The Modern Scarlet Letter - the A-Word and its Connection with Both Society and Bodily Autonomy
It has been a crazy summer so far. The world needs to fall apart sometimes to come back into place. For many people, with Roe vs. Wade, it feels like the end of days following the controversial decision made by the Supreme Court in the United States back in June. Today, Dolli and I discuss the matter, the current a-word in our culture and try to understand the consequences from both sides. It is not an easy discussion as this 'modern Scarlet letter' creates immediate lines of division, including with us. Hopefully, dear listener, we have handled the conversation with respect. Not all topics are rosy and light but they need to be debated. How do we come to a compromise?
“I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.”
The Scarlet Letter, 1861, Hugh Merle - Walters Art Museum, Baltimore Maryland - The painting of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s controversial character, Hester Prynne has often graced the cover of numerous classic paperback editions of the novel. She has a look of both fear and defiance. The crimson ‘A’ stitched to her clothing is easy to make out.
I would like to further note, that, for this podcast, made in June, both Dolli and I were racked with depression following the recording.
We debated whether to release it or not.
For a long time, I myself felt torn about the topic. Speaking for my dilemma, I would say more and more I am pro-life after formerly being completely pro-choice.
The reason, for me, for this podcast’s delay had in part to do with high school. In grade 10 history, I delivered a presentation on Roe v. Wade and indicated I was pro-choice. A student in my life class was visibly upset and engaged me in a discussion. Bright-eyed and optimistic, I considered abortion essential. The female student felt otherwise. The teacher, placed in a precarious position, a man known for his levity and irreverent humour, struggled to calm us both down. The presentation and the resulting argument haunted me.
I believed for many years I was right but the look on that student’s face, the anger - it stayed with me. I remained convinced for the pro-choice side.
However, the last several years have shaken many people. I have learned about the horrendous history and practices of Planned Parenthood. I have met and learned about individuals who were sexually abused, whether by parents, by cult members and often by those ‘do-gooders’ in the foster care system. These individuals have led shattered lives.
While I would rather have a pro-life world, as a society we need to address the abuses made by systems and institutions of power. We cannot discuss this ‘hot topic’ issue without discussing human trafficking, Satanic cults, the moral decline of the education system. To simply not acknowledge these below-surface problems, most endorsed by immoral individuals, and unwisely think, hunky-dory-like that is all fine in the best of all possible worlds is to neglect the memory of those who suffer. In a sense, we exchange the possibility of knowing for the immediate bliss of media-sedated life, an existence, for example, where the list of Epstein Island visitors is buried or found on websites belonging to conspiracy theorists. (If it was a theory, then why is Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxwell now convicted of sex trafficking? And why is the list of who she sold her victims to not made public? A thinking person would wonder about this, question it. A media-sedated person would shrug and indulge in the next batch of fear newscasters are divvying out.)
I feel the abortion problem is a greater moral problem. I believe bringing life into the world is both a choice and not a choice, the way that our lives are seemingly both a result of our decisions and a path we are divinely guided down. We choose to be who we are and the way reflects our struggle and our courage. Meanwhile, the sexual act has become profane, and in the eyes of modern marketing executives, parasites that heighten desire and lull reason, sex is more a simplistic tool to sell deodorant, razors, cars, holiday packages, and a host of other consumer products. Meanwhile, online pornography is a few keyboard taps and clicks away.
The world faces degradation and to engage in sex with love, for me, is a reflection of our connection to divinity. If we live in a world where pro-choice reigns, we live in a world where we acknowledge but do not attempt to discuss the horrors that face humanity. It is a popcorn world, one of neglect where the news is our entertainment and someone else’s suffering fosters superficial discussion around the safety of the dinner table. In a sense, our experience or lack of pain creates a hierarchy. Sentio mundum, ergo est. I experience the world, therefore it is. The limits of the ego are the limits to compassion. Because we did not feel suffering nor share memories of guilt due to abuse, we place ourselves up on high and belittle others who speak out, secretly scared such horror exists. (It is the same with those injured by media-touted medical interventions: they are shunned, ostracized, and neglected, all with the media and medical doctors raising the banners against them.)
The Veteran in a New Field, 1865, Winslow Homer - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Perhaps Homer’s most famous and haunting painting. The image of a Civil War veteran mowing down his field symbolises the slaughter of innocent men. The painting has a great weight to it. I would like to add my own interpretation in that we must cut down falsehoods in order for new growth to rise up. The obstruction to freedom we face is not a physical one but a mental one. The more we believe in our institutions, the more we give them power. Every question we ask is a crack in the facade that imprisons humanity and limits growth.
I feel steering towards pro-life, we are preparing ourselves to rebuild the world and face the greater demons hiding in the shadows, the shadows often protected by the media, the greater sycophants and fairy tale conjurers of society. And if most people would turn off their evening news and cancel their newspapers, we would be on the way faster to healing together. The rifts are their creation, not ours.
The media is untruth, to misquote Danish firebrand, Soren Kierkegaard.
“We are tending towards the union of the peoples; we are tending towards the unity of man. No more fictions; no more parasites.”
This is the other part or reason for this episode’s delay. We live in a world where the servile media, dedicated to protecting its owners and masters, eager to belittle and spew wrath on those with honest questions, has instructed numerous people to believe them and forego their immediate relationships with others. The people closest to us, whether injured or not, are shunned because strangers have dictated the sickly social morality for the blind to follow. For over a year, I was ostracized for following my own thoughts, questions and concerns regarding the c-word. For a year, I was unemployed and trying to navigate that landscape, emotionally and mentally. Since then, I have been trying to rebuild that life. To survive, I keep this part of myself hidden in daily life. It is easier to be light and not heavy. Of course.
I think discussions are necessary. We need more discussion. It is a matter of when and where. Along the way, we need more questions, we need the freedom and bravery to ask them. So, as a result, Dolli and I decided not censor ourselves.
And what I write here is a reflection of what I feel.
“It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.”
Kindred Spirits, 1849, Asher Brown Durrand - Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas - This idyllic depiction of the two American artists, Thomas Cole (painter - left) and William Cullen Bryant (poet - right) in the Catskill Mountains of New York in the 1840s reminds people of a gentler time. Before the Civil War, a time, yes of slavery, it was not perfect but neither was the world but in the US, a time when most American children were taught in small communities and most Americans were well-read. Since the Civil War, a costly war and deemed essential for multiple obvious reasons, division has continually haunted the American landscape and the same is happening today, especially around the abortion issue. The American education system has fallen. There are so many wounds and Dolli and I feel sometimes standing on opposite sides will not heal any rifts.
“Must we continue to lift our eyes towards heaven? Is the luminous point which we there discern of those which are quenched? The ideal is terrible to see, thus lost in the depths, minute, isolated, imperceptible, shining, but surrounded by all those great black menaces monstrously massed about it; yet in no more danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.”