The Reproductive Right

(Response to If These Uterine Walls Could Talk)

            “Thirteen states have introduced laws that would allow pharmacists, nurses, and other healthcare professionals to refuse to distribute medication that goes against their moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.” (Valenti p. 86)

     We live in a society where doctors can refuse to treat us if it goes against their morals.  This seemingly innocuous idea can actually prevent women from getting the abortions and contraception that they need.

     We live in a society where women do not have essential rights concerning their own bodies.  Since Roe vs. Wade, which advocated abortion rights, additional legislation has essentially made abortions largely unavailable to women and girls.  The truth is, 1/3 of women have abortions and 99% use contraception.  The problem is driven by anti-sexuality, as exemplified by Dr Janet Woodcock of the FDA when she said:

“(I) could not anticipate or prevent extreme promiscuous behaviors (resulting from public access to the morning after pill), such as the medication taking on an ‘urban legend’ status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of (the morning after pill) EC.”(Valenti p. 89)

     Sex based cults?  No cults, to my knowledge exist, and those fears are urban legend and or Hollywood based.  But we can see the problem is that our government officials are against teenage promiscuity, and they believe that abortion and contraception add to that problem, which is an essential problem for the religious right who want to prevent teenage sex (and essentially punish women by forcing them to get pregnant and remain pregnant) and for the republicans who want the religious right vote.

     Essentially we are facing an anti-sex movement, and it manifests itself in the debate around abortion.  Eleven states are trying to ban abortion.  Some have mandatory waiting periods that prevent and discourage mothers from receiving the abortion they want.  Lawmakers in Alabama and South Dakota both pushed for anti-abortion laws that made no exception for rape and incest related pregnancies.

     In certain states where abortion is illegal, a teen can still appear before a judge and petition for her right.  These women are sometimes battered and or psychologically stressed and in no condition to appear before a judge, yet that’s the only way they can achieve bodily sanctity.  A proposed law in Virginia stated that women would be unable to receive fertilization treatments, while another law simultaneously outlaws gay marriage.  Effect:  Lesbians, as “single women,” cannot receive fertility treatments or acquire help with conception.  There’s some definite anti-gay agenda in state legislation in that case.

     A lot of the anti-sex argument is that contraceptives and abortions will turn women into sluts.  Women however probably take the issue more personally and seriously than the old white rich men who theorize about young slutty pregnant women.  As stated, these are individual cases of pregnant women with real needs, and real assessments of their possible children’s future welfare, not just general cases.  It’s less important whether individual babies are killed or saved, what’s important is that the mother has the choice.  Even if the husband or legislator wants the baby to come to term, it’s not really their right to tell you “you have to undergo this arduous 10 month process where your body gets hijacked by a fetus.”

     Sometimes, advocates for birth control go too far.  An organization calling itself “Project Prevention” pays women to receive sterilization or long term birth control.  They put up signs in neighborhoods where there are female addicts that say things like “Addicted to Drugs?  Want $200?” (Valenti p. 106).  This kind of abuse of those who are addicts has to stop.  No one should hand an addict $200, that’s not good for their welfare and is unconscionable.  These women need serious help, not just a drug fix.

     Even conscientious adults who acquire birth control are in danger of complications from an improperly administered morning after pill called RU-486.  In Europe it is less dangerous, because they monitor women closely for complications.  In one woman’s private experience, entitled Personal Belongings, a local clinic misdoses her with RU-486 and does not do proper blood tests and preventative examinations that could have given her a better experience.  Even when contraception and abortions are available, they are sometimes not properly administered.

     It makes me wonder what exactly is at the root of the anti-women’s-sexuality argument?  I get that our culture doesn’t want women as sluts (while simultaneously worshipping their sexuality in the media), but I’m mystified.  I get that this is a problem, but I’ve never been one of those people.  I’ve never said to myself, “Gee, certain women shouldn’t be allowed to have babies”, or “Women shouldn’t be allowed abortions in general.” It seems like a lot of the pressure is coming from conservative Christianity, and also old money conservative republicans in general.  I think the problem is that there are people who try to play to the masses.  First, let’s convince people that abortion is bad.  Then let’s promote my candidates leadership by campaigning against abortion.

