Sarah Palin Steals The ‘F’ Word
by Melody Thomas
I‘m a feminist.
There, I said it. I’m a feminist.
Despite the fact that I have been a passionate advocate for gender equality since I learned what that was, I have not until now ever managed to call myself a feminist. I think in part that’s to do with the stereotype I must associate myself with in adopting the title. In talking to a friend recently about the importance of gender equality this (very intelligent) man told me feminism has no place in modern times and that angry, hairy, anti-men women were bringing about negative repercussions for males (“which is revenge, not equality”). This comment may have made me splutter up my coffee but it did not motivate me to claim the title for myself, which would immediately have gone some distance towards disproving his theory as I am not overly hairy, I love many men and I love to laugh (although if there’s one thing that’ll turn me into an angry feminist it’s being told feminism’s no longer required.)
And if I’m going to be completely honest, the other reason I’ve never said it before is I’m scared there’s going to be some older, wiser, more deeply-entrenched feminist within earshot who will then proceed to point out that I cannot possibly be a feminist considering my many anti-feminist behaviours. For example, I care a lot about how I look (to my own detriment). I sometimes pass time on a site called thesuperficial.com (“because you’re ugly”) where scathing, anti-women rhetoric runs wild next to upskirt images and celebs in their underwear (oh how embarassing). Recently I had a 36-comment facebook argument with a friend when he commented on the announcement of Julia Gillard as Australian Prime Minister that she at least had some masculine traits, such as her entire face. Two days later I committed an act that is potentially as bad, posting a picture of Sarah Palin and John McCain on a stage, taken from an angle where it looks like she’s giving him oral sex (although I’m still adamant that if it’d been George Bush bending over I would have had as much delight in sharing the image, but still). So I’m half scared of being thrown into a box with all the (imaginary) hairy, screeching feminist banshees and half scared of being thrown out of the box by them. You can see how this is an awkward predicament.
So what is it that has caused me to suddenly grab hold of the feminist crown and staple it to my head? It’s the news that the aforementioned Sarah Palin is a feminist. A “conservative feminist.” And not the only one at that.
Although it depends who she’s talking to (with CBS’s Katie Couric she was one, with NBC’s Brian Williams she didn’t want to take the label) Palin recently spoke to conservative pro-life group the Susan B. Anthony List (click for video on youtube)), addressing her “pro-woman sisterhood” with a speech overflowing in feminist rhetoric, using the “f” word and its variations at least a dozen times.
To put this claim into context you should know what the Susan B. Anthony List is. Susan B. Anthony was one of the USA’s Kate Sheppards – a suffragette at the front of the women’s movement in the 19th century. Membership of the group that takes her name consists of over 280, 000 Americans whose central agenda is advancing “pro-life” education and legislation. The following is from their mission list at sba-list.org:
“The Susan B. Anthony List’s mission is at the nerve center of the pro-life movement and political process. Advancing, mobilizing and representing pro-life women directly contradicts the claim that abortion is a woman’s right and the premise that abortion somehow liberates women. To accomplish our ultimate goal of ending abortion in this country, we know that activating more pro-life women in the political and legislative arenas is critical”
One thing that should be noted before we dig deeper is that the term “pro-life” is a controversial one, and a great example of what’s called “political framing”. Politically framed terms (not just “pro-life” but also “pro-choice”) purposefully attempt to define their philosophies in the best possible light while simultaneously describing their opposition in the worst possible light. So the term “pro-life” sets up the alternate viewpoint as “pro-death” or “anti-life”, while “pro-choice” frames the opposition as “anti-choice”.
The implication that those who oppose the “pro-choice” cry are “anti-choice” isn’t too hard for me to stomach. That’s because those who oppose pro-choice feminists are blatantly rooting for anti-abortion legislature, which to me is very much anti-choice. The implication that opposers of “pro-life” philosophies are “pro-death” or “anti-life” however is not so easy to stomach. As Gloria Steinem put it recently to CBS’s Katie Couric “Yes you can be a feminist who doesn’t agree with abortion, would never have an abortion, but you can’t be a feminist who says that other women can’t.”
And yet Palin has managed to take from this dialogue something very different than what I have. In her Susan B. Anthony List address, Palin went as far as to say that “liberal feminist groups … want to try to tell women… that no, you’re not capable of doing both. You can’t give your child life and still pursue career and education. You’re not strong enough. You’re not capable…”
I’m not sure where she got idea from but I’m pretty sure it’s founded in nothing resembling fact. Try as I might I can’t see how legislature legalising abortion as a choice for women who find themselves in unwanted pregnancies equates to telling them they’re not capable of juggling motherhood and a career. The hyperbole gets more confusing when Palin goes on to state that pro-life groups are all about “…empowering women, letting them understand that yeah there’s gonna be some help, some support and resources out there for you in order to give your child life.”
