Feminism

Moral Objections, and Legalizing Prostitution

For once, I’d like to pose a question without necessarily providing an answer: should prostitution be legal?

As a general rule, I’m against the idea of women being used for sex, and as a result, I don’t like the idea of a world in which prostitution is legal, common, and not taboo. But legalization — or something shy of it, like decriminalization — seems overwhelmingly supported by feminists, and activists concerned the safety, independence, and basic well-being of women.

Perhaps more importantly, it seems the sort of thing that, while dangerous, can be made safe by regulation (unlike, I think, drugs).  This means I’m out of reasons to oppose legalization, or decriminalization, but I don’t like it. Am I missing something?

The Empowerment of Abortion Restrictions: Freedom is Slavery?

Yesterday, I found myself in the bizarre situation of debating abortion (and by extension, the importance of contraception) with someone who’s never had sex. I, uh, have? Without attempting to state a per se rule, it seems like people making decisions about others’ reproductive rights should speak from a place of experience — the more the better — when more often than not, as here, those who do seek to restrict reproductive rights have studiously avoided all relevant life experiences. Take Christine O’Donnell.

Please.

I digress. The argument, building on Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R-OH)’s remarks of earlier this week, was that banning abortion is, in fact, the feminist position. Referencing early suffragettes like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Alice Paul:

The original feminists were, indeed, against abortion. These women believed that there was power in motherhood and in choosing life. Alice Paul,the author of the original Equal Rights Amendment, said it best: Abortion isthe exploitation of women.

Although it surely has the tactical appeal of turning the pro-choice movement’s rhetoric against it, aside from that, this argument is so flimsy that I’m shocked Congresswoman Schmidt even managed to build a fairly long speech out of it. An individual women may freely believe that terminating her pregnancy would debase her, sure. The essence of feminism, after all, is support for a woman’s right to make individual and independent moral decisions. But, consistent with a belief system premised on individual choice, individual moral judgments cannot be generalized to the systemic level.

Similarly, despite feminism’s focus on integrating women into the professional world, a woman who chooses to stay at home and take care of the kids is making a feminist choice because she is making a choice. Feminism is about options, not outcome. “Choosing life” is a feminist act if it is a choice. But no one woman can take her own choice, force it on the rest of her sex, and call it freedom.

Moreover, I’m unaware of any case where removing the individual’s right to make a choice results in more freedom. This seems axiomatically false. Am I missing something?

Feminism & the Light of Other Days

This may be an odd post for what turns out to be International Womens’ Day (oops!), but I think it’s nonetheless important. So here we go.

I’m generally a fan of political correctness, which I understand as little more than the noncontroversial proposition that we ought to speak civilly to each other, and be mindful of past prejudices that, if not laid to rest, could disturb our newfound peace.

But political correctness deals with how we handle ourselves in the present, not how we describe the past. It’s not politically incorrect or insensitive to read Huck Finn as the author intended it, without removing or altering words we wouldn’t speak today. Nor is it insensitive to represent western art as it was, not as we wish it had been. So I’m not sure I get the point of this campaign:

It’s no secret that premodern and modern masters were predominantly male, as a function of the relative newness of the women’s rights movement. And the female form was a common subject. These percentages, then, are meaningless, unless they represent a further distortion of an already male-dominated history. But I can’t draw that conclusion from this limited information. There’s a lot in the Met that’s objectionable, removed from its context. But surely we don’t embrace the rape of the Sabine women by displaying arts about it.

Should we struggle for an equal presentation of men and womens’ works? Of course. But not at the expense of telling the story as it was.

If Some Abortions Are Unsafe… Is That Reason to Ban It Altogether?

I’ve never understood why a list of health complications, or scare stories about abortions gone wrong, or unscrupulous doctors (all of the above mentioned here) state an argument about making the process illegal, rather than making it safe. Especially  the anti-choice lobby has made because abortion less safe, by banning unpopular but (at times) necessary procedures, it seems increasingly clear that the movement’s respect for life extends only as far as the fetus, with the life and health of the woman being (at best) an afterthought, and (at worst) a chit to be exploited in the operating theater of public opinion.

Libertarian regulatory wisdom — from which (I thought) the tea party draws its essence — is not to the contrary. Under that rubric, a process that can be made safe should be legal, but regulated. Plainly, if that logic does not control, we prefer potential over actual life.

Yeah, This is Tacky

Just so we’re clear, stories like this one are not acceptable, even about our comically inept opponents. Jezebel’s position is probably right: stories like this wouldn’t matter if the subject was male.

We can go farther: by focusing on a female candidate’s sexuality (which she has, admittedly, put partially in issue), rather than her ridiculous policy positions, articles like this risk chilling competent female candidates, who can reasonably fear that they’ll be evaluated by a political culture that at times looks more like a junior high school than anything that should befit the world’s remaining superpower.

Appearances, and Laws for the Exclusive Benefit of Society

Things are pretty rough here,  but man, some days, it’s especially good to be an American. As opposed to a female citizen of the United Arab Emirates, say. Although it’ s a progressive country by middle eastern standards, according to the UAE’s Federal Supreme Court,  ”a man has the right to discipline his wife and children provided he does not leave physical marks.”

As an aside, note how similar this sounds to Phyllis Schlafly’s selected ramblings, on how criminalizing violence against women “abuses the rights of men,” and on how unhappy women should shut up and get over it, because “grievances are like flowers.”

But I digress. The line the FSCOUAE draws is especially odd, becuase it doesn’t seem to be geared to protect the women or children involved in these beatings, at all. One can do a lot of damage without leaving a mark: there’ve been studies on just how abusive American men have learned to avoid bruising and scarring, and consequentially, we know it’s all too easy to beat someone within an inch of their life without actually leaving any telltale mark. Why do we care, then, about the appearance of violence?

