they're right. it's a complex issue about empowerment and exploitation, but it's turned into this sort of orwellian nightmare where empowerment and exploitation are inseparable from each other.

it's post-britney, i think. i remember living through the 90s and thinking we were turning back the clocks. blondie never hit that kind of media saturation, and madonna was all about the power. even the spice girls were in control. but, the whole fiasco around britney as a manufactured commodity really changed the industry for the worse, and what's happened since makes more sense in the context of a discussion of the supremes or billie holiday than one of madonna or courtney love.

it's very well understood that the primary purpose here is image control, and simon wasn't confusing this on purpose but out of an inability to find evidence that corroborated the storyline, but what's the point of doing this at all if you're just going to embed them?

i know. it's dangerous. still.....

- hobbes presents a basic argument for reproductive rights that is something i've also argued for and have seen nowhere else. i'm not big into contract theory, but with the technology that exists today to facilitate birth control and abortion i find it difficult to sentence any male to fatherhood against his will. accidental pregnancy doesn't happen anymore, and can be terminated rather easily if it somehow does (i suppose due to ignorance) and the accident is fully unwanted. there consequently needs to be a sort of a trade off. women need to be in control of their own bodies, but the logical consequence of this is that men should not be held responsible for the child (aborted or not) unless they agree to enter into the arrangement. that reduces the process to two independent choices, rather than a unitary one - the would-be mother must first choose independently to have the child or not, and then the would-be father must choose whether to accept the responsibility of fatherhood. should he reject the responsibility, the would-be mother would of course be free to change her decision. hobbes is not as detailed, nor were abortion or birth control (safely) available in his time, but this is basically the argument he provides. it's one that modern law ought to take more seriously.