Aside from the fact that Sarah Palin forgot to mention here that in 2008 she used a line-item veto to “ slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live “, Palin’s argument for pro-choice legislation seems to go something like this:
1) Liberal, pro-choice feminists are telling women they’re not capable of having babies while pursuing careers and education.
2) Pro-life, conservative feminists think you are capable of being both mother and career woman.
3) But not capable of making that decision for yourself.
Typically, the legal right to choose an abortion is very important for feminists. It represents a greater concept – the right to bodily autonomy. Most definitions of autonomy carry words like “independent”, “self-governing” and “self-directed” – so the right to bodily autonomy is basically the right to decide for yourself what you want to do with your self. Inside the feminist frame this also carries comparative connotations – I personally can’t think of any legislation that dictates what men can do with their bodies but anti-abortion legislation is blatantly doing so for women.
In terms of autonomy Palin’s argument is a direct contradiction. I just can’t buy the argument that women who would consider or go through with an abortion aren’t smart enough to make their own decisions, whereas the women who would decide for them that they cannot, are.
The arguments of most pro-lifers are often bulked up with statements about the negative side-effects of abortion – from research that suggests a link between abortion and breast cancer to a general “wounding of the soul” to the symptoms of guilt, hostility and sexual dysfunction related to post-abortion syndrome. The trouble is, there seems to be little scientific evidence that post-abortion syndrome exists. In fact in 2008, the American Psychological Association rejected the term outright, stating that:)
“The most methodologically sound research indicates that among women who have a single, legal, first-trimester abortion of an unplanned pregnancy for nontherapeutic reasons, the relative risks of mental health problems are no greater than the risks among women who deliver an unplanned pregnancy.” (note: “non-therapeutic here means voluntary”)
and that
” The prevalence of mental health problems observed among those women “was consistent with normative rates of comparable mental health problems in the general population of women in the United States.”
The report does acknowledge that of course periods of grief or sadness, sometimes even clinical depression and anxiety, can follow an abortion but that the correlation is unclear – “following” does not equal “caused by.” Factors that seem to predispose women to a greater degree of emotional fallout seem to be termination of a wanted pregnancy, pressure from others to end the pregnancy and a desire to keep the termination secret due to stigma attached to abortion. A study published in 2000 revealed that two years after the procedure, 72 percent of the women surveyed were satisfied with their decision to have an abortion, 69 percent said they would have the abortion again, and 72 percent reported more benefit than harm from their abortion. The small proportion of women who did experience problems also tended to have a prior history of depression.
Aside form the direct effects of the procedure itself, there is abundant research that shows the horrible circumstances women find themselves in when abortion is made illegal. History shows time and time again that women have always tried to terminate unwanted pregnancies. When safe medical procedures are banned by law, women resort to more dangerous methods. Before the Roe v. Wade US Supreme Court Decision in 1973 decriminalised abortion in the US, millions of women were seeking and attaining abortions anyway. A 1932 study estimated that illegal abortions and their complications were responsible for the deaths of 15,000 women each year (although more current, conservative estimates put this number at 5-10,000). The legalisation of abortion following the Roe v. Wade decision led to a near elimination of deaths associated with the procedure – with the mortality rate dropping from 4.1% to 0.6% between 1973 and 1997.
In addition to all this, Palin is one of the extreme pro-lifers who assert that abortion is only acceptable if the pregnancy threatens the mothers life and is not an acceptable option even in cases of unwanted pregnancy from rape and incest. She has refused to answer questions regarding the hypothetical situation where an 11/12/13 year old girl might fall pregnant after being raped by her father, which may be an extreme example but is not completely unrealistic.
The scariest part about all this for me is that Palin is a popular woman in the US, and one who is considering running for US President in 2012. Palin has a whole army of men and women lapping up her “feminist” rhetoric without realising her selection of the term is a political strategy and her “pro-woman” facade hides hefty anti-woman policy. Palin’s fans and endorsers include bloggers (like fellow “conservative feminist” Lori Ziganto, whose motto is, “Walk softly. But carry a big lipstick”, and who has asserted her relief in Palin taking the feminist title because she’s at least easier on the eyes than the “irksome hysterical screeching … already irrelevant and soon to be extinct” liberal feminists , fellow political candidates, “grizzly Moms” and women who’ve wrangled their way to the tops of corporate ladders. Even some self-declared liberal feminists have asserted that Palin’s adoption of the feminist label is ok – L.A. Times journalist Meghan Duam wrote:
“I feel a duty (a feminist duty, in fact) to say this about Palin’s declaration: If she has the guts to call herself a feminist, then she’s entitled to be accepted as one”.
But I just can’t agree with that. As long as I’ve used them I’ve come to understand that words have meanings. If a man walks into a church and tells people he’s Jesus resurrected, the statement (while gutsy) isn’t necessarily true. I’m not saying he’s not, I’m just saying the statement isn’t automatically true because he had the guts to say it.
