used to it yet, not that it shouldn’t exist.

Finally, even if homosexuality IS  a sin according to this one sect of religion – so what? I could go on  about the other Christian sins that are rampant in our society yet receive no legislation and for which people receive little or no daily persecution. I think it’s more to-the-point to recognize that we should not be dictating how other people live their lives if their ways of life do not affect anyone else. Being gay in and of itself affects no one but the person feeling that emotion. Sexually active (so long as all is consensual) negatively affects no one else in a psychological, emotional, or spiritual way. I cannot wrap my mind around so many people caring who is sleeping with whom – when we begin telling people how to live their lives when their ways of life do not affect anyone else, it is very easy to start throwing stones at glass houses, and I know mine would crumble far too quickly to pick up even a pebble.

Now, it’s four in the afternoon and I’m writing this post so that I could more fully articulate my thoughts on this subject and bring up some points I couldn’t get to on a Facebook thread (at least not without making all the other commenters want to shove the hundred notifications down my throat and up my ass). I think people are people and love is love. I think marriage is defined as it is – one man, one woman – because of our own cultural inclinations and not because of some innate inability for men and women to find love within their own gender. And I think that sex in general needs to be un-demonized and pulled out of the dark, musty cave where it’s been hiding for generations.

What are your thoughts? How do you think about sex and homosexuality? Do you agree, disagree? I welcome civil discussions and was so thrilled to start the day on that note – let’s not end it in harsh words or disrespect.

Let’s joust!

*edited to clarify a few points.

I wanted to append a note. I rewrote a large portion of this post for a few reasons. One – I realized that a 300-word blow-by-blow of my Facebook debate was not only uninteresting but didn’t really serve my larger purpose. It inspired this post, sure, but I had two different aims in both conversations, and they were not meshing together well. Two – I found a paradox in my Facebook post that was another reason this article wasn’t reading very well. I was debating my friend and I was of the position that the Bible is not authoritative for x reasons, but then I used information from the Bible. I actually don’t really know if this was a problem in the FB thread, but it certainly became a problem here. 

I apologize for this big fustercluck around this article. Please, in the future, if you ever read something I’ve written and it just isn’t jiving, comment and let me know. I welcome discussion and debate, and it was only through a few comments on another site and from my boyfriend that I was able to see my huge mistake here. Thanks for your loyal support! 🙂

Obamacare – From a Layman’s Perspective

I don’t pretend to be a political guru or to be particularly passionate or minutely aware of how politics work. I think I know enough to be informed, though I am ALWAYS trying to educate myself further. In fact, I very rarely read articles from my party’s perspective because I don’t want to be a brainwashed supporter: I want to be able to read an article attacking my party and my party’s candidate and be able to counter, not blindly agree with those who agree with me. So, when I came across an article about a 12-year-old boy who wrote a strongly worded letter to Romney attacking his plans for this country, I read it. The biggest issue at hand for his family seems to be the health insurance. I know this is something that a lot of people simply adore Obama for, but I thought I’d try my hand at a rebuttal to Obamacare.

I have a very close friend whose father is in healthcare (he is a doctor of some sort – excuse me for not knowing the technical title) and who is already seeing the very negative side effects of Obamacare. Did you know that pre-Obamacare, there were only a handful of medications that patients undergoing surgeries could not take for risk of serious complications? Well, since Obamacare, patients can take NONE OF THEIR prescription medication, even medications that pose little to no threat to the patient while under surgery. This means that even elderly patients on very important cholesterol or blood pressure medication cannot take that medicine before surgery – which, by the way, is bound to send cholesterol and blood pressure out of control. According to her father, people are dying far more often in routine surgeries simply because doctors cannot keep control of their blood pressure because they weren’t allowed to take their medication.

Oh, and how about the organ transplant process? Apparently, since Obamacare, patients who are cleared for organ transplant AND HAVE AN ORGAN READY cannot get that organ until their insurance is sifted through by the hospital. What does this mean? It means sometimes patients in dire need of transplants, cleared for that transplant and with the organ ready and available must wait up to weeks or even months before they are can actually undergo the surgery. Many times, the organ simply goes bad in that time. There’s a reason organ donations are done as quickly as possible and the organ placed on ice: organs are not canned beans. They will go bad very quickly, even when refrigerated. How many people have died because their perfectly good donor heart simply went bad at the hospital?

Obamacare wants to try to address every minute healthcare issue on a federal level, but that’s an impossibility. How can a government, which oversees millions of people over thousands of miles of the country in varying health, economic, and mental states, possibly provide for every single person in need? THEY CAN’T. That’s why it was NEVER the responsibility of the government to create welfare or handout programs or, more relevantly, to pass healthcare laws on behalf of the entire country. That’s like passing a law that every single college or university in the United States must offer the same exact curriculum. Well, what about private versus public schools? And how about graduate schools, medicine or law schools, tech schools, and vocation colleges? Should ITT Tech or Virginia College offer every single class that Texas A&M does, even though that’s not what students go to those schools for? Should Baton Rouge Community College, which has a few hundred students, offer the same exact curriculum LSU with more than 30,000 students? Or should LSU, a public institution, teach the same classes as Harvard or Yale, private (and let’s be frank, far more prestigious) institutions? And what about professors – should a school without access to an adequate quantum physics professor teach the subject with a subpar professor simply because another school has the option or because the government is forcing you to? Or should every school just nix the quantum physics option, even those with proper teachers? And these are just the logistical questions that don’t even consider every school’s physical space, number of students, tuition, and community. That is what Obamacare does. Obamacare created a one-size-fits-all plan that is supposed to suit all Americans, even though to propose such an option just seems absolutely ludicrous to me.

