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Feminism, rape culture, and the pro-life movement

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In my previous post, I mentioned that I had recently finished reading Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape. Well, I am back to discuss another one of the incredibly problematic accusations that was made in this book. And yes, we are going to be focusing once again on Jill Filipovic’s essay “Offensive Feminism: The Conservative Gender Norms that Perpetuate Rape Culture, and How Feminists Can Fight Back.” (Prepare yourselves.)

In addition to misquoting religious texts and accusing “anti-choicers” of trying to “give a fetus rights that no born person even has” (Friedman & Valenti, 2008, p. 19), Filipovic also decided to draw illogical comparisons between sexual assault and abortion. This is what she said:

“Sexual assault is not only a crime of violence and power, but also one of entitlement. So long as men feel entitled to dominate and control women’s bodies, sexual assault will continue. While issues like reproductive justice may initially seem unrelated to sexual assault, they are a crucial aspect of women’s bodily autonomy and integrity – legally forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy for nine months and give birth against her will and without her consent, or coercing certain kinds of ‘unfit’ women into not reproducing, are deeply troubling uses of women’s bodies to serve the needs, ideologies, and desires of others” (Friedman & Valenti, 2008, p. 26).

Filipovic then went on to claim that “anti-choicers” were actively supporting rape culture:

“We need to situate sexual assault within the greater cultural battles over women’s bodies, and recognize that anti-rape activism cannot be separated from action for reproductive freedom, anti-racism, LGBT rights, and broader equality; and that the opponents of those movements are the same people who have an interest in maintaining rape culture” (Friedman & Valenti, 2008, p. 27).

Now, there are many, many things that could be said in response to these claims. For example, it is intellectually dishonest to claim that pro-lifers are “legally forcing a women to carry a pregnancy for nine months and give birth against her will and without her consent”. As a pro-life woman, I have no interest in forcing women to give birth. However, I am interested in ensuring that the state does not sanction abortion, which allows doctors to systematically dismember an unborn human fetus/being/child. This has nothing to do with “forcing” women to give birth and everything to do with “forcing” men, women, and physicians to abstain from participating in the destruction of human beings.

But Filipovic’s accusation goes much deeper than this. The real claim that Filipovic is making is this: by opposing a woman’s bodily autonomy, “anti-choicers” are supporting rape culture. So let’s examine this claim.

As a pro-life woman, I would like to clearly state, once and for all, that I believe in, support, and advocate for a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. I mean, let’s be serious. I am a woman. I love women. I believe in women’s rights. I studied feminism. I am a traditional feminist. I am thankful for my bodily autonomy. I support the bodily autonomy of other women. Capiche?

However, there is a massive difference between supporting a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and supporting a woman’s right to exercise autonomy over the body of another human being (ie. the human fetus). This is where pro-life and pro-abortion advocates diverge.

You see, pro-abortion advocates believe that a woman not only has the right to control her own body, but that she also has the right to control the body inside her body (ie. the body of the human fetus). (Side note: This is why the “My body, my choice” slogan should really be “Our bodies, my choice.”).

However, as a pro-life advocate, I reject this belief. I reject the idea that another individual has the right to assert control over, perpetuate violence against, and threaten the existence of another individual. And do you want to know a secret? This is perfectly in alignment with my stance as a traditional feminist who combats rape culture!

When a man rapes a woman*, he is asserting control over and perpetuating violence against another autonomous individual. In simplified terms, he is violating the woman’s bodily autonomy.

As a pro-life woman, it is my belief in bodily autonomy (among other things) that fuels my opposition to sexual assault. And it is also my belief in bodily autonomy (among other things) that fuels my opposition to abortion.

Now, before people begin to freak out and make all sorts of unfounded accusations against me, let’s make one thing perfectly clear: I am not suggesting that abortion and sexual assault are similar. However, what I am saying is that Jill Filipovic’s claim is absolutely false.

Do “anti-choicers” actively support and maintain rape culture by “opposing” a woman’s bodily autonomy? Absolutely not. As I demonstrated, the pro-life worldview is premised on the equal distribution of human rights and bodily autonomy to all human beings, born and unborn. This is what fuels our opposition to abortion. This is what fuels our opposition to human trafficking. And this is what fuels our opposition to rape culture.

One final point: The connection between rape culture, abortion services, and businesses like Planned Parenthood is a lot more problematic than you might think. I would recommend that you watch this video and this video. The reality is that, through our activism, pro-life people have been actively combatting rape culture. And realistically, if you truly want to combat rape culture, you too must oppose the insidious way that abortion is used by Planned Parenthood to cover-up sexual abuse, sexual assault, and sexual exploitation.