My instincts tell me that Sarah Palin is not a feminist. As someone who disagrees with abortion personally she could still call herself one without sending up alarm bells, except she’s at the forefront of legislation that would dictate what another woman can do with her own body and this is a contradiction I just can’t get past.
I have Palin to thank for one thing though, because if she hadn’t gone and asserted herself as a feminist it may have been a long while before I went and grabbed that title for myself. I see it this way, while I may be nervous about jumping into the stereotypical box of screeching feminists (and scared of being kicked out), I’ve gotta be IN that box if I’m gonna help in the fight to keep her out.
ENDS
Tags: Abortion, conservatism, Equality, Feminism, feminist, Gloria Steinem, Julia Gillard, Katie Couric, Melody Thomas, motherhood, pro-choice, pro-life, Republicans, Sarah Palin, Susan B Anthony
Speaking as the friend mentioned in this article, I feel like I should back myself up. One thing I DEFINITELY never said is that feminism has no place in modern times!
But I responded to the thought that “men to be prejudiced against sometimes IS equality, considering it’s happened to females for so long”.
That (and this is not opinion, it is fact) is revenge. Equality means no one is prejudiced against. We need to strive for equality, and that should always be the goal of feminism. Affirmative action for females is not the same as negative action towards (= punishment of) males!
You definitely did say that Simon and I have a couple of witnesses to the fact (who joined me in getting you to define what you though feminism was and in conveincing you that gender discrimination is alive and well just perhaps more subliminal).
Also, that quote wasn’t mine but was someone elses. It was not my opinion, just something to think about. It made me think of the kids in High School who thought Scholarships for Maori and Pacific Island students were prejudiced against us Pakeha students, which would be true if we were in a society that treated all cultures equally which it most certainly isn’t. This man was just saying that sometimes he let such (slight) prejudices slide because he knew women had had to for so many years.
Great article Melody.
And I might add that ‘prejudice’ against men (or for women) is not the same thing as ‘punishing’ men.
I don’t believe we can always treat all people equally as in treat them the same. I don’t want to be treated like men get treated. I want to be treated as I deserve, as I have earned, and in a way reflective of how I treat others.
In other words as an individual human being which may at times mean being treated ‘differently’.
And I agree wholeheartedly with your point Melody about the fact that we don’t live in a society where all people are treated equally yet.
The odds are still stacked against women, Maori and Pacific people. There is no harm in actively unstacking them.
Excellent stuff. Two things: –
Kate SHEPPARD not the other sp.
And as for “… the hypothetical situation where an 11/12/13 year old girl might fall pregnant after being raped by her father, which may be an extreme example but is not completely unrealistic…” – unfortunately it’s neither hypothetical, extreme nor at all unrealistic, but frighteningly common. They’ve got away with it so long because of society’s reluctance to believe the statistics that our (feminist) researchers unearthed decades ago. However, like all other forms of formerly hidden child abuse it’s well out in the open now, and boys benefit from this as much as girls, of course, especially those who had anything to do with priests.
Don’t you love the way men say “this is not opinion, this is fact”? Hahaha!
Whoops, my hairy legs are showing – better go look for a big lipstick.
Spelling fixed, thanks.
Men and women don’t deserve equal treatment–a man demanding an abortion would be silly–but what they do deserve is equal consideration of their rights.
At Simon: feminism is ultimately a movement for gender equality, but while women are still under, the movement has to be pro-women. I keep running into this rhetoric of “But what about the men?!” (the silliest is “what about a men’s refuge?”; build it yourself you freaks, we’re not stopping you!), and it’s rather tiresome. I get that jokes/serious assertions about men being all the same or good-for-nothings is frustrating, hurtful and unfair. Fortunately feminists who have thought it through don’t actually ascribe to that logic.
I’M A FEMINIST TOO!!!
I get so sick of hearing “I’m not a feminist, but…”
Like almost everything, it comes down to education. If young women don’t know what feminism is they can’t be expected to fight for it.
I was really surprised to learn we have a Working Women’s Charter in NZ http://www.wwrc.org.nz/NZ%20Working%20Womens%20Charter.htm Why did no one ever mention that in school?
Thank you Melody for expressing so eloquently the utter betrayal of a woman using her power and exposure to further a blatantly anti-empowerment agenda. I think what angered me most about this was the apparent ploy by Biden to choose a women (ahead of some other, more experienced candidates) in order to garner more female votes for the Republican party – to assume that women are so easily led that we would blindly vote for a woman if even if she has anti-female policies! It was cheap and nasty and I am glad that the world dismissed Palin. However, I feel that the media coverage of her got really petty and vicious, and part of me wondered if, in deriding her, the proud feminists like me were standing alongside people who dislike seeing an uppity woman thinking she belongs in office. Has she, with her US$150,000 clothing allowance and ill-informed comments, actually set back the estimation of female politicians? Who knows. Meanwhile (on the subject of abortion), here in Victoria, Tony Abbott’s $15 million dollar pregnancy helpline, established to minimise abortion and advised by Centacare (a faction of the Catholic Church), will be scrapped in six months. Yay!
