Women don’t get to count as human
Sarah Ditum asks why abortion rights are brushed aside while LGBT rights are front and center in discussions about the Tory-DUP coalition.
[S]enior politicians were making it clear that the DUP’s regressive social agenda would be staying in Stormont. Same sex marriages remain unrecognised in Northern Ireland, and the 1967 Abortion Act (which permits abortion under certain conditions in England, Scotland and Wales) still doesn’t apply there. The DUP has blocked legislative efforts at liberalisation on both counts.
Over the weekend Ruth Davidson, the Conservative’s leader in Scotland, demanded – and got – assurances from Theresa May that LGBT rights would not be up for debate. Soon after, Jeremy Corbyn gave an interview in which he declared: “LGBT rights are human rights. They must not be sold out by Theresa May and the Conservatives as they try to cling to power with the DUP.”
But abortion rights? Nope.
So how come our political defenders of socially liberal values aren’t talking about it now? If LGBT rights are human rights, do women count as human?
Here’s the cynical answer. It’s also the answer that I think happens to be true. Women don’t get to count as human. LGBT rights are human rights because they affect men too. Women’s rights – well they only affect women, and don’t merit any special protections. It’s a particularly bitter disappointment that women like Theresa May, Arlene Foster and Ruth Davidson can enjoy the fruits of equality through their own positions without defending the reproductive choice that is the cornerstone of liberation for women.
Women just don’t matter as much.
Yeah, surpising how much women’s rights don’t make it onto the left wing agenda. Now we’ve (mostly) accepted on a cultural level that gay people are actually fully human (and, believe me, I applaud that too-long delayed realisation), they seem to have been slotted into the same old hierarchy. White gay men, only a small step behind white straight men and ahead of straight women. White lesbians ahead of black lesbians. Gay men above all women, gay or otherwise.
Funny that, ain’t it?
LGBT rights is a new, shiny, and trendy social rights issue; women’s rights has been around for ages now, and so people are becoming inured to
the complaints of areas of unfairness that remainyour constant nagging.As a lefty in the UK who is hugely concerned by what is going on with the DUP here, I want to clarify that it isn’t as simple as this makes it seems. We are talking about women’s rights, and they form just one of a whole host of issues we have with the DUP. A few examples from a range of sources, but there are more.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/theresa-may-faces-backlash-over-dups-deeply-worrying-abortion-stance-a3561981.html
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/06/restricting-abortion-rights-unlikely-be-priority-dup-tory-pact
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/12/tories-bartering-womens-bodies-maintain-power-dup
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/we-not-duped-abortion-campaigners-10599292
http://theday.co.uk/politics/may-to-clinch-deal-with-anti-abortion-dup
Obviously different people are talking about the DUP from different angles. I’m not surprised that Ruth Davidson focused on LGBT rights – as a women in a same sex marriage (and for that matter, in a Catholic-Protestant marriage, which the DUP also oppose) she is bound to focus on that aspect of the DUP message. But please don’t take that high profile example as indicative of the opposition to the Tory-DUP deal at large.
Another thing is that women’s rights are perceived to be in place and complete. For some reason, if you can find a woman in every office in the country, working some sort of job, any sort of job, alongside men, that means women’s rights have happened. Any further concessions requested can safely be dismissed as “first world problems”, because…well, because. Women have rights, and to try to expand those rights is to deny similar rights to women in Muslim countries…for some reason. Which must mean there is a limited amount of rights to go around, and giving any more to first world women would use up all the possible rights for women, so none could be distributed elsewhere.
But LGBT is not “first world problems” because…well, just because. Because LGBT people in third world countries are treated even worse, and if we give rights to LGBT, then we are setting a shining example to show the world that giving equal rights to LGBT doesn’t result in a destruction of civilization as we know it, and may actually be kinda nice, you know?
If that sounds like something familiar…maybe a double standard…don’t blame me. I didn’t invent the stupid arguments I hear about why we can’t give more rights to women in the first world until we have solved every possible other problem (including environmental, which obviously is not going to be addressed until we solve every conceivable other problem except women’s rights).
Well, it’s not as if they can be in two places at once…
Gosh, a double standard? Nah, can’t be. That would suggest we still need to think about women’s rights and that would be, you know, ridiculous and outdated…
Well, LGBT rights affect women too, so that is a bit overheated. I think the most likely explanation is that nobody thinks new restrictions on abortion could possibly be part of any programme. And I think they are right.
Oh my sweet summer child…
It would not take very much at all for abortion rights to be rolled back in a similar way to America (not exactly the same – in the UK you wouldn’t be able to use simple geography to limit access). We have an uncomfortable tendency to follow America’s cultural lead. The DUP will, at the very least, insist that abortion access in NI is not to be brought in line with Britain’s – which is something NI pro-choice campaigners have been working to achieve for a very long time.
Yes, LGBT rights include rights for women for are part of the LGBT community – but these are not women’s rights. LGBT rights are about discrimination based on sexuality, women’s rights are about discrimination based on being a member of a class expected to do reproductive labour. There’s a metric fuckton of legal rights women need to have protected that have nothing to do with their sexuality (or, in the case of the T, self-identified gender) and everything to do with their forcible placement as a second class citizen based on imposed gender roles
And guess what? The DUP support very, very few rights that apply to women. Abortion is only the tip of the iceberg.