In the last couple of years, I’ve met a lot of people online through cricket. I rarely send FB requests to people I’ve never met, but I often recieve them. I’m always careful to make sure we have a few mutual friends and that gives me an idea of why this person has requested me. If we have no mutual friends, he/she gets the boot.
Last year I met this one guy who likes to talk cricket with me. He’s a big fan of Australian cricket and also of Nathan Hauritz, so we chat. I’d worked out through his status updates that he is a Christian and that’s fine. I have a problem with the dogma of Christianity but I don’t have a problem with actual Christians (except the seriously narrow minded ones and they are in the minority).
So, with this guy, it was all good – until the new facebook appeared last month, or whenever it was. Now, I get to see every comment he makes on other people’s pages and I’m getting to know him a bit better.
And I’m not happy.
This morning, he commented on a post made by some guy he knows – I think it was a link to a blog post or an article – called Abortion doesn’t prevent you becoming a mother, it just makes you the mother of a dead baby. Wow. These people really do exist.
Unsurprisingly, there was quite a discussion going on. This one was about how there is no excuse for a woman to have an abortion when there is plenty of information about contraception available to them. All the contributors were men. At one point a woman stepped in. She was annoyed and said (I’m paraphrasing here):
Why do you all assume the woman is not using contraception? Men should be just as responsible for contraception. Or perhaps the contraception failed. Why must it be the woman’s fault? Oh yes, because we are all nymphomaniacs who can’t help ourselves, aren’t we?
Absolutely! And well done to her for wading into the swamp of righteous men. But here’s where I really get annoyed. My facebook “friend” responded to her with – and here I am NOT paraphrasing:
Not nymphomaniancs – SLUTS
I’m not kidding. This is a person on my friend list? Not for much longer, I can tell you.
Something else has occurred to me since this, though. For various reasons, I have had the abortion debate a few times in the last couple of months. It’s always heated, of course. But I have just realised that most of those who have been vocally against abortion in these debates have been men. And notice the original post on facebook that started this – it makes you the mother of a dead baby. Why isn’t there a father to that dead baby?
It’s very easy to sit back and cast judgement when you’re safe in the knowledge that you can always walk away from any consequences, isn’t it?
Posted on October 17, 2011
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