PS Love the image of you grabbing hold of the femmo crown and stapling it to your forehead…
I know, it’s ridiculous! Did you go to the 30th anniversary convention for it? It was awesome.
Good on you Melody.
I get depressed when people say ‘I’m not a feminist, but…’ We fought long and hard not be just in the secretarial pool (ugly) or draped over cars (sexy).
ruthz
Go Melody! Are you the same Melody who contributed to Muse feminist magazine (and the Readstrange writing group). Stop me if I’m wrong! But, if so it seems strange that you were afraid of calling yourself a feminist before this. Women have to get over the fear of what men or ignorant women think. Fear is totally how women are controlled. So, good on you.
I completely agree with you about Sarah Palin- and I have met one or two ‘christian feminists’ who are anti abortion, not just for them, but for all other women, and the argument doesn’t work. And they are ultimately serving a patriarchal religion, not women.
From personal experience, I’ve totally had a gutsfull of men who call themselves feminists because they’re players, they want to sleep with feminists, they don’t actually ‘do’ feminism. Its all about their public image, making themselves look good. How they behave privately is about as mysogynist as you can get. Sadly, there’s plenty of them out there. Also, until the transexual community which has also invaded the feminist community, faces up to and acknowledges the mental and physical violence and community bullying they inflict on female friends and partners, disproportionately as a group in my experience, they’ll get no time from me either.
I have written for Muse Magazine before, but you’re likely talking about Melody Nixon- another Wellington writer.
Rae, really good points, esp re pseudo-feminist men. But we have to get skilled at telling the pseuds and the genuines apart, because the genuinely feminist men are powerful allies and risk much on our behalf, including our suspicion.
Thanks Melody, I enjoyed this article too. You may be interested in a discussion your post has sparked over at The Hand Mirror:
http://thehandmirror.blogspot.com/2010/06/more-on-choice-and-feminism.html
I particularly liked your analogy about the box. I took a while to jump in (not fully in until my early twenties despite a lot of experiences that would have shifted many others!) and I do still worry sometimes about being ejected. There are a lot of smart feminists out there, and sometimes they can be a tad intimidating, but I’m finding there is a place for me too.
Great article, Melody.
Welcome inside the feminist box, lol.
I think the biggest thing that differentiates ‘liberal’ from ‘conservative’ feminists is exactly the point that you’ve hit on: I would defend any woman’s right to define her own life, her own feminism, up to the point where her philosophy restricts or detracts from another person’s ability to engage in feminism. The abortion debates in the USA are but one forum for that kind of proscriptive thinking, btw.
There have been flame wars between feminists since the earliest separatist spats, so this is nothing new for the American context. I can still recall the first time I heard Sarah Palin referred to as a feminist by someone, comparing her run-up to the USA presidential elections with Hilary Clinton’s campaign, and being dismayed because on policy, neither of them looked good, and Barack Obama seemed to be more feminist than either of them. I was in a roomful of undergrad’s, none of whom recognised the name ‘Monica Lewinsky’, most of whom were unaware that there were lobby groups rolling back Roe vs Wade all over the federal states’ legislatures as Ms Palin was making her resounding claims for the primacy of marriage and family for all good female citizens.
Shall we say heated debate ensued, as we discussed the merits of the various descriptions of the individuals concerned!
hang on a minute mates, could i please get the following, like, really straight?
“in addition to all this, Palin is one of the extreme pro-lifers who assert that abortion is only acceptable if the pregnancy threatens the mothers life and is not an acceptable option even in cases of unwanted pregnancy from rape and incest”.
Here was i thinking all along that was motivated the rage against the Church was the belief that its doctrine always subordinates whatever “threatens the mother’s life” to the imperishable mission of the child within. This, at least, is what i have heard from those who most eagerly charge the Church with that little beastie they call ‘misogyny”
so, one is “anti-woman” if you think that even the fruit (gasp!) of incestual rape might be given an outside chance to make it into this world on a pair of decently inline skates.. are we quite sure that we are not, even, say 3% “anti-child” here…?
Just wondering, aye….
I’m not saying it’s right but you should probably achnowledge the ‘pro-life’ viewpoint that they are protecting the rights of the unborn child, and that the reason for advocating limiting what a women can do with her own body is the consideration of the unborn.
That position would perhaps be more tenable if the same people like Sarah Palin didn’t also advocate for citizens’ having the ability/right to shoot anyone who trespasses on your property, which is a direct parallel to abortion.
