On the new blog Open Left, a diarist uses the word “framing” while not understanding the first rule of framing. His argument is that in order to “reframe” the abortion debate, we should agree that abortion is very bad but talk about how to reduce it. That is not reframing. That is the opposite of reframing. When you concede that abortion is bad, you are arguing within your opponent’s frame.
If you want to reframe an argument, you phrase your arguments in a way that brings your opponent onto your turf. So someone wrings their hands about how bad abortion is, to actually reframe the argument, you say, “Actually, I think that it’s great that women have this choice. I think it’s important that we as a society value women’s equality, health, and human rights, and that we make all medical care they need available to them as we do men. What do you think it’s a bad thing if women have full access to all the health care they need?” That’s reframing.
I’m all for pushing birth control and welfare as wedge issues—also, it’s great to talk about how women need the full range of choices, including the choice to give birth if they want—but wedge issues are a different rhetorical tactic.
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Amanda,
that diarist not only doesn’t understand framing, they’re anti-choice. That’s why they’re “reframing” doesn’t work.
Well said.
Unfortunately the Democratic leadership and media doesn’t get it at all, I don’t see the talk of framing translating into anything. They are still paralyzed by the “liberals are traitors” and “support the troops” BS.
The latter is particularly galling - somehow the people who “support the troops” are the ones getting them killed abroad while ignoring their health at home.
The Republicans are really not masters of framing. They aren’t genius wordsmiths. The strategy they employ is for everyone to say the same thing, loudly, over and over again. The exact message really doesn’t matter that much and it is often juvenile and nonsensical.
I think that is the point people who argue about framing are missing. The language does matter but how you deliver the message matters as much if not more. The Republicans are masters at delivering the message, even though that message is often stupid. The reason their terms dominate the debate is a testament not to their brilliant word choices but how loud and persistent they are.
I know! How ’bout we reframe the war debate:
“The Iraq war is about freedom and democracy, so how can we work together to find the pony?”
It’s liberal gold!
Yes and no. The Republicans have been masters of framing. However, framing is not merely a matter of language. It’s how the language fits into a broader ideational system.
I think the best definition of a frame comes out of Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards and Rucht’s book Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democrach and the Public Sphere in Germany and the United States [Disclaimer: Gamson is my PhD advisor]:
While Amanda has been heavily influenced by Lakoff, and particularly by the centrality of metaphors in his work, I do come at it from a somewhat different perspective. My dissertation work is on framing, but framing done through narrative (which is itself an organizational tool). What’s most important to both approaches, though (IMHO), is the centrality of ideational relationships.
The writer of that bloody diary has not only used the language of anti-choicers, but has tied it into an entire ideational system where abortion is a tragedy, a terrible outcome, etc. What needs to happen, as Amanda mentions above, is the constant (re)establishment of relationships between abortion and positive social values. (There are other methods of engaging in framing contests, but let’s focus on establishing our preferred frame as the goal.)
Part of the problem, though, is the discursive opportunity structure under which we’re operating. The anti-choicers have successfully driven discourse to the point where “pro-choice” people will automatically respond or write within the preferred frame of the anti-woman brigade.
OK, enough blathering from me on this topic. I’ve written the same five pages of my dissertation on this topic innumerable times, and I hate them every time.
I tried to post on their site but got some sort of error indicating the page wasn’t available anymore. Strange, considering the post just went up today.
I was all ready to blog away, but commenter Natasha got there before me. She wrote just what I was thinking.
How many times do “liberal”(?) bloggers need to be smacked in the head until they understand that the only justification women need for abortion is that they don’t want to carry and bear a child? That’s it! It’s really that easy!
I’m so tired of hearing excuses about income or job stability used as justification to support abortion rights. Sure, bring them up as secondary or tertiary arguments, but whether a woman is rich and well-educated or poor and illiterate, if she doesn’t want to carry a child, she doesn’t want to carry a child. That’s it. Game over.
I’m really turning into a broken record on this one.
deep6,
Exactly…the problem is unwanted pregnancy. How do we reduce that?
Abortion is a tricky one because many pro-choice people do believe that abortion is a bad outcome, they just think that pro-choice is better than the alternative. So some of the people who are using the opposition language are not using it because they have been had, they are using it because in their minds it is accurate.
That’s why I’d rather use things like “support the troops” as an example. It isn’t nearly that complex. People who claim to “support the troops” do nothing to support the troops, while the people they accuse of not supporting the troops try to save their lives. And yet, those rules of debate have largely stuck.
“Cut and run” is another good example. It’s just a stupid bumper sticker that has stuck largely through repetition.
And in doing so, they are forfeiting the game. That’s not pro-choice.
Being pro-choice is being pro-choice. You may not like why some people are pro-choice, and their reasons may differ from your own, but claiming they are not in fact for choice is silly.
Pro-choice is not a sweeping political philosophy, it’s a view of a specific issue. People who are for the right to choose to have an abortion are pro-choice and I’m not sure how you can argue otherwise without some interesting contortions.
Hmmm… spray magic fairy dust and make everybody gay?
Wait, no.
Sterilize every poor, non-white woman in the country?
Eh, no.
Ooh, got it: medically accurate sex education; significant increase in availability of contraceptives at little or no cost; inclusion of women as full, equal members of society with rights to health care and a violence-free environment; and the ending of cultural and religious discrimination that leads toward minority women not realizing their full academic or workplace potential as members of American society.
Oh, Senator Obama? Bonjour? Are your staffers listening?
the individuals may be pro-choice but their speech acts are not. If they’re interested in retaining abortion rights, they need to seriously look at the rhetoric, and their own complicity in helping anti-choice forces gain the upper hand.
Speak for yourself. I have no problem with abortion, I don’t think it’s any worse than any other medical procedure.
Where can I buy some?
Is it just me, or are both sides of the abortion debate afflicted with short-sightedness? The arguments all seem to sound as if unwanted pregnancies started during the Sexual Revolution, and abortion started with Roe. Let’s face it: as long as there have been people on this planet, there have been unwanted pregnancies (Eve’s probably being the first, what with the whole “In pain shall you bring forth children” thing–though King James’ scholars have done their best to muddy this point)–and methods (folk, fake, dangerous, or deadly) for ending them. “Roe” just made it legal, and (relatively) safe.
I’m with the God of Biscuits and Framing on this one:
the problem is unwanted pregnancy. How do we reduce that?
This goes back to that earlier discussion about “trusting” women to use their franchise correctly. I have an inalienable right to judge what’s best and appropriate for my health, financial well being, moral choices, future plans and so on.
My NEUTRAL rights shouldn’t have a string attached wherein I’m supposed to keep asking for them … nice. Nor should they depend on whether someone I don’t know likes the terminology used to tell them once again that they have no legal or moral standing.
Religious theofascists have spent decades attempting to impede my access to my inalienable rights by employing extra judicial means, and normalizing that persecution in the mainstream, until they can persecute women legally.
Partisan consultants for the Dems have clouded vision on this issue. If they want to tinker with language fine (and come seek my Independent vote when they tire of pandering to the religious right) but there’s no such thing as the pro choice “extreme” to fair and balance the no-choice “extreme”. Constitutionally mandated choice is now and has always been both sides.
I definitely see what you’re saying, Bizarro. And I agree that they find abortion a tragedy, etc. What we need to do is convince people that if abortion is a good choice in some circumstances, then it follows that abortion is actually good. But MAJeff is right, too, that people who buy into the “abortion is a tragedy” frame are very rarely really pro-choice. Like the poster, they’d rather see abortion banned but don’t see how to work it.
This is a reality issue. In reality, women who have abortions are generally making good, healthy decisions.
Thinking about the “abortion as tragedy” narrative, you can almost see how the anti-woman framing falls out, even from a positive POV, because it’s a “preventable” tragedy — the two sides just disagree about how to “prevent the tragedy.” Suddenly, women are selfish because they want the “thoughtless” and “easy” solution to their tragedy. There’s a reason anti-choicers can make many of us pull faces and say, “Well, I think it’s wrong when a seven months’ preggers lady just changes her mind…” as either a common circumstances of an abortion-seeker, or as a reason to restraint abortion.
Which takes it back to, “why is it a tragedy?” (My smart mouth thinks, “If you think abortion is a tragedy, try infanticide.”) Now, as a counter-narrative to the abortion tragedy, the tragedy of forced birth has some power, too. Because a fingertip-sized cluster of cells has no personality. It’s not a person. At best, it might someday have a personality if it’s one of the small number of fertilized zygotes that “God” lets through that gets backronymed onto a cluster of cells and called potential, but that’s =/= person.
I think it comes down to how you view women, essentially. If you think women == mothers, and that is primarily what women are here for, the narrative is either that the non-mothering woman is monstrous, basically Unwoman (women who ain’t breeding be selfish b*tches, basically) for the hostile anti-woman type, or something that is regretfully sorrowful for the paternalistic chivalrous, doesn’t like being called anti-woman but is type. In that point of view, the “framing” sounds perfect, because again, on some narrative level, narrative and personal completion for women is motherhood. Motherhood when she wants, with help from dad, because family is the most important thing, with a career if she wants, but again, the highest ideal of womanhood in this model is motherhood.
So I think the narrative “abortion is a tragedy” is too easy in some ways? You can break down the logic and many moderate anti-choicers will agree, while still making choice for me but not for thee type arguments, so I think trying to defuse the narrative bomb of “women’s greatest work is motherhood” is the real trick.
Made harder, of course, by whatever happens when you don’t say that good parenthood is the greatest thing a person could ever ever do, natch.
Can we make the argument here that if people self-identify as pro-choice when they accept arguments against reproductive rights - largely the kind of situational, almost anecdotal arguments against disagreeing with a woman’s choice when she is in _____ circumstances - then these people are only pro-choice insofar as there’s no other term in common political usage that accurately describes their position on abortion? When faced with “pro-life” vs. “pro-choice” don’t people pick a side and then present all sorts of individual justifications for any variation from the understood definition or ideology of an extreme interpretation of the political stance?
