choice

I have been staring at this page all day, writing and erasing, it seems that I just don't have many words today, so I will keep this short...

It is pretty sad when a (male) teacher stands in front of a class of 120 people and tells us that we women should feel so lucky that we are no longer second class citizens. We still are, and it’s still shitty. Oh shit, I actually vocalised that and now everyone is staring. Well fuck it, we are. Yeah I can get an education, but I have to make grades that are SO much better than the male students in my class so that when we both show up to a job interview they might even consider hiring me over him, but in this country, it’s unlikely. I might have a job, a job working behind a bar where I serve idiots who drive trucks that are too big for their families, don’t give a shit about the environment and think I should feel privileged that they even bother to pinch my ass every time I walk by. Sure I have the vote, but most of the time there are no women to vote for in the election now that we have lost (my dearly beloved!) Helen Clark. I can play sport but I can’t watch Women play it on television if there is men’s sport on which takes preference over it immediately. I don’t have to marry and have children but when I seek out healthcare such as asking for a hysterectomy due to chronic pain, I am denied because I am apparently giving up a womb that the world still might want to use.

Abortion is okay!

On the one hand, I'm happy when I see other people being outward about this take: that abortion is plain OKAY. Not a necessary evil, not a sad shame, not something unfortunate that should-be-avoided-at-all-costs-except-that-it-should-of-course-still-be-an-option... but OKAY.

On the other hand, I have mixed feelings about how this writer goes about their opinion--both in how they practice it and how they express it. It's a pretty heavy blog entry. The writer--whose gender I cannot determine--works/volunteers at an abortion clinic and a pregnancy clinic. A choice quote:

"To all of those women waiting in the clinic’s nurse station for their pregnancy results, I said ... “If you think abortion is wrong, I’m not going to sign this referral letter.”

Hej!
I'm looking forward to being around here more-I'm in Denmark for the semester, and it's been an interesting time. I'm learning more about authentic Danishness, and I've had some face-to-face confrontations with it, including one that I'm writing this blog about. :)

I was at a dinner party last weekend, all women just having dinner and drinking wine and eating together. It was a nice evening. We were having a conversation, and sex came up. The women were all extremely candid, speaking openly about sex, and it was interesting to me. Primarily because it was focused around women's pleasure. In other words, the conversation wasn't solely about what you can do for your partner, but about how frustrating it can be when your needs don't get met. All the women were heterosexual, so all the partners they talked about were male, but I could see the contrast between me and my own friends immediately. I can rarely remember a conversation about sex that was woman-centric. I think to a large extent it's a cultural difference. Me and my friends were never raised with any conception that healthy sexual activity where pleasure was given and received was something we should expect, much less demand. Most of the women I have met here don't think that way.

I was just mentioning today that while it is, absolutely, positively vital to talk about backalley abortions, to talk about what abortion was like before Roe vs. Wade (and what it still is like in areas where abortion is illegal or inaccessible), it's equally important to talk about what choice as a whole was like and still IS like, even with the help of Roe and other supports. I think many often forget or simply don't know the combined impact Roe vs. Wade,Title X and other feminist initiatives had when it came to reproductive choice no matter the choice a woman made. More accurately, no matter what a woman did or what was done TO her when she became pregnant before she had any sort of choice.

Today I read an article about women who have given up their uteruses to Jesus. These “Quiverfull” parents aim to bear six or more children, rejecting all forms of birth control as a defiance of Christ’s divine power over women’s reproduction capabilities. “Our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice” states one family, and their children are future soldiers in God’s army.

We, as AGA bloggers and by virtue of our age, have never lived in a country without Griswold and the right to access to birth control. We've never lived without Roe and the right to choose abortion. And it's easy to forget that not so very long ago these rights were greatly restricted or withheld altogether. We must remember the work of our foremothers; and the times when we forget, there is one group of women who never fail to remind me.

Before the Feminist Majority Foundation, Before NARAL Pro-Choice America, before NOW--

Heather Booth made her first referral.

So I spent most of last week hanging out with my partner and catching up on way too much time apart. At one point, we were watching the Colbert Report and saw him interviewing feminist author Linda Hirshman about her new book, "Get to Work".

As far as I can tell, the general consensus is that feminism is all about making it possible for women to have choices. In the context of that, all choices should be valid choices. There is no 'right' or 'wrong'. There is only what any given individual woman wants to do with her life and how she choses to go about this.

Similarly, I assume we can all agree that even in our Western culture, being a stay-at-home-mom and being a homemaker has not always been a matter of free choice for women. Even those who do want children are oftentimes forced -either explicitly or implicitly- to stay at home and care for their children. Even with lack of complete evidence for this, the opinion that children whose mothers have a career will ultimately be damaged by this is still rampant.

We're all feminists here. We're united under one word, one title that speaks of our priorities, our values, and our morals, right? Well, you know as well as I do that few statements could be farther from the truth. It's a mistake practically all people who don't identify as feminist make and one that we even make with each other.

"Feminist", to most of us, means a girl or woman actively struggling with identity in a society where the odds are stacked against us from birth; often a feminist is considered nontraditional and unorthodox, focused on reproductive rights and abortion issues, looking to install women in all facets of daily life where any person would assume a man in place. The language seems benign, but already I know that this generalization excludes at least a number of my fellow bloggers here, not to mention many women who do identify as feminist. Passing judgement, even in the way of expectations and generalization that hold accurate more often than not, is a terrible habit and an impediment to our goals as people who fall under the feminist umbrella.