The nice thing about being pro-choice is you have the breathing room that intellectual honesty and consistency affords a person. All your views on the subject of reproductive rights stem from the simple notion that women are fully human. Should a woman get to have sex without “consequences”? Should a woman be free to choose how many children she has? Should a woman who’s been raped be forced to bear her rapist’s child? Should a woman who has a pregnancy with complications be forced to ruin her health or lose her life? The answers are all fairly straightforward and simple when you believe a woman deserves basic human rights.* To be fair, anti-choicers are pretty consistent in their worldview, too—they believe that women are second to men, that women should be punished for having sex, and that pregnancy is god’s way of enforcing women’s second class status. They are extremely consistent in this view. In all but their rhetoric. For some reason, anti-choicers cannot advance an intellectually consistent position, jumping all around the place, casting about for some other reason than the real ones that they have the policy goals that they have.
It’s tough to say why this is, but I suspect the reason might be similiar for the reasons that BushCo claimed, at various times, that we’re in Iraq to advance democracy, stop terrorism, take out some non-existent weapons of mass destruction, or because it makes puppies happy.**
One of the most irritating intellectual inconsistencies of anti-choicers is that they assert that they are anti-choice because of “life” and yet their big project over the past few years is passing and defending a federal ban on a specific abortion procedure called a D&X. This is the sort of ban that will not save a single life but could in fact take many, since the reason D&Xes are used by doctors rather than other procedures is because they feel it’s safer in some circumstances. The policy is effectively anti-life, unless you secretly believe that women don’t count and you don’t care if you get some of them killed in your pursuit to erode women’s rights. Scott Lemieux has an article up at the American Prospect detailing exactly how stupid this ban is and why the Supreme Court will probably approve it anyway, now that it’s headed up by judges who don’t care about niceities like clear, consistent arguments when it comes to hurting women. Highly recommended. Needless to say, the other asinine intellectual inconsistency that will result from all this is that “federalist” legislators and judges—all who claim they want to leave these issues up to the states—are all eagerly signing onto federal anti-woman legislation. But you’ll rarely catch them admitting this.
The downside to siding with the coherent folks is that sometimes you feel a bit sorry for the anti-choicers, with their wildly inconsistent positions. (We’re for life except when it’s a pregnant woman’s! We want women to resort to the coathanger because we just respect them so much!) They get called out on the fact that they’re sleazy liars who won’t be straight about their views on such a regular basis that it’s almost unfair that they don’t get to flip that shit around on their opposition. Not that they don’t try, of course, but such attempts are so dreadfully weak it gives me a pity rush. I got a trackback from a woman defending “Feminists” for Life who wants to tell the world what feminists are really like.*** She’s found us out—we’ve committed the dreadful sin of being just what we say we are, which is supportive of women’s full rights and therefore of the idea that women are a diverse group with diverse desires.
Confronting such intellectual consistency apparently gave Sharon a shock to the system, because she totally mistakes it for the sort of disingenous bullshitting that her side engages in.
I despise what Pandagon calls feminism because it tends to be selfish self-centered BS focused entirely on personal pleasure versus what used to be known as caring about family and society. I think it’s very telling when someone says that they want an abortion (but presumably didn’t mind the process of creating a baby) because they just don’t want kids. It definitely flies in the face of the way NARAL and NOW describe women facing abortion:
While it’s critical to promote policies that help prevent unintended pregnancies and make abortion less necessary, NARAL Pro-Choice America also fights to protect the right to safe, legal abortion.
How, I’m not sure. I read this statement up and down and didn’t see anywhere that NOW or NARAL advocated for the idea that women with unwanted pregnancies should be forced to have the babies as punishment for not being proper women who wants lots of babies. It says something about protecting legal abortion while reducing its necessity by preventing unwanted pregnancies. Unless Sharon thinks that I said that I really enjoy getting pregnant a few times a year because I love nothing better than a painful, expensive abortion, her notion that she’s “caught” me makes no sense. Going back to the intellectual consistency of pro-choicers—we believe women are fully human and deserve a right to control their bodies. This actually means they have a right to prevent unwanted pregnancy as well as terminate it. Interestingly, it’s not the feminists who want to take away the right to prevent unwanted pregnancy. The major organizations that want to increase the abortion rate by increasing unwanted pregnancy through contraceptive deprivation are all the anti-abortion groups. Talk about inconsistent! They say they’re against abortion but want to increase the rate.