What’s the most hilarious to me is that people attack Romney for disagreeing with Obaamacare, saying that his “Romneycare” inspired Obama’s. I’m sorry, but you cannot simultaneously tell Romney that his healthcare plan inspired Obama’s while then condemning his healthcare plan. You just can’t. Speaking of which, Romney has commented many times on this issue: Obama may have used his plan as a jumping off point, but Obamacare does not reflect the core of Romneycare. Where Obamacare is working on a federal level, Romney’s plan works on a state level. Where Obamacare took trillions of dollars from pre-existing healthcare programs to fund his own, Romney’s does not. Where Obamacare raised taxes in order to make it a possibility, Romney’s did not.

This is all beside the fact that giving insurance and healthcare away just isn’t financially feasible. This country is based on the flow of money: simply doing thousands or millions of procedures for free or giving away millions of dollars in coverage for little or nothing is not a good economic plan. Just like giving away mortgage loans for houses to anyone who wants a loan isn’t a good business model (oh wait, that sounds familiar, too….) While I wish we lived in a world where everyone could be taken care of at least adequately, if not spectacularly, we just don’t. Money makes this world go ’round, and if you can’t pay for insurance, the burden of giving it to you should not be placed on others.

The biggest issue with Obamacare that I have personally has to be his stance on abortion. I am extremely pro-life and always have been and always will be. Now, up until very recently – like, a week or so ago – I truly believed that banning abortion throughout the United States was best for this country. However, I had a sort of epiphany: this can never nor would ever happen for a multitude of reasons, the biggest one being that to ban abortion would be akin to, well, forcing an entire country to accept a single healthcare provider. While I will always cheer when steps are made to taking away abortion or when abortion clinics are shut down, I understand that to completely get rid of them would be a sort of violation, despite my personal opinions about it. What I cannot accept from Obamacare is the plan to force me to pay tax dollars to fund abortions and abortion clinics. I am vehemently against abortion: to me, there is no reasonable instance in which abortion is okay. Yes, that means that rape victims, victims of incest, those whose lives are endangered by the pregnancy, or pre-term babies that show signs of problems. No, I’m not sorry for this stance. While I am just as appalled as the next person with all the talk that’s been going on about “legitimate rape”, by saying that abortion is okay in one instance, then that leads to being okay in more instances, until finally abortion is where it is now: any teenager whose condom breaks can walk in and get an abortion. This is simply unacceptable. Plus the fact that there have been studies that show that rape victims who keep their babies have a better time dealing with their trauma than those who abort, which is also true for those who were not raped but just decided to abort. A good percentage of women who decide to abort suffer guilt and emotional problems because of it.

So, that got a little off track, but my point is that Obamacare should not tell me that I have to pay for women across the nation to kill their babies (or, in technical terms, “terminate a pregnancy”). I am against it, I do not believe that it is ever the right decision, and I should not be forced to contribute to it.

The federal government was not created to see to every single need of every single individual. The federal government is meant to take care of the country as a whole: to act as a representative of the American people in times of war or crisis; to command and maintain the army; to coin money and keep track of the economy (which, by the way, Obama is also failing at, but that’s for another post); and to ensure that we remain a free country, free to live and pursue that gosh-darned happiness. The thing about that pursuit of happiness, though: nowhere in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence does it say that happiness is guaranteed or that we as Americans are entitled to it. We are free to try our damnedest to reach it, but that does not mean that the government is responsible for giving it to us.

Am I a heartless, unfeeling bitch? I don’t think so. It’s unfair that not every can get the treatment or medicine that they need because they can’t afford it. It’s unfair that not everyone can be healthy and that not everyone can get the healthcare they need. At the same time, it’s not our federal government’s responsibility to address that issue. It is the responsibility of the states individually. The states can do the most good by taking into account specific demographics, economics, statistics, and input from constituents. That’s what Romney’s plan is based on, and that’s what makes the most sense.

I have no delusions that this post will convert anyone or change any minds. Whatever comments I do get will be positive from the Romney supporters and vitriol from the Obama supporters. But silence equates to consent, and I can no longer remain silent. Too many times I sit at the lunch table and listen to friends praise Obama and curse Romney without saying a word because I know it’s not an argument I’ll win. Too many times I read articles and comments that just are not getting to the point and just exit the page. Not anymore. I’m standing up and saying what I think.

And hell, I didn’t even touch on his economic policies. Another rant for another day.