Blog or Not?



A statistically improbable polymath's views on politics and culture.

Saturday, October 29, 2005
Side effects include annoying Leon Kass
 
Not only does hormonal female birth control greatly reduce the chances of pregnancy, regulate and moderate the menses, and clear up mild to moderate acne, it also, according to Blog or Not's favorite bioethicist Dr. Leon Kass, redefines the meaning of our own womanliness by separating reproduction from sex, and thus "free from the teleological meaning of her sexuality [....] her natural maternal destiny".

A few thoughts:
--If destiny can be thwarted by minute amounts of estrogen and progesterone, or even by a thin piece of latex, then destiny is weak.
--If womanliness is defined by openness to a "natural maternal destiny", does that make nuns not-women? As a correlary, would it mean that women who were actively trying to get pregnant through in vitro fertilization "super-women" because they're trying to seize their "maternal destiny"? Wait, nature doesn't want them to have children, so they're thwarting nature. But does that mean that those women aren't women? I'm confused.
--If a man can define woman's essential nature, can a woman define manliness? Does it require an M.D.?

Perhaps the answers to these questions will be coming in Part III of "The End of Courtship".


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