I am a childless man in my late thirties with unlimited wisdom and a suspicious amount of free time. My closest friends are exhausted, over- burdened, and filthy with children clamoring for answers. While I am a bad person, I am a good friend, so I’ve agreed to handle the overflow questions, provided my friends read my answer to their children, in full, without editorial interference.
Let us begin.
Dad used to check under my bed for monsters but now he says that there are no monsters. But I think that there are. Is there monsters under my bed?
After much prompting he replied, with the considered grace and solemnity of a flustered game show contestant, “The answer is, there has to be some form of punishment for the women”. The question was “Should women face legal punishment for receiving an abortion, were a ban to be put in place?”. After first giving a shout-out to back alley failed med students worldwide, he stepped onto the ledge and asserted that if abortion is illegal, of course women should be punished, but he was too gutless to jump and clarify the scope and nature of the punishment.
Damn it, Donald, after the Muslim internment camp business I thought I could trust you to bring a point to its insane, hate-filled conclusion. Now you have forced me to try and suss out the fine points of the punishment and legal mechanism of this charming ethos. And I got hate mail for throwing people out of the P.T. Area.
To get a meaningful answer to this question, we first must examine the stated mandates of criminal punishment.
1. Incapacitation: Lock them up so society is safe from further mayhem
2. Deterrence: Serving as cautionary example to other potential miscreants.
3. Restitution: An attempt to return the victim to the status quo ante.
4. Retribution: You harmed society, so now society gets to harm you.
5. Rehabilitation: There are places where this is still a thing.
Now let us apply these to the crime of not having a baby that you were supposed to, and see which allows for the most meaningful remediation
Incapacitation
Conceptually the simplest — you violated the law so you go to jail. The length of the sentence is tricky; a nine month stay is symbolically appealing, but if the intent is to protect society from re-offence, I suppose it would have to be until menopause without hope of parole. Admittedly, this does massively penalize teen age fumblers raised on abstinence only sex-ed, but I stand by the adage “If you can’t do the time, don’t give in to your overpowering mammalian drive to procreate”.
My best friend is a self described rebel. It’s was cool in high school, noble in college, and sort of edgy but irritating in our late twenties. The dude is now thirty and he’s still all about the things he’s not about. Is there some age where rebellion stops being cool? Or have I just sold out and become part of the system?
Ex-Punk from Brampton
Here’s the thing XP, rebelling against The Man is always cool…but it only counts as rebelling if The Man gives a shit. When I was four years old, jamming a handful of rocks into my mouth was the act of a madman, and so against the social compact that strangers would bound from their houses to prevent it. When I was ten, I was suspended for farting into a pencil case and tricking my friend into smelling “these weird erasers I found”. I’m not sure what I was rebelling against there, but it was a great bit. High school was my peak rebellion window but I suspect The Man was more annoyed than outraged, past that everyone in my life was either too tolerant, indifferent, or wrapped up in their own shit to have strong reactions to my choices.
I have been off the market for a long time. This is fortunate, as my wife is wonderful and were I single in the age of tinder I’d have three kinds of twitter herpes and at least one abduction scare. I love Sally deeply and she deserves recognition, but the sentiments on store bought cards are too trite and non-specific to convey adult romance. So I’ve decide to make my own.
Over the past two days I have listened to this song eighty seven times. My wife almost left me, a persistent synth backing track scores my life, and I invented names for the band members:The Cheerocrat, Little Miss Crazy Eyes, and Larry Bird’s Daughter
While trying to hype up a co-worker for a max squat attempt I told her to “Deal from strength or get crushed every time!”. It’s not bad advice in that context, but it was said without irony and that is problematic. And yet I can’t stop watching it.
Let’s address the elephant in the room; the staging is flawed. I’m all for insane jingoistic show tunes delivered by damaged children, but I stand by the adage: The Righter the message, the Tighter the choreography…and that mess was sloppier than a step dad at purity ball graduation. Were they even trying to do the same thing? Because someone needs to tell Little Miss Crazy eyes in the middle that the others were doing glee club hip shimmies and she was all drunk Bette Midler working a river boat drag show . If you are going to be fascist you need to be precise; it’s their only positive trait. Aside from that it is perfect and I just want to know the backstory.
If you are reading this you have recently, and likely repeatedly, been banished from the personal training area of my gym. I can imagine that you feel slighted, diminished, and that you are being denied a service to which you are entitled. During our brief exchange you received a cursory “Unless you have a trainer you need to leave”, as I was busy doing the job for which I am paid and couldn’t engage in a drawn out discussion.
In the interest of mending fences lets explore the issue further Q&A style
Why did I throw you out of the Personal Training area at my gym?
I paid for a membership to the gym, shouldn’t I be allowed to use all of the equipment no matter where it is?
By that standard once you order something from a restaurant you should be able to sit at any table and eat from any plate, even though you purchased a club sandwich and tipped 5%. That is not how capitalism works. The people in the PT area paid for steak so they get steak; your sudden meal envy doesn’t entitle you to sit on their lap and lick the juices from their jowls while decrying the fairness of a free market economy.
Flawed But Fixable 