The funniest part of this entire rant, for my purposes, is that Sharon claims that feminists both scramble to get abortions left and right while stating at the exact same time that we don’t mind the process of creating a baby. Which is it? To me, the stated eagerness to terminate pregnancies seems to contradict the stated adoration of being pregnant, which is of course the process that creates babies. Do we hate pregnancy or love it? Who knows, but the important part is to know that feminists are all the same and whether that means they love pregnancy or hate it, they are evil, wicked, man-hating beasts. Who are selfish.
Of course, there’s the outside chance that Sharon doesn’t understand biology and in her eagerness to imply that feminists are sluts, she mistakenly said conflated the process of creating a baby with Teh Sex. If so, it’s kind of cute that she can’t bring herself to say that a woman could actually want sex, just that we sluts don’t mind it like good women should. Regardless, this notion that sex and not pregnancy is the process that creates a baby makes me wonder if she’s quite aware of what an abortion even is, since it has to happen during that pregnancy phase, where Sharon seems to think that as soon as you light up that post-coital cigarette a bassinet pops up at the end of your bed and starts emitting baby wails, much like on “The Sims”. And hell, even in “The Sims” you only got a baby once out of every few times you had sex and in the real world, a lot of us manage to go years having Teh Sex without ever even beginning the baby-making process called “pregnancy”. My inclination is to point to this entire misunderstanding of what the process of baby-making is as further evidence that science education in America is sorely wanting. How can they even work up to evolution when so many people don’t know where babies come from?
*For the dumbasses who don’t get it, the proper answers are: Yes, yes, no, and no.
**This might be why we’re going to invade Iran. I can’t keep the bullshit straight.
***Interestingly enough, by slamming the existence of feminism while defending FFL, she inadvertantly admitted that FFL is not feminist.
52 Responses to “Funhouse mirror world of anti-choicers”
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Oh yeah, that definition of “selfish.” I’m very familiar with it.
Selfish: A word used to describe any woman who does not do the things I want her to do.
Oh, those pesky, “selfish” feminists, going out and doing things they want to do for their own benefit! When any good woman would be doing what her father/husband/boyfriend/family want her to be doing with her life/mind/body!
Just two days ago, I was called “selfish” for telling a guy I don’t date. How awfully SELFISH of me!! OMIGOD!!
Yeah, I laugh at “selfish.” I worked with a guy who dated a woman who used to call him from the hair salon to see if the cut she wanted to get was OK with him. He eventually broke up with her. Why? You guessed it, she was too “selfish.”
This is also an instance of the “sex must have consequences” mentality. Or, in other words, you can’t like Teh Sex if you don’t want to be making the babeez.
in her eagerness to imply that feminists are sluts, she mistakenly … conflated the process of creating a baby with Teh Sex. … this notion that sex and not pregnancy is the process that creates a baby makes me wonder if she’s quite aware of what an abortion even is, since it has to happen during that pregnancy phase
Hmm… I started to pick at this and point out Come on, of course sex creates a baby, pregnancy doesn’t just happen! …but indeed, there are other ways (less common but ) of getting yer ovum and yer spermum together, and plenty of non-pregnancy-inducing ways of having sex. Very interesting distinction.
Thanks also for the link (Alas a Blog) to that excellent breakdown of how anti-choice rhetoric vs policy speaks against abortion but acts against women enjoying sex — DAMN.
Yeah, I laugh at “selfish.� I worked with a guy who dated a woman who used to call him from the hair salon to see if the cut she wanted to get was OK with him. He eventually broke up with her. Why? You guessed it, she was too “selfish.�
Haircuts? Sounds like extravagence to me. A tattered braid down to your ass was good enough for my great grandmother and it’s good enough for me. Plus, all that calling him was probably sucking up his valuable time, time that she could have better spent gazing at his photograph, or maybe cleaning something.
