Mathilda in Cambridge, Coco in Kyoto. One glove, one pigeon. Glove Pigeons is our lovechild, documenting our lives while we're apart and hopefully keeping us closer together.
The name was inspired by a friend of ours, Geoffrey Chaucer. His title, 'Love Visions', is probably classier, but less sartorially daring.
GLOVE PIGEONS
(Source: theantagonista)
Caitlin Moran
‘Women still die in childbirth. Not as many as used to
– but notably more than die while receiving other “gifts”, such as scented candles’
There’s something disturbing about the idea of someone pressing something unwanted – wholly unwanted – in your hands, saying, “It’s a gift! It’s a gift!”
And you demur, politely at first, saying, “How lovely, but no. I do not want this gun/modern sculpture too large for my house/sack of oysters – to which I am allergic – thank you. It is lovely that you thought of me, but no.”
But the insistence increases. “It’s a GIFT,” they insist, forcing it into your palm. “A PRESENT. YOU MUST HAVE THIS GIFT.”
And now your hands are bleeding, and you’re truly alarmed, and you try to back away. But you find that the law has changed overnight, and you are legally obliged to take this gift – even as you stand there with your hands torn, saying, “But surely a gift is something wanted? Something suitable? A stranger’s hand putting something into my pocket is the same as a stranger’s hand taking something out of my pocket. Really, there should be no hand there at all.”
And the gun goes off, and the sculpture is wedged in the doorway, immovable, and the oysters leak, slowly, onto the floor. Things that would have been wanted elsewhere cause chaos here. They do not fit, and they cause grief.And the stranger walks away. Having pressed his gift upon you, his work is done.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s comment that, if his daughter were raped and became pregnant, he would not want her to have an abortion – but think of the baby as a “gift” from God – has been one of the defining quotes of the year.
As contraception and abortion become, yet again, controversial – the UK facing the second proposal, in as many years, for pro-life organisations to counsel women wanting an abortion; in the US, Santorum and others speaking out against contraception, even for married couples – the idea of babies as a “gift” becomes a pivotal one.
“Gift” is a key concept. If all babies are a “gift”, then a pregnant woman seeking abortion becomes unforgivably “ungrateful”. Similarly, contraception is bad, because it is the rejection of yet more “gifts”.
Let us think of all the inferences of “gifts”. If I give you a gift, it is usually a surprise. It is probably something you would not have got for yourself. And after I have given it to you, I would not see it again. I leave you with the gift.Gift-giving leaves the person who receives the gift essentially powerless – not a problem if it’s a brightly coloured wristwatch, a great deal more so if it’s a human being you bear responsibility over for the rest of your life.
Babies being “given” to women as gifts makes the women sound powerless. Just something that a present was put into, like a cupboard or a shelf – rather than a reasoning adult who decided they were ready to be a mother.
Calling a baby a “gift” also sounds – let us be honest – like the phrasing of someone who has not spent much time bringing up children. It seems unfair to use visceral language to describe parenthood – but as anti-choice, anti-contraception campaigners are quite happy to use visceral language themselves (“slut”, “prostitute”), I have to presume they would be all right with it.
From the shop floor of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood, here’s what that gift can entail: tearing, bleeding, weeping, exhaustion, hallucination, despair, rage, anaemia, stitches, incontinence, unemployment, depression, infection, loneliness. Death. Women still die in childbirth. Not as many as used to – but notably more than die while receiving any other “gifts”, such as scented candles, or minibreaks. Additionally, “gift” sounds hopelessly inadequate to describe your children, whom you inhale like oxygen, swoon over like lovers and would die for in a heartbeat. I have never done this over a foot spa, book token or vase.
The worry of the anti-abortion and anti-contraception campaigners is that women rejecting these “gifts” are rejecting the gifts of Nature, or God. But Nature, of course, turns to contraception and abortion all the time: the diseases that make you barren; the sperm counts that fall to zero. Blocked tubes, blown wombs and the thousand sorrows of the infertile. The one-in-three first pregnancies that end in miscarriage – miscarriage which is just like abortion, a potential life ended, except miscarriages are unwanted, and often dangerous, while abortions are safe, and wanted.
Nature also, clearly, believes in non-procreative sex: for 27 days a month, sex is non-procreative. Sex after the menopause is non-procreative. Statistically, most sex is non-procreative. Clearly, sex isn’t just for procreation: it’s also for the creation of happiness, or excitement, or contentment.
Those things really are gifts, and are always wanted. Those things do not scare me, when pressed upon me.
CC I HAVE FINALLY FINISHED ALL MY COURSEWORK. onwards! to exams!
aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrgbgbhgekghgfkjsns.
xx
(via suicideblonde)
life is very busy. lots of coursework/revision and exams on the horizon.
sooooo today i went shopping in sallys and got my hair cut.
as you do.
bought this skirt and the check shirt in the next picture, both of which are lovely lovely, fit perfectly and smell like grannies.
nom nom nom nom
would have quite liked this for my bday.
next year…
