After many edits and bouts in committee, the eventual caption on the shirt was but a pale shadow of the original, more accurate caption: “Be a tool.”
Image from Lionhearted Apparel, an inaccurately named company that is part and parcel of this whole attempt to turn Christianity, a religion based around a gentle man who preached peace, into a religion of hypermasuline war-mongering. Naturally, 10% of their profits got to anti-choice charities. Because there’s no greater threat to Christian manhood that women who decline to have their bodies conquered by the all-powerful sperm. (Hat tip to bellatrys for the link.)
Which leads me to today’s topic, which is the next email from Feminists For Life. (One day, this series will get a front page Google ranking. Maybe a Google bombing when it’s done?) Today’s topic is: Isn’t feminism about a woman having rights equal to those of a man? Place your bets on whether or not Serrin Foster is going to weasel in her answer or be straightforward.
Feminism is much more than that.
As a teen, I remember the electrifying call for equality during the ’70’s women’s movement, and how it challenged and changed the nation. The idea was so compelling it still circles the world.
By definition, equality is a principle extended to all. When one group of people gets their rights at the expense of another, there is nothing equal about it.
Nice sentiment. So here’s the question: If Foster thinks that women should have equal rights to men, then why does she oppose women having equal rights to medical treatment and, in the larger sense, does she think that women have the equal right that men do to bodily autonomy? Right now, men have a legal right not to have someone else commandeer their body for nutrition. So, if you’re for equality, then you assume that women should have that right as well.
The foundation of feminism is built on the basic tenets of nonviolence, nondiscrimination, and justice for all. Abortion is discrimination based on age, size, location, and sometimes gender, disability, or parentage.
Discrimination based on “location”, huh? Some feminist, that she thinks that a woman’s body just happens to be where the fetus is hanging out. Not so—it’s biologically a parasite. Now, that makes the sentimentalists moan and groan, but parasitic relationships can be totally great if that’s what you want. But if you don’t want a parasite, by god, that parasite doesn’t have a right to be there. For the more slow-witted people in the audience, Bluey can explain it to you. That said, there’s no right not to be discriminated against because of “location”. I doubt even an anti-feminist like Foster would argue that rapists are being discriminated against because of where their penises just happened to be. I suspect that the largely Republican leadership of FFL is big on property rights and certainly thinks you have a right to toss someone out of your house if you don’t want them there.
And it is often the result of a more insidious form of discrimination: the lack of resources and support that pregnant women need and deserve.
As usual, Foster says this as if there’s a pro-choicer out there who would disagree. That’s why the term is “pro-choice“. We are all for women who don’t want abortions having the choice not to have them. Luckily for use, Foster ratchets this up to a whole new level of silly.
As I entered college, the women’s movement continued to gain momentum. Cries for equality in the workplace were muffled by the even louder call for “abortion rights” and “pro-choice.” You were either pro-woman or pro-baby.
The term “pro-baby” implies that there’s a side that’s anti-baby. But, as one might suspect, Foster declines to explain what “anti-baby” might mean. She just hints that there is this substantial group of people out there that are “anti-baby”, which, if true, is a fairly alarming thing due to babies being relatively innocent, harmless beings. So I cobbled together a suspect list of who Foster might mean when she says “anti-baby” to see if there’s any chance that such a group of people exists.
- Suspect #1: Feminists. Best guess, since Foster claims that the women’s rights people were telling her that “pro-woman” and “pro-baby” are mutually exclusive. However, the fact that many, probably most, feminists have babies at some point in their lives—and the fact that we know they want those babies because, due to the pro-choice thing, they wouldn’t be having babies they don’t want—we can safely guess they are all for those babies. Even if they, on occasion, joke about hating their babies. It’s a joke, people!
- Suspect #2: Women who have abortions or use birth control. Now I’m just taking a stab at it, on the theory that Foster probably thinks that having abortions or using contraception means you’re “anti-baby”. However, the latest abortion statistics demonstrate that 60% of women who had one in 2002 already had one child. And it’s safe to say that many of the other 40% will have babies in the future. No telling how many women who use birth control have children or plan to, but it seems that merely not wanting a baby right now is no indication of anti-baby sentiments.
