February 2009 – Page 3

Why are even smart liberal men freaked out by abortion?

A really, really great article up at AlterNet about the difficulties women face in discussing abortion with their male partners — especially when the women don’t exhibit the socially acceptable post-abortion feelings of regret or woundedness. I’m also pretty sure I went on a few dates with the same wide-eyed Sarah Lawrence grad MFA candidate as the author.

She talks about how her abortion wasn’t emotionally scarring, and how she dealt with it in the same way she deals with most of crap life throws at all of us: By joking about it or being straight-forward. She writes:

I honed my improbable pregnancy and ensuing abortion into a kvetching monologue about life’s little inequities — I get pregnant on birth control, while teenagers in Utah practicing the pray-to-God-and-please-come-on-my-ass method remain distinctly un-knocked-up? It’s not like I broadcasted my uterine news to co-workers, distant cousins, or Facebook cronies. It was simply something that happened to me, and I shared it with my friends like I would’ve shared any other story. It would have felt wrong not to. My female friends laughed when I laughed, commiserated when I needed it and treated the procedure as lightheartedly as I did. That’s all I wanted. To be able to define my own experience, not the other way around.

But there was a palpable discomfort when I had the same conversation with men. For the guys I was dating, the idea of a vacuum-like apparatus being the last visitor in my vagina was more troubling than if it had been, say, Stalin’s penis. Even die-hard liberals who would wax on about a woman’s right to choose were downright uncomfortable when actually presented with a woman who chose.

Of course I knew that bringing up abortion was about as fascinating as listening to a nursing-home doctor detail Grandpa’s incontinence problems. Medical procedures are decidedly not sexy. As far as dating went, I operated under a tit-for-tat divulgence basis: you talk ball cancer, I’ll explain my thirty-day long period. If the dreary poet had never asked about surgery, he would have been none the wiser.

Seems like a good enough rule of thumb to me. But somehow when abortion comes up, the author finds herself treated like she’s either victimized or in denial about her own experiences — because she must secretly feel awfully sad and guilty about the whole thing.

I understand that men are in an uncomfortable position when an abortion story is dropped into date conversation. Abortion is socially marked as taboo and horrible and universally emotionally difficult, so I understand why the first reaction is “You poor thing” or “You’re so strong.” I’ve never been in the same position as the author, but I have been on a first date where the guy dropped his almost-abortion story: His girlfriend got pregnant, they decided to terminate the pregnancy, and then she had a miscarriage. It’s not an easy story to respond to, so I fell back on How To Deal With An Awkward Conversation Topic 101: Mirror the other person’s reaction. He seemed like he was sad about the situation, so I think I said something along the lines of, “That sounds like it was really hard, I’m sorry.” And the conversation moved on. I also had a friend who once told me the story of his hugely swollen testicle — like, baseball-sized. In recounting the story, he was cracking himself up, so I laughed along. It’s really not all that hard to take your cues from the person who lived through the unpleasant ordeal. And I think that’s the author’s point: Not that men should universally think abortion is no big deal, but that they should take women as individuals who have varied responses to situations, and who very well may not be traumatized or upset at all — but who may nonetheless be highly annoyed and physically discomforted by a 30-day period. Or they may just be relieved. Or they may be sad, or even devasted. Or they may feel stupid for getting pregnant. Or they may have emotions that are mixed and that evolve. You know, like most human beings.

Predictably, commenters at AlterNet are Very Upset with the writer, because how dare she talk about her abortion in such a flippant way? She gets called all kinds of names, and even self-declared pro-choice commenters feel the need to lecture her about her lack of appropriate sorrow and self-hate, her “vulgar” language, and her loose morals. And then they wonder why she writes under the name “anonymous.”

Something to make you tear up

I didn’t watch the Oscars, but this moment is still pretty great the next day.

Submit to the WOC and Ally Blog Carnival!

This is a guest post by Renee.

Hello everyone, this is Renee from Womanist Musings. Last month was the first edition of the WOC and Ally blog carnival. I started this is an effort to bring attention to the great work that WOC and allies are doing to deal with the various ways in which race interacts with the isms. Recently there has been a lot of conversation about tokenism regarding our work and I feel that this devalues the efforts and strides that we have made to broaden the conversation.