(Sorry - either blockquotes aren’t working or I’m using them wrong. That first paragraph, “in her eagerness” through “pregnancy phase”, is all Amanda’s words. I’ll study up before commenting again!)
agh. thanks a lot, amanda. your post was so funny and fun to read that i went over and commented on “down with choice” lady’s blog. whoops.
i think you have a wonderful point, there, about our nation’s science education standards. when i read her insinuation that you don’t mind being pregnant, i was hoping with all my heart that you would say that.
bahaha.
Because you can so work for your family and community if you’re dead because of a problem during pregnancy or have more kids than you can handle(for some people, that’s no kids, and the choice should be for the indivdual woman because we all know what we can handle without going crazy. I mean, I’ve had teh sex before, but I used omg, contraception! because somedays I can barely type out a paper let alone tend to the needs of another human being 24-7)
I think it’s very telling when someone says that they want an abortion (but presumably didn’t mind the process of creating a baby) because they just don’t want kids.
Ah, yes, that “didn’t mind the process of creating a baby” crack is all about the sluts. I remember it from my early brainwashing.
And it also explains why abortion for rape is OK: if you didn’t enjoy the “baby making process”, no need to be punished for it.
Also, I’ve never understood the whole “you are selfish for not wanting children, you bad person!” argument. I mean, assuming it’s true, why would you WANT a seflish person raising kids? My mom brought this out on me a while ago and all I could think to say was “well, I mean… yeah, that’s why I think I’d make a pretty terrible mother.”
Hmm… I started to pick at this and point out Come on, of course sex creates a baby, pregnancy doesn’t just happen! …but indeed, there are other ways (less common but ) of getting yer ovum and yer spermum together, and plenty of non-pregnancy-inducing ways of having sex. Very interesting distinction.
…which I don’t think you understood. Sex doesn’t make a baby. Not just not sometimes, not ever. Conception happens after sex. If sex made a baby, emergency contraception wouldn’t work. A woman’s body begins the process of making a baby from egg and sperm somewhere from hours to days after intercourse. It takes nine months after that to finish the job. Basic biology.
I haven’t had a chance to fully peruse your post but I thought y’all might be interested in this:
http://priestsforlife.org/lte/lte26.html
These are sample letters to the editor courtesy of the Priests for Life. They claim that they do not wish to imprison women who seek abortions, only those who perform the procedures. They are claiming that it is pro-choicers who are pushing penalties for the women.
For one thing, that flies in the face of legislative reality. The law that was passed in S.D. did mandate jail time for the woman, if I’m not mistaken. Here in Arizona, we have a law on the books since the late ’60s that calls for 5 years in prison for the woman and her doctor for even attempting to carry out an abortion. I have no compelling reason to think that the godbags in the majority at the State Capitol would revise that provision were Roe v. Wade overturned. Furthermore, how would the Priests for Life or other anti-choicers have the law deal with a woman who self aborted, or attempted to do so, via drugs or another method?
Read the sample letters and realize how the forced birthers are trying to mislead the public about this.
feminism . . . tends to be selfish self-centered BS focused entirely on personal pleasure versus what used to be known as caring about family and society.
Holy crap! So all the concern I read on so-called “feminist” blogs about the importance of making sure that women and men who work AND have children have good child care and health care and suchlike, that’s all fake? Or does that mean the people who want that really aren’t feminists? I’m so confused. Probably because I’ve used up all my oxytocin with all that non-marital, non-reproductive sex.
Well and the funny thing is the tired line that sex leads to babies is statistically untrue to the point of being laughable. In my own life, the correlation between driving and car accidents is stronger.
Since her post revealed the shocking information that some people want to have sex without procreating, I thought I’d follow it up with some other shockers.
Not only do women have abortions because they want to terminate pregnancy, but also:
When they are hungry, they eat.
When they want to go somewhere, they get in the car and drive.
