We need to talk about women as a class
Glosswitch on The problem with talking about “pregnant people” – she starts the way I did, with “if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” It is very much the point, after all.
The problem, we see, is not what pregnancy is, but where women are situated within a social, cultural and economic hierarchy.
And that’s why it’s a mistake to stop talking about women as the targets of efforts to eliminate freedom of reproduction.
Occasionally this tension comes to a head. For instance, last year the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) changed some of the language in its core competencies document to refer to “pregnant people” as opposed to “women” (although there is still one reference to the latter). In August this year an organisation calling themselves Woman-Centred Midwifery delivered an Open Letter to MANA in protest at the changes, arguing that they constituted “the erasure of women from the language of birth”. The signatories include Ina May Gaskin, one of the most well-known advocates for natural birthing choices. Her involvement has shocked and disappointed many, to the extent that some have petitioned for her to be removed from the Birth and Beyond Conference speakers’ list. After all, why should language that is more neutral be seen as politically objectionable?
Because reproduction isn’t neutral. Because reproduction is central to why women are an oppressed class. Because women already get erased and ignored and shoved aside everywhere you look, so it’s not “progressive” to do even more of that.
It is very easy to dismiss Women-Centred Midwifery as the bad guys in all this. First of all, they’ve called themselves “woman-centred”. Nobody calls themselves “woman-centred” unless they’re a 1970s throwback, belonging to an age when feminism was drab, unenlightened and too busy eating its own afterbirth to get anything done.
Um. I can’t tell if glosswitch is being ironic there or not, but if she’s not…yikes. Is that really how 1970s feminism is seen now? Has anybody thought to compare it with feminism circa 1964? 1970s feminism got quite a lot more done than placenta-munching.
If one looks at how gender functions, not as a means of self-definition, but as a class system, the gender-neutral pregnancy starts to feel akin to John Major’s “classless society”. It’s a way of using language to create the illusion of dismantling a hierarchy when what you really end up doing is ignoring it. Pregnancy is a gendered experience, not because pregnant individuals necessarily feel like women, but because the pregnant body is externally managed within the context of its subordinate sex class status. Because if it had a different status, “abortion [and free birthing choices, epidurals and caesareans on demand, investment into more and better pregnancy care etc.] would be a sacrament.” We need a way of talking about this which is permitted to prioritise the sex-class reading of gender over the identity-based one, not as way of excluding people, but as a way of naming what happens to them and others in the context of class-based oppression.
In Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?, Katrine Marçal describes our tendency to discuss humanity as though it were “created outside class, gender, race, age, background and experience – rather than through class, gender, race, age, background and experience”:
“Instead we see circumstances, the body and context as layers that have to be peeled away. They cloud the vision. If we want to talk about how things really are, we must abstract how things really are, we think.
But being human is experienced precisely through a gender, a body, a social position, and the backgrounds and experiences we have. There is no other way.”
I wrote my next Free Inquiry column about that – about the fact that “identity” isn’t just internal, it’s social, it’s shaped by how the world sees us. There is no other way.
One can argue over whether or not gender exists as an apolitical entity; whether to be a woman is to identify or be identified as one. Our most immediate challenge, however, concerns whether all pregnant individuals are seen as people, not whether all pregnant people are seen as women. In order to address this we need to talk about women as a class. Gender-neutral terms limit our ability to do this. Whatever our intentions, neutralising language is not a neutral act.
Neutral isn’t neutral.
It seems to me that the sides are talking past each other
a. What is the cause ? The cause of people being anti abortion (and in general reproductive rights) is targetted against women. Most of the people opposing it will probably not acknowledge the “trans” label and for them genitalia defines gender – period. Here it is completely appropriate to talk about “women” – The fact that not all women can get pregnant (either because they cannot biologically, or they have other issues ) or they don’t want to or that some would not ever want an abortion is not relevant to whats being discussed.
I guess this is roughly your position too.
b. Who is affected ?
The laws and attitudes impact more than just women. In general we don’t refer to men as also affected because men are more privileged. However Trans men are not more privileged than women – and have a particular issue in that the trans folk are marginalized and are made invisible in other contexts. So while discussing this particular thing , I would think it is worthwhile using more inclusive terms (Pregnant people or (All including trans) women and trans men or whatever)
This is I think the position of the people using inclusive terms – Im not sure if you are actually against this or not.
a) and b) are not mutually exclusive.
c. What is the effective way to argue this? – use inclusive terms or not?
It reminds me of the accommodationist /new atheist wars – Everyone has an opinion but all evidence provided is anecdotal on both sides. I would guess the reasonable position to take would be – you argue your way and I argue mine – Don’t tell me I’m harming your cause till you can prove it with evidence.
Deepak, re-read the post. It’s point is not inclusivity. It’s point is how NOT to erase women in the cause of inclusivity.
Erasing women is NOT inclusive. It excludes half of humanity.
Being trans-inclusive is good if it does NOT erase (all other) women.
Maybe my reading comprehension is deficient, but that’s how I understood the post.
(PS. Glosswitch is definitely being sarcastic about some people’s view of 1970s feminism.)
@quixote
Fine – but abortion is almost always framed as a woman’s right issue – there is no way to be inclusive without diluting it a little bit (A women and trans-men issue for e.g. or the unpopular pregnant people issue).
Erasing women is not inclusive.
That ^^^^^
I checked with some trans guys. They’re uncomfortable to some extent with being erased and with being expeted to go to women’s clinics or women’s doctors or what have you. But they seemed open to the idea that every women’s issue didn’t affect every woman and zero men. And everyone wants to be a good feminist these days.
I think this is a case of yelling when you could just talk. We’re all on the same side, here.
Repeating a question I asked last time that wasn’t really explicitly addressed, would you prefer it if instead of “people” activists said “women as well as trans men and non-gender binary people”? That’s being inclusive and still making it clear that women are oppressed.
I’m late with this, but Jonah Mix over at Gender Detective had a very good summary of the issue:
Bingo. I don’t identify as a “man” – I think gender categories are an absurd, oppressive construct. Still, for me to deny that I am often identified as a man and thus accorded a ridiculous degree of social privilege would simply be gender-blind sexism, much like color-blind racism. Indeed, the social aspects of identity are the only parts of identity that matter to others, with the exception of hardcore authoritarians who literally want to police others’ thoughts.
I have pushed for “pregnant people” in many contexts, because it is far and away the most accurate term when talking about, for example, pregnancy-centered health care – not all women ever become pregnant, and not only women become pregnant. I do very much still agree that there are contexts – particularly when discussing broad, class-based rights – where it makes sense to frame the issue as one primarily affecting women. In those cases, I usually refer to “women*”, with the asterisk comment noting that some non-binary-identified people and trans men can/do become pregnant. As always, context dictates meaning and thus the appropriate approach.