Hmm … there are lots of points of view, and everyone has every right to hold their own. But the fundamental issue is whether you have the right to force your views onto someone else or not.
You have every right to believe anything you want – that the unborn child is paramount, the mother’s life secondary, pigs can fly, whatever. But – do you have the right to bully everyone else to fall into line with you?
Those who identify as ‘pro-life’ are not content to have their own views; they pressure for LEGISLATION that will force everyone else to conform to their beliefs. Pro-choice means – resisting such legislation and allowing all women to make up their own minds. THIS is the issue.
As someone has already said, it’s quite common for a woman to be personally anti-abortion, but politically pro-choice.
nah, that can’t be right. For surely ’tis the legislation, specifically ‘Roe Vs. Wade’, which effectively puts the thing beyond discussion, and requires that the so-called ‘point-of-view’ (which, if it were really such, could be situated just abour anywhere in the house at all) falls on this side of the indivisible object (we call the foetus), or falls on the other side, and methinks it be the very legislation that for so long now has made exchange-of-views on a truly political, or secular level, largely impossible…
(please forgive my annoying typos!) But i do have to add, positively palpitating in the womb-of-my-merely-nascent-opinion as i do so, that the concluding statement of raffia rather beggars belief, asserting as it does that ‘it is common for (a woman) to be “anti-choice personally” but “pro-choice politically”? Setting aside for now whatever might be gathered from the value here given to the idea of ‘common’, does not such a statement virtually champion a schizoid mindset as the pre-condition of acceptability in our time, verily and as if in every way a “woman’s mind” was composed in a kind of vacuum, in the wake of which her involvement in the ‘political’ is but some sort of ..afterthought/birth’?
Sorry to confuse you, Frisky. To be perfectly clear – I personally would never have an abortion (and so am personally anti-abortion). But I will defend to the death other women’s right to make up their own minds on every aspect of the issue – (and therefore am politically pro-choice). There is no conflict here. I don’t wish to legislate for other women to behave or believe as I do, that’s all.
Furthermore; the law is constantly under threat – as we speak there is a yet another challenge to Roe vs Wade, and the “pro-lifers” in NZ are currently mounting a campaign against Steve Chadwick’s attempts to liberalise our own abortion laws. It doesn’t ever do to assume that feminist battles are won – look at Iran, Afghanistan; their women were once as free as we are. Backlashes are always just around the corner.
Agreed raffia, this government especially will require shoring up the votes of the religious right as they alienate voters who supported them last time. Abortion is an easy bone to throw them – I daresay they will conscience vote on the issue allowing them to vote it down not because they will admit personally are against abortion or indeed a woman’s right to choose but because ‘women I talked to said I should’ or ‘it’s what my electorate would have wanted me to do’.
Having supported two of my best friends through abortions I too would die in a ditch before their right to choose is taken away. And personally, if I had the biology and was in the family way I suspect I too would have had an abortion in their circumstances.
This article has made me really consider that feminism label. I’ve never had an issue with using it – even when some women and men told me that you have to be female to be a feminist – maybe it’s being gay but once you come out labels are far easier to adopt! But the article has certainly made me look at what it means today. Good work.
I have no axe to grind either way here, but this post displays a rather confused defence of the pro-choice position. Bodily autonomy isn’t a very useful concept to focus on in any discussion on abortion. Adhering to the bodily autonomy argument would give us no moral clues on whether it’s OK for a mother to abort at 8 months, or to allow her newly born child to starve to protest its reliance on her breast milk.
The question is at what point does that little bundle of cells acquires the right to not be killed? If my personal belief is that the magic point is, say, 3 weeks after conception, can I still be a feminist? I struggle to see how any possible answer to this question would exclude me from being able to declare my support for the cause of gender equality.
This whole post is politically framed in a misleading way. The pro-life position isn’t that women shouldn’t have control over their bodies; it’s that women shouldn’t be allowed to abort something that pro-lifers consider to have human rights. None of this post’s emotive language and heart-wrenching hypotheticals come close to addressing the real issue here.
Platonic Charisma – “women shouldn’t be allowed … “? Pardon? Who gave you the right to tell me what to do? This is a personal matter, a personal choice that each women makes depending on her own circumstances, and we should all mind our own business, not tell each other what we are ‘allowed’ to do! Good luck with your decisions on when the ‘bundle of cells’ becomes this or that, but don’t bother me with your conclusions thanks, I know where I stand on this issue.
Whatever any of us believe, if abortions are going to happen and they always are, let’s at least ensure they are available and safe. The tragic mortality rate of formerly very live women from backstreet abortions in places and at times where safe abortion is not an option should be our ‘pro-life’ priority.