- Suspect #3: Childless women who want to stay that way. Included because the assumption that never wanting babies means that one hates babies is one that is invoked against me a lot. I can speak from personal experience and say that people who don’t want children aren’t necessarily acting out of some baby hatred. I have been known to coo at babies. They are cute. Giant, slobbering retrievers are cute, too, but that doesn’t mean I want to make room for one in my life.
- Suspect #4: The teeny, tiny group of people who actually do loathe babies. Only putting this out there because if I don’t, someone somewhere will find the one person out there who will admit to being “anti-baby” and toss that in my face. Yes, a tiny number of people hate babies. That said, even they aren’t “anti-baby” in the sense that few, if any, of them would like to hurt babies or have some political organization to pressure the government to do hurtful things to babies. This is not true, however, of the people who loathe women, who are great in number and agitate to strip women of their basic rights.
So, I think that Foster might be beating a strawman a bit here. She then prattles on about the suffragists and how they were supposedly anti-choice. I’m not going to requote it here because they have all this crap on their website. Needless to say, it’s been demonstrated that the selective quoting of early feminists is an extremely dishonest tactic. But really, if you look up and down the list of names of feminists that FFL quotes, there’s a trend that emerges: They seem to think the only good feminist is a dead feminist.
Now, we get into the deep dark territory of the wingnut mind, where the inability to understand the concept of freedom lays.
The early American feminists did not work to replace a patriarchy with a matriarchy. Women have a right to be women in the workplace and in school. Women shouldn’t have to pass as men.
Good lord, she is, I do believe, implying that femisnists are advocating to turn women into men. That would sort of defeat the purpose, don’t you think? I kid, but only somewhat. This is a solid indicator that the anti-choice movement is not about “life” but about imposing strict gender roles on people. Foster is all but coming out and saying that you’re not really a woman unless you’re currently gestating. But even darker than that is her implication that by having the right not to be pregnant, you somehow forsake the right to be pregnant if you want to. Common wingnut misunderstanding, of course—brought to you by the people who think that if you’re free to marry someone of your own sex, you’re forbidden to marry someone of the opposite sex if you wish—but you have wonder how far they take this misunderstanding. Do they think if you’re free to live in LA, that means you’re forbidden to live in New York? That if you’re free to take a nap right now, that means you’re forbidden from cruising the internet if you want?
When women think they have to lay their bodies down or swallow a bitter pill for an abortion in order to compete in the workplace or make their way in the world—that is not feminism. In addition, abortion has hurt women by diverting feminist attention from other issues, particularly those that help mothers, such as affordable child care, comprehensive health care, and a living wage.
Oh fuck me. If abortion has diverted feminist attention, then whose fault is that? Let me put it to you in simple terms: Do you think that I’d be writing something else right now if Serrin Foster wasn’t out there trying to get abortion banned? Of course I would. Does the fact that I write about FFL mean I don’t write about other things? No. So, reproductive rights activism doesn’t mean feminists don’t spend time and energy on other issues, and if you want them to dedicate more resources to those issues, the first step is to quit trying to ban abortion, which creates the need for the activism you think is diverting attention.
The rest is more blather about not making women choose between family and career, as if the legality of abortion somehow forces you to have one. She never does address the issue of equality between men and women issue and how it relates to abortion, but I suspected that no one was willing to put any money on the chance that she would.
31 Responses to “You have a right to behave how Feminists For Life has decided you must”
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So….how is a “matriarchy” women acting like men? Isn’t matriarchy rule by women?
It’s quite true that FFL et al don’t want to make women choose between family and career. They want family to be women’s career.
I doubt she meant your #3, by the way. They can’t fathom that happy women who really don’t want to be mommies actually exist.
Be perfect? Sheesh. What ever happened to the bumpersticker “Christians aren’t perfect, just saved”.
Fuck me. You mean if we just elect Republicans, we can ban abortion, but get child care, affordable health care, and a living wage? What the fuck do they put in their kool aid?
