TW: CISSEXISM
[Catholic Girl Problem #40: Having our dignity and femininity under attack for almost 40 years under Roe v Wade. Screenshot from: mycatholicgirlproblems.tumblr.com]
“Many feminists insist that abortion is necessary for women to participate freely and equally in society. Anyone who disagrees, they argue, has merely adopted patriarchal standards and accepted women’s ‘place’ in society. Yet this argument demonstrates how deeply the roots of sexism run in our culture. Its premise is a sexist one—that women are inferior to men and that in order to be equal, we have to change our biology to become like men—wombless and unpregnant at will. What other oppressed group in history has had to undergo surgery in order to be equal?” Marilyn Dickstein Kopp
Hey, cissexist prochoice “feminists.” I bet you don’t like it when antis conflate femininity and reproduction like this. It’s kind of gross right? Well, guess what? You don’t get to complain because this is precisely what you advocate for when you actively refuse to be inclusive. Which, you know, would weaken every outdated stereotype they peddle [and would meet the bare minimum for being a decent human being!]. They use gender essentialism against you and you’ve chosen to “fight” it by…fighting for the “right” to be gender essentialist and cissexist towards us. Funny how that works.
Oh and, “What other oppressed group in history has had to undergo surgery in order to be equal?” That’s cute.
Pretty much all of that.
People with penises also undergo surgery so as not to have any more children, too. It’s about being able to participate equally in society, and people with the capability to become pregnant are automatically at a disadvantage.
On a different note, I’m not sure what’s with the horror and disgust about being “unpregnant at will.” Whatever your political leanings, I’m pretty sure we all enjoy not being pregnant when we don’t want to be.
There’s another population that always seems to get left out by these anti-choice feminists bewailing the loss of femininity: People who have had their uteruses removed to prevent the spread of cancer, say, or people who are infertile. Anti-choicers are typically totally dismissive (or worse) of people who don’t fit all nice and neat into Boy with Penis or Girl with Vagina, but surely they could be sympathetic to this group. But what are these people, according to anti-choicers? After all, without our reproductive organs, what good are we, really? Who are we, if we aren’t Boy Who Impregnates and Girl Who Gets Pregnant?
That’s the problem with the anti-choice view, and with anti-choice feminism. People don’t fit into boxes. They don’t fit into the categories the anti-choice so desperately want them to. There are boys with uteruses, girls with testicles, people who don’t identify as either or identify as both, and people who’ve had all of their reproductive organs removed. To inextricably tie - no, to base someone’s identity entirely on the contents of their pants just doesn’t work. To say that refusing to live at the whim of our reproductive organs is denying our dignity or femininity is absurd. Gender and identity is so much more than that, and it absolutely blows my mind that people who call themselves feminists can’t see that.
I don’t know guys, I’ve been real sick all week, so this might not even make sense.
All good points from Bebinn in relation to original post. They have a tendency to willfully misinterpret everything that we say. I know of zero prochoice people that believe pregnant people must have abortions to be equal to people that can’t get pregnant. What I will say is essential to equality, and therefore essential for feminists, is access to reproductive healthcare and that includes abortion. Pregnancy effects a person physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, in every possible way essentially. There are so many laws that are on the books right now that restrict, and even criminalize, the lives and bodies of pregnant people, even with wanted pregnancies, that our government is virtually creating a lesser class of people solely on the basis of pregnancy. It’s just a fact that people cannot participate fully or equally in society when they are not allowed to choose parenthood freely, without the use of guilt-tripping and coercion. If people can be impregnated and forced into parenthood on the whims of others they are no longer free to plan or live their lives as they see fit. Having something like that hanging over your head is the antithesis of freedom.
As for fitting people into boxes, I agree entirely. When you live life with absolutist beliefs it can be incredibly uncomfortable to be presented with the myriad of circumstances that make up other people’s lives. I know they hate to think about all the what ifs and the complexities that make abortion necessary, but if they’re not prepared to do so, if it’s too much work, then they really have no business interjecting themselves into someone’s life when they refuse a nuanced position.
I will say, though. The jarring effect of shattering their essentialist way of thinking is precisely what we need. And that’s why I made this post to begin with. Essentialist ways of thinking are detrimental regardless of which side is using them. And it’s hard to take people seriously when they object to being objectified and characterized in the above fashion while doing the same to trans* people. It’s sort of the epitome of cognitive dissonance. I just hope all the people who are rightfully disgusted by their worth and identity being tied to reproduction are cognizant of our own movement’s gender essentialism.