I will accept someone self-identifying as pro-choice, even if the term doesn’t accurately express the person’s real opinions on the matter, largely because I’d rather people self-identify with my side of the argument than the other side. But the more fundamental issue here is that much of this country, including its center/center-left have vastly differing ideas of what it means to be pro-choice.
I agree wholeheartedly.
I remember when the MN legislature was debating their fucked up “informed consent” law. That’s the law that requires abortion providers to lie about the link between abortion and cancer. I’ve never had so many women tell me their own personal stories about abortion as during that time. All of them were/are mothers (some have become mothers since the abortion). Each and every one of them made the right choice for them. Each had different reactions in the moment, but not one of them regretted it. Abortion is a social good. Period.
damn, fucked up the tags…..sorry
Okay, sorry about the blockquote thing….
Oh wait, that wasn’t me. It was MAJeff.
Dude, you did fuck up. Shameful.
OK, here’s MAJeff the pedantic academic. “Abortion is tragedy” is a frame, not a narrative. Putting it in story form turns it into a narrative. That’s the sort of thing I was referring to above; it’s about relationships. There may be many “abortion as tragedy” stories, all confirming the basic frame. (here’s where we get into Barthes and all his stuff about the individual parts of the story having no meaning apart from the story.)
sorry to be pedantic, but this is my shit
I’ve given up on shame.
Magic fairy dust? It’s here, in the decaf.
That’s how the marriage vote passed, btw.
Christ, my links don’t even work. That’s it. I’ve been tainted with imperfection by MAJeff. How will I ever live up to the standards of commenter perfection that pandagon holds so dear????
Fuck it. I’m on margarita #3. Where’s that post on anal sex again…?
decaf? fuck that…I just finished a bottle of pinot grigio….
That is certainly true and well said.
So about framing - someone convince me that Republicans accomplish framing by a method other than loud, constant repetition of juvenile slurs.
When I see Democrats and liberals talk about framing, what I see is typical of Democrats and liberals - a bunch of brainiacs arguing about word choice and whether or not something is more accurately termed a framework or a narrative.
Republicans are loud, dumb and single-minded. That is why they win these framing wars. *Not* because they have some awesome grasp of language and rhetoric, but because they are shouting in unison through a megaphone.
We need fewer nerds and more thugs. Republicans do understand one thing very well - it doesn’t matter what your message is if you can’t get it out. And conversely, if you can get your message out, what it is doesn’t matter all that much.
Go watch Frank Luntz in action. You will change your mind. He extensively researches particular phrasings. As much as I despise the man (he’s the one responsible for “death tax” and the entire Newt Gingrich list of attack phrases) he’s been amazingly effective.
They’re way ahead. Maybe that’s because those of us progressives talking about framing have been stuck in academia (my advisor’s been publishing on the topic since the early 1980s), but they have been doing the work.
Sorry, but this is my field of study. They’ve kicked our asses, and they know what they’re doing.
I think Bizarro is right that GOPers are loud and *consistent.*
It seems that any productive value “changing the frame” would have exists only if we all start using the same frame. Staying on message–sticking with the frame they choose–seems as much a part of the GOP’s success as choosing *the* correct and compelling frame.
I’m just not sure that staying on message is particularly compatible with the free exchange of ideas valued by the left, especially the left at places like Pandagon.
“Consistent” was the wrong word because obviously GOPers are often extremely contradictory. I just meant… what Bizarro said… whatever they are saying, they’re saying again and again and again.
“Persistent” is closer.
Superman, Repugs are good at something else: targeting and harassing existging messaging organs (like news media, academe and “hollywood” — or any entertainment structures) into “fair and balancing” extremism as if it’s HALF of society. It’s not, as 75% of people want to keep abortion safe and legal.
The 25% shrinks even more if you factor in extremists who get abortions (and like to reserve that option for themselves) but don’t say so pulicly.
Too many places that dispense information, news and entertainment have been pre-whupped to now include the “other side” just to avoid being targetted by churchy phonebanks.
No doubt they have some smarties, but as you point out, the “good guys” have some smarties too. Unfortunately ours are apparently busy masturbating in the corner.
The rank and file Republicans are not geniuses, and the people conveying the messages are not either. (Hannity, Rush et al. are not exactly brainiacs) But they have a certain amount of media savvy, and at least recognize that nobody can hear you if you speak in a whisper.
All this blabber about framing - what is it accomplishing? At some point it just becomes a pointless self-indulgence.
When you say you know what they are doing, what they are doing is *something*, as opposed to nothing. I suppose because Republicans are manly men of action and liberals are effete elites…
You and your professor know a lot about framing - ok, volunteer for a campaign or something. Otherwise what’s the point?
Framing, in my mind, has become mostly another topic for liberals to argue with each other about.
Talking Politics
Shaping Abortion Discourse
Prime Time Activism
But to bring the two sides of the issue together here, the question becomes Who is controlling the framing?
I think the Luntz example is spot on. Republican talking points are *not* determined by GOP politicians. They’re decided upon by think-tank gurus and media elites. The party apparatus gets its ideas from these individuals or groups and then passes on the framing jargon to politicians and mass media pundits like Hannity and O’Reilly and Ingraham, and every other sad excuse for a journalist in psycho-GOP world. This eventually filters down to red state bloggers and Idiot Conservative X, like my stepfather, who still measures the truth of global warming by whether it can get cold outside.
But the Democratic side is exceptional to this standard. Here, it’s not think-tank gurus or media elites - it’s consultants who control the language. Very few members of the Democratic Party “establishment” listen to their progressive base or netroots activists, where the best information on challenging Republican framing and developing policy can be worked out.
damn I hate that multiple links end up in moderation.
I’ve just linked to three books coming out of the media/movement working group I work with, two produced by my advisor.
Yes, academic publics operate under different conditions than “mainstream” political ones, but I think you best be careful when you talk about us. I’ve been a part of queer movements for a number of years. The other folks whose books I mention have worked with labor/womens/peace movements as well.
Part of the problem is linking academic publics to political publics, which is a serious issue. Let’s be honest, Judith Butler’s work is of limited utility in the “political” realm while feminst and queer theorists have made major use of it. I often view my own role as one of translator from academic to activst, though I’m often more comfortable with academic language. Indeed, how do I finish my PhD without engaging in academic discourse?! I hope to make it usefu, but there are a hell of a lot of intervening relationships.
Christ, I’m an anti-marriage queer working on how stories of same-sex couples were used to pursue marriage equality. I’m part of a movement/media research group that’s worked to change the local media coverage of both domestic violvence and specific (minority) communities in the Boston area.
We’re working. Maybe we’re not doing the PR we need to do, but we’re working.
Actually, to contradict my own last post, there is one example of establishment message organization. Remember the beginning of 2005 when Bush had his mandate TM and he started trying to dismantle social security?
Never before have I seen such a united message - and united voting - come from Democrats. The message was always there is no crisis.
I remember that vividly. It’s probably the only time I’ve ever seen real unison among Democrats on any economic issue. Well, at least since I’ve been paying attention, which would have started circa Perot 1992.
Yet here we are, still in the path of the Demographic Iceberg, and a rudder that is too small to manoeuver our ship of state.
I was all ready to blog away, but commenter Natasha got there before me. She wrote just what I was thinking.
How many times do “liberal�(?) bloggers need to be smacked in the head until they understand that the only justification women need for abortion is that they don’t want to carry and bear a child? That’s it! It’s really that easy!
And I was all ready to post on this thread when you stole my thunder and said exactly what I was thinking.
Don’t worry, Joseph. There’s a thick wooden door floating around here you can climb on.
I have seen one woman on TV recently who is credited as a “Democratic stategist” (or something like that) that seems to get it. (She fills in for Alan Colmes sometimes, or at least once anyway) Bill Maher is another example of a guy who can capture ideas in a way the common man can understand and appreciate. For example, you have laugh at this:
“George Bush told Osama you can run but you can’t hide - but then he ran and hid.”
It’s funny, it’s accurate, and it is pretty damning of Bush. Maher is really good with language. He isn’t a great spokesman because of some of his views (on religion for example), but he would be an excellent writer for someone else. When McCain says some fluff about “chasing Osama to the gates of hell” he rightfully scoffs and immediately points out we knew where Osama was and didn’t bother to go after him. His line about neocons like Bill Kristol, “why don’t you sit this one out Nostrodamus, we’ll rely on the Magic 8-ball for a while” is something that could easily catch on. “Good one Nostrodamus” is the perfect 3-word description of Bill Kristol and his track record that people could incorporate into columns and TV appearances.
It’s funny to look at the Democratic party communications. We have Air America, which is basically a joke, and crappy mass emailings from Howard Dean, but then you have things like TDS, The Colbert Report and Maher getting the word out, as well as guys like Olberman. But these guys all seem to be acting on their own, outside of (or even contrary to) the communication lines established by the Dems.
Whereas Republican message-spreaders (disease-carriers?) seem very plugged-in to the Republican apparatus, the most effective Democratic mouthpieces seem far removed from the Democratic apparatus.
—
MAJeff, I don’t mean to minimize or mock what you are doing. I’m just saying I’d like all this talk about framing to amount to something.
OK, simple reply: my message is complicated, and a lot of times, the simple version of it makes it sound like something it’s not. This is true of the Republican position, too, which is why people believe abortion is about babeeeeeezzzz.
My non-simple extra reply: And because of frames and narratives and meta-narratives and things I use loosely because I was always deliberately bad at semantics, “Abortion is a baby-killing tragedy!” just beats the crud out of, “It’s my body and my medical decision!” because, like I said, I think a lot of people think a woman choosing against motherhood is making a bad decision, because motherhood is a great good and non-mothers are self.
So a lot of the framing/narrative work is because “Abortion is a baby-killing tragedy!” is a powerful message, and the one that Dems like this are using shakes out to: “Abortion is a baby-killing tragedy…which we could largely prevent with sex ed and birth control” sounds like you’re a follower, one, and continues to place fetus > woman. Even though the pragmatic solutions are RIGHT ON.
