“Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy … someone who really cares about and understands women.” – Lena Dunham
This week marks an especially repugnant page in President Obama’s catalog of attempts to woo young female voters. In an online ad titled “Your First Time,” featuring actress Lena Dunham, the President’s campaign drew an offensive and distasteful parallel between losing one’s virginity and the “awesome” experience of voting for Mr. Obama.
Explaining that it’s “super uncool” to abstain from the election, Miss Dunham says she became a woman when she voted for the President, and was honored to “do it” with a guy who cares about her right to taxpayer-funded birth control.
Until very recently, it would have been unthinkable for any politician, let alone the President of the United States, to endorse an ad that so trivializes sex and demeans the importance of a chaste lifestyle. Mr. Obama apparently thinks he speaks for women by endlessly insisting on their right to taxpayer-funded birth control and abortions.
But in fact, Gallup polls show that social issues and birth control rank among the least important issues in this election cycle. The economy, which voters deem as their greatest concern, has plagued women during Obama’s presidency. For example, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment among women has risen from 7 percent to 8.1 percent and from 12.5 percent to 14.4 among young women during his administration. Women have regressed during the last four years, and many are now supporting Governor Romney.
President Obama enjoys indicting his opponents as propagators of a “war on women.” But what is truly demeaning is to suggest that the womanhood of female voters depends on his reelection, and a few newly minted goodies that will make it easier to have uncommitted sex without regard for the sanctity of life.
Just as insulting is the packaging of these views in an ad that hyper-sexualizes women and treats chastity as a quaint concept. Many Americans continue to see the value of abstaining from sex until marriage, and believe young women should not be peer-pressured into losing their virginity—just like they should not be peer-pressured to vote for a morally bankrupt President.
The sole silver lining of this revolting ad is that it represents a small step forward from the Clinton administration, for whose female supporters becoming a woman with the President was occasionally more than a metaphor.
This year will be My First Time voting. It will be nothing like Lena Dunham’s First Time.
Luciana E. Milano ’14 is President of The Harvard College Anscombe Society, a student organization at Harvard that endorses premarital abstinence and sexual integrity, upholds the institution of marriage and the family, and advocates for true feminism.
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Comments
Why both birth control and abortion?
Seems to me if you did birth control right you shouldn’t need abortion…sort of the whole point of birth control being “no conception” and all.
(yeah I know ..failures in b/c, but really….I think it is a good point to use to distract and discombobulate a Libbie for fun….LibbieBaiting should be a National pastime.)
Presumably, they want abortion rights because birth control is uncomfortable or inconvenient. The Fluke-type women don’t want to discourage their “friend with benefits”.
And on topic….how does this approach work on all the straightmale first time voters and lesbian 1st time voters?
Whether it is individuals who choose to engage in homosexual behavior or heterosexual men, as human beings they should have a vested interest to prevent human rights violations and the devaluation of human life which follows from tolerating elective abortions and all abortions generally.
The issue of abortion (especially elective and following the emergence or expression of consciousness) is the same as slavery. Whether you were a slave, slaver, or uninvolved, it was in the best, long-term interest of all people to preserve individual dignity and strictly limit involuntary exploitation.
The idea behind that ad is to psych up college girls, straight and not so straight.
And like so many first times experienced by others in the past, now and in the future, you’ll wake up and realize that you gave something precious to someone who only thinks of you as a counter in a different kind of numbers game.
Someone who you find has lied to you, cheated on you and lied about it and if you become pregnant will encourage you to “get rid of it” or he’ll move on.
If you do carry the child to term, the next 20 + years of your life will be partly devoted to trying to get him to take responsibility for his child and do something with his life and the rest of the time struggling to deal with the bills he’s left you.
Most times this sort of guy just disappears and leaves you with an STD and a child. Sometimes you may see him around and he’ll be with some young thing just like you were but he’ll manage to keep you away from her and telling her what’s what, She wouldn’t believe you anyway.
After her “FIRST TIME” she’ll learn.
And, please, Ms. Dunham…
most first times…like most Obama votes…are given to guys who know NOTHING about what they pretend to be expert at, are fumbling, groping, selfish pigs, and will tell you any lie and pretend to be anything you tell them you would like.
And, in Obama’s case, you wake up with a guy who hates his country.
Not pretty.
Only a lib would equate voting with having sex. Only a lib would say they became a “woman” the first time they had sex. This child says she had sex with a great guy who understands and likes women in celebration of voting for obama. Wouldn’t it have been better to have had sex with someone who liked her? Or was that possible?
Well said, Luciana.
The denigration of women into sex objects who vote demands complete Obama abstinence. And, Biden’s blue jokes and perverse innuendos demand Biden abstinence as well.