 

*Note: I recognize that rape and sexual assault do not always follow this construction. However, in light of the fact that the vast majority of sexual assault is perpetrated by men against women, this is the construction that I have chosen to use.

“Women’s rights” in crisis

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From time to time in this current political mess, someone will toss the phrase “women’s rights” into the mix. Apparently, in saying that government employees can’t go to Human Rights Tribunals over pay equity disputes, the Harper government is against women’s rights. I think that’s what it is about, anyway. Hard to tell. Why? Because those people bandying about the phrase don’t have a sweet clue either. They never explain, and I’ve not heard a reporter ask for or offer clarification. Fortunately, however, they don’t need a sweet clue. Because paying lip service to “women’s rights” is all they want to do.

Look, one thing I won’t do on this blog is pretend to represent all women. So let me say this for myself. I’d really love the government to stop funding “women’s rights.” I want Status of Women Canada to lose every tax dollar it gets. I’d love it if the “women’s caucus” stopped defending things like “gender-based analysis.” I will never even bother reading The Pink Book. 

I don’t represent all women. So I find it fascinating when others speak up for–wait for it–me. Why–Ed Broadbent did so just the other morning on a local Ottawa CBC show. The Conservatives are against “women’s rights”, says he. But just what might those rights be? The right to unionized jobs? The right to be defended by him? So kind of him–I’ll invite him to tea and we can chat about a coalition of women’s defence. I’m sure he, maybe with Duceppe and Dion can swing it.  

“Women’s rights” indeed. Are you buying it?

Britain on top in more ways than just one

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This article highlights how Britain is top of all western nations for sexual promiscuity. And that, they say, is a good thing for women’s rights and equality:

Britain’s ranking was ascribed to factors such as the decline of religious scruples about extramarital sex, the growth of equal pay and equal rights for women and a highly sexualised popular culture.

Just off the top of my head, there are other areas where Britain is on top, too: family breakdown, dropout rates, generational welfare dependency, high rates of single parenting, indebtedness and drug addictions. I believe their youth gang rates are also on the rise.

 But I’m sure none of these things are connected. Way to go Britain. And thank goodness for “women’s rights,” as expressed by men (in this case, David Schmitt, a professor of psychology at Bradley University, Illinois) who slap wildly inaccurate interpretations on top of devastating research results.

I blame rampant individualism

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A letter writer has recently implied that it’s the right-wing, western-based, redneck crowd that is to blame for all social ills… that pro-life types are nowhere to be found when babies are born and that young girls who get pregnant benefit from abortion–flourishing careers, you know. As a 20-something (now 30-something) who got unexpectedly pregnant after one year in university and who sacrificed her studies (I have a law degree but was never admitted to the bar) to raise a family this question is of more than academic interest.

13 years later, I have completed some of my studies but my career is unmistakably mommy-tracked. I had dreams of traveling the world and I now find myself the least traveled person of my acquaintance. I have carried my pregnancies to term and I do harbor regrets about all the things I might have been able to do, especially when I look at my peers who are paying off their mortgages at 35 while I wonder how the heck I will pay back the $60 000 line of credit I incurred to buy a Master’s degree and with it, the possibility of developing a career.

These struggles are supposed to make me pro-choice. They don’t.

We live in a misogynistic society. This is not our children’s fault so much as our own. When we flaunt abortion as the panacea for our inability to recognize motherhood as an important contribution to society and to acknowledge that mothers may have ambitions in life other than motherhood – ambitions that are not per se incompatible with motherhood but that are made so by a myopic outlook on motherhood and ambition – we effectively reinforce prejudices against mothers, children and families. This is the heart of my position against abortion.

I am not “anti-choice.” I only firmly believe that choice in matters of pregnancy has effectively reduced the range of options available to women in society. And this occurred principally when we made childbearing a personal choice for which women alone are held accountable.

Where pregnancy is a personal choice for women alone to make, everyone else is off the hook. Fathers, families and society. You might blame “anti-choice folks” for being nowhere once a child is born. I can personally assure you, pro-choice liberals aren’t anywhere to be seen either.