The pragmatic solutions for reducing abortion are so obvious it hurts. Donate to Planned Parenthood, push for universal healthcare, get screwball anti-choicers out of office, from the ground up (just like they did it), and so on. But our work gets easier, a lot easier, in the long term, if the message, “Is it your pregnancy? No? Get up out of someone else’s business, you panty-sniffing moral scold!” is sold as well and deeply as “Abortion is a baby-killing tragedy.”
Because any time I want to change someone’s mind, it’s two-fold. I can’t just present solutions; I have to convince that person the baby-killing tragedy is either their own hysterical projection of a personality on an embryo or fetus (and you know that goes well, amirite?), or replace the tragedy frame with one that has the impact of “tragedy.”
“Get up out of someone else’s business!” should work, but as one can see from gay marriage, pharmacists who won’t dispense birth control, anti-abortion, anti-sex folks, there are a lot of people who SAY “government should leave us alone” and mean “government should leave us alone to exploit others as is our right as superiors.” Hence, all the framing talk is recognizing which idea is a direct idea to take on, and which one is going to need backup from exploding some other anti-woman ideas.
Uh, no. What follows is that abortion can be good in some circumstances. The claim that abortion is good means that abortion is always good, which certainly isn’t the case. For example, forced abortion or selective abortion (based on gender of the child) is not at all good and is in fact bad.
The main trouble for liberals is that our issues are almost always complex. They are almost always nuanced and that makes short sound bites difficult. Reframing can only go so far to fix that problem.
For example, reframing works with healthcare. Reframing it from “socialized medicine” to “universal healthcare” makes sense. It removes the stigma associated with socialism that has been pounded into us Americans with propaganda over the last 50 years. The talking point is simple:
If you think only the rich deserve healthcare, then our system is fine and we should keep it. If you think everyone deserves healthcare, then our current system is broken and we need to fix it.
But the abortion debate is more complex. Pro-choicers reasons for being pro-choice run the gamut. There are people who think abortion is fine and they have no qualms with it whatsoever. Then there are people like me who appreciate that technology has brought us this far, that women can choose to prevent or terminate pregnancies, but that technology has further to go. Perhaps one day we’ll be able to get an abortion and the fetus will be able to survive outside the womb in an incubator. That would change the debate dramatically, just as all technology changes the political debate about that technology.
If I say I’m pro-choice, but that I’d welcome fetus-saving technology, that doesn’t make me less pro-choice. That’s why it’s framed as “choice.” It’s about the choice of the woman. It has nothing to do with the state of personhood of the fetus. It has everything to do with the fact that a fetus cannot survive without enslaving a woman.
So:
What Open Left does isn’t reframing, but what you do is? Open Left “reframes” the argument by conceding a point. You “reframe” by asking someone to concede a point as well. Kind of a bullshit difference, really.
Just to toss a further complication into the mosh pit of discussion:
The most important thing that “ourâ€? – NB i’m done being a Dem – framers forget is the relationship between assembly and message that’s working for the Repugs. The assembly onto which the Repug messages are dumped are friendly towards the message, flattered by its being brought there, and already on board to convey it elsewhere.
It’s no accident that Preznit Above The Fray claims to be a Methodist (though his own church leadership has criticized him harshly for forgetting that) but he sucks up to hardline evangelicals which he has subsumed into the Republicult.
When he shows up on one of those bigass megachurch God-tron screens he’s got a readymade flying monkey squadron, gathered to serve “at the pleasure of the President — it’s always said like s/he’s been personally plucked from the multitudes to suck him off — for his convenience. They’re literally waiting for His Word, for the Gospel to repeat like mindlessly rote-learned bible verse to shout at people who don’t regard that particular book as a legally binding document.
The multitudes of the Republicult are predisposed to meet in this kind of gathering and do this “evangelical” kind of message conveyance. It’s a theofascist mission to preach even where they’re not wanted and/or persecute people and/or mass kill them and let God sort it out. Republicult theofascists further regard those who do NOT practice that extremist sect of national religion as an affront. (cf Bill “People Who Don’t Celebrate Christmas My Way Make The Baby Jesus Cry Before Killing Him Dead and IT PISSES ME OFFâ€? O’Reilly)
Dem framers should stop trying to duplicate the RW ‘down from on high’ stone tablets model of God’s elite pallies telling the unwashed what to repeat.
They should quit trying to impose a mechanistic, yoke driven juggernaut model on free range liberals, who don’t like to be yoked to a pole and whipped by some asshole into powering his or her political machinery. It’s just plain stupid. True liberals are not only disinclined to take that seriously, it more likely pisses US off.
I say that as a liberal who speaks ONLY for herself, always.
Framers should instead foster opportunities for spokespeople that actually represent liberal ideals: transparency in government, for example. Take a people up approach, though this has the HORRIBLE side effect of removing their lavish gigs to lie around and play with slogans that the unwashed are supposed to receive like Gospel and repeat like automatons. (I don’t pay much attention to idiots who start from the position that the “special interestsâ€? wrecking everything are typified by female “extremistsâ€? such as myself, who never signed on to giving religious fanatics courtside seats at her pap smear, law office, bedroom or temple.)
They need to adopt an unchurchy approach that is better suited to the mythology and messaging systems that already exist among liberal beliefs and lives: the model of revolution and resistance against a top down incompetent authority.
Liberals are more than ready to dismantle the authoritarian incompetent authority of the Repugs. Unfortunately, Dems persist in working out how to replace that disaster with a Democratic one.
That’s counter-intuitive or dumb depending on how you want to frame it.
It gets even easier! The only means through which we judge the “goodness” or “badness” of any action is it’s consequences.
Abortion is so, so easy to “get.” The only negative consequences are (1) $ and (2) a potentially painful procedure. On the upside, all parties involved with the pregnancy get their lives back.
There is nothing else to have concern over. There’s no aspect I’m leaving out.
No contest.
I’m a good framer.
Okay, I’m going to be quick here, since I have trouble saying stuff in length without drifting into stream of conciousness mode…
1) As I said at the end of the book review thread, I view Lakoff as a sophisticated concern troll, and framing as a dead end.
a) The main reason why I think so is that framing is massively capital intensive. There isn’t really a means for any vanguard (so long as we’re in vanguard mode, anyways) to use something like framing without the basis of some kind of media empire. Framing works under the framework guided by branding. People tend to look at the world as they are told to look. Told repeatedly. How does anyone of us get access to enough people on a regular basis in order to tell them new frames over and over again?
corrollary–underground means of secure mass broadcast is a precondition for any sort of success in using framing to change minds
b) Framing distracts progressive elements from doing what they can, at a level at which they *can* affect positive change. It would be little, and subject to capsizing, but it would be truly real improvement. What we are good at, is the use of an open mind, learning well the art of rhetoric, and most importantly, use our superior arts of empathy on others and on the world. The most perfect revenge, of maybe any action, is to–confidently and with belief in the world–live well. Being an example, and being able to explain why you’re happy and confident in a range of terms for any particular audience. The over-arching societal machine punishes such nails that stick up, and what is truly needed is catalyzing more and more people to act in their own interests, more than any hammer can nail down. This requires cleverness, insight, and humor, to be seen by others as a free spirit, but hidden from the damoclean hammer above.
corrollary–framing is incompatible with such a strategy. It requires spokespeople, who are too easy to smush by the dominant heirachy. It requires commodification of other people (and not addressing many underlying ills). After all, even if it’s only the borders of perception, one has to impose on people the borders of their thoughts. And in the capital intensive world of framing, you can only do so many frames before rhectorical decoherence into noise. There is a reason why repubs use only a few slogans at a time. But we’re not about slogans, or even just a few issues. We’re about being full human beings, with all the complexities that implies!
c) Lastly, framing is susceptible to being treated as a magic bullet. Most true change is hard, much as being a true christian, or muslim, or whatever self-sustaining principle is hard. It gets results fast, but it gets results shallow. You reach how people think, but not how they feel. Now, it is true that much of this stuff acts through feeling and guts, but the object of the game is to get the audience to emit the meme into the greater pool, like a diode emitting into darkness. One has to think and react to your drinking buddies to repeat whatever Rush Limbaugh said on the way to work. However, if the wifey hears what you say over the football game and objects, with different reasoning, and different context, how you feel may change, because you’re in a different emotional state and context. A lot of this will result in bifurcation into public and private beliefs, and encourage the Rights for Me and Not for Thee attitudes. Hence, because people tends to see results in public displays of agreement, they can get a feeling of success when that isn’t warranted. As people who have been involved in many civil rights struggles, it can take an ice age to change attitudes (with many setbacks), even in the face of many advances in de jure rights! As for the conservatives, step back a bit, and check out how convinced they are about “message discipline”. To the extent that we mock people as living in the basement with cheetos stained fingers typing at the keyboard. You know, things like Keyboard komandos, or 101rst flying keyboarders. They got that way for a reason.
corrollary–it’s really easy to mistake progress in the course of using framing because measuring true progress gives off alot of false positives (with huge sunk costs), positives that we are very susceptible to believing in. With a balanced set of rhetorical skills and loads of applied empathy, we wouldn’t be so easily decieved, and we would also know *much* more rapidly when the events have progressed to point that one has to cut bait…
dang, I wasn’t quick…hope that was clear…
Abortion is a tricky one because many pro-choice people do believe that abortion is a bad outcome, they just think that pro-choice is better than the alternative. So some of the people who are using the opposition language are not using it because they have been had, they are using it because in their minds it is accurate.