When they’re bored, they look for something to do.
etc.
“When they are hungry, they eat.
When they want to go somewhere, they get in the car and drive.
When they’re bored, they look for something to do.”
Hey! This “freedom” thing looks like it’s getting totally out of hand. Does the government know about this?…
Also, I’ve never understood the whole “you are selfish for not wanting children, you bad person!� argument. I mean, assuming it’s true, why would you WANT a seflish person raising kids? My mom brought this out on me a while ago and all I could think to say was “well, I mean… yeah, that’s why I think I’d make a pretty terrible mother.�
I think the idea is that pregnancy and childbearing are supposed to magically transform you into the Holy Madonna. I know, the prospect of that didn’t convince me, either. Guess my oxytocin thingamajiggy got all screwed up too.
You’re just not supposed to be female and have an identity aside from being a mother, that’s all there is to it, really. Anything else automatically makes you “selfish.” By the way, if that’s the same “sharon,” and it writes like it is, it’s been trolling Echidne’s blog for quite a while now.
ohhh. that’s funny. probably true, cause she wrote a couple posts about echidne, including one about how all the whiny feminists got upset that ann althouse criticized j.valenti for striking a pose “which made her boobs look bigger”, but then when liberals some other place criticized tom delay’s (female) replacement WHERE ARE ALL THE FEMINISTS? HUH?
i had no idea what she was talking about, so i’m probably not a feminist. feminists are the ones who knew about this woman getting sexist trash-talked and reveled in it. or something? this lady is totally confusing.
hahahaha. oh, NEVER MIND. “down with choice” lady has put up TWO more posts tonight to make fun of us pandagon-sycophants who are really dumb, really selfish, really callous, and bad at biology. i don’t get why she just restates the points people ahve already countered and then adds, “so, you’re wrong”. but after a certain point seeing someone make the same lack of sense over and over stops being fun, let alone instructive.
I can’t even begin to describe how lazy her argument is. There’s the appeal to popularity, the lack of precision in terminology, and even the ever-popular “making shit up as you go along” fallacy.
It’s a good thing that the Grand StrawFeminist has good saving throws. She’s been taking quite a beating, lately.
“I think it’s very telling when someone says that they want an abortion (but presumably didn’t mind the process of creating a baby) because they just don’t want kids.”
According to a later post she made on her blog about this post, when she typed “the process of creating a baby” she meant to say “having sex”.
So the quote above should have read “I think it’s very telling when someone says that they want an abortion (but presumably didn’t mind having sex) because they just don’t want kids.”
She has pretty much explicitly said in comments to both posts that women shouldn’t have sex unless they’ve had a tubal ligation or unless they want kids.
Yes, but if you have a tubal ligation, you’re a freak too, because at the end of the day, in their world, sex without babeeeez is WRONG (for women of course, men can do whatever they want, it’s just that the women they do it with are SLUTS).
And for women, having any sort of pleasure, enjoyment or self-fulfillment is plain SELFISH. For men, it’s normal.
Best part about the Sims is that even when you finally triggered a baby, it asked you if you REALLY wanted one.
Scarlett: Yes, but if you have a tubal ligation, you’re a freak too
She’s evidently well aware that it’s very difficult for women under 30 who either have no children or “not enough” children to get a tubal ligation at all.
Damn right, tell me about it… Still can’t get one at 33 because I don’t have kids and doctors insist that “there’s still time”. The point is I don’t care how much time I have left, I don’t want any.
I also loved it how the commenters on her blog pointed out that it was precisely because of mentalities like hers that it was so difficult to get a tubal ligation if you haven’t had 2 or 3 kids already…
According to a later post she made on her blog about this post, when she typed “the process of creating a baby� she meant to say “having sex�.
Which is particularly funny, because sex doesn’t actually create babies per se. It can, but most of the time it doesn’t.
I commented at her new post:
Scarlet:
in their world, sex without babeeeez is WRONG (for women of course[…])
To be fair, there’s the alternate line that sex without babies is pointless for women, because all women love babies and there’s no such thing as a clitoris.
