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I found this on Postsecret, which is a community art project where people make anonymous postcards of their secrets and mail them in. I've seen secrets similar to this before, but I've seen it all over the place, too.

We all know that the anti-choice/anti-sex/abstinence-only crowd uses guilt and shame to make people feel horrible, but it seems that it's not just harrassment that causes this shame. It seems that a lot of people feel this guilt naturally becuase they have internalized the fear of human sexuality that is very pervasive in this society. The 'lifers seem to have figured out how to manipulate an almost universal human fear.

Arthur Silber talks about this phenomenon in his blog post, "Of Abortion and Women as the Ultimate Source of Evil", and Chris Hedges talks about it in his article "The Christian Right's Fear of Pleasure is Our Biggest Threat To Choice". Both articles apply mostly to Christianity, but I think many non-Christians have internalized shame and fear of human sexuality as well. As the Postsecrets have shown, people often secretly feel that their unwanted pregnancy or other negative relust of sex is some sort of "divine punishment." I wish I had saved all the other "God sent this to punish me for sex" postcards, because I swear I've seen a ton of them.

So, discuss: Internal and external shame, guilt, fear, etc.

True, but maybe she does know her own biology, and she still feels that way? I think that a lot of people who are well-educated about their body and who aren't neccessarily religious or believe that God is so uptight about sex are still kind of superstitious. I once read a story about a woman who had an excellent sex-education when she was younger, and who didn't beleive masturbation was wrong thinking that the migraines she sometimes got during masturbation or other sexual activity were some sort of diving divine punishment.

I think education does help, but the fear will probably still be there.

EDIT: Ridiculous typo corrected.

After having an abortion, I still get a little antsy right before every period and every time it comes, I do a little "I'm not pregnant" dance. And my beliefs celebrate sex, not condemn, so I think it might just be a little of that. Even with the precautions I take now not to repeat the same mistake, I still get paranoid, because as we all know, nothing is 100%. And there ain't no way I'm having a kid right now, and abortions are not cheap, nor do I want to have another one, ever again.

In the case of the postcard sender, if she knows her own body well enough to know she was not actually late, then what exactly would she be assuming God did? I don't think it makes sense in this particular context.

I was only addressing fear, not guilt, in my previous post. Guilt is much more a learned response than a lack of knowledge.

I disagree. I'm religious, and a pro-choicer, and I feel that way EVERY SINGLE TIME there's a mistake, and my period's late (I have a period that's VERY sensitive to stress, so every time I'm worried something could go wrong, I'm late)

No, I just firmly believe God has a sense of humor. That, and it's a hell of a lot easier to blame some divine being, then my own sexual activity combined with a case of nerves.

Of course, my religious ideas are... far from orthodox.

I guess. I don't know. I can TOTALLY see myself joking about that, especially. And a friend's dorm has a "secret board" in it, and there's tons of not-serious posts on it. I wouldn't say you're wrong, but I also wouldn't say you're necessarily right.

More Weird Postsecret Stuff:



This is really sad and, to me, very hard to understand.

Thoughts?