This just shows why re-framing the debate, to be about the woman’s body and autonomy, is so important. When the fetus is providing the frame for a discussion of abortion, the discussion centres around “bad for fetus” or “good for fetus” making the woman invisible. However, if we’re talking about the woman’s CHOICE, we can see that there are some circumstances in which abortion is bad– circumstances in which the abortion is not the woman’s choice, due to social pressures, etc. If the fetus is framing the debate, we have no way of addressing these concerns– if the woman and her personal choice is the centre of the debate, we can say “let’s do everything to maximize a woman’s choice, regardless of whether she wants an abortion or she wants to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term. If we discover that women are having abortions that they don’t really want, then those abortions are bad, and we can try to minimise them. However, if a woman does not want to carry a fetus to term, then it is a good thing for her to have the option of abortion freely available to her. And of course we acknowledge that the best thing for women, in terms of bodily autonomy and pregnancy, is to ensure that women, and their male partners, have the most resources possible to prevent unwanted pregnancy.”
When people claim that abortion is a bad thing, the reframing is to ask them: If you think abortion is a bad thing, what policies do you actively support that are proven to reduce the number of abortions each year?
Uniformly, anti-choicers will then argue that the policies proven to reduce the number of abortions each year (comprehensive sex education, free availability of contraception and social support of contraceptive use, financial and social support for parenting, especially for single mothers) are policies they’re also against. They prefer to make abortion illegal, dangerous, and hard to get, without in any way working to reduce the number of abortions women need.
You can then safely point out that they are actually pro-abortion, they just see abortion and pregnancy in the frame of punishing women for having sex for pleasure. Of course they’ll scream and kick about that, but until they’re prepared to argue for policies that reduce abortions, they can’t honestly claim to be anything but anti-choice and pro-abortion.
I walked away from Dana’s blog (finally disgusted by Sharon’s open pleasure at the discovery of a village where dozens of Iraqis had been massacred by other Iraqis, which she seemed to think helped her “debunk” the Lancet report) but this was a frequent argument with the misogynist anti-choicers on that site. (It was noticeable how all the anti-choicers consistently loathed the idea that women can have sex for pleasure, loathed the idea of comprehensive sex education/free access to contraception/welfare support for parents, and were uniformly against the notion that the Iraq war was a bad thing because it had killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. “Pro-life” is such a misnomer for these people.)
It is good that women have full access to the health care they need: it is not good for women to be forced through pregnancy and childbirth against their will. Therefore, access to abortion is a basic good. It’s a human rights issue. (Of course, all health care in the US is a human rights issue. It’s ironic that in the US a woman on a low income will not be helped by Medicaid to get a legal, safe, and relatively low-cost abortion if she wants one - but if something goes horribly wrong with an illegal abortion, then Medicaid has to cover the thousand$ that the emergency medical/surgical support will cost. (Admittedly, in parts of the UK, it can be sufficiently difficult to get an abortion on the NHS - though it’s probably easier for women who need an abortion to travel to a clinic that will provide one. There’s nowhere in the UK where it would be difficult for a woman who needed an abortion to get one if she could pay for it.)
What I would say that if abortion is a good choice in some circumstances, then it follows that the availabiltiy of abortion is actually good.
Amanda, I’m fairly sure that I understand what you meant by your response, but particularly in a thread about reframing, I think it is appropriate to dig into specifics about language.
I don’t think there is much value in responding to someone who thinks that something is a tragedy by trying to convince them that it is in fact an objective good.
That’s why I far more agree with the frame that the issue is about choices, and about trusting individual people (in this case women) to be able to make their most personal, important, and intimate choices for themselves.
A lot of people point out (it happened above) that framing the abortion issue as entirely about the fetus makes the woman involved irrelevant, which is a true statement - and it is probably the biggest sticking point in having their frame “win.”
But by the same token, it has to be acknowleged that framing the issue as entirely about a woman’s choice and the right to manage her own body makes the fetus irrelevant. And that THAT is a huge part of what keeps the pro-choice argument from “winning” (at least in a final and conclusive way.)
A successful frame needs to include in it all the major points of both sides of a debate, and something that deliberately leaves out any reference or consideration of the other side’s main objections isn’t a frame so much as it is spin. That certainly doesn’t mean that anyone has to concede the opposition’s points or assign the same weight to them, far from it.
Abortion is a “good” in the sense that a hysterectomy or a triple-bypass is a “good”, not in the sense that exercise or education is a “good.” In other words, it isn’t a goal to be sought after, but it is something that in some, but not all cases, is the best answer, and as such needs to be available as an option.
I’ve deliberately chosen fairly serious examples. It would be up to each person to decide what might be appropriate examples for them. Having a small melanoma removed, perhaps, or even antibiotics for a sexually transmitted disease. I suspect most people fall somewhere in between.
But I have never met anyone (outside of conservative fantasies) who thinks of abortion as something to be actively sought, as in deliberately seeking to get pregnant for the express purpose of having an abortion - which is the kind of image that the “abortion is an objective good” sort of language brings up.
It doesn’t necessarily follow that because it is a serious choice that one must have done something wrong or immoral to find ones self in the position of having to (and having the right and responsibility to) make it.
But a lot of pro-choice people seem to make it a party-line point of dogma that the choice needs to be treated as though it is no big deal, and I think that is both inaccurate on its face and tactically poor in terms of winning support.
But that again is where framing comes in, with the language of freedom and responsibility, where we remind people that just because some people might use their right to choose something irresponsibly (drunken Vegas weddings, for example), that doesn’t justify taking those choices away from everyone else.
The fetus IS irrelevant. It’s not a person.
I find the “nerds vs. thugs” frame interesting. Surely brainiacs can be persistent and repetitive?
No doubt they have some smarties, but as you point out, the “good guys� have some smarties too. Unfortunately ours are apparently busy masturbating in the corner.
Hee. Okay, that’s funny. The real problem in my eyes is that our “smarties” make the fatal mistake of either assuming that you win through dry facts instead of compelling narratives (which don’t have to be lies, though they often are on the right) or the even more fatal mistake of trying to win over people that will never come over to your side. Which is why it’s stupid to try to lure abortion opponents by squeeing about birth control and welfare—these people hate women, and talking about giving women more choices will just piss them off. That said, the talking about birth control and welfare in terms of reproductive justice is an excellent wedge issue, a way to separate people that are mildly uneasy with women’s sexual freedom but get that it’s a good thing from the hardline anti-choicers. As long as you remember you’re pushing for swing voters, you can craft your narrative better. Go for the people that think abortion is icky but would probably get one if they needed it.
What Open Left does isn’t reframing, but what you do is? Open Left “reframes� the argument by conceding a point. You “reframe� by asking someone to concede a point as well. Kind of a bullshit difference, really.
It’s considered wise in some circles to understand the terms before jumping in the debate. I see that your people have not taught you this, but they really should have.
I don’t think there is much value in responding to someone who thinks that something is a tragedy by trying to convince them that it is in fact an objective good.
Well, generally when you’re arguing with a misogynist, you’re not trying to convince him so much as your audience. If you reframe the debate to make him argue the point that women are less human and less deserving of rights—and that women are permitted their rights, this is a tragedy for male dominance—it turns off a lot of people who don’t hate women. Which is the point. I’m not trying to convince the real haters to hate less. I’m trying to convince people on the fence that building social policy around hating women and punishing women for having sex is wrong.
But by the same token, it has to be acknowleged that framing the issue as entirely about a woman’s choice and the right to manage her own body makes the fetus irrelevant.
I’ve heard about these mythical people who actually believe the fetus is a person and not a stand-in for their general fears of sex and disapproval of women’s freedom, but I have yet to meet any of them. Seriously. There might be one or two people out there—though I haven’t met them—that are both anti-choice and not invested in maintaining old-fashioned gender roles, but they are such a tiny minority they might not be worth addressing at all.
Shah, you seem to think that telling people to craft their ideas into marketable narratives is somehow going to get less money thrown to think tanks and less people onto TV. Not really. All framing is on a base level is telling people that they need to speak to people in language they understand and argue debates on terms they set. This doesn’t hurt activism, but increases effectiveness. You’re concerned about media infrastructure; well the way you get into the media infrastructure is to create think tanks and experts who are convenient for journalists to turn to. Once those people are on, they need to be able to get your message across.
Lastly, framing is susceptible to being treated as a magic bullet.
Which is stupid, but what’s interesting is you reframed the debate to make that point. People need to realize it’s not a magic bullet, but here’s a frame for you: throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because some people treat it like the end-all doesn’t mean that we should reject the task of getting our spokespeople to use narratives that make sense and best portray our values. On framing, it’s really an either/or issue. Should be people be conscious of using good rhetoric or not? Do good narratives work better than bad ones? Is it better to argue on your opponent’s terms or yours?
Framing is a good idea. Our big issue is with the obstacles the media puts up, mainly refusing to let on liberal pundits use liberal frames. To use an example I use all the time, everyone wanted me on TV after the Edwards dust-up—until I did one show and made it clear that I was going to reject the narrative of “naughty woman gets spanked by Jeebus people and repents” and instead argue inside the more accurate frame of “victim of a well-financed swift-boating”. Liberals are trained like dogs to stay within conservative frames if they want to be invited back—hell, it got Alan Colmes a TV show. All he has to do is play the part of the no-common sense liberal weakling.
Another example is the squeeing about Michael Moore, whose main crime, at the end of the day, is violating the media frame that all liberals are elitists who speak three levels above your head. Moore’s very, very good at framing issues on his terms, and he scares people.
One libertarian frame re: abortion:
Adult individuals own their own bodies and have the right to control same. This means they can have abortions, use whatever prescriptions or other drugs they want, act as prostitutes, sell their body organs, smoke cigarettes, eat trans fats, ride a motorcycle without a helmet, etc.
Although others may disapprove of these choices, they should not be able to exert any control over them (except in very limited instances, abortion generally not being one of them). In this framework, it is easy for a person to think abortion, or using drugs, or smoking, is bad, yet yield to the other’s right to own/control their own body.
Some other libertarians would disagree with this, at least as it applies to abortion, because of the issue of when a fetus becomes a “person” entitled to rights.
And then their stupid argument falls apart, because by libertarian standards, no person is entitled to leech off another, even in a collective pool that maximizes benefit for everyone. By their own measure, not only should abortion be legal, but so should infanticide, because babies are born to be leeches. The fact that many libertarians are anti-choice and even more of them are anti-abortion really points to the intrinsic misogyny to the libertarian fantasy-ideology.
