“Sure as a guy it is great 4 u, but the gf is too young. She needs to keep her virginity for the man that is going to marry her.”
Yahoo! Answers response to a guy asking about where he and his girlfriend could have sex.
In other words, it’s totally fine for you to have sex if you’re a dude. But if you’re a girl, you need to “save yourself” for your husband.
“We have anti-choice women in for abortions all the time. Many of them are just naive and ignorant until they find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy. Many of them are not malicious. They just haven’t given it the proper amount of thought until it completely affects them. They can be judgmental about their friends, family, and other women. Then suddenly they become pregnant. Suddenly they see the truth. That it should only be their own choice. Unfortunately, many also think that somehow they are different than everyone else and they deserve to have an abortion, while no one else does.”
Anonymous Physician, from ”The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion” by Joyce Arthur
Why am I pro-choice? My question is, why wouldn’t I be?
I became pro-choice at around the age of thirteen. That was a moment in which I realized, “Wait, why should I tell people what they can and cannot do with their bodies? That’s insane.”
And it certainly is.
This is why I don’t understand how abortion is still such a heated topic. In my view, there is no need for debate at all. It’s all pseudo-concern for the “unborn” to make anti-choicers feel better about themselves. Instead, these people should be feeling awful for purposely trying to make women’s lives more difficult. How is restricting access to birth control and abortion, and further complicating people’s lives, in any way moral?
The word “controversy” to describe abortion makes no sense to me. “Controversy” seems to imply that there are two opposing yet legitimate sides to an argument. That simply isn’t true in the case of abortion. One side argues based on thought and reason. The other side argues based on emotion, myths and outright lies. One side is realistic. The other side has this imagined ideal about how the world works. One side values living, existing people who contribute to society. The other side values a non-viable clump of cells.
As you can see, this is not a debatable topic.
And abortion shouldn’t even be an issue today.
An important part of being a feminist is caring about the rights of everyone. People of any race, class, sexual orientation, and so on. But I also believe fight for the rights of people of any gender.
Anti-feminists would not have one believe this. They play feminists off as being man-haters who want to men to experience the same oppression as women have experienced. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. This is because feminism helps everyone. I will explain why later.
But first, I want to say a few words about so-called “Men’s Rights Activists” (MRAs). The first time I went to an MRA website, it was quite an enraging yet laughable experience. MRAs claim that men are the most victimized group in modern society, and that feminists want nothing more than to treat men unfairly. As an MRA I encountered on a forum once put it, “Women in today’s society are pampered.” Pampered. Because the fact that women are paid less on average than men and face more discrimination in the workplace just screams “pampered”.
MRAs claim that most women lie about being domestically abused or raped and that they unfairly steal custody from their children’s fathers. This happens, but it happens a very small percentage of the time. MRAs make it seem that it is a major issue that happens constantly.
Not to mention, MRAs show up in every political setting in an attempt to deny women their rights and things such as protections for female and male victims of domestic abuse.
This modern breed of MRAs began because a group of men felt threatened. They were scared of women having rights and power. They want it to be like the good ol’ days where men could rape or beat without consequence. So they whine on websites like Reddit and 4chan about how feminists are ruining everything for them.
In essence, MRAs don’t want positive change. If they truly cared about making the world a better place for men, women, and children, they would pay more attention to the issues that actually matter.
For example, an issue often overlooked is that of male rape. More men are raped in the U.S. than women. This is mostly due to prison rape, often regarded as just part of being in prison. What do we do to bring attention to the problem of male rape? We make jokes about it. This is unacceptable. Rape, whether male-on-female, female-on-male, male-on-male, or female-on-female, imprisoned, or free is an awful crime that should not be tolerated. We need to make more resources available for male victims of sexual assault instead of just treating the issue like it’s something to laugh about.
There are also male domestic abuse victims who need as much help as female victims. Again, men are seen as being invincible and therefore, people scoff at the idea of a man being “beat up” by a woman.
These are just a couple of issues I believe deserve more attention from people, whether feminists or MRAs or those who don’t identify as either.
Finally, queer men are arguably more often discriminated against than queer women. I think this is because society has this idea of women being the lowest form of human life and basically the scum of the earth. So if a man does anything even remotely feminine (like, say, sleep with men), he is lowering his status to that of a woman. Feminists want to get rid of this idea of women being the bad or undesirable part of society. If men want to wear women’s clothing, they should be able to without fear of being discriminated against or made fun of. This also relates back to male victims of abuse, who are too often seen as being “weak” or “woman-like”. We need to get rid of this idea that women are always the victims and that male victims are just weak men.
Feminism has a place for everyone. Instead of treating it like the enemy, we should recognize feminism as an ally in achieving equal rights for all. Feminists have an interest in helping everyone by changing views of gender in order to make society a less discriminatory, more accepting place.
I know my very first entry kind of explains my pro-choice journey. I’ll let you know a bit more for this one.
Recently, my own state of Michigan passed HB 5711: an extremely restrictive piece of anti-abortion legislation that attacks and limits women’s health services. Governor Rick Snyder signed it into law yesterday.
In a state crippled by the economic crisis, I can’t help but wonder why so many are still focused on the abortion issue. Why are Republicans still so concerned with protecting their precious fetuses while simultaneously not caring about actual women?
As I ponder this question, I recall a bit of information from my past. The unfortunate truth is, I used to be anti-choice.
Yes, it’s true. Back in middle school, my parents had me take Confirmation class at our church each Thursday. It was a normal and enjoyable experience for the first year learning about spirituality. During the second year, however, we students began to be indoctrinated into the church’s anti-woman convictions. We had a reading assignment: a book that was written from a fetus’s point of view, which was absurd yet emotionally powerful enough to sway little seventh grade me. We were taught that women who got abortions were careless and don’t give it much thought. And the pastor’s overall message for the class seemed to be that abortion is bad, evil, and selfish. So it made perfect sense to me, having abortion presented to me in that way, to call myself “pro life”.
It’s an embarrassing time in my life to recall now. In high school I began to understand that women who have abortions are not evil and selfish; they decide carefully that it is the most responsible option is for themselves and often their existing children. What is evil, I thought, is not allowing women to make that decision for themselves, intimidating and shaming them for the choices they make, and using the church to scare people into thinking a certain way.
I tell the story of my pro-choice journey because it not only gives me some insight into how anti-choicers think, but it also shows the significance of religion in anti-choice arguments. Never mind that Jesus was mum on the subject of abortion and that the Bible doesn’t even mention the practice. Abortion is still seen as the greatest evil there is. And when this belief is reinforced by the church and family from a young age, it often sticks, which is now apparent with white-haired male politicians attempting to regulate every aspect of lady parts.
In addition, the Republican stance on abortion brings a sense of morality to the party. Being a member of a party whose leading presidential candidate stated that he doesn’t care about the very poor, saving fetuses is the only thing they can cling to in order to have that feeling of having done “the right thing”. In short, being “pro-life” makes them feel good about themselves. It doesn’t matter that there are living children, women and men they could be helping. That’s just too much work.
I can only imagine why some people continue to value a clump of cells over women. Once in a while, I can sort of get a glimpse into the head of an anti-choicer when I think about how I used to be. But then my common sense kicks back in and I think of the experiences that made me who I am today.
I hope that anti-choicers can look at their motives as well. Motives for supporting things like HB 5711. Motives for being against things as personal as women being able to choose whether they give birth or not. Is it really for the “health of women”, as they claim? Or do they just want to protect fetuses?
I hope they can learn to put living people over their selfish agenda. And I can only hope that this heinous attacks on women will stop so we can begin to focus on the issues that matter.