And anyway; this is what feminism is REALLY about:- http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/04/women-budget-cuts-yvette-cooper
You can climb down off your soapbox – I’m not in the business of telling anyone what to do. I support the live-and-let-live mantra in all walks of life, so I have nothing against the validity of the bodily autonomy concept. The crux of the moral debate on abortion is whether the bodily autonomy concept can be applied in the case of abortion.
That may sound ridiculous – why wouldn’t bodily autonomy apply in the case of abortion? But in some legitimate cases it is quite clear that the mother’s right of bodily autonomy ‘gives way’ to some other right. For instance, I feel quite comfortable in passing moral judgement on a mother who aborts at 9 months because of a change of heart, or on a mother who withholds her breast-milk and allows her new-born to starve to death. I’m sure that many other pro-choicers would feel the same. At some point, that little bundle of cells acquires the right to life, and the mother’s right to terminate becomes no more “personal” than her right to kill her local dairy owner.
The concept of bodily autonomy is a nice little concept to toss around in a pro-choice echo chamber, but it is not the crystal-clear panacea you or the author seem to think it is. Once its true complexity is revealed, we find it is a mostly irrelevant concept to anyone who actually disagrees with the pro-choice position – and, I would argue, is even more irrelevant to the question of whether or not a particular person can call herself a feminist.
You may find the ‘nice little concept of bodily autonomy’ (!) complex and opaque, but many other people, including myself, have no issue with its clarity – because we are taking responsibility just for ourselves, not other people. I suggest you do the same.
Stop trying to pretend you’re sitting on the fence. Only those trying to figure out a ‘universal law’ that can be used to pull everyone into line bothers with the ‘moral debate’ that you are presenting. Your ‘morality’ is your affair, however much you may want to drag the rest of us into its murky embrace. I wish anyone out there who actually IS genuinely confused good luck with your personal struggle, but urge them to apply their conclusions to themselves only please, not me or anyone else.
Women who want to terminate at 9 months or starve their newborns to death almost certainly only reached this tragic extreme because they didn’t have access to a safe legal abortion when they wanted one – or are desperately ill. They require our support and compassion, not judgment and moral arguments.
raffia, i find it very difficult to conceive of morality as something belonging purely to the ‘affair(s)’ of an individual being, for how would they have ever have aquired that, all by themselves exactly? Seems to me that what we call ‘morality’ is best understood as nothing other than reciprocity, (or, in the originary (Jewish) sense, our differences subordinated to the one whose difference exceeds ALL of us, aka Mr God!) It is hard to see how real morality could have emerged otherwisely.. you may wish however to insist that, as a woman, you have a relation of possible reciprocity with what is called your ‘internal other’, and then this might require the generation of a pretty new active vocabulary; meanwhile, i DO like your insistence that one can only ‘pretend to sit on the fence’..i’ve been sitting here for one truckload of time only waiting for someone to ably demonstrate that i’m pretending
God, eh.
On the contrary; moralities of various sorts were developed long before the God you are talking about, and have ancient and very dignified vocabularies. There is also a long history of believers in God persecuting people who didn’t, and trying to bully them to believe what they did. I’m sure you’re not one of those.
I’m sure you also know that you don’t have to believe in a God to be a deeply moral person.
@ raffia.
I think you are misreading my intentions here. I am not a Christian, not a conservative, not even a pro-lifer. I only stumbled upon this article because I have a decent amount of $$$ on Sarah Palin not running in 2012, and was surprised that no one had pointed out what I considered to be a rather glaring error in the author’s argument. I have no desire to design or discover any universal moral codes. As I said above, the very core of my philosophy is live-and-let-live – a corollary of that being that people should live by whatever moral code they deem appropriate.
There is a clear limit to this corollary though. The freedom to move my fist is rightly limited by the proximity of your chin, as some US judge once put it. Rights claims frequently conflict with each other. Pro-lifers see abortion as one such case: where, in their terms, the rights of the unborn baby conflict with the rights of the mother. What’s your answer to such people? Mine is: it’s complicated. I tell these people that we disagree about when that little bunch of cells acquires the right to life. Telling them that when the bunch of cells acquires such rights isn’t even up for debate – and likewise declaring that anyone who holds this position is no true supporter of women’s rights – is an extremely arrogant position in my eyes.
Sure, there are plenty of pro-lifers who are inconsistent and make for easy targets – Sarah Palin certainly being one of the more popular ones. But an easy target doesn’t excuse intellectual sloppiness, and I stand by my assertion that the focus on bodily autonomy is framing the debate in a particularly misleading way. Until you or anyone else can explain to me what part of the exceedingly clear bodily-autonomy doctrine makes it OK to terminate at 3 months and not OK to terminate at 9 months, I’ll continue to believe that the above article is a rather illogical argument for the pro-choice position.