Each month, like all other carnivals it will feature a great set of links and highlight one post I feel that is particularly relevant to our struggle to make our voices heard. At this time I am asking for any and all submissions either written by WOC or written from an ally stance.

Race is a very serious issue and we cannot hope to combat it unless we start having the hard conversations. Sometimes it may make us uncomfortable and sometimes it may make us angry but these are hard truths. It is my hope that this carnival will grow and flourish enabling us to dissect the issues from multiple positions.

Please submit any and all submissions here. I can also be reached via e-mail at womanistmusings at gmail.com to answer any questions. Thanks for your time.

North Dakota Senate Passes New Infantalizing Anti-Choice Legislation

As if there wasn’t enough anti-choice asshatery going on in North Dakota already, the state Senate has just approved a bill that will require special notices to be put up in abortion clinics:

The state Senate voted 45-1 to approve a bill that would require the notice to be posted at abortion clinics. The measure now goes to the House.

The state’s only abortion clinic is in Fargo.

The sign would read: “Notice: No one can force you to have an abortion. It is against the law for a spouse, a boyfriend, a parent, a friend, a medical care provider, or any other person to in any way force you to have an abortion.”

And you know what? Women do indeed deserve to know that no one should or legally can force them into having an abortion. Sincerely. I think that any genuinely pro-choice person wishes to live in a world entirely without coerced and forced abortions, and where every decision regarding keeping or terminating a pregnancy is 100% freely chosen.

But this bill clearly isn’t about ensuring that women know their rights. If it was, the legislature would also be requiring a notice to appear in the office of every doctor performing prenatal examinations, stating “No one can force you to give birth.” Strangely enough, I don’t see that bill anywhere in sight.

And it’s for a few reasons. Firstly, because such a sign would rightly be seen as patronizing. Secondly, because having a sign in the office, rather than having the doctor speak with the patient where he or she can have conversations and read signals about whether or not this is what the woman really wants (something most abortion providers do in one way or another, anyway), probably wouldn’t prevent a single forced or coerced pregnancy decision. And thirdly, the reason that we really won’t see this bill, because forcing women to give birth is exactly what anti-choicers want.

So what this is really about is propagating the dual myths that no woman would ever have an abortion of her own volition, and that abortion is the most commonly forced and coerced reproductive choice.

With the bill going to the same House which just passed legislation stating that a fertilized egg is a person, I don’t exactly have high confidence that this bill has any chance whatsoever of failing. So patronizing and utterly useless pats on the head for women, here we come.

Happy Sunday

Something that always makes me laugh, just because:

Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

You know the drill. Leave links in the comments to your own best blog post(s) from this week. But don’t just link to your whole blog — be specific.

Weekend Reads

WANTED AND DESIRED, AND RAPED: Rapists make movies and have sympathetic documentaries made about their rape confessions, and numerous famous others turn out in droves to defend their art and legitimacy. But even though Roman Polanski and his team of lawyers tried desperately to keep as many balls in the air as they could, it comes down to one thing: He raped a 13-year-old girl, her story clearly implicated him, and he offically admitted doing it. Moreover, he served no sentence and received no punishment for the act — not even the death of his Hollywood career — except fleeing for Europe, where he’s lived the high life for the last thirty years. Polanski is trying to revisit the case and prove his innocence, not of raping the girl, mind you, but effectively arguing a miscarriage of justice, by trying to move the case out of L.A. where he would have to surrender himself to the courts. On Tuesday, thankfully, “Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that if Polanski, who fled on the eve of his sentencing, in March 1978, wanted to challenge his conviction, he could — by coming back and turning himself in.”

ASSAULT: [Serious trigger warning] Police have sexually assaulted a woman who called them for help, and are now suing the news station that exposed them. They picked her up on accident instead of picking up her attacker and subjected her to a forcible strip search that violates their own procedure. There is a clip of the news story at the link that includes some footage of the strip search and it is very disturbing, but it gets worse: subsequently five more women stepped forward and are alleging similar treatment. Also related, the social and emotional impact on survivors when embroiled in sloppy and inconsistent police investigations.