You know, I did a number of searches to see if I could get a bio of Serrin Foster that says how many children she has, and I haven’t found anything yet—not a bio, not an interview—where she divulges that number. It seems to me that if she has personal experience advancing her career while being pregnant all the time, it would have her message to highlight her experiences to show it could be done. I’m surprised she hasn’t used her own life as an example yet.
That is, if she has children.
Ha! I’m so glad you pointed out Bluey to us! I think that article’s straight to the point.
Exactly. Just like how those who liked Haggard don’t really believe that gay people exists - just straight people who are sinning. That’s the kind of mentality we’re facing here.
Her FFL biography seems to put her as an Ivy League grad and a professional woman; she was director of development for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. So she wasn’t exactly spending her life staying home and raising her children while her husband worked outside the home. No mention of kids in her glowing bios that I could find, either.
Hmmm, maybe I should write her and ask about how she handles the tug-of-war between children and career, or did.
I didn’t find any mention of kids, but did learn that “Surprisingly enough — considering her aggressive approach — it’s hard to find anyone to criticize Serrin Foster.” This from a guy who “spent every off-hour for two weeks searching for someone.” That is, a guy who needs better online searching skills.
Not quote. They think that if you’re free to marry someone of your own sex, then they’re forbidden to marry someone of the opposite sex if they wish. It’s almost like they don’t even think of themselves as real people.
These are the zero-sum thinkers, remember? Part of that is their amazing ability to hold only one idea in their mind at a given time. And if they can’t think about more than one thing at a time, well, gosh-darn it, no one else should be allowed to, either.
I , for one, would LOVE to see Amanda take on Serrin Foster in a one-on-one debate type forum. Hmmmm….. Is she coming to Austin anytime soon?
“When women think they have to lay their bodies down or swallow a bitter pill for an abortion in order to compete in the workplace or make their way in the world—that is not feminism.”
No indeed, it is not. It is a realistic assesment of the society in which we live. The FFL position seems to be that if we would all just accept forced pregnancy their group would be able to focus on seeing to it that we are watered and fed regularly.
You know, it’s interesting that that t-shirt comes from a Christian company… seeing as how it’s a sort of stylized interwoven triangles, a Valknot, the Norse symbol of the slain and Odin the All-Father.
http://www.odinsvolk.ca/valknot.htm
And of course, now adopted by various Neo-nazi groups… (damn their eyes).
http://www.adl.org/hate_symbols/neo_nazi_valknot.asp
It’s almost like they don’t even think of themselves as real people.
Or they think of themselves in terms of the people they can oppress. “I am ‘not-gay’” or, for men “I am ‘not-female’”.
how is a “matriarchy� women acting like men?
Because. According to “feminists” like “Feminists” for Life and GPWoW, men are supposed to rule. If we put women in that position, they, by definition, must be men as well. It’s simple if you have no brain to speak of.
I can think of a bunch of groups who actively pressure the government to hurt babies. They crusade against access to contraception for poor women, thus ensuring that their children will have fewer resources devoted to them. They fight to ban abortion, so that more babies will be born unwanted and be abused by their birth mothers or by a foster-care system that’s also unfunded as a result of arguments made by these same groups. They help install judges who force poor women to choose between keeping their babies and getting enough education to support those babies honestly. They crusade to keep women in abusive marriages that will pass damage to future generations. Some of them even pressure the government to send troops to foreign countries and kill and injure babies there (not as their only task, of course, but as a foreseeable consequence of their actions).
None of those folks are ones I would exactly describe as feminist. (It’s rather the same way that you find the most unregenerate hatred and contempt for men in the heart of the patriarchy.)
Or, say, Governor Schwarzenegger who, in his zeal to eliminate “waste and graft” in the state of California, tried to cut funding to many services for disabled children. See, if they’re not perfectly formed Aryan progeny, then they cannot become part of the master breeding plan, so fuck them.
“Fuck me,” by the way, is the most perfect crystallization of a response to the malodorous idiotic diatribe spouted by FFL. I mean, really, what else can you say?
There is always a remote chance that any given tumor could develop into a human infant. Should we ban chemotherapy and surgery based on that slim chance?