Oh yes, I forgot that one.
)
Wow, super weird. She seems to think that if you don’t want babies you should get your tubes tied. That’s the first line of defense against pregnancy? What?
Not sure is she understands that a lot of people simply don’t want babies now, but will want them in the future.
This woman reminds me of when I was six. Having heard the expression “marriage and children” together, I thought that naturally, the act of getting married was what caused a woman to have a baby. So, I decided that my parents must have gotten married to each other twice.
But I was a kid, and kids are stupid. What’s her excuse?
I must have a whole slew of kids out there to put the Quiverfull movement to shame if sex = children. Maybe I should start hitting up my bf for support. Similarly, I can’t imagine that women who have children without PiV sex really think of themselves as “getting it on” with the turkey baster.
Her argument is that until you want a baby, no sex for you. AND, you’re supposed to be married before you have/want a baby (because even wanted out-of-wedlock babies are BAD SIN SIN SIN). Therefore, even married couples should refrain from sex until they’ve got tha Baby Rabies.
So, by her logic, since I’m married but don’t want kids, I should be celibate until 35 when my doc will finally tie my tubes. I told her I doubt my husband would be thrilled with that arrangement…but it occurs to me that she just expects him to “zip his pants and deal.”
Well, I don’t want any car accidents, but I don’t mind driving. In fact I love driving. In fact it’s very much worth doing—which doesn’t mean I want any unpleasant accidents to happen or will forego seeking medical attention to deal with the results if I do.
Ditto sex.
Honestly, how often do we dignify processes with such significant failure rates with language that suggests one is doing what one is attempting to do? I can’t think of any analogies.
Ugh! I’d respond with “That’s exactly why I need one! If there wasn’t “still time” I’d hardly need the blasted thing to make sure it doesn’t happen, would I?!”
Only good thing about doctors like that is they’re good targets for ranting at. Go in, tell them (again) you want a tubal, and express annoyance that it’s taken more than one request; when they refuse, yell at them, question their competence if they can’t manage to understand a simple logical concept (”I don’t want babies, therefore sterilization = good thing”); if one of them is pro-life, accuse him loudly of trying to drum up business for the “abortion industry” by doing everything he can to saddle you with unwanted pregnancies, quote Griswold v. Conneticut, et cetera.
And then, find a decent doctor.
I keep telling you all that lesbianism will solve all of these problems. We get all of the sex and none of the babies.
Saving throws?! Hail Dan! I love a good RPG reference.
I really have nothing else to add, so will retreat back into gamer-geekdom.
Well, I don’t want any car accidents, but I don’t mind driving. In fact I love driving. In fact it’s very much worth doing—which doesn’t mean I want any unpleasant accidents to happen or will forego seeking medical attention to deal with the results if I do.
Ditto sex.
So you’re admitting you’re a godless hedonist and going straight to Hell.
Now Amanda, it’s not very nice to poke the fundies with sticks. They can’t help it that they’re dumb animals. Tut, tut.
my /fundie tag fell off. Sigh.
jeez, her blog is getting way more traffic than it’s ever gotten in it’s life thus far. maybe she is having a hard time keeping up and that’s why we keep getting the same responses? i hate when the conversation evolves at the same pace as, like, dinosaurs.
Funny, by my reasoning, not having kids is one of the most selfless things one can do. One is voluntarily giving up the right to procreate and pass on one’s genes to create a better world for other people’s children. You know, a world with less population problems, less strain on limited resources, &c.
I love how she quoted my comment from here regarding my abortion experience, as if it somehow proved whatever obscure point is buried under all of her OMG SEX IS WRONG bloviating.
To be fair, there’s the alternate line that sex without babies is pointless for women, because all women love babies and there’s no such thing as a clitoris.
Uhm, excuse me. I’m sorry, but….what?
It’s facetious, Christina. The fundies believe that women are incapable of experiencing solely physical (without emotional) pleasure from sexual relations because women are naturally inferior to men and this distinction is a way to prove that women are subhuman.