I lost my “political virginity” to Ronald Reagan in 1980…. 😛
[…] the last four years, and many are now supporting Governor Romney. Read more at Legal Insurrection By Editorial Staff /// October 29, 2012 About Editorial Staff […]
One of the more perverse ironies in the Lena Dunham ad is that it was undoubtedly approved by huge numbers of 40-55-year old “seasoned” female campaign advisors and Obama surrogates–the same women who told Obama’s campaign team that it was a good idea to attack “Stay At Home” Breast Cancer and MS survivor Ann Romney. That generation of women is battling a breast cancer epidemic the likes of which our country has never seen. Those women know that one of the REAL healthcare issues facing their daughters who are lucky enough to find and keep jobs after their “First Time” is NOT putting off having kids until their late 30’s because of the cancer implications so many studies have shown are at play with delayed childbearing. If Sandra Fluke has bothered to pay attention to her mother’s peers’ cancer rates, she might want to encourage HER peers to look into the “Science” that her beloved Democratic Party flings around when it suits their purposes to try and belittle Conservatives. And speaking of that “Science,” it sure can be a bitch when women in their 20’s who are pregnant get to see their early ultrasounds in 3D showing in vivid pediatric detail what the Gloria Steinems and NARAL grannies told themselves and others was just a “cluster of cells” and nothing to think about vacuuming away.
Luciana E. Milano,
I find your article to be ever so thoughtful and wonderfully written. It is inspiring to know that there are young women like you, rather than some of the stereotypes so frequently presented to us by the media. Given your observations about President Obama, especially that he is “morally bankrupt”, I believe they are sufficient in and of themselves not to re-elect this President. My hope for the future of our country is slightly better this morning by hearing your message.
Best wishes, Alman
Amen!
I don’t know where the dems are playing this ad, but I hope that Republicans are playing it in the swing states. That should work against the dems.
Great first post, Luciana!
The Obama campaign is actually emailing this ad out now. I received it yesterday. Talk about clueless!
Tediously predictable tatted hipster snobs like Lena Dunham are anathema to cool and a war should be declared on them.
You can ink up Julia to overcompensate for her fragile ego, but the composite, post-modern personality of irony and snark is to cool what Sandra Fluke is to parking-lot political rallies.
Lena and her buddies display their tattoes like skunks display their warning stripes, and the foul liquid they spray is peer pressure.
No values, no limits … lots of consequences.
Luciana, you’ll go far with your sensible, responsible attitude.
To paraphrase the Dos Equis Man, “Stay cool, my friend.”
LukeHandCool (who would only add, speaking of skunks, and for the Professor’s interest, that there is such an animal as a Stink Badger, native to the Malay Archipelago)
I lost my virginity to Janet Reno.
*sigh*
Poor Janet !!!!!!
OK, zwell… Now I;m blind…
While finished with a nicely turned phrase, your gratuitous whack at Bill Clinton cheapened your argument. I doubt highly Monica Lewinsky was a virgin before she got tangled up with Bill. “Hey, Mr. President, wanna see my thong?” is not an invitation from a sweet innocent girl. The same goes for the entire string of bimbos.
No, I’m not defending Clinton at all. He’s always been a sleazeball when it comes to women and lately he’s a scumbag when it comes to supporting Obama. However, I have not forgotten that the last time I had enough money in my checkbook to cover my bills, Clinton sat in the White House. I give the devil his due.
Congratulations, though, on arriving at the conclusion you will vote for Romney. His repair of the economy will do far more for women than anything Obama has ever done.
If you learn anything in your life I hope it is that not all Republicans are good (see: Akin, Todd and Mourdock, Richard) and not all Democrats are bad (see Feingold, Russ and Richards, Ann).
Vote the candidate, not the party and question everything. If you do that, you will be a real woman.
Two-minute video of Greg Gutfeld on Lena’s “First Time” ad:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/10/26/gutfeld_on_obamas_first_time_ad_political_equivalent_of_a_booty_call.html
wonder how many other disabled vets like myself were saddened by the cheapening of what we gave by equating the right to vote with an orgasm.
this and the video of turner ( http://www.conservative-media.com/video/1073/Ted-Turner-I-Think-It-s-Good-US-Troops-are-Killing-Themselves ) saying it good soldiers committing suicide have hit hard this week
What kind of dementia does this man and his supporters have to think that calling up imagery which analogizes an 18-year-old girl’s voting for him to having having sex with him would not just induce responses of “Eee-ew, ick!”
How I lost it.
In ’76, in High School, I couldn’t watch Carter’s swearing in because my man had lost. I couldn’t wait to turn 18 and to be able vote for president.
My first presidential election was in ’80. As a young college student at the University of Arizona, I was passionate about what I had been taught. I knew that the national debt was wrong because a Harvard educated lawyer had sat me down with worthless German money and taught me Germany’s history — much like Glen Beck did on his show.
I had seen that Carter had ruined the country. Not all my classmates agreed. I feared for my countries future.
I remember going to the polling place that morning, going into the voting booth, and punching Ronald Reagan/George Bush. No hanging chads on my part. I voted for the first time!
That afternoon, even before the polls closed in CA, our excitement to know that Reagan had won in a landslide was incredible. I was giddy with joy because the Gipper had won.
Is she Jeff Dunham’s daughter?
Been spending too much time with Jose Jalapeno (on a steek), if you ask me…
If your “first time” was with OBOZO in 2008 – you better vote for Romney in November; he’s the penicillin you now so desperately need.
(Sorry, but you’ll still have to suffer with the crabs and genital herpes…considered them punishment for making a horrifically BAD choice in 2008)