To help impoverished pregnant people travel hundreds of miles
Lindy West is confused. She has a piece at Comment is Free about what a mess the US election is. She starts with a friend who works hard for abortion rights.
“You’re a hero,” I said.
“No, I am not,” she snapped, vehement. “Somebody’s got to do it. It’s a fucking embarrassment that I have to.”
She was right. “Our country is a septic tank,” I sighed. “On fire.”
“Full-on fail.”
I still think that choosing to take on the exhausting, sisyphean, largely thankless work of abortion advocacy (we are not taught to say “thank you” for abortion; we are taught to never speak of it at all) is heroic. She could choose to leave that work to others, but she doesn’t. That’s significant.
It is, but she goes on to say, quite rightly, that it’s grotesque that anyone has to do it at all.
But that reaction – somebody’s got to do it, so I do – triggered a familiar weariness in me. We shouldn’t have to spend our spare time working, pro bono, to remove stigma from a procedure so common that a full third of the women you know have had one; or to raise money to help impoverished pregnant people travel hundreds of miles, to other states, to exercise a legal right; or to convince a supposedly free and enlightened nation, in 2016, that people with uteruses are autonomous human beings deserving of basic medical care.
That’s the confusion.
Why is it that anyone still has to? Why is it so contested? Why do we have to fight and fight and fight to get it or keep it?
Because women are the subordinate sex, that’s why. Why are women the subordinate sex? In great part because we’re the one that gets pregnant, that’s why.
That’s what the whole thing is about – the subordination of women, all women, women as a class. It’s not about generic “people” being subordinated, it’s about women being subordinated. Lindy West is a feminist; on some level she must know that perfectly well; yet somehow she’s been bullied or persuaded into thinking it’s more right-on to pretend that abortion rights are not a women’s issue.
After that detour she goes on to talk about the election and misogyny and the tidal wave of misogyny we’ll all have to deal with if Clinton is elected – just as if she knows all about the subordination of women as a class.
She’s confused.
I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, we need to say that the oppression of women as a class is a thing, it’s real, and no matter how you identify, reproductive issues are what nature made them until such time as medicine changes it.
On the other hand, sometimes I think that a construction like “pregnant person” has a benefit of waking readers up, reminding them that these are PEOPLE. Because we fall into the habit of being *used* to classes of people being oppressed. With white male our cultural default for person, the human rights of others seem a little less important. Until language is used like “human rights” or “the lives of people” to remind everyone that, in fact people who aren’t white and male are in fact people too and get to have rights as well.
Samantha, that occurs to me to. The problem seems to be that they don’t mean it that way. The real intent is to further marginalize women at the expense of another marginalized group, and not to acknowledge women. In this case, intent is important, I think. So we have been arguing forever that feminism is the radical idea that women are people, but now we are being removed from the dialogue without getting that real recognition as people – the one that comes with equal pay, equal dignity, and full rights to our own bodies. So, yeah, I think you’re right. This is a very difficult situation.
The MRAs couldn’t have done it better – find a way to get women to object to being called “people”, and voila! Instant hypocrisy – just add water (or, at this point, some booze might be nice)
This is bizarre. Nobody is claiming that women as a group aren’t oppressed. But abortion rights affect anyone with a uterus, anyone who is biologically capable of becoming pregnant. Not all women have uteri. Some men do. Leaving them out of this conversation, pretending this isn’t an issue that affects them, is thoughtless; actively attacking people who make a point to include them is gross and unkind.
Lots of people are claiming that women as a group aren’t oppressed. You really aren’t aware of them? Not the angry anti-feminists, not the religious pro-patriarchy-ists?
I’m not so stupid that I don’t understand that the goal is to include the very few trans men who need abortions. Of course I understand that. I understand it and think it’s a terrible reason to remove the word “women” from discussion of a political campaign that is rooted in indifference (at best) to women’s rights. Most trans men are well aware that opposition to abortion is rooted in hostility to women’s rights.