For proof, I could rhyme off anecdotes from my personal experience over the last 13 years – which covered both Liberal and Conservative governments by the way – but this post is getting long enough. Let me leave you all with this homework assignment: I submitted my Master’s thesis in late June and have been looking for work since early April with no success. I am well qualified but completely inexperienced. I have spent 12 years raising five children and finished my law degree and got a Master’s degree but I don’t have experience. That’s a problem—incidentally, not pro-lifers’ fault. Had I aborted my babies, I would have plenty of experience by now. Employers demand this experience, why? Because they can. And certainly since pregnancy is a choice, they don’t need to accommodate women who don’t choose experience over life.

About three weeks ago, I found myself a little queasy and peed on a stick. Surprise: I am – very unexpectedly – 2 months pregnant. And still looking for work (see aforementioned “$60,000 line of credit.”) Now, that’s complicated. Who looks for work pregnant? Who hires people for 6 months? Where is my mat leave after 6 months? What guarantees do I have to have my job back after I give birth? Don’t look, there aren’t any, I already checked. The choice of abortion has made unexpected pregnancies an aberration, a thing of the past. Abortion and its correlating ideas about motherhood-only-when-convenient and as an individual choice have created a brick wall with a one-way sign and a prohibited u-turn for women.

P.S. I should add that I have just found work for the next six months with a pro-life, so-con employer who knows about my pregnancy. Liberal pro-choicers—top that.

Oh to be more like Dilbert

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Lots and lots of ink spilled on women, jobs, mothering, how, when and who… This snappy piece highlights those issues again. But most interesting to me was the notion that there is an academic elite advocating for mothers in the workforce because their jobs are so darn interesting, never considering that only a thin slice of women (and probably men) have the luxury of working in fields of interest that are intrinsically rewarding, and that lead us to feel “important” by virtue of what we do:

Not that being an academic isn’t a hell of a lot of fun; in fact, its very pleasantness contributes to a bias peculiar to members of the thinktankerati. So argues Neil Gilbert, a renowned Berkeley sociologist, in A Mother’s Work: How Feminism, the Market and Policy Shape Family Life. According to Gilbert, the debate over the value of women’s work has been framed by those with a too-rosy view of employment,

‘mainly because the vast majority of those who publicly talk, think, and write about questions of gender equality, motherhood, and work in modern society are people who talk, think, and write for a living. And they tend to associate with other people who, like themselves, do not have “real” jobs—professors, journalists, authors, artists, politicos, pundits, foundation program officers, think-tank scholars, and media personalities.

Many of them can set their own hours, choose their own workspace, get paid for thinking about issues that interest them, and, as a bonus, get to feel, by virtue of their career, important in the world. The professor admits that his own job in “university teaching is by and large divorced from the normal discipline of everyday life in the marketplace. It bears only the faintest resemblance to most work in the real world.” In other words, for the “occupational elite” (as Gilbert calls this group), unlike for most people, going to work is not a drag.’

Next best part highlights the wonders of gender equity in Sweden:

Oh, if America could only be like Sweden—such a humane society, with its free day care for working mothers and its government subsidies of up to $11,900 per child per year. The problem? One hates to be Mrs. Red-State Republican Bringdown, but yes … the taxes. Currently, the top marginal income-tax rate in Sweden is nearly 60 percent (down from its peak in 1979 of 87 percent). Government spending amounts to more than half of Sweden’s GDP. (And it doesn’t all go to children, given Sweden’s low fertility rate.) On the upside, government spending creates jobs: from 1970 to 1990, a whopping 75 percent of Swedish jobs created were in the public sector … providing social welfare services … almost all of which were filled by women. Uh-oh. In short, as Gilbert points out, because of the 40 percent tax rate on her husband’s job, a new mother may be forced to take that second, highly taxed job to supplement the family’s finances; in other words, she leaves her toddlers behind from eight to five (in that convenient universal day care) so she can go take care of other people’s toddlers or empty the bedpans of elderly strangers.

This discussion about mothering ain’t going to end anytime soon, and I believe women ought to do what they think is best. But are they? For my part, I’m just glad to be part of something called “the thinktankerati.” It’s high time someone noticed just how glam my job is.  

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Tanya adds: Most women I know who return to work after maternity and parental leave benefits have run out do so for one reason: money. Though there are some who love their careers, and others who just want to get out of the house, most would ultimately want to stay home and raise their children.

There’s the single mother who has little choice in the matter. My mother, for example, raised three kids on her own. Staying home with us was not a viable option.

Then there’s the mortgage and the two cars, the annual vacation and the on-trend wardrobe. Most women want some of these things, and some want them all. But why? Is it because of society’s expectations, or from a sincere life’s desire? Is it the woman that wants these things, or her spouse’s expectations of her? And what level of priority do these things hold? What order should women’s priorities be in?