WITHOLDING AND CONTROL: M. Leblanc shares her story about a different kind of rape that is enveloped in the confusion of an emotionally abusive relationship.

SOCIAL JUSTICE: Renee asserts that in our work to resist violence and fight racism the work of feminists of color can not be ignored.

MOTHER OF FOURTEEN: Despite the various ethical arguments against Nadya Suleman’s decision to undergo in-vitro fertility treatments as a single mother without any income, the coverage of the case in contrast to other media outlets says a lot about what kinds of large families we will celebrate and why.

WILL WORK 4 JOB ADVICE: What to expect when you’re expecting lay-offs.

TPS REPORTS: Flair, the working class, and corporate attempts to tamp down worker expression and individuality.

LOVE LESSONS: Elle and her son have a genuinely heart-warming talk about whether Valentine’s Day is really just for girls.

Iran and Women’s Rights

This article published last week in the NY Times provides a run down on both the advancements that have been in Iran with respect to women’s rights, and the many pervasive setbacks that women still face:

Janet Afary, a professor of Middle East and women’s studies at Purdue University and the author of “Sexual Politics in Modern Iran,” says the country is moving inexorably toward a “sexual revolution.”

“The laws have denied women many basic rights in marriage and divorce,” she wrote in the book. “But they have also contributed to numerous state initiatives promoting literacy, health and infrastructural improvements that benefited the urban and rural poor.”

[. . .]

Despite the gains they have made, women still face extraordinary obstacles. Girls can legally be forced into marriage at the age of 13. Men have the right to divorce their wives whenever they wish, and are granted custody of any children over the age of 7. Men can ban their wives from working outside the home, and can engage in polygamy.

By law, women may inherit from their parents only half the shares of their brothers. Their court testimony is worth half that of a man. Although the state has taken steps to discourage stoning, it remains in the penal code as the punishment for women who commit adultery. A woman who refuses to cover her hair faces jail and up to 80 lashes.

I certainly don’t have anything insightful to add; but I thought that for those of us like myself who are more ignorant on the subject than we ought to be, it’s an interesting and informative primer on the issues that Iranian women are up against, and where progress is being made. Check it out.

International Women’s Day: What Are You Doing?

It may seem a bit early to talk about International Women’s Day, which is March 8th, but what time is better than when you still have time to plan?

Women For Women International is planning on using the day to bring attention to the global food crisis, how it is affecting women and families, and what women are doing about it. They’re hosting a conference call on March 5th, and also have information on their website about how you can get involved by holding your own event or house party to raise awareness.

You can also click here to find events already planned, from all over the world.

Are you doing anything special for International Women’s Day? Have an event going on? Know of an organization that is doing something cool, or holding a fundraiser? Leave all of that information in the comments!

Vatican Says: “Men and Women Sin in Different Ways”

A new report out of the Vatican states that men and women sin differently. And how might the Catholic Church’s notions of what count as sins get divided up among gender lines? Well seeing their other views on gender roles, the answer should surprise none of us.

A Catholic survey found that the most common sin for women was pride, while for men, the urge for food was only surpassed by the urge for sex.

The report was based on a study of confessions carried out by Fr Roberto Busa, a 95-year-old Jesuit scholar.

The Pope’s personal theologian backed up the report in the Vatican newspaper.

“Men and women sin in different ways,” Msgr Wojciech Giertych, theologian to the papal household, wrote in L’Osservatore Romano.

“When you look at vices from the point of view of the difficulties they create you find that men experiment in a different way from women.”

Msgr Giertych said the most difficult sin for men to face was lust, followed by gluttony, sloth, anger, pride, envy and greed.

For women, the most dangerous sins were pride, envy, anger, lust, and sloth, he added.

Well it’s good to know that we’re not reinforcing any stereotypes about men having insatiable sexual appetites and women being needlessly stubborn and intent on bringing down other people. Actually, I’m fairly surprised that gluttony didn’t make it higher up on the list of Top Female Sins. You know how us ladies love the chocolate, after all.