     The story of the woman in Accidents is revealing.  Aunt Joan is retarded and suffering, should she have been aborted?  And what if I had been aborted?  The fact is I am lucky, my mother did not consider an abortion when I was born. But had she been considering it, it would have probably been in lieu of my future welfare, of and her own future welfare.  I stand up for my mother’s right for abortion, and it is also the right of the unborn child not to be born into a crappy life.     Overall, our society is in a tenuous place.  Will Roe vs. Wade be overturned?  What new definitions and distinctions about abortions will our society adopt?  Let’s hope for our mothers and sisters that the religious right and republican conservatives do not get their way.  Let’s hope for a future where women have sanctity over their own bodies – indeed, the right to decide what can live in their uterus, and when and for what reasons pregnancy should be prevented or aborted.

     Finally, I wanted to add that parental consent is an issue with abortion - in cases of incest or abuse, the parents consent to abortion is not always relevant, yet some states have those parental consent laws.  Are there parental consent laws for masturbation?  After all, you're killing all those sperm, all those unborn babies.  More evidence of gender stratification.

The Egg and the Sperm

     “(The egg’s role is likened to) that of sleeping beauty: ‘a dormant bride awaiting her mate’s magic kiss,” which instills the spirit that brings her life.  Sperm, by contrast, have a ‘mission.’” (Martin p. 490)

     Even in modern biology, language is skewed at the cellular level.  Sperm “swim vigorously” while an egg “passes” from the ovaries into the uterus.  Even religious language is used:

     “The egg coat, its protective barrier, is sometimes called it’s “vestments,” a term usually reserved for sacred, religious dress.  The egg is said to have a “Corona,” a crown, and to be accompanied by “Attendant Cells.” (Martin p.490)

     So deep in our language, the egg appears to be a religious queen, however incapable of movement and mission, while the sperm are the King and “key” and the egg is the “lock.”  Sperm are regularly personified as vigorous progenitors, indeed, the “fertilizers” of the egg.

     The reading struck me as revolutionary – indeed, the personalities we give to the male and female reproductive systems are indeed microscopic representations of the gender stratification in our own society.  When the egg was not being viewed as passive, it was almost described as spiderlike, “capturing” the sperm, “harpooning” it with enzymes.  If women’s bodies aren’t portrayed as passive, they are portrayed as dangerous and aggressive.  Language is such a human endeavor, I think personification is a natural thing we do to the outside world, and see gender stratification in the personification of sex cells is almost overwhelming.  Even science skews data along gender lines.

     It makes me wonder, what does pregnancy look like from the empowered eggs perspective?  Indeed, it makes a wondrous journey down the fallopian tubes, it situates itself in the creative womb, indeed, it and it alone admits the sperm, no penetration can occur without the egg’s cooperation and encouragement.  Indeed, the egg invites the sperm, the sperm, it merely has to seek the egg.  The egg is the source of life, indeed, the egg fertilizes the sperm, and creates the embryo, the zygote, the place where all humanity begins: within a woman’s body, and it is her body’s incredible wisdom that perpetuates humankind.

     It makes me wonder, how do I use gender stratification in my personal language?  I find myself examining my use of words a lot, and I hope that someday if and when I write scholarly papers, I will do so with a mote of consciousness devoted to gender stratification awareness.  The problem of stratification in the language of biology is huge, I have only just examined the tip of the iceberg, and I will always keep my eyes open for those stratified representations that science gives us.  I am especially fed up with social evolution theory that emphasizes women’s physical signs of health and attractiveness as primary goals for women as if those evolved into actual gender stratified roles.  No, those goals are culturally instilled by this sort of science, and the scientific theories are cultural theories that do little to explain evolution.  What they really explain well is the gender stratified state of our society’s body of scientific knowledge.

     All the day’s readings were connected.  We examined women’s health, abortion, and surrogate motherhood to name a few.  In all these cases we come up against gender stratification.  In the story of surrogate motherhood, the judge decided that “surrogate motherhood was not good for her children,” and her husband with his lawyer managed to take away her home and children, while leaving her with half the mortgage payment.  We also came up against Christian values – conservatives who are basically against anything they can’t control.  Empowered women who take their motherhood into their own hands and have faith in themselves are a huge threat to the established government and Christianity, so women’s rights must be marginalized by society, by judges, by lawyers, by everyone to maintain the status quo.

     What kind of world would it be if women were empowered?  The ads would say “Motherhood – your body, your wisdom, your choice,” not “abortion is murder,” not “surrogacy is frowned upon by society.” There are so many negative messages to women about their bodies, it’s epidemic, affecting the entire planet, and it’s endemic to particular cities and countries more than others.  Thailand had a disturbingly high C-section rate, for instance.