Amazing that we are still asking these same questions 40 or so years after the women’s lib movement, don’t you think?

What fits in Mother Russia?

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Russia has the highest abortion rate in the world. Now the Duma is attempting to ban abortion advertising in an effort to reduce the number. I see this as a reminder that abortion being legal doesn’t correlate with happy, healthy populations. Women in Russia do not have more freedom and rights, men and women in Russia are not healthier (in fact, globally, Russia is the only country to not experience an improvement in life expectancy between 1950 and today–improvements in life expectancy are generally an indicator of better health and welfare.) I’m not saying abortion is the only factor to consider–that would be silly. But it is one factor and since we are strangely told that abortion equals enhanced rights and improved health in particular for women, we ought to examine Russia closely.

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Brigitte wonders: Does anybody really believe that a ban on abortion advertising will help? I have trouble imagining any pregnant woman suddenly deciding to abort her child because she saw an ad on television on in a magazine. I’ve lived in Quebec for 30 years (last time I looked: 42 abortions per 100 live births), yet I can’t really recall any abortion advertising jingle or slogan or any kind of abortion ad whatever. But I can still imitate Sucrets’ famous “Solange, es-tu réveillée?” from an ad that probably hasn’t aired since 1978. I’m afraid there as here, the problem is a culture that doesn’t put much value on the unborn, not abortion advertising.

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Rebecca adds: 42 abortions per 100 live births? Wow. I’ve never heard it framed that way before, but that’s a very attention-getting way to put it.

 

Re: abortion and advertising: I agree, I find it unlikely that a given woman with an unplanned pregnancy will be spurred to abort, when she otherwise wouldn’t, by an ad. I do believe, though, that a culture in which abortion is portrayed as so mainstream and acceptable as to be advertised like a new soft drink (hey, we don’t allow cigarettes to be advertised anymore because of their harmful effects) would encourage people to perceive abortion, even unconsciously, as a perfectly valid option that means less caution is needed with birth control and choosing sexual partners.

 

The link between unmarried births and welfare rates (they’re positively corelated with respect to increases in most U.S. states) is a similar sort of background, culture-setting issue. Your typical 17-year-old doesn’t sit down with a scratch pad and calculate whether it’s financially viable to have a baby with no job and no husband on the horizon based on current benefit rates, but is nonetheless influenced by the degree to which society assents to supporting the children of teen mothers.

 

In the case of Russia, even if the only motivation is demographic concern, a ban on abortion advertising would have the effect of delegitimizing it to some small extent. Free speech is always an issue in advertising restrictions, but Russia’s history of problems with freedom of expression is such that pro-abortion ads are the least of its troubles on that score.

A special kind of biased reporting

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Women don’t earn less than men, access to abortion is not about women’s rights, and Bill C-484 is not about abortion. Other than that, I suppose this article is just fine.

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Véronique adds: There is an interesting dichotomy here. In 1928, the Supreme Court decided that women were not “qualified persons” and we look back with righteous indignation: How can “personhood” be so arbitrarily determined? Yet, in the same breath, we condemn Bill C-484 thus reaffirming our right to arbitrarily determine the non-personhood of the fetus. Pushing the irony even further, we can see that the same court — although differently made-up — declared women and fetuses non-persons.

I would like to know what is the moral basis of that argument. What makes arbitrary determinations of personhood and humanity wrong when it comes to women yet right when it comes to fetuses? Is it just that excluding fetuses is easier? More convenient? That’s not much of a moral argument.

From church dogma to choice dogma

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Were women asexual prior to the 1960s? Michael Valpy seems to think so. Today, Valpy chose to kiss the ring of 1960s “choice” dogma, ironically, in an article about how women rejected church dogma in the 1960s. Valpy comments on the advent of a woman’s choice to be sexual, which, apparently, arrived finally, after millennia on the planet, with the birth control pill. Talk about repression! Prior to that, all sexuality was denied her—she was a mere slave to her reproductive system. “Birth control gave them the deliberate choice to be sexual, to move out of enslavement to fertility,” he writes.  

There’s a fairly simple formula, here, that appears to have passed many by. Having sex may sometimes result in pregnancy, and this amounts not to being a slave but to being a parent—for both men and women (for all you parents out there, I’ll grant that sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference). Men didn’t come out scotch free, in this equation, sorry.

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