If they weren’t trying to ban abortions it wouldn’t be a bad platform. I am sure there are a lot of women who actually do want to have the baby but feel overwhelmed. If they had better access to resources it would probably cut down on a lot of criticism. It’s just you can’t run a war against “welfare moms” at the same time trying to push more people into that position.
It is interesting how they target college students, you could see this as trying to expand the skilled workforce or trying to decrease people who are middle class. One of the pieces on demographic programs was commenting on Value Added Babies, as in professional women got more money from the goverment for contributing to their baby boom then non-professional women as their children are expected to be more beneficial to society when they grow up as richer people invest more in education. A lot of first world countries pay their women to have children, if they want to increase their population.
We of course are not shrinking, no one has accused us of falling below our replacement rate. Our growth rates are the highest of developed countries.
Other Developed Nations: http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=02/12/11/07293329
In Estonia:
In France:
If you are looking for the interest in children it is all but overflowing these days, replacement rate seems to be all the rage. (I have heard a ton of demographic arguments lately as i study economic development theory.)
Oh, Lord. That may be the worst FFL missive yet. How long until Ms. Hasselbeck insists on bringing Ms.Foster on The View to make pine cone popcorn balls, or whatever women are really supposed to be doing?
I’m afriad I got stuck on the Lionheart site. This is like watching a sperm trainwreck.
Is one right in thinking that they have named their whole company after a well known gay crusader? May I further be amused at thier inclusion of the fleur-de-lis on their site? and the caption underneath it ‘Put not your trust in men’? Pure Gold. I think this site will keep me laughing for the rest of the day.
She was director of development for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
Ugh. I volunteer for them. They do good stuff. They helped me and my family so much when I was sick.
Picture Foster harassing the women NAMI helps: “Yes, I know you take Depakote and Lithium. Yes, I know that ’scientists’ say that there’s a 95% chance your baby will be born with seven heads, an external heart, and a pair of seal flippers, but just think–that could just be so special, you know? But if you’re going to be all discriminatory towards your own child based on her potential disabilities, why don’t you just stop taking them? I know if you go off them you’ll kill yourself. (Gee, look who doesn’t want to die now, eh? How do you think your baby feels? Do you think your baby WANTS to be killed?) Okay, so whatever, you’ll probably hang yourself. But in hospitals, incubators break all the time and we just throw them out. What makes you think you’re any different?”
Erica, I think they focus on college girls for two reasons: 1) They want privileged people to breed more. 2) As I’ve stated before, I think they think this is a good way to return to more male-dominated marriages. Women who delay marriage and childbirth until they establish careers have more bargaining power inside the marriage. (In fact, I’d bet, for instance, that brides who have established careers are likelier to keep their own name.) But if you get pregnant in college and marry your boyfriend, the allure of dropping out of school or your career track and letting him support you is strong. They want to return to an era where middle class professional men had charming, educated wives who had no other job but to dote on husband, children, and home. They claim otherwise, but look at their actions, not their words. They claim they want to help poor women and single women, but the vast majority of their activism is aimed at convincing privileged college girls to start having babies at 18 and 19 years old rather than wait until they’re 30.
They want to return to an era where middle class professional men had charming, educated wives who had no other job but to dote on husband, children, and home.
Bingo.
After all, notice her pitch: It’s unfair and terrible for women to be forced to make choices about their families because a man is giving them orders. Young, educated women with careers certainly agree with the idea that their bosses shouldn’t be able to fire them for getting pregnant, and they shouldn’t have to meekly submit to an abortion because child support would cramp their boyfriend’s style.
And educated, privileged women are probably less likely to be put off by her punchline of “So nobody should be allowed to have abortions ever!” They’ll be able to get theirs, of course, having money and privilege, and anyway That’s Different.
bewilderness, that’s exactly what I was going to say. If the FFL would get off of their lazy asses and make raising children easier, then maybe people wouldn’t be so interested in abortion. Duh.
By focusing on women in college they also target a group of women who (in general) are more likely to be able to take care of themselves and a baby, and who have (once again, in general) social/family support networks that will reduce the odds of really bad outcomes. So you’re less likely to get the stories that go “FFL convinced me to have this baby, but I’m living in an abandoned tenement so its hand were chewed off by rats” or “FFL convinced someone down the street not to have an abortion, and a couple years later she put her kid in the oven.”
