This week, Dawn Eden takes on feminism. And it’s… special.
First, she lauds the word of Feminists for Life, a group which she says “walk[s] the talk” when it comes to “pro-life” activism, which basically means that they actually try to help poor women and college women when they get pregnant. Now, I can certainly support pro-life groups which seek to help pregnant women and which aim to give women more options. But Feminists for Life, despite their support of a handful of pro-choice and progressive bills which actually help women, are nearly as ass-backwards as Dawn and her ilk when it comes to the basics of preventing abortions.
According to FFL,
Since the Washington, D.C., office opened in 1994 and a new executive director (now president) Serrin Foster was hired to lead Feminists for Life, FFL has successfully and uniquely worked to address the root causes that drive women to abortion.
Basic question time: What is the root case that drives women to abortion?
Basic answer: Unintended/unwanted pregnancy.
Not too tough, right? And so it would logically follow that if we want to prevent abortions, we should tackle the root cause and help women who don’t want to be pregnant to not get pregnant in the first place. That would remove the need for abortion. And I think most women would greatly prefer to prevent unintended pregnancy in the first place than to get unintentionally pregnant and have a whole bunch of “feminist” anti-choicers telling them that everything will be ok because, look, FFL occassionally challenges welfare reform!
Obviously, pro-choice activists must work to help women prevent unintentional pregnancies in the first place and make it easier for women who choose to give birth to do so. And that’s exactly what feminist and pro-choice groups do. It’s not what Feminists for Life does.
But in my skepticism of “Feminists” for life, I digress. Back to Dawn:
Even so, all that “pro-woman” — as though it were opposed to “pro-family” — and “feminist” talk gets awfully tiresome. One could say it’s merely a euphemism for “pro-women’s-rights,” a concept that would be admirable if there remained any basic human right that American women (those out of the womb, that is) were denied.
I actually chuckled out loud when I read this. Because Dawn’s right, isn’t she? American women are incredibly lucky, and on a legal level, we aren’t across-the-board denied any basic human right — except, you know, we would be if Dawn got her way. Because if we lived in the dream world of Dawn and her anti-choice friends, we wouldn’t have basic rights to our own bodies. And bodily autonomy is a basic human right.
Not to mention that “pro-family” actually came out as a term after “pro-woman” was in use, making “pro-family” the term which is actually opposing itself to pro-woman, not the other way around.
But there’s something vulgar about reducing one’s area of advocacy to a group of people who share a particular biological makeup. Martin Luther King didn’t confine his movement to the reductionist tag “pro-black”; the terms “civil rights” and “equality,” while they have gained various connotations over time, nonetheless embrace all humanity.
That’s right, kiddies, Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement wasn’t actually about black people — it was about all people! Because all people are oppressed, and it was truly just a fuzzy-nice movement about all of our humanity.
Think of it the other way: Would you want to be locked in a room with a “masculist”? Someone who saw every issue through a “pro-man” lens?
Heh. No, I wouldn’t like that so much — and yet, that’s life every damn day, because the dominant cultural conversation is set by men, had by men, and revolves around men. W’re already locked in the room with the masculinists, Dawn. Feminists are trying to change that.
Manly men are manly precisely because they are pro-God, pro-family, pro-community — not “pro-man.”
I see Dawn’s been channeling Harvey Mansfield. Ok then. “Manly men” can certainly be all of those things, but isn’t it a wee bit convenient that they get to shape all of those outlets to suit their interests?
Better to be not a “feminist,” not “pro-woman,” but simply a member of the human race. Because women deserve better than feminism — even when it’s used as a guise for attracting aged liberals and their teenage daughters.
Funny, as I’m nearly an “aged liberal” or a teenage girl. But Dawn’s point is clear: Feminism is only for old, useless hags and silly little girls. You know, the people who don’t matter. At least there’s one thing that Dawn and I agree on: She is certainly not pro-woman.
It’s easy to simply be “a member of the human race” when you’re in a pretty damned privileged position within that race. Now, I’m in a similar position as Dawn — white, rich (by global standards), American, literate, educated, employed, and living in an urban community with many resources. But I don’t fool myself into thinking that just because I have access to all these things that everyone does. And I don’t fool myself into thinking that I would have had access to these things without feminism.
Dawn may be content with sticking her head in the sand, and ignoring the fact that not every woman in the world (or in the United States) is as privileged as she is. She may even be content in pretending that she has all the same rights, liberties and privileges as rich white American men. If it helps her sleep at night to blame the evils of feminism for the fact that she didn’t get pushed into marriage at 17, and was able to work and support herself without the financial need for a husband, then more power to her. If one’s primary goal in life is marriage, and Dawn would have been fully willing to foresake her education, her career, her social interactions, her political activities and her basic rights for a husband, that’s her business, and she’s welcome to put the culpability on feminism for the fact that she doesn’t have everything she wants (although, as we know, it’s not an either/or situation between marriage and a life, but that’s another post). She can even refer to women like Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir — without whom Dawn would have had precious fewer of the rights she so takes for granted — as “old, obselete baggage.”
But I think it’s pretty clear who has the baggage here.