Re my focus on morality. The legalisation-of-abortion debate does not appear to be one that can be settled objectively with science (although there is still some hope there). Our only alternative, then, is to (as a society) come to an agreement based on rational discussions about an extremely subjective topic. In the eyes of pro-lifers, your position on abortion is just as much a moral judgement as theirs’ – you may not be forcing your morals on any women, but, with your support of the legalisation of abortion, a pro-lifer would certainly accuse you of forcing your morals on unborn babies. Abortion _is_ a moral debate, and your position is certainly not above morality. To believe as such is, again, an incredibly arrogant position, and one that displays a startling lack of empathy.
I have never seen the point in making abortion illegal. I might as well make meat-eating illegal, or using any animal products, or using unsustainbly grown tofu. But assessing sustainability, or independent life (there are so many different forms of pregnancy, a lot of them don’t ever become anything like babies) is complicated, so it isn’t her pro-life opinion that stops Sarah Palin from being a feminist. It’s the hypocrisy she has already directly shown in cutting funding to young mothers, that shows she really does not care about women at all.
well then! neither of you have even begun to take seriously – or rather directly – my straightforward recommendation that it might be far more instructive to speak of what is simply *reciprocal* than it is to speak of what is supposedly guaranteed by the declared possession of this weirdest substance called ‘morality’ .. for oh raffia, you sound like you believe that the deeper you are buried within your own ‘morality’ the less pressure there will be on you to ever need to understand in what this morality could possibly consist – very best of luck with that, for now! ..now platonic charisma – ha, the suggestiveness of that tag is hardly lost on me – you verily seem to say as much as me, ie, recognise the same demands of each of us that are constantly at work, even as you apparently wish to reload the word ‘moral/ity’ with every new stab of yr wayward fingers…!
Platonic Charisma – you ask what is my answer to such people? I don’t answer them; I don’t need to, I don’t need to speak to them at all; I don’t need to evangelise and don’t want to; nor do I want them to pester me. I know where I stand. I don’t need to ‘debate’, because I live in a caring society that has done all the debating already, and enacted humane laws on the basis of the outcome.
My answer to you? It is clearly NOT OK to terminate at either 3 OR 9 months – for you. However, if you are ever in a situation where you have to make the choice, I would be VERY surprised if you didn’t realise very quickly – and for quite logical reasons – that 3 months might be preferable! (It might also then occur to you that it’s a substantially different situation from shooting the poor guy in the local dairy…)
Logic, reason, morality, science … the business of baby-having is on a whole different plane. Fortunately here the issue is safely between each woman and her conscience, and this is the culture we need to support.
(Yes, Amy, exactly)
@ raffia
Didn’t you watch the movie Australia? Just because it is, doesn’t mean it should be! I’m pretty sure some raving chauvinist from the 50s could use the same logic in your first paragraph to argue that his wife’s place is the kitchen. Closing your ears, avoiding all nay-sayers, and adhering blindly to the status quo is the policy of a reactionary, not a progressive feminist.
I do appreciate you responding to my comments though – thanks.
@ Amy
Palin made the same mistake Winston did. She openly hates and lies about the media, and they openly hate and lie about her. The Palin-cuts-funding story is probably true in some other context, but the claims made in the linked article above appear to be false (see link below – albeit from a questionable source). I guess Palin-raises-funding-astronomically-then-reduces-funding-slightly-to-spread-out-payments-over-multiple-years isn’t as catchy a headline.
http://wthrockmorton.com/2008/09/04/our-operating-budget-was-not-reduced-director-of-teen-center/
It’s a bit of a jump to go from Palin-cuts-costs to Palin-hates-women, too. Is Helen’s feminist card revoked for not giving more to teen women? How much do politicians have to give before they can be called feminists?
There are always significant opportunity costs for any government funding; some worthy recipients are inevitably going to lose out to other similarly-worthy recipients. That’s the nature of government funding. It doesn’t follow that the top brass hates any particular group that missed out; it probably just means that giving to the eventual recipient group was thought likely to attract more votes – but hey, that’s democracy.
Hey PC, if “some raving chauvinist ” came at me with that lot, I’d laugh my head off. Then I’d go into the kitchen and have a good chat to his wife!
(Btw for anyone anxious about a pregnancy, the place to go for sympathetic advice and support, 100% non-judgmental, is still http://www.familyplanning.org.nz.)
just to check – so i am reduced to “such people”, is that right? For my open request to have a language a little more operative on reality? please confirm/deny
Frisky, the ‘such people’ references started from one of my posts above. In the context of my comment, ‘such people’ was referring to the group I had mentioned in the preceding sentence. raffia was just answering my question. So, ‘deny’, I guess.
ahhh, now i see – and i do thankyou for that ..