Fundies also believe that ALL women are uniquely and naturally suited to childcare tasks and unpaid domestic slavery because, again, women are inherently subhuman, without the capacity to choose to do anything other than what biology has programmed them to do.
OH! See, I was getting worried! If that thingie isn’t a clitoris then what is that thing we’ve been paying such attention to?
Great. Now I’ve got the quote from Jay and Silent Bob Strike back stuck in my head.
“No, the C.L.I.T. is real… female orgasm, that’s the myth!”
I still remember reading in Cujo, about the woman whose husband “didn’t know what happened every time for men could also happen for women”. Crazy old world out there.
What’s also really bad is what this lack of belief in female sexual pleasure did for men. I mean, gads, isn’t half the fun of sex watching your partners mind be blown? Isn’t a good chunk of arousal knowing how badly your partner wants it? I can’t even imagine what kind of self-loathing and sex-hating was triggered by bozos who didn’t see sex as a joyful coming together. (Er… that’s not meant to refer to simultaneous orgasm.)
I think that’s what gets me about these people. If sex is a source of joy - and it is - then it shouldn’t be tied to babymaking, if we’ve found ways to avoid it. The joy should be present without the risk. And if it’s not, can I just say *ew* and *ug* and a whole bunch of other things?
And from the other end: kids are much better off being raised by people who WANT to be raising kids (regardless of their race, religion, sexual orientation, etc., etc.). Self-selection, whereby people who don’t want to be raising kids choose not to raise kids, on the average works out. (I recently answered a local paper letter from a character who denounced — as SELFISH — a gay couple for adopting a child who supposedly would have been better off being returned to his hetero drug-problems-supposedly-all-fixed-now birth mother.)
What seems true about the fundamentalist ilk is that they are emotionally undisciplined. I believe that they draw most of their conclusions on the basis of how they happen to feel, a great deal of the time, rather than on the basis of either logic or the capacity to modulate one’s own feelings. So, there is this apparent wholesale hostility to women, whereas at the same time, fundies will proclaim that they have no such hatred towards women — that they actually “respect” women. What seems to be going on, then, (and I draw from my own experiences), is that the fundamentalists — male and female — do have a sense of women’s power. Actually, because they are such emotional beasts, they don’t just think but actually EXPERIENCE women’s power as incredibly powerful as well as primarily sexual. To one of a fundamentalist mindset, no matter how little actual political power or control any particular woman has, she already has too much power. This is indicated by her ability to make him lose control of his thoughts whilst she is present to him. This is the source of all the hostility against women and the fundamentalist’s sense that women have too much control over things. The practical reality is that women have very little world power and usually we are not socially positioned to have much power even in our local spheres. This is irrelevant to the male fundamentalist in particular — who still feels that sexual power is the most overwhelming power evvah! So, no matter how little power any woman has, or how much she is suffering, because her legal and practical powers have been taken away, such a woman is still, in the male fundamentalist’s sexually oriented view, OVERWHELMINGLY POWERFUL.
In fact, from the view of the most extreme male fundamentalist, this female power of hers is so intense that nothing whatsoever can ever take it away. Equivocating the women herself with her sexual power leads to the unfortunate notion that no amount of hurt nor pain will actually affect “her” just because her sexual power will always have this immense hold over him, even when she is dead.
So, there is no such thing as “killing a woman” in the emotional mindset of the fundamentalist. Not when her sexual power (universalised as the sexual power of all women, up until eternity) is still so OVERWHELMINGLY POWERFUL.
From the fundamentalist’s point of view, nothing you can do to women can really hurt them or serve to undermine their power!
Yeah, but he got eaten by a rabid dog in the end, so it’s all good.
The same government that can deny abortion must then also be able to require it. If it has the authority in the matter of pregnancy, it will always have the authority in all cercomstances. This is just the logical reciprical. Who wants that?
The same Gold Plated Witch on Wheels has in fact pretty much admitted, in follow-up discussions, that it doesn’t bother her if women have abortions because they can’t afford a child (or another child) - she’s only actively concerned about women who have abortions because they don’t want children.