(No neither of those scenarios is particularly common, but it’s going to be more common among non-middle-class, non-college-bound women who are troubled enough to give in to the blandishments of FFL and those like them.)
Discrimination by location? Discrimination by LOCATION! If this is a valid argument of anything, I’m moving into one of the guest bedrooms at the White House. Permanantly. What? Of course I can do that—if people try to kick me out, it’s discrimination by location! Oh, and I’ll have a Lamborghini from some random import dealership while we’re at it, and noooo, you can’t arrest me just because I’m in your car here!
Gods, they’re dumbasses. Rape charges could be explained away as “discrimination by location.” Trespassing, some forms of stealing, and I suppose we should open up all the prison systems in the country, ‘cause objecting to convicted criminals being outside the prisons rather than inside the prisons is just discrimination by location!
And for that matter, criminalizing abortion is discrimination by location—it would punish a woman for removing herself from the area around the fetus.
How about when women think they have to “lay their bodies down or swallow a bitter pill for an abortion” in order to NOT BE PREGNANT?! (Will they ever get this bit? My money’s on “no.”)
And, nothing wrong at all, I suppose, with women having to lay their bodies down and give birth to an unwanted baby after spending months supporting the creation of said unwanted baby?
This probably pretty old hat but…
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if most the patriarchal blowback against
feminism (as a force of its own…not JUST women’s rights)
isn’t actually a fear thing.
Said another way, that ‘feminism’ isn’t threatening so much as a
movement as it is testament to the inherently false confabulation
of the patriarchal mode, belief system, what it stands for …
Revealed in its starkity….as inherently weak.
C’mon, gimme a break…some of us are just slow.
So the other 30% have shown enough responsibility to deserve their legal rights? Nimrod. Here’s a feminist idea: MYOB.
They want to return to an era where middle class professional men had charming, educated wives who had no other job but to dote on husband, children, and home.
Bingo.
See Julia Stiles’ character in “Mona Lisa Smile.”
Women who delay marriage and childbirth until they establish careers have more bargaining power inside the marriage.
Also true, which is why FFL is pushing so hard to start the breeding earlier, because being an uppity woman is so unladylike. The even uglier undercurrent to this is, if a woman doesn’t have that kind of bargaining power in her marriage, what does she have to rely on?
I can’t help but wonder if the reason Patricia Heaton is captain of this particular wingnut flagship has something to do with her TV alter-ego. Her character doesn’t seem to have much going on besides The House and The Kids, and she mainly negotiates her relationship with her husband by being a frigid, relentlessly hectoring shrew who rations out teh sex on a punishment/reward basis. Is this the kind of message FFL really wants to steer women to? “Forget the career and independence, ladies, here’s how you really take charge.”
Right now, men have a legal right not to have someone else commandeer their body for nutrition. So, if you’re for equality, then you assume that women should have that right as well.
Distinguish between legal rights and biological realities. We don’t, for example, force women to give blood and not do the same for men. Laws can’t change biology.
Re: discrimination based on location.
Picture a six-month post-conception baby. Some states will allow for abortion at that stage. If the woman has to deliver early, the baby will be in an incubator in a NICU. Anyone who goes into that NICU and kills the baby will be charged with murder. Why not charge the person who goes into the womb to kill the baby? The basis of the distinction is location.
And it is often the result of a more insidious form of discrimination: the lack of resources and support that pregnant women need and deserve.
As usual, Foster says this as if there’s a pro-choicer out there who would disagree. That’s why the term is “pro-choice“. We are all for women who don’t want abortions having the choice not to have them. Luckily for use, Foster ratchets this up to a whole new level of silly.
You’re actually complaining about this??? Please. She’s calling for more support for pregnant women, so they can make the CHOICE that many of them would make - to carry their babies to term - instead of having unwanted abortions.
The only way that you can disagree with her sentiment is if you consider abortion to be a more valid choice than carrying a baby to term. Some of us think that “pro-choice” should mean more than abortion. You know, things like maternity leave, flexible work schedules, child support, enforcement of child support laws, and having universities that allow women to continue their educations despite pregnancies.