"Not a feminist, but": A guide to what feminism is and isn't

Except that's like saying gay people do have the same rights as straight people, since they're all allowed to get married to the opposite sex.

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The way I see it is - a woman has control over her own body. Just not the body of the embryo.

If there were some way we could fulfil both rights, then I would be all for that. But we don't, so we have to pick one.

It's not that I don't think she has the right. Just that the other right conflicting with it is more important.

Be not afraid...

And other people see the embryo as instead being a part of the woman's body until it's assured that it will survive on its own, as opposed to being miscarried, stillborn, etc. Which brings us right back to the exact same divide.

edited 10th May '11 12:31:53 AM by Jeysie

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Not really; I'm just explaining why thinking abortion should be illegal isn't incompatible with feminism.

Unless you can say that 'an embryo is an organ' is an objective truth that it's possible to be absolutely certain of, or that it's an inherently feminist idea, believing otherwise doesn't mean you're not a feminist.

To clarify: "An embryo is a person" vs "an embryo is just tissue" are not really feminist points in and of themselves.

edited 10th May '11 12:43:15 AM by LoniJay

Be not afraid...

Except they kind of are, since the end results mean one faction thus thinks outlawing abortion is an acceptable thing to deal with since it doesn't interfere with women's rights, and another set thinks it's not at all acceptable because it does.

I mean, since I'm in the latter camp, to me outlawing abortion would be a gigantic step back in the women's rights movement.

edited 10th May '11 12:52:15 AM by Jeysie

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Not really. Marriage is entirely a social and legislative issue, which can be made as equal as people choose. Pregnancy, however, is inherently biologically unequal: whether you decide to allow for it or not, one sex will end up with more choice than the other either way.

Yes really, in the sense that while technically true, it utterly and completely misses the spirit of the point.

Plus, this matter can also be made equal as well, for those of us who don't think abortion is murder/strictly immoral, etc.

Sigh, plus again, no offense, but I'm not really interested in debating the moral points of abortion in this thread, because I'm not interested in converting any of you, nor are you going to convert me. Just pointing out WHY it's so contentious in the framework of feminism specifically, which all of the moral arguments don't really change.

edited 10th May '11 12:59:28 AM by Jeysie

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@Loni Jay: even if a embryo was a person, is it really right to risk the health and possibly life of a women for it?

I mean if you were a doctor in ER and this women 18 weeks with her second child came in bleeding to death from a lifted placenta would you say to her

'sorry love. You only have a 40 % mortally rate, No abortion for you.'

edited 10th May '11 1:06:32 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

If anything, reproductive rights, as enforced by many Western governments are more misandrist than anything else.

Oh, and believing in the OP's statements is not enough to make one a "feminist", IMO. It seems like someone's trying to shift goalposts.

edited 10th May '11 1:02:19 AM by MRDA1981

Enjoy the Inferno...

@Loni Jay: Actually, I think abortions are generally a good thing: We're overpopulated, and early term fetuses are not yet sentient.

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

The fact that pregnancy is an issue of biology rather than legal or social rights is a rather important distinction between the two. If you're working under the assumption that a fetus is a human being with an inviolable right to life, and that for anyone to interfere with that life constitutes murder, then women are unfortunately disadvantaged due to their physiology, but both sexes have exactly the same rights.

Generally, trying to even the playing field by compensating for biological differences with legislation tends to be a bad idea. Nevermind that in this particular case, the exact same reasoning is used by both sides of the abortion debate ("I may not be able to give birth myself as a male, but I should still have equal say in the decision to abort").

I'm not interested in debating morality either; my argument has only been about whether or not being pro-life is inherently contradictory with being a feminist, as Black Humor defines the word. Personally, for what it may be worth, I think abortion should be available on demand and free of charge.

edited 10th May '11 1:11:03 AM by MostlyBenign

At our current level of technology, there is no solution to the abortion issue that allows men and women to have equal rights. Either men get more sexual freedom/control over their bodies than women or women get more control over the fate of their unborn offspring than men.

But then, for pro-lifers, it's not men v. women, it's prospective victim v. prospective murderer. Their stance is orthogonal to the issue of equality of the sexes.

I think so. Equal rights doesn't necessarily mean equal outcomes. "women should have equal rights as men" can still be an ideal that the pro-lifer holds. It's just not as high a priority for them as "fetuses have a right to life". They're not incompatible ideals in principle. Eventually, we may have the technology to satisfy them both simultaneously. But since we're not there yet, a choice has to be made. An imperfect outcome has to be accepted. I imagine the pro-life feminist's position being something like "women should have equal rights as men; unfortunately, it's not currently possible to completely achieve this without permitting an evil even greater than inequality".

Not at all. Saying "well, men have the equal prohibition of not having an abortion" is pointless since men don't need them to begin with. Just like saying "well, straight people have the same prohibition of not marrying the same sex" is pointless because they don't want to marry the same sex to begin with.