I don’t know if framing is right, but we need to cut through the bullshit. Everytime someone starts going on about “the babies” I simply say “If you cared, you’d support health care for everyone, you’d support daycare availability, you’d support free public education, you’d support access to birth control… I mean if you ACTUALLY cared about a cutlure of life, you’d give a damn about the living. Otherwise piss off.”
I think abortion is a shame, mostly. I wish we lived in a perfect world where everyone only got pregnant with children they wanted, and that the health of either the mother or child was never in jeapordy. And money grew on trees, and the Cubs winning the world series was even a remote possibility.
And you are totally right, by even agreeing with them that abortion is wrong, you hand them over the debate. So even when I might find some common ground with these jerk-offs, I avoid it. In a normal disagreement you look for common ground and compromise. Anti-choicers don’t want a compromise, they want God’s law on earth, with them the deciders of what God’s law is. Fuck ‘em.
I think the best reframing would be to expand the meaning of “the right to choose” in the abortion debate. “Choice” has become a euphemism for abortion, which is unfortunate because the right to choose is so much more than that.
The “right to choose” means:
The right to choose to have an abortion.
The right to choose NOT to have an abortion.
The right to choose to have an adoption on the mother’s own terms.
The right to choose to be a parent.
The right to choose whether or not to become pregnant in the first place.
Those who support the “right to choose” need to be sure to the right to choose for all women’s reproductive choices. Improved maternity leave policies, maternal and child health care, and even access to affordable housing are ALL related to a woman’s “right to choose”, and should be defended with the same vigor that abortion rights are. How can a woman truly be able to choose when she can’t leave work, can’t get health care for her or her baby, and can’t put a roof over their heads?
Plenty of people do disapprove of abortion, but do not want the government to have a say in such a personal decision. Let’s not alienate them with an “abortion is good” frame.
I tried to post on their site but got some sort of error indicating the page wasn’t available anymore. Strange, considering the post just went up today.
Me, too. What I wanted to post was, “Is that you, Will Saletan?”
Reducing abortion is a good idea. Why? Because it’s surgery, and all surgery carries risk. As someone said above, the real issue is unwanted pregnancy, and if you get someone who says they want to eliminate or reduce abortions, ask them which policies they are supporting to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
Abortion *should* be, in the interest of women’s health, a last resort. And the first line of defense is comprehensive sex education which not only teaches how contraceptives work, but how to negotiate for your own protection (i.e., don’t accept “It’ll be okay this one time, baby” ). Contraception is the next line of defense, and should be readily accessible and subsidized (or free under universal health care). Plan B is the next step. Then abortion.
Don’t want to see abortion happening? Then get serious about preventing unwanted pregnancies. Anyone who is sincere about being pro-life should be getting on that bus instead of throwing women under it.
The thing is, it does work. One member of our working group has been working with the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence for several years. Over that time, they’ve worked on framing issues and have altered the way domestic violence is reported in the Providence media market (wish I had the citation for her article demonstrating this.) We’re a small academic group who tends to work with local groups.
We’re talking about public discourse. In trying to establish our own frame as the dominant one, we first have to decide on one–no easy task in itself as this thread shows. But then, we need actors to sponsor that frame in particular arenas of conflict. Since most public discourse takes place in the mass media arena, there are a couple of things to keep in mind: we’re engaging in conflict with our opponents, and we’re operating under the constraints of that media, including the way their routinized practices produce certain preferred frames. Maintaining a preferred frame, not falling into the the opposition’s or the media’s frame ain’t easy work. But it’s necessary and valuable.
Framing strategies need to be parts of larger organizing strategies, not some stand-alone activity.
Sorry Amanda, I thought we were talking about framing.
Choice. God Giveth. Conservatives taketh away.
Zuzu, I think that really is the winning argument. The core of the right wing delusion is that unwanted pregnancy isn’t really a problem: every child is a blessing, God will make it work, yada yada. They prevent contraception access and information from expanding, lie shamelessly about the risks and function of Plan B, and spread the notion that pro-choicers get some satanic enjoyment out of every abortion.
For many of us, nothing would make us happier than to render abortion obsolete by successfully preventing all unwanted pregnancy.
But… but… could not goalposts be said to “frame” a field? And so, if you were to move the goal posts… so far infield that the opposition need but snap the ball to score… could that not be considered a “reframing” ?
Another example of how reframing works very well: The gay marriage debate. Conservatives got their frame (assault on traditional marriage) out early, and had a small advantage. Liberals did what liberals do (dithered), but eventually we came around to agreeing on the general frame of equality and fairness. The result is that the support for legalizing same-sex marriage has climbed rapidly and will continue to climb.
I personally find abortion disgusting.
Disgusting because there are ways, in this civilized society, to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
I’m also a person who grew up adopted to a family that had MAJOR psychological issues and on many occasions wondered why my birth mother didn’t just abort me and save me from all the living hell that I grew up with. As a matter of fact it was one of the things that I asked her after a few months of finding her…
Abortion is wrong but in a surprising display of nuance (surprising and misplaced) the pro-life groups ignore the pain and suffering that results from all of those unwanted pregnancies being carried to term and the resulting hell that the children (once sacred fetus) are put through on a day to day basis.
They totally ignore the huddled and battered and bruised child bodies that live in constant fear of being beaten, pummeled, and assaulted. Sometimes beaten literally within inches of their very lives. Children that fear the twist of a doorknob or rustle of paper or slam of a car door. Children that are literally tortured… Children that are mentally tortured too… I’m not even getting into the sexual abuse that seems rampant in many communities…
Children are ‘precious’, and not lust because they are punching bags or receptacles for their parents worst emotions…
GOD DAMMIT!!! Abortion IS wrong but so is forcing a child onto people that don’t have the sense that God gave a potted plant!
Jesugislac, do you think you might be painting with too broad of a brush? You said “all anti-choicers� (I will concede the term for now) loathe all these things. When have I ever said I was against a woman’s pleasure, comprehensive sex education/free access to contraception/welfare support for parents? For that matter have where have you seen me argue against quality universal health coverage? Surely you know by now that I interact with private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid on a personal/user basis everyday?
The occupation of Iraq has been horrifically tragic in terms of human lives. I never tried to trivialize the death of a single Iraqi, much less hundreds of thousands. I did argue against how the Lancet study was conducted with you, but I never even hinted that Iraqi suffering was anything short of horrific.
You and I have had our tussles and some of your advocating tactics I find maddening as you know. I am quite sure my sarcasm has grated you, but does that justify me being painted as insensitive and heartless?
God, Jes, stop lying about what happens. You got mad because I asked you where the mass graves were if there were actually 655k people dead in Iraq. You couldn’t prove ANY proof outside the ridiculous Lancet report–which isn’t used by ANY news organization–and so I gave you a link to ACTUAL graves in Iraq. The problem for you, of course, is that the graves were from the murder of Iraqis by Al Qaeda. It’s unsurprising that you ran, yet again, from an argument you couldn’t win and started claiming that I was “gleeful” at the sight of graves. Your lying is truly unbelievable.
Thank God you quit commenting at both my site and Dana’s. Someone who has rightly earned the nickname Pinocchio and is so needy they have to continue whining in more favorable venues about their stupidity is disgusting.
No it’s not, god dammit.
J, I do have to support Sharon, you have misrepresented what she said. There is no way a reasonable person could conclude she was “gleeful” regarding the deaths in question.
She was being definitive in providing support for her view of the Lancet report.
I don’t know if framing is right, but we need to cut through the bullshit. Everytime someone starts going on about “the babies� I simply say “If you cared, you’d support health care for everyone, you’d support daycare availability, you’d support free public education, you’d support access to birth control… I mean if you ACTUALLY cared about a cutlure of life, you’d give a damn about the living. Otherwise piss off.�
I think this is a very useful approach also: attacking the opposition’s frame. The “if you don’t work to prevent unwanted pregnancies, you are supporting abortion” line worked on me back when I was in a “pro-life” group.
I think abortion is a shame, mostly. I wish we lived in a perfect world where everyone only got pregnant with children they wanted, and that the health of either the mother or child was never in jeapordy. And money grew on trees, and the Cubs winning the world series was even a remote possibility.
Heh–that’s great. “Yes, it would be wonderful if no woman ever needed an abortion again! And rainbow sparkle ponies flew down and carried us off to Candyland!”
I always like the line (can’t remember where I picked it up): “I’m not ‘pro-abortion’ anymore than I’m ‘pro-triple-bypass’: yeah, it sucks that you need one, but it sucks a whole lot more if you can’t get one when you need it.”
Amanda,
I have admired your writing for about a year now, but I realy think with this framing business you have fallen hook line and sinker for the empty words of a quack philosopher.
Framing is what you do to pictures. In debate we can “frame” our argument by deciding how we will present it but only if our opponents are illiterate morons will they argue within the parameters we set. We cannot however put a neat little box around the debate without fatally limiting our ability to manouvre. A smart opponent in any debate will come at you from an unexpected angle.
Abortion? Abortion is bad. Choice is worse. Why should women take responsibility for making that choice? The world is overpopulated so sex education is the only answer and if the churches resist we tax into poverty couples who have more than two kids. Its not about what families can afford, its about what the world can afford, there is no choice.
Just see how that policy would the guys running off for vasectomies.
When you talk of drawing your opponent onto your ground, that is just what fundies do of course and they are successful in America because every liberal wants to be a nice person (Well liked, as Willie Loman puts it in Death Of A Salesman) You are all scared to say “you’re talking through your arse. The case is…”
And the case is “framing” is just another empty word, like cosmic ordering, dianetics, paradigm shift, lateral thinking etc. What all these have in common is someone is making money out of gullible people.
