Please read what aerialcircus wrote as a response to this post that I put earlier today.  I love it, love it, love it.

aerialcircus:

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:

[Image of Eddie Vedder from 1992 with the word “Pro-choice” written in black marker down his arm.]

From Wikipedia: “During Pearl Jam’s 1992 appearance on MTV Unplugged, Vedder stood atop his stool, took out a marker pen, and wrote “PRO-CHOICE” down his arm in large letters when the band performed the song “Porch”.”

From a Feministe commenter (in response to people dismissing the power of Bieber’s anti-choice words in Rolling Stone):

Young women are heavily influence by their idols, I know I was. I can’t imagine being a young girl who’s a victim of rape hearing Justin saying “Meh, it happens”.

I came to be aware of the pro-choice movement, and “No means no” (which we were taught at school, but it didn’t ring true enough there) through my teenage love for Eddie Vedder. At 16, a group of us watching MTV Unplugged as he scrawled ‘Pro-choice’ on his arm, and sang about “Saying no.. when she says no, you’ve got to stop”, that fired us up in a way that comprehensive school sex/relationships education never could. We looked up to him, this worldly American man, who sang songs and made statements that moved us. One friend got up the courage to report someone who was molesting her, because of the message she heard in a song, and she wasn’t the only one of us inspired by those we looked up to.

It seems almost silly to say that now, as a 33 year old, but it was true. We didn’t have internet then, being ‘alternative’ was not cool and we were frequently beaten and spat upon for daring to be different. So we decided that if we were going to be different anyway, we might as well put that to good use. No use taking beatings for nothing, when we could have strength in numbers and prove that our people weren’t ‘bad’ because of how we dressed, or the music we played.

Our little collective of rock/metal/hippy ‘losers’ gathered informally on saturday afternoons in a local city, listening to new music (awful fifth-hand bootlegs on c60 tapes) and talking about politics. We marched against racism in our city, and for women’s aid groups that operated refuges, and organised little music festivals that gave the proceeds to charity. Music did that, it sparked something in us. It’s important to people, whether it’s pop-fluff like Bieber and Miley, or politically inspired rock. Justin may only be sixteen, but people look up to him. Being sixteen isn’t an excuse for anything.

I was ten years old when this happened, not a Pearl Jam fan at the time by any stretch of the imagination (I was still hovering around here somewhere), but it was so cryptic and passionate and moderately disturbing to me that it prompted me to approach my mother and ask her what “pro-choice” meant. I learned about abortion when I did entirely because Vedder’s actions opened up dialogue between my mother and I, which contributed to my receiving both sides of the debate at once. If it had never happened, I’m not sure she ever would have broached the subject with me (especially not at that age), and if she had it’s likely she would have explained it from a strictly anti-choice standpoint (since those are her personal beliefs). Because Eddie Vedder went on tv and wrote “pro-choice” on his arm in sharpie, I didn’t ask “what’s abortion?”, I asked “what’s pro-choice?”

11 months ago  /  226 notes  /   / /Source: kier-cs