Another Controversy
Written By: Kat
Since it’s inception in patriarchal, faux-puritanical America, Planned Parenthood has remained infamously controversial. Family planning is certainly not taken lightly in a country where unarmed teenage boys are shot on the street for wearing hoodies. We value human life! People traipsing around making the private, and probably wise choice that they are not prepared for parenthood is just unacceptable.
I mean, that’s an awful lot of freedom, even in the land of the free.
I understand the contention of the other side– that maybe, just maybe the fetus is fully conscious of it’s existence, sitting in-utero thinking about Legos and soccer camp– but that argument is just so unbelievably hypothetical, full of “what ifs” instead of factual realities, like the ungodly amount of time and money it takes to raise a child.
Truthfully, it’s all about control. White men doling out freedoms to the underprivileged masses. It’s about keeping women, particularly impoverished women, down and out. Breastfeeding, and being judged by the same Christians who denied them abortions as they collect their welfare check.
So, somehow in America, an establishment designed to provide women freedom has been completely demonized. Repeatedly. Meanwhile Coca Cola is poisoning children with high-fructose goo, and big pharmaceuticals turn suburbia into zombies. Recently, Planned Parenthood took another hit when famed “pickup artist,” and general misogynist Tucker Max publicly declared moralistic jihad on the organization.
Long story short, Max had contacted PP offering to make a $500,000 donation to the organization. His request was that they name an abortion clinic after him… ::crickets::
Initially, Planned Parenthood accepted his offer and agreed to meet with him to discuss further. The day of the meeting, a PP representative called Max and told him the deal was off. Several months later, as his new book slid down the charts, Max decided to tell the world about the event. Doing what he does best, Tucker Max manipulated the situation so that he looked like a great guy, and the women of Planned Parenthood were left looking overreactive. Gas lighting, ladies. This guy isn’t a famous douche for nothing.
Many argued that PP should have taken the money, as charities often do not screen their donors for a squeaky clean ethics record. Instead of building the Tucker Max abortion clinic, Planned Parenthood ended up shutting down a location. Truthfully, this is a tragedy. But, I am going to side with PP on this one.
First of all, Tucker Max can claim the donation was not a publicity stunt all day long, but his public comments regarding the organization have been in exceptionally poor taste. On July 22, 2011, Max tweeted “Planned Parenthood would be cooler if it was a giant flight of stairs, w/someone pushing girls down, like a waterpark slide.” On March 14, 2012 he tweeted “In South Florida. This place is awful. Shitty design, slutty whores & no culture, like a giant Planned Parenthood waiting room.” Yeah, buddy, sounds just like the kind of things you say about a place that you *claim* assisted you and your girlfriend out when you were “poor and needed help.”
If the ladies at Planned Parenthood are anything like myself, they have a hard time putting aside principles. I suspect they are even more morally grounded than myself, as they have dedicated their lives to literally FIGHTING for the rights of underprivileged women. Tucker Max makes no apologies for being a master manipulator, and he puts little value on the emotions or well-being of the women who he has been with. We can laugh and tell ourselves that any ladies who would sleep with Max are probably idiots, or perhaps gold-diggers looking for a piece of his pie, but then what would that make Planned Parenthood for accepting his donation..?
If you ask me, Planned Parenthood was damned if they did, damned if they didn’t. Had PP accepted the donation, they would have faced a PR storm of those who felt involving Tucker Max in the organization undermined the empowerment of women. Since PP did not accept the donation, they faced an onslaught of people claiming that they did not care about helping women, or they would have closed their eyes and signed on the dotted line. Were I the one making the final call, I would have done exactly what Planned Parenthood did. What every woman should probably do…
Said NO to Tucker Max.