     Overall, the picture of gender stratification in society is becoming clear to me.  Empowered women, women who are in touch with their own erotic, are the biggest threat to gender stratified society that there is.  They represent powerful mother goddess energy – transformative energy, energy that doesn’t take shit from nobody.  Think about it ladies, it’s your body, it’s your life, don’t be subjugated by the fictitious cultural knowledge that our scientists spread every day.  I’ll never envision a sperm on a mission by itself again – indeed, the egg is the locus of pregnancy in my honest opinion, and if there is gender stratification at the cellular language level, it ought to be empowering to women – they are the one’s responsible for the miracle of human life on the planet, and if we ever take that away from them, we will have taken the purpose from their lives and the power from their wombs.

Violence against women

(reponse to readings from Kirk)

     I found myself deeply disturbed by this class’s unit on violence against women.  Not only is it an endemic problem (1/4 to 1/5 women have been sexually assaulted), it is mostly perpetrated by men that are known to the women – friends, boyfriends, lovers.  3% of men who were murdered were murdered by their wives.  33% of women who are murdered are killed by their husbands.

     “Every year, as many as 4 million American women are physically abused by men who promised to love them” (Kirk p. 260)

     Violence against women often goes unreported.  Sometimes, the trauma of a rape will cause a woman to not immediately report a rape.  In that case, a legal statute of limitations imposed by the patriarchy prevents women from seeking justice on old crimes.  The truth of the matter however is that women need time to recover and feel strong enough to fight for their rights after such violation.

     “Between 1992 and 2000, an estimated 63 percent of completed rapes and 65 percent of attempted rapes were not reported to the police” (Kirk p. 262)

     In Radical Pleasure, we learn that recovery from rape is anything but ordinary.  We must overcome our tendency to dwell in the victim position and remain feeling powerless.  Simultaneously, we cannot be consumed by hate against our attackers:

     “When we refuse healing for the sake of rage, we are remaking ourselves in the image of those who hurt us, becoming the embodiment of the wound, forsaking both ourselves and the abandoned children who grew up to torment us.”

     This quote highlights the role that society plays in raising individual men who are violent against women.  One researcher noticed that rapists and those who were violent against women seemed to be normal men.  I would assert that they are not normal men, that appearances can be deceiving.  Social gendering starts at a young age, filling men’s heads with images of objectified women, and objects are acceptable targets for violence and sexuality, because they are dehumanized and marginalized in the media and in every day interactions.

     What are the causes of violence against women?  There are some factors that contribute to women’s bad position in society.  Economically, women earn less than men and are often dependant upon spouses who are abusive and know they have their women in between a rock and a hard place financially.  Sexual harassment in the workplace is the fusion of two powerful positions – boss over employee, and man over woman.  Women are an elected minority in American government.  More women than men favor gun control, banning the international arms trade, reductions in military spending, and disarmament.  These are larger manifestations of the violence of the world’s patriarchies.  The heads of our countries fight each other by conscripting out nations youth into the military.  The tendency towards violence by the patriarchy is strong, whether it is expressing itself as violence against women or violence against other countries.

     In “I am not a rapist,” men are invited to discuss and discover what it means to live in a society where men are feared.  Basically it’s a sad state, but it highlights an issue.  I have accidentally physically harmed my spouse before, and I still feel guilty about it, but I think it was situational.  I’m not a violent person, but I’ve committed violence against women.  I’ve also made amendments to wield my physical body more carefully.. Even a strong finger can leave a bruise.  I live with the monster that I have shown myself to be in some ways.  And when I encounter women who have experienced men’s degradation, I know my own acute shame from when I harmed my wife.  I think it’s good that I have shame and feelings about it – the problem is when there is denial, and no amendment of change.

     I find myself asking, what can an individual really do to change anything?  Not only am I isolated, I feel like my voice is a whisper in a sea of shouting.  How can we change the capitalist-military regime?  We will never be able to address violence against women on a microscopic level if we do not address the global manifestations of violence that are in the news every day.  We could live on a paradise planet, but the patriarchy and capitalism give us economic disparity, wealth disparity, rights disparities.  As an individual I have to make individual changes, and with what power I do have, I have to wield it to increase women’s rights.  And what would I do if I had the whole planet at my command?  What changes would I make, how would I make it work?

    I mean, ultimately this class is about discovering and implementing a better societal system.  We need world unity and we need some more socialist values – capitalism has raped our women and our wallets long enough.  How about we create a system that maximizes human happiness instead of putting the most dollars in the fewest pockets?  We need a system that doesn’t channel all the dollars and resources into the hands of the few.