(in passing,it might be noted that it is the sub-title ‘advertising’ (lit: warning of) the contents of our essaying above by MT herself, ie “feminism is what you do, not what you call yourself”, which is by all subsequent deliberations finally contra-indicated – Who can you possibly identify with/Who can identify With you, and by what Name are they ultimately permitted to do so..?
but raffia, we are wallowing most wigglefully in a wondrously worldly world where we can speak of what is “100% non-judgmental” at the very same time as we may speak of what is “deeply moral”.. !
..but do we really, really believe that the kind of capacity now needed to do this much, involves nothing more than the pseudo-freedom to bypass altogether the scandal of the Jews’ invention of the one, the universally complicit God, and go instead straight for the sacrificial jugular of a “long history of believers” who, were it not for the purely existential – as opposed to simply institutional – representational capacities of a God capable of vacuuming up us/them all and our/their sins to boot, might well have not spiritually ‘existed’ at all?
haha.. well, i tried
..i killed the party again, i ruined it for my friends http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpgkG4TIyvE
Only in America (USA actually).
Go the Tea Party!
Great article, Melody. As a feminist (ha ha) and I proudly ‘wear’ the label, I am oftentimes perplexed, confused and downright bemused by women (irrespective of age…I’m 42 by the way, in case anyone wants to have a go at that…)that refuse to claim the title. The stereotypes are unflattering…but as a heterosexual, reasonably fashion-conscious working parent (of two wonderful daughters) I think their is still a real need for feminist perspectives….made me think of the wonderful quote from Rebecca West from the early 20th century used by Susan Faludi in her late-20th century tome Backlash:
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
Rebecca West
Food for thought…
(i also had the the following thought – that SP herself somehow resembles the very figure of a foetus in utero, created as it were, almost entirely by the shocking political disarray on all sides around her, she herself a virtual ‘nothing’, but the fevers of every relevant party in *response to her* being nearly the whole reality…)
Palin has kicked it up a notch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsUVL6ciK-c
ha! does Rebecca West really say ‘doormat’ in the remark quoted in your ..Faludi book? In my copy of “The Essential RW’ (selected and edited by herself) she says ‘prostitute’ in that verysame statement..
speaking loosely, but goodness gracious great balls of cynosural fever, paltonic (oops) charisma, if that (contents of yr YT vid) don’t look like some kinda fem’nism kicked up to the nth power there, the womens all out to CONSERVE their potent earthly pow-wers in the face of mens whose merely transcendental lustifications can finally ONLY be justificationalised in heaven.. i don’t be known what that be… (oh gasp and gag me with a daggyspoon, just as i went to post this the Lennon comes all over the radio crooning “Woman”)
Just to throw a knot into the discussion that seems to have become mired in the abortion debate let me say the following.
I strongly believe in women’s equality, but am not particularly politically active for the concept save for voting for measures that support women’s rights should they happen to make it to the ballot, not that this happens too frequently. I do however wage what I consider my own private war on misogyny and anyone likes to consider women incapable just because they are women. I do this chiefly by doing whatever I want, be it working long hours doing landscaping and grunt labor or becoming the best sparrer in my taekwondo class. It is much harder to argue with results and I’ve had people tell me that they had to change their opinion of what they believed women capable of because of me. By doing things that women do infrequently or not at all and doing them well I’m opening opportunities for women who may follow me. For that I consider myself a feminist. If Sarah Palin were to become president, she would be doing the same. Therefore, her claim that she is a feminist may just be justified.
Now I’m not saying I support her politically as I dislike her politics intensely and would never vote for her nor advise anyone else to do so, but looking at feminism as I have framed the issue above she might deserve the title she is claiming. Unfortunately I don’t believe that she is calling herself a feminist because she believes that she is expanding opportunities for other women to enter politics. It seems more likely that she is using it as a political stunt to garner more votes. Sad really.
I find it funny how those who sympathise with the pro-life camp, either in truth or as some kind of devil’s advocate, seem to think that women who have abortions are just doing it for a good time.
An abortion is an awfully unpleasant procedure. It’s not something that most women would take lightly. The physical procedure can be both painful and humiliating, and there can be strong emotional consequences to boot.
So, why would a woman put herself through it? An overwhelming urge to kill babies? A masochistic bent?
The simple truth, not much fun for either side of the debate, is often that she feels she would be unable to provide or care for the child sufficiently, should it be born. This may be for financial reasons – having not yet achieved financial independence or the resources to support a family – or the softer aspects, such as having the maturity or emotional stability to be a ‘good’ parent, whatever that means.
The bottom line is – the outlook for these aborted babies was never rosy. Children who are born to parents that don’t want them, or cannot look after them, do not generally flourish.
The cries of anti-abortion campaigners would have more weight with me, if their advocates would spend some time on the frontline helping abused/neglected children or perhaps young criminals (who rapidly become adult criminals, and sprout little unwanted baby criminals of their own).
Forcing women to give birth to unwanted children does no-one any favours – not the woman, not the child, not society.