Without having read the Court’s decision (I can’t find it online), one possible reason may be that it’s more about keeping up appearances than about actually protecting any individual player. Citizens of the UAE want to believe they live in a peaceful, happy society, even if violence is known to lurk just below the surface.

This instinct seems to have a lot in common with socially restrictive American regimes. The hardest battles over social reform come where the regulated conduct is particularly visible: arguments for restriction cluster around loose justifications to keep the behavior hidden, or outright fearmongering, but the concern is always the minority group’s visibility. Applied to gay rights, recall the National Organization for Marriage’s banner Prop 8 ad:

We know that gay couples exist. How could we not? But we’d rather not have them participate in civil society: especially in schools or other peculiarly public settings. A solid plurality is now okay with gay marriage, in many states, and it’s getting close nationwide. That number jumps when the option of letting gay couples unite under a different label — “civil unions” — is offered. Like the UAE, our socially conservative friends opposite are struggling to preserve a whitewashed society, even (and perhaps especially) if it hurts the minority.

Speaking of Phyllis Schlafly…

…and fundamentalist-inspired misogyny, the Republican Party’s inexplicable hatred of independent women continues apace. While we’re on the subject, don’t miss her son’s take on feminism:

Specifically, a modern feminist tends to:

• shirk traditional gender activities, like baking [. . .]
• prefer that women wear pants rather than dresses, presumably because men do [. . .]
• object to being addressed as “ma’am,” or feminine nicknames such as “sweetheart” or “honey”; object to other female-only names, such as “temptress.”

Imagine!

WorldNetDaily Hates Sex Now, Too

Conservative blog WorldNetDaily caught flak last week for printing a post by Pat Buchanan, reviving the old anti-Semitic meme that Jews exercise power out of proportion to their numbers:

If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity?

If we focus on Buchanan’s post, though, we risk forgetting that everything on WND is entirely insane — like this post, on the 50th anniversary of The Pill, excoriating women for having sex. Apparently, that women want or enjoy sex makes them no better than an animal:

I’ve seen the argument that sex is a natural part of human nature and to deny our urges is stupid and old-fashioned. “Why is sex made to be this big, sacred thing?” asks an Irish reader commenting on Welch’s article. “It’s completely natural, and if people want to sleep around that’s their business. Also, blaming the Pill is stupid. People had sex before contraception was invented, and what has it got to do with marriage anyway?”

Sure, go ahead and rut like an animal, sweetie. I hope it makes you feel empowered.

Are feminists telling me they can’t control themselves? That, like our cow in heat, they are mindlessly controlled by hormones? That they are incapable of keeping their pants on and therefore need artificial methods to allow them to advance their careers between sessions of mindless rutting? This is empowerment?

This could be forgiven as a general exhortation that we of both genders behave ourselves, and restrain our sexual impulses out of some paleo-conservative, neo-Platonic desire to focus on intellectual pursuits, like watching Glenn Beck, or reading WorldNetDaily. But male promiscuousness is generally forgiven, or expected, as the columnist acknowledges, and regardless, isn’t affected by the Pill. It’s women who benefit from medical advances such as the Pill, and women alone whose desires are cast as blameworthy and inhuman. This isn’t “standing athwart history”; it’s trying to roll back the clock to a time when the female orgasm was an unspoken horror, and women submitted to, rather than participated in, their partner’s sexual desires. Those days are behind us, and we, men, women, and couples, are better for it. If feminism, equality, and modernity are to have any meaning, they must mean that we stop blaming women for their own humanity.

Abortion for Convenience?

Vigilant subway riders will have spotted the “Abortion Changes You” campaign — in all its tacky instances. One example, for discussion:

One can imagine that abortion does, in fact, change you — that’s why it’s a serious choice: one not to be taken lightly, and one not to be coaxed into, or out of. Like the decision to have a child.

I stress the decisional aspect of raising a child because, in the modern era, regardless of how you feel about abortion, it is a choice. By disputing that it is a choice — and not just arguing that the exercise of the choice would be wrong — this RedState article on the subject probably gives us more information than the author ever intended. If, after all, abortion isn’t just a bad decision, but no decision at all, the minute a pregnancy occurs, the woman must carry it to term, not because there’s no moral alternative, but because that’s the way of things.

We — men — don’t often look at it this way, but, combined with the far right’s hostility to responsible sex education, this is a very deterministic way to look at a woman’s life. Under this reasoning, the world can alter a woman in a way that she cannot alter the world, and bind her, and her alone, to a future that she was, in every instance, not alone in choosing, and in which she sometimes had no choice.

Conservatives can take the position that an abortion for “convenience” (read: any reason other than grave danger to health) is an immoral act, but instead of acknowledging the difficulties it creates, they demonize women expressing valid concerns as selfish, mock those who share them, and in no way attempt to avoid the difficulty by providing meaningful pre- or post-pregnancy support structures. When was the last time you heard conservatives speak honestly about contraception, or push for incentives, whether public or private, for affordable neonatal care, or day care for working mothers? Until that happens, the anti-choice lobby — and yes, even the women who populate it — shouldn’t, and won’t, be able to avoid being characterized as anti-feminist. Maybe a fetus isn’t a “choice,” but nor is a woman a passive vessel for the state to control, and then ignore.

For Glenn Beck, Which Comes First? Conservatism, or Sexism?

Tyranny always contains the seeds of its own downfall.

Sarah Palin is a disaster. But not because she’s a woman. Beck apparently came to the right conclusion for the way wrong reason.