the children of men and women

Pardon the advertisement mess. I figured I'd give it a go, see if I can't make a few cents out of it. It sure would be funny to receive direct deposits of $0.37. It'll be like WTF, except real.


I decided to watch one of my favorite films again, Children of Men. I actually do like quite a few films that don't fall in the Hollywood blockbuster category, but don't mistake me for a movie-phile. You probably won't catch me having dirty, back door sex with films anytime soon. But, I do like me good movies, and this is one film I particularly love.

What I probably find most interesting about the film is how the problem of infertility, which goes unexplained in the plot (as is Cuaron's habit), is focused on women, not men. Though this is contrary to popular scientific belief that men will eventually be infertile, it does make for some interesting observations. If, in the film, men were infertile, then it would have mattered less, probably. If the one man that was fertile were found, most likely they'd just harvest his sperm and begin impregnating women everywhere again. Kind of like a baby factory.

But, because women are the ones who are infertile, not men, somehow it becomes extremely urgent that the one woman who is found to be fertile to be protected. When you think about how most women are still treated around the globe, it makes you think, if only for a moment, how very little women get appreciated, or more importanly, how little they are valued. That is, until push comes to shove. Even more important still is how the woman in this film, Kee, is an African woman, and how the father of the child is unimportant. What primarily matters is the saftey of Kee and her daughter.

I think that the film also provides excellent commentary on how fragile politics really are under strained circumstances such as this. A lot of things can fail in a country and in a government. But when the most important piece of the machinery, the ability to leave behind a genetic legacy, goes missing, everything else falls apart. A lot of people like to brag about how they want to leave behind a legacy, especially men. But the truth of the matter is, it's much less important to leave behind buildings and paintings and novels and movies, as it is to leave behind a son or a daughter. Otherwise, who will continue to live in your buildings, or look at your paintings, or read your novels, or watch your movies?

Finally, the film comments on how fragile humanity is, and how useless things like ethics, morals, and law become when faced with a daunting future. Somehow, given the circumstances, it becomes less important to save others or to help others, and far more important to shoot the guy next to you because you don't know who he is.

Still, as long as we can reproduce, the world is fine and dandy. But, given our real circumstances, for how long might that last? This is something both men and women need to give serious thought to, rather than arguing or criticizing or locking yourself up in a room filled with money from all the gas your company's sold.

Sometimes things need to get worse before they get better though. But I have hope that someday, we'll think more of our kids than of our petty problems.

"She got pregnant...but I'm not sure how."

So I was minding my own business the other day, as I usually do, in fact. Anyway, I was just walking around town lazily, when my ears picked up the fragments of a conversation of two women not too far ahead of me. I really don't know the context of their discussion, but this one particular piece stood out.

(translated roughly into English)

"So did you know [random girl] is pregnant?"

"Really? Wow, I can't believe how irresponsible she could've been."

"Yeah, I know, you'd think she would use her head and at least avoid getting pregnant..."

(end rough translation)

What stood out here for me wasn't the fact that apparently another teenage girl has fallen victim to lack of information or any kind of sensibility. It was that there was absolutely no reference to a man at any point of this topic. And that's when I stopped to think about it. At least 95% of the time (a fabulous statistic made up by yours truly), you never hear about the man when someone becomes pregnant outside of marriage, and most especially with a teenage girl. In other words, it's as though the girl became pregnant on her own because she was not smart enough to be more careful.

Pardon the crass language, but what the fuck?

I'm serious here. Okay, I get it. I get that because it's the woman that carries the baby in her womb for nine months and then spits out the baby through her vaginal canal and, unless she gives it up for adoption or custody gets taken away, the kid is legally under her care until the age of 18/21.

But let me make this clear. Women, no matter what the age or what their marital status is, do not get pregnant on their own. Women do not regularly pull a Virgin Mary (nor can they get away with it). Women cannot tango alone.

I think it's more irritating for me because, despite laws to ensure that children have a father that has to at least pay child support, people will not budge on this. I don't know, I mean, sure, we could call the girl involved irresponsible till the cows come home. But why don't the men involved in these situations get the same treatment? Seriously, keep it in your pants or wrap it up. I hate to hear such crap like "but I don't feel anything". What would you rather do, not have the same warm wet feeling your penis usually gets but prevent an unwanted pregnancy, or father at least ten illegitimate children with no job? I mean, it's not mathematically possible for men to have had sex with at least twenty women and for one woman to have had sex with only three. And it's not fair that the woman has to take the brunt of it all.

I can't wait for the day this changes. But my grandchildren might be grandparents before that happens, unfortunately.

sex in the city, sex on the city, sex over the city...

I just realized that it's been about two months since I've posted an updated, and I kind of feel bad. I'd gotten busy with college, job interviews, and now with my parents' marriage and me getting caught in it. At any rate, I plan on trying to post an update once a week from now on, with whatever topic that comes to mind.

So, just recently the Sex and the City movie came out. I'll be quite frank: I never liked the series. I suppose it's something I might've better understood if I were 30-something, single and successful.

Though I haven't watched the series enough to pass better judgement, from what episodes I'd seen, I thought it was a superficial show that disguised itself as a commentary on modern women and their sexual plights. I have no intention of seeing it's big screen counterpart either, but I've already read and heard about its plot from the Internet and various people.

If I'm going to explain why I really dislike this series, and consequently its movie, I think I can sum it up simply by the fact that, like in every other series in the media that represents women, it doesn't really represent what women should aim for, rather what she should aim for to be with a man. Take the main character Carrie, for example. She's beautiful, a fashionista, and is successful. By our standards, she is an alpha female. Yet in the entire series and in the movie, the happiness and confidence she feels is completely overshadowed by her on again and off again boyfriend, Big, who is commitment-phobic.

Do you know what I'd tell Carrie? I wouldn't encourage her to continue to go after a guy who wants the milk but not the cow. I'd tell her to drop him, and find a new guy that is neither Big nor that furniture guy she dates some of the series. Why should she feel the need to pursue a man? A woman does not pursue men. She pursues her own happiness. Let a man come to you. If he doesn't want to, so what? It's his loss. Gain confidence in yourself first, and don't let your opinion about yourself be shaped by a guy.

But instead of the show portraying this idea towards its target market of 30-something women, it just continues to tell them that pursuing the commitment-phobic guy who really isn't into you at all but is in it for the prolonged sex should be the ultimate goal. All the while, this thoroughly-traditional portrayal is masked by the modernness of talking openly about your sex life and being pretty.

I don't condone the pursuit of satisfying sex or the pursuit of a good love life. I condone the continuous oppression of women by forcing her the idea that she should be fetching a man in order to feel that life is perfectly complete. If she feels this on her own, then okay. But girls should work on themselves, first and foremost, and not work on themselves to please men or other girls.

So, I hope the next woman-centered series that becomes successful can deal with issues like this a bit more upfront without the need to hide behind sex.