Instead, IMHO what should be done is looking at the spirit of the fact that while biology is inherently unequal, contraception helps close a large chunk of the gap in equality, and abortion closes the rest of it. Ergo, it is currently completely possible to give women the same sexual/reproductive freedom as men.

So the reason why I say that all the "But this! But that!" arguments aren't really fully relevant, is because one, I already know that's how one side feels, and two, you can argue all you want that it's immoral/wrong/etc., it still doesn't change the fact that there's a currently possible method of granting the equivalent of full biological equality that you're taking away. It's just that some of you consider it justified and understandable because you think said method is simply irredeemably bad and thus not acceptable.

Problem is, on the other side you have the feminists who, for whatever reasons, think that abortion is perfectly acceptable, and thus taking away the possibility of equal biological rights is as a result not acceptable.

Thus where the question of being pro-life being compatible with feminism lies, since it depends greatly on your POV on the matter.

edited 10th May '11 1:24:04 AM by Jeysie

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Except that men don't have the same reproductive freedom when abortion is freely available to women, since in that case, only women have the choice on whether or not any sexual act leads to childbirth. As long as men cannot become pregnant, equality is not achievable, and should therefore not be used as an argument in the first place.

EDIT: tongpu said what I was going for better than I did.

edited 10th May '11 1:29:28 AM by MostlyBenign

The question of women having the same amount of control over undesired changes in their body as men do absolutely should be used as a factor.

edited 10th May '11 1:32:04 AM by Jeysie

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It seems like we're going in circles, and I feel that my earlier posts (and tongpu's, which I largely agree with) make my position sufficiently clear.

You know I have to drive pass a women clinic to get to uni at the moment.

The shear lack of protesters there has never cease to amaze me.

hashtagsarestupid

The problem is that your viewpoint forgets that it's the woman's body going through changes, so all your argument does is bring in the even thornier issue of whether this situation can only truly be equal if a man has say over what happens in someone else's body, even if she doesn't want to happen.

So let me phrase it this way, then: if you're pro-choice, you see abortion as an acceptable solution that gives a woman as much control over her own body as a man has control over his.

If you're pro-life, you accept denying abortion means a woman has less control over her body compared to a man, but that's because you see it as not being an acceptable solution.

So, from the POV of the first person, they might see pro-lifers as incompatible with feminism because they advocate denying a woman a valid choice in the matter. From the POV of the second person, they see themselves as compatible because they don't see the woman as having any valid choice to begin with, so they're not denying anything.

edited 10th May '11 1:54:09 AM by Jeysie

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On the point that not being able to make 100% sure that there's no pregnancy would limit sexual freedom: vasectomy/tubal ligation(most radical and costly), strap-on/fleshlight or whatever the female equivalent would be, just not doing base four but limiting oneself to all the other possibilities. It's still a somewhat disgraceful policing of sexuality, but not as grave as some make it out to be.

I know what you said, sugar, but 'platonic' still entails a world of ideas.

That is not what I said at all: in fact, it's the opposite of what I have been saying. To quote tongpu, since he put it so succinctly: "At our current level of technology, there is no solution to the abortion issue that allows men and women to have equal rights. Either men get more sexual freedom/control over their bodies than women or women get more control over the fate of their unborn offspring than men."

In other words, the current biological reality is such that equality is essentially impossible in this matter: I don't consider the appeal to equality to be a valid argument, since neither option results in equality.

I'm not pro-choice because I believe that freely available abortion gives a woman as much control over her body as a man has over his, since factually, it gives her more control (she has the choice to either give birth or not, while a man cannot have the option to give birth). I'm pro-choice because I believe the right to self-determination trumps the considerably more abstract - and impossible - concept of reproductive equality.

Seems about right.

That's still admittedly bringing a thornier extra issue into the matter. (Namely, which you consider more important in this instance.)

But I still seem to have possibly gotten closer to getting my real point across with my last paragraph anyway, so I'll take that success and run.

(As much as I hate to sound like I'm closing down discussion, I really hate getting mired down in a 10-page side convo on something I feel is tangential to the point I was initially trying to make.)

edited 10th May '11 2:22:34 AM by Jeysie

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—clicks thread—

Oooh, I like this thread, I think. It always surprises me when I see that Black Humor is a feminist, not sure why...

Time to po—

—sees abortion derail—

OF COURSE.

Read my stories!

I agree with this comment.

Not that I think abortion is irrelevant when talking about feminism, but it seems to have taken over the whole conversation and is going around in circles now.

The owner of this account is temporarily unavailable. Please leave your number and call again later.

Look we all know where this thread is going, I'll save us time.

edited 10th May '11 3:27:06 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

I didn't even want the discussion to be about debating abortion in the first place, because the specifics and whys of where people stand wasn't even my point, just the effects on what camps being pro-life or pro-choice splits feminism into.

So don't blame me, at least, for it going around in circles, I tried to steer it back on course multiple times.

edited 10th May '11 3:30:06 AM by Jeysie

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