Your example of gay marriage falls down because you ignore the reality which is that marriage is not a sacrament but an invention of the medieval church to protect inheritance rights. But the law now protects property rights so while you waste energy framing your case for supporting a gay person’s right to be the possession of their partner (and in a same sex partnersip who possesses whom?) you just give ammo to the conservatives. Let’s talk instead about abolishing the legal status of marriage altogether, it is a relic of an oppressive society.
See what I mean about coming at them from an unexpected direction to wrongfoot them. Its the art of adversarial debate and is as old as the classical civilisations.
Sorry but your “framing” guy has the imagination and originality of a housebrick. Follow his thinking (?) and you are going to lose every argument.
Sharon:
Thanks for the threadjack, but you persist in ignoring Jesurgislac’s main point (and the main point of anyone who’d actually read The Lancet article)
I think he quit commenting over there because, to quote Schiller
“Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.”
Yes it is when there are perfectly good ways to stop a pregnancy from happening in the first place…
Well, and maybe ‘wrong’ is too strong. It’s not ‘wrong’ but I feel that to use it as ‘birth control’ is just plain stupid… Sure, a woman is raped, is pregnant, forcing her to carry the product of her rape is just inhuman… Sure, a daughter is raped, is pregnant, again forcing her to carry that product of that incident is barbaric… Obviously in the health of the mother cases too…
In an idea society, birth control would be a ‘human right’ and women (and men) would be able to buy and use without getting all that ‘doom and gloom’ from the catholic church (and many others) that want to make sure that they have millions more unhappy participants (as many as they can) which is the entire reason for the ‘no birth control/pro-life dogma)… Taking ‘go forth and prosper’ to absurd extremes… (Loved the vagina/clown car from a few months ago!!)
Think of a world inhabited with a massive majority of practicing catholics… A manned mission to Mars looks very good at that point… Take ME!!! PLEASE!!!
On a related tangent: That couple that had 4 of the 6 children die recently in Minnesota. Any opinions?
I found the hypocrisy rich in that they ‘let ‘god’ decide’ when they actually did artificial insemination. Isn’t the idea that they weren’t able to get pregnant ‘letting god decide’? What if public assistance paid for those 6 births and the hospital care? I’m sick that so many died but to find out that their OB/fertility doc advised that they ‘reduce’ their ‘gifts of modern science’, isn’t it just sickening and disgusting? Should fertility clinics have the right to reduce the number of fetuses in cases like this? Is this a case of idiots using ‘modern technology’ with a backward mentality? I’m just sick that the kids that may have survived will be plagued with health issues for their entire lives… But anyway…
ALSO don’t conservatives use a lot of words that they really don’t have a clue what the meanings of them are? Think: Freedom, Democracy, Honesty, Legal, Ethical, Compassionate…
In english?
You want to complain about a threadjack after Jes persists in lying about other people’s views? Puh-lease. Jes’s point was to try to inflate the casualties in Iraq, and when challenged couldn’t support it. Then I provided evidence of the REAL killers in Iraq, the people who ARE terrorizing peaceful civilians. That Jes then–as usual–mischaracterized my statement as being ‘gleeful” over Iraqi casualties and using that strawman as an exit strategy from an argument it had lost is shameless.
Or…like
It’s HER blood supply
Pinky: It is always birth control. I’m pretty sure that you have to be pregnant to get an abortion. So whether or not you have 1 or 100 is not important in any moral sense: fetii do not equate to a “fraction” of a human being, they either are human or they are not. And for that matter, while there are good ways to avoid getting pregnant, sometimes those things fail–so even in a perfect world where everyone was using a form of birth control, abortion would still be necessary and no more or less moral because there is nothing about the circumstances of the conception that would change the outcome. Rape, incest, broken condom, missed pill, ‘he said he was sterilized’, pull-out “method,” or just felt like fucking and didn’t think about the consequences until after the orgasm: it doesn’t result in a different procedure or different outcome.
Plenty of women have crowed the line “it’s just so wrong, I find it reprehensible, I would never have one, but I wouldn’t want it outlawed” change their tune real quick when it’s their life and their future on the line.
Abortion is not wrong. Shit happens. People aren’t always going to be responsible 100% of the time. We should be glad that they have the option to come to their senses before they start using a kid as a punching bag to take out their frustrations that 5 minutes of sex ruined the rest of their life.
Loose translation “Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.”
Jes was not inflating the casualties. He was pointing out what The Lancet article actually said. If you don’t believe the results, distrust the methodology, so be it. The fact is that the article’s findings haven’t ever been refuted by any scientific or statistical proof. The deaths are in excess of what would have been expected had there been no occupation. That does not mean that the occupying forces are the direct killers. This shouldn’t have to be repeated. Although I wouldn’t have called your response gleeful, I did think it was beside the point.
Hey there Amanda, it’s great for a troll to be fed by you!
1)
a) What I’m saying is that all the quality narratives will do you no good if you can not present the narrative over and over again. Thinktanks and experts are ineffective if they cannot get into the general consciousness as a consistent influence over time. Hence yours and Michael Moore, and other spokespeople’s issues. The TV people will never, ever, consistently allow people like you guys to present any contrarian narratives, so long as TV is viewed primarily as a means towards social control rather than a true profit center. The only way around that is having our own projective media, say txt messaging broadcasts, or whatever.
b) Whatever activism I might get into or not, my primary concern is the heirarchy, and the means of conservation of status. To put it short, I have substantial empathy with Octavia Butler in her general works, and Cherryh, at least in Merchanter’s Universe. Somewhat like Debois, I am practically unsympathetic to egalitarianism, because I believe that people are incapable in long term (and under a wide range of circumstances) of behaving in egalitarian terms. Therefore I would like to see heirarchy reformed, and diversified into a very wide range of status markers rather than trying to remove it. That being said, the left being taught good general debating tactics will cure the problems Lakoff talks about.
c) Why should our argumentation be grounded on Lakoff’s theories? You can go to the bookstore and buy Annette T Rottenberg’s Elements of Argument, like I have (not that I am very good at convincing anyone, as I well know, but…). From what I read of Lakoff’s work, he reads like a marketer, and not a little of his stuff is based on a kind of commodification/securitization of people. I have Bill Hick’s attitudes about marketers, and I believe that approaching the social situation is a variant of winning the battle (even if we had control of the access to the masses), but losing the war. I’m not saying spokepeople using well constructed narratives is bad. I’m saying that it’s a bad idea to focus on that as the primary means of modifying people’s ideas. We have more of a need for people to act within the general populace than big guys with bullhorns.
d) Lakoff is primarily talking about a lack of empathy and situational awareness among the left (so far as I can guess from various reviews). What he advocates is not how to be more “in tune” so much as *compensate* for the lack. I’m sorry, but I don’t make a good marketer or a good vampire, and I don’t particularly *want* to be, because they are incompatible with what I *do* want to be.
So yeah, argue from your frame instead of the dominant frame. Just be aware that this mentality disengages you from the world and from other people. I’d rather not do that. If someone attacks me with a frame, I want to *not* fight after the fashion of aikido. Which requires a balanced knowledge of argumentation, and spreading the meta-meme around as to what constitutes legitimate argumentation, rather than the constant use of the Chewbaca defense and other silly chaff.
heh, might as well troll again…
The point of systemic racism is to profit off of white people’s labor and reinforce class, rather than hurting colored folks ?:~) Lynching, raping, redlining, slut shaming minorities are all part of the *show*, and not quite where the action *is*.
Maybe if I repeat it enough, perhaps people will open some books on American and European history, and perhaps some economic history…who knows
The conservative evangelical blog at world magazine (worldmagblog) had a post recently about state imposed abortion in China. I used that opportunity to comment that it is too bad the Chinese do not have Roe vs. Wade to protect their privacy and reproductive rights. I also mentioned that Roe vs. Wade protects American women from having abortions imposed upon them just as much as it protects women who do not want pregnancy imposed on them.
It’s not terribly surprising that Lakoff reads like a marketer, since he’s taking on the Republican marketing machine.
And it is, literally, a marketing machine. They’ve made extensive use of direct-mail marketers like Richard Viguerie for YEARS. They can phonebank and push-poll and prepare the ground to see which issues are going to resonate with the public *before* they even bring them to the mainstream media. That’s why there are so many dogwhistle phrases — they’ve been tested out and bubbled up through the base’s consciousness, so they all catch on when Bush says them.
I should just quit while I’m behind…
For those that seek to limit, or eliminate, birth control in this country, I really have to wonder what is in their minds? I mean really… Someone told me that there were more ‘abortions’ in this country BEFORE Roe v Wade than after… They just weren’t called ‘abortions’ back then… D&C’s, etc which are valid medical procedures that covered the act of abortion…
It would seem to me that if you really WANT to limit abortion, the ready availability of birth control would be a very good thing and should be whole heartedly supported… I mean you don’t encourage vegitarianism by limiting the agricultural communities across the country. likewise, you don’t bring freedom to a nation by bombing the shit out of it and selling their neighbors weapons either…
And those that talk fondly about the ‘good old days’ needs to watch the A&E program ‘Sex and the Civil War’… Bands (gangs?) of women would follow the soldiers around the country not unlike rockstar groupies of the ‘free sex’ 80’s, basically performing ’services’ for the men. STD’s ran rampent and claimed many soldiers lives. The ‘old days’ always carry the sheen of our imaginations and our ‘mind’s eye’…
Something odd, from the ‘past’… I had a friend years ago who was dating a girl who’s mother had an abortion. That’s not important except that as the relationship started to disintegrate the mother kept pressure on her daughter to keep it going. The reason? The ‘male’ that she ‘D&C’ed’ would have been within a few weeks of that guys age… When he found out, the mother told him one after dinner at their house over wine after the daughter left for a few minutes, he was shocked… What baggage to carry, but also the stigma of being pregnant and ‘living in sin’ not so many years ago… We’ve come a long way, or have we… The same bullshit seems to pop up time and time again… True sins are those against those that can’t defend themselves: children, women, etc…
Let me reframe the abortion debate.
