I won’t bemoan the state of gender relations. I won’t, because others do it for me. You have more traditional/conservative/religious female bloggers complaining about men. You have traditional/conservative/religious men complaining about women. You have liberal feminist atheists doing the same. My personal relationships with the men in my life are great. Societally speaking, however, I’m aware that things are not on the up and up.
Anyway, here’s one of the many blog posts on this theme. And what it highlights is that men and women are different, which is simultaneously one of the most ridiculously self obvious things to say and one of the most controversial.
Here’s where I’ll tie this in to abortion. If we fail to acknowledge that men and women are different, we’ll never get over this idea that “abortion is a woman’s right.” Because this notion stems in part from the idea that when women have sex, the outcome should be exactly the same as it is for men. Men can’t get pregnant, ergo, neither should women. The “unpregnancy” of abortion is a mainstay of this flawed worldview.
(Please note: I’m not sure that I’ve used the word “ergo” properly, but gosh, doesn’t it just seem to fit in with the flow of that sentence?)
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Mary Ann says
I believe the post sexul revolution world is filled with women at war with nature, their biology and their bodies. Was it Simone de Beauvoir who said, “Biology is not destiny”? – an assertion that was a wish not a fact. Many women want to live as men live and have sex as men do – without the result of pregnancy. Their body doing was it was designed to do goes against everything their identity and mind tells them they want. That is why abortion has to exist. An unplanned pregnancy would swamp them and threaten their identity at its core. And that is why when presented with graphic images, for example, they can’t argue, they lash out. They are existentially threatened.
As a woman, I find it rather sad and pathetic. I do not want my identity to have its foundation on dead fetuses.
Megan says
I think you have hit upon the spectacularly ironic “success” of certain brands of “feminism”: the greatest result has been the affirmation that men ARE the superior sex! …So much so that women must alter themselves & their biology to emulate men more fully. I think about what sort of message it would have sent if, subsequent to emancipation in the Southern United States, African-Americans decided that to affirm their new equality, they would pigment their skin tones to become more Caucasian. This would have been a travesty and a farce! The essence of the death of racism was an awareness that in spite of the acknowledged distinctness between different races, all are equal in dignity, intelligence, value, etc. The essence of female liberation, however, has been, “let’s become more like men!”, rather a far cry from a celebration of equality in spite of recognized distinctness.
Steve says
The word “ergo” is latin for “therefore.” If we plug in “therefore” we can see that you’ve used “ergo” wonderfully:
“Men can’t get pregnant, [therefore], neither should women.”
Well written!