Life begins at birth, according to the Bible. The Bible repeatedly speaks of the “breath of life,” of god blowing the “breath of life” into someone. Life begins after birth, when we draw our first breath. Nowhere in the Bible does it mention conception. It is an odd, modern mix of science and theology to say that life begins at conception. Of course, according to science, life began about 4 billion years ago in the ocean, we just remix the DNA at conception.
But god blows the breath of life, and our souls, into us at birth. So says the Bible. You don’t think god can do so whenever he so chooses? Anyone who says otherwise is injecting their secular beliefs about the beginning of life into the argument, and contradicting the Bible.
THAT’S called reframing.
AMEN!
I find it interesting that several people–including a few of us–have headed over and pointed out problems with the diary, yet it’s author has yet to respond to anything. The whole “it takes a village to abort a child” thing makes me think the author is themself a concern troll.
Yeah.. personally, I find most medical procedures disgusting.
Pinky, you still have a responsibility here.. you’ve gotta explain why abortion is a more ethically problematic procedure than heart surgery.
It’s staring you in the face and you’ve gotta respond.
And so you should, and so should we all. And really, I do see that as exactly what you are trying to do.
At the same time, I don’t think you heard my point. You certainly didn’t respond to it when you quoted my post.
Not everyone who thinks that abortion should be taken seriously and used as a last resort (with contraception and sex education coming far higher up the priority list) is inherently misogynist.
Then you haven’t met most of the expectant parents that I have.
You are absolutely right that rhetorically and politically, most of the public “pro-life” voices are arguing in bad faith, and using the fetus as a stand-in and cover for their true ainti-sex agenda. Exposing those bad faith arguments is critical, and you do a consistently good job of it.
But the reason that works is because so many people do think of fetuses as people - or at least they think of the welcome and wanted fetuses in their own bodies or the bodies of their loved ones as their children. No, they don’t have the illusion that they can interact with them in the same way and on the same level as an adult human, but you can’t do that with a six-month-old either.
Exposing the bad faith arguments of the other side is a critical part of successfully reframing the debate, but I don’t think this counts as that. It is denying the possibility that they have any good faith arguments.
He was trying to reframe the issue of abortion.
Instead of telling women who get abortions that they’re “evil” and “sluts” he’d rather tell them they’re poor, stupid, pathetic “victims” instead.
It’s just that he’s reframing the abortion issue for the right, so I don’t know why he’s got a piece on “Open Left” unless he’s a concern troll, which I personally think he is.
Ponygirl beat me to it, but it doesn’t hurt to belabor this point:
BIRTH CONTROL FAILS
I happen to be well-acquainted w/that personally, but the fact of the matter is {thank the FSM, DiscoBall or whatever deity you prefer}, it’s nobody’s business but my own…
Peter, I don’t think there is much value in responding to someone who thinks that something is a objective good by trying to convince them that it is in fact a tragedy.
The two sides aren’t ever going to come together on this issue, I think that’s a certainty. But I always find it problematic that those who think of abortion as either a “tragedy” or at least a really terrible thing that one must only do as an absolute last resort, have some kind of moral high ground over those of us who think that abortion is a good thing.
And of course women don’t get pregnant because they love abortion and just want to have one! But when a woman is confronted with an unwanted pregnancy, and has the legal choice over her own body to terminate, that’s more than a good thing - it’s what freedom is all about, and it’s a GREAT thing!
Abortion is not a problem.
Unwanted pregnancy is the problem.
I don’t ‘gotta’ do anything. I’m not your monkey…
‘nothing else to have concern over’? Explain your comment. Do you stand outside of maternity clothing stores and pass out pamphlets urging women to get abortions? There are many reasons why your statement comes off as cold as ice not to mention heartless… In a civilized and technological society like ‘we’ have, ‘we’ (the big collective WE) still fight idiocy and illogic over what should be just common sense. There are ways to avoid getting pregnant. Wanna cut abortions, increase birth control and education on the alternatives… Skipping through the streets on your tricycle with the red-white-and-blue streamers telling people to ‘not think about sex’ (abstinence only education) is just so stupid! ((Abstinence implies voluntary self-denial and is usually associated with the non-indulgence of an appetite.) (I’d like to see Bush abstain from killing more soldiers and flipping off the constitution))…
Abortion and heart surgery aren’t related except on the cold technical level and you know it… Plus there is ‘baggage’ with both…
========================
HATE Another word where the people that should understand what the word means, the ‘religious’ people, seem to miss the meaning… It’s like they are stuck with the track ‘Chump’ from Green Day playing in their heads over and over…
shorter pinky: The Baybeez!
Abortion is much closer to removing a cancerous tumor, but without the worry of chemo.
Question for you Framers:
Is alienating fencesitters an issue?
MAJeff, it seems like you’re saying that pro-choice legislation won’t go through if people are “lukewarm” about it–so even though someone might believe in the “safe, legal, and rare” mantra, and even though they would vote pro-choice, they’re still unacceptable?
MAJeff deity wrote:
And it bears repeating.
Pinky: Your feelings or the (really) odd response of a woman who’s had an abortion aren’t the point The point is whether or not women get to have control over our bodies, regardless of whether or not someone else approves or likes the choice. That’s the bottom line here.
pgwarner: When have I ever said I was against a woman’s pleasure, comprehensive sex education/free access to contraception/welfare support for parents?
You had plenty of opportunity to say you were for all those things while Dana, Sharon, Eric, and the rest of the anti-choice gang were vociferously arguing that these things were all horrifyingly wrong. And somehow, you never found time to do so. To whine now that I should have noticed you were silent is pathetic.
Wow, I’m glad I stay out of abortion threads…
I just tell ‘em it’s non of your beeswax and leave it at that and talk about something else…
wait. damn, I just did that in this thread, didn’t I?
Oh well
where did I say that? I’m talking about discourse. Taking, for instance, Pinky’s position is ceding ground in public discourse to anti-choice forces. There’s nothing different in what she says than what the “abortion for me but not for thee” anti-choicers say. I’ll take votes where I can get them, but I’m not ceding ground in the debate. Period.
Abortion is a social good. Period.
as a further matter, lukewarm supporters shouldn’t be spokespeople (see the head of NARAL) because they are willing to cede that discursive territory. That’s a losing strategy.
Roe vs. Wade prevents the government and the police from stopping women of the Quiver Full movement from having too many children.
Roe vs Wade protects the privacy and reproductive rights of evangelical women just as much as it protects the privacy and reproductive rights of women who do not want babies.
Is the point to be right, or to get consensus on the laws we need? Because you get to be right either way (assuming that you actually are).
Isn’t there something deeply counterproductive in going for the “anyone who disagrees with me in the slightest degree is simple wrong. Period.” idea?
I agree that arguing something like this inside someone else’s oppositional frame doesn’t work, but what in the world is wrong with “we disagree on the fine points but agree on the bigger ones.”
Others have asked it, but what in the world is wrong with having the “abortion is an objective good and therefore obviously should be legal” people, the “abortion is the best answer sometimes and needs to be kept legal for people to choose for themselves” people, and the “It is a tragedy, but sometimes unfortunately necessary, and needs to be an option” people all rowing their boats in the same direction?
Why is allowing someone else to support something for different reasons “ceding ground in the debate?”
The point is to get the laws we need and to shift the debate away from the anti-choicers’ preferred framings. Making them argue on our terms instead of on their terms provides an advantage. What’s so hard to understand about that?
Oh, I forgot, we’re trying to get those anti-choicers who will never vote for us on our side.
Again, the problem is not abortion. The problem is unwanted pregnancy.
Ok, apologies for my ignorance–I was a bio major, never grokked “narrative” and “discourse” in their technical usage. I was just thinking of your discussion with Bizzaro. It seems to me as if people can be roped into supporting the same thing (say, a piece of legislation) even though they do so for different reasons. I was under the impression that the latter was simply a subordinate goal on the way to achieving the former.I’m asking this because I have learned a lot here so far and I am pretty certain I can argue in support of some issues from a conservative, first-principles perspective. If the end goals are the same, how big of a concern is framing? Do you necessarily give ground and is it that vital? Is re-framing always essential?
Again, sorry if I’m distracting from the conversation, I know I really don’t have the background in this stuff :
because I have learned a lot at Pandagon, to the extent that I think I can explain some (perhaps not all) of some of the ideas presented here in ways that some Conservatives will understand. But if I approach it from a different angle, does that necessarily mean that
Sorry, meant to comment on this as well.Abortion is a wedge issue, so I suppose it might be pointless to try to persuade people. But I do wonder–how vital would you say framing is in other issues?
Well, you’ll not get me on board arguing from conservative principles. Indeed, that “first principle perspective” is itself a frame. Of course, multiple frames are always in play, and the particular frames will vary by the publics involved and the texts that comprise those publics. The folks here, I think it’s safe to say, are feminists. I’m interested in pursuing rhetorical strategies that further feminist goals, and that establish feminist (and queer) values. Conservative frames will almost always be in opposition to that, and by arguing using such language, you’ll lose people like me.
Goffman argued that frames are “schemata of interpretation.” (1974: 21). They’re constituted by the relationships between ideas and language. Your “first principles” framing will work among certain publics but not others (like feminists).
(Way above I linked to three books. Check ‘em out, they’ll provide far more detailed explanations than this kind of space allows for.)
Frames aren’t some special thing. They’re always there. Goffman’s original work was titled “Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Reality.” (Goffman’s really the father of framing as a concept.) When I walk into an unfamiliar room, if I see things I can identify as “toilet”, “sink”, “shower” I’m able to understand it as a bathroom. that’s one of the things that made that particular scene in Borat so funny, and viscerally uncomfortable. The character didn’t have those conceptual schema, those frames we take for granted, and understood the “toilet” as a “wash basin.”
This is where the “hard” scientists get really fussy with us social scientists. Social reality is constituted via language. Facts do not speak for themselves. They need to be framed, to be placed in relationship to other conceptual phenomena.
Is alienating fencesitters an issue?
Define “fencesitters”. My mother is a Sicilian-American, Catholic (as in goes to Mass every week, lights candles, says novenas, has statuary and a healthy supply of holy water around the house, talks to saints, etc.), fire-breathing Democrat (as in Senators Durbin and Obama probably know her by name as often as she writes, which is only slightly less often than she writes emails—from rants, to treatises, to requests for support of some left-leaning group or cause—to all of us family members who are copasetic, which is just about all of us). Her version of politics could probably be most accurately described as “old left”, or “old labor” or “New Deal Democrat”. And yes, she will say that abortion is regrettable, and a necessary evil. And some here might assume her emphasis on “evil.”
But that’s not where she puts the emphasis. Her emphasis is on “necessary.” She isn’t a fencesitter, and would loudly argue the opposite. She may have an outlook different from mainstream feminists, and perhaps that outlook is different because of her divergent background. But.
She was also a nurse in one of Chicago’s large hospitals before legalized abortion. She has a visceral memory of what the alternative is. That’s critical, and shouldn’t be so easily dismissed.
Now, the legality of abortion isn’t necessarily a complex issue. People are complex, and abortion is automatically conflated with so many other issues, topics, controversies that are intimately tied into one’s identity. Whatever else abortion is, it’s fucking personal—especially for those of us who have the potential of having our own feet up in the stirrups.
For those of us interested in keeping abortion legal, we don’t need to stress over the framing—we already have the tools to knock the opposition down. We need to emphasize their hypocrisy and lack of consistency. We’re the “both/and” folks—we want abortion to remain safe and legal, and we also want to reduce the number of abortions by increasing the availabiliity of birth control and comprehensive sex education for children. We want affordable housing, universal health care, job security, quality schools and child care—which will also have an effect on reducing the number of abortions. WE are the real pro-life people, because we want a good quality of life for every person (even women). We are consistent.
And we can still acknowledge that it’s ok for people to have ambivalence towards abortion. Without thinking of them as potential turncoats, or “fencesitters”. I’m ambivalent about abortion, because all of the women I know who’ve had abortions did not regret the abortion itself, but regretted that they didn’t really have any other real option. It was a type of “sophie’s choice” for them—and it was all about the economics. If maternity leave or affordable childcare had been an option, they would have chosen having a child instead. For me, abortion is a necessary survival tool in the face of a generally hostile society—a society that in fact doesn’t welcome all of our children, or even necessarily any of them. A society that persists in thinking of women as lesser beings.
Whether, or how ambivalent your feelings about abortion is based on your location—your history, identity (ies). Like anything else, it doesn’t always impact us the same way. Our enemies know this, and make the most of our inherent divisions. They pick specific words and phrases keyed to evoke certain images. Think of “abortion on demand.” We know that never existed. That doesn’t matter. The key word is “demand”. What image is that intended to conjure? When I hear the word “demand”, I think of a loud, obnoxious, belligerent asshole. A person with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. And even though I know better—know that the word doesn’t necessarily lead to any of those images my mind lands on—those images remain. I’ve been enculturated to think of “demand”-ing as a bad thing. My mind has been colonized, and I have to consciously fight against that.
I think language can be of far greater importance to us than the landscape—or framing—in which our battles take place. There’s a reason feminists in the sixties took on exclusionary language, and replaced words like “chairman” with “chairperson”, “fireman” with “firefighter”. Changing the language changes the imagery. That’s why I’d be wary of using phrases like “abortion is a social good.” Like it or not, that phrase is divisive. Comparing a termination of pregnancy to removal of a cancerous tumor is divisive. (I’d say it’s more like removing a gangrenous leg. No one misses a cancerous tumor, but a whole helluva lot of folks would miss a formerly healthy leg—or wish there had been another option of treatment, which sometimes there isn’t.)
We need to change the language—get away from the use of “pro-choice” and start using the more inclusive reproductive justice (which necessarily includes the right of bodily autonomy for women). “Choice” carries an a-la-carte image, as if our “choices” aren’t of serious import, and nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to pregnancy. It also assumes that all of us have the same ability to exercise “choice” when nothing could be further from the truth.
J, I am not whining, I was just stating fact. Show me where I was obligated to fight your fight? I don’t recall you ever supporting me on anything.
My point today is that it is not fair or accurate to lump people together or just assume. Take it for what its worth.
J, it is also not accurate that Dana and ‘da gang were/are horrifyingly against all those things as you stated. That is a bit absolute I would think. Then again it is not my job to fight their fight either.
BTW, the Lancet study is full of holes and that is absolutely true!
Anyway, cheers J.
Well chalk me up as an ‘on the fence’ whatever-you-call-it…
I’m for ‘limits’… I’m for sanity. I’m for reason.
An abortion is the symptom of a failure somewhere… It is a symptom of something that went wrong. (or at least SHOULD be, IMO.)
The woman gets pregnant and is over joyed. Comes home, tells husband/partner “Honey, we’re pregnant”. Said person goes ______. Ooops. Bad timing…
The woman gets pregnant after being raped. Ooops. Ick!
The woman gets pregnant. Is overjoyed. Partner/husband is too, at first. Finds lipstick on dipstick. Divorce. Ooops.
The woman gets pregnant. Tests show almond shaped eyes, a tail, growing ESP powers. Ooops.
The woman gets pregnant. Tests show encephalitis/Downs/etc. Ooops.
The woman gets pregnant via fertility treatments. She’s carrying too many… Ooops.
Birth control fails, parents lose jobs… Ooops…
I have a problem with: Woman gets pregnant. 8th time. 8th abortion. Uh, and how many times do you have to hit your head with a 2x4 to know that it’s not productive?
I guess that I’m _____ enough to think that MY tax dollars funding that 8th abortion for a dipshit that doesn’t know what birth control is would be better spent on x feet of road or food for a starving family or x number of trees planted… I’ve got a friend in healthcare and he ranted about this one night… One woman, evidently, came in who had 6 abortions, all courtesy of the state… He broached the subject of birth control and the answer was that (and he doesn’t know, nor I if it’s true) “it’s easier than asking her many ‘boy friends’ to use birth control’. His point was that she, obviously lower class and terminally stupid, should be sterilized by the state rather than being able to keep getting pregnant…
I guess his attitude leaked to me…
I totally understand the ‘control over your bodies’ idea for women. I agree with it. I really do. I feel that the idea of using abortion for your ONLY source of birth control is something I can’t get my head around… Avoid the pain (but I am a male of the species and my wife says that if men got pregnant humans would have died out long ago.)
Maybe I’m too old fashioned… Maybe it’s my conservative streak… I think in *some* cases, abortion is wrong… I could date a woman that had one. I could date a woman with a kid. I don’t think that’s an issue with me. I’d have a problem if the woman of my dreams bounded up to me and confessed that she had n+5 abortions…
Is it that hard to understand my point? I can’t get the idea of how ‘have as many abortions as you want’ will play to the masses (ie: Kyle)…
Whatever… Obviously I have a different opinion then most here… Sorry… I’ll try to stay out of future threads…
Damn it, the malfunctioning internets ate my brilliantly well-reasoned reply. So instead some snark.
I’m against those.
I relished in insanity when I was younger… I considered ’sanity’ a curse, a slam, putdown… I hated being called ‘normal’
I thought that it didn’t matter… Now I realise that I was truely insane for believing that…
I still hate being called ‘normal’. ‘Normal’? Compared to what exactly?
Shorter Pinky:
I’m for women controlling their own bodies as long as I can determine how much control they have.
MAJeff: Whatever… I never said that… Do I smell bananas?
You can’t escape framing anywhere…
Quite an asshole move on Blunt’s part… Symbolism? HELL YES! Christ, what a fucktard…
La Lubu,
Thank you.
Give your mom a hug from me, and yourself too… Thank you… ‘Coat hanger abortions’ still happen, sadly… Even overdoses of drugs, beatings of the belly…
My friend had a teenage girl in a few years back who though taking a bottle of Tylenol would cause her to abort. In a manner if speaking, it would… Abort her life. She was afraid of telling her parents that she was pregnant. Now she has to tell them that she is dying. She ‘aborted her liver’…
I feel sick… The pain…
I agree with La Lubu:
The people I know who’ve had abortions did it because they couldn’t afford another child. They already had a child or children and simply couldn’t afford to feed another mouth. I don;t know anyone who had an abortion for their first pregnancy. Nor could they afford to lose their jobs when their bellies got too big to work or just too big for the boss to keep them around. Some of the them even think abortion is morally wrong. They are pro-choice, but believe that abortion is wrong.
There are tons of people like them.
ok, there’s something I’m seriously not getting here. IF someone is pro-choice and thinks abortion is wrong, does the latter have an impact on the former? I imagine that there are things that I, personally, think are wrong, but I don’t think that policy should be made around my foibles.
Is it that they want that “abortion is wrong” idea validated? I don’t think that the making of policy or law is based on feeling ok about something, it’s based on principles. This is why autonomy is the basis for abortion rights, not whether or not someone deserves one or gets one under some approved condition like rape or inability to afford another child.
And if we’re falling back on that tired “my tax dollars!” argument, it simply points up the need for universal coverage.
tmi department: I had one abortion, it was my one and only pregnancy.
Pinky: Whatever… I never said that…
Yes, you did, in your comment at Jul 11th, 2007 at 8:55 pm.
Pgwarner: Show me where I was obligated to fight your fight?
If you’re claiming you also oppose Dana’s and Sharon’s and Eric’s views on health care, access to contraception, etc, which was your initial point on this thread, then it’s your fight as much as mine. But if it’s not your fight, but only mine, then what on earth were you whining about?
Agreed…
Ok, I’ll say it: I am ‘uncomfortable’ with abortion…
If that makes me a hypocrite, being a quite liberal guy, then, well, so be it…
IF someone is pro-choice and thinks abortion is wrong, does the latter have an impact on the former?
Not necessarily. Most folks who will tell you that abortion is wrong, do NOT want to see restrictions put on a woman’s ability to get an abortion, because they know, usually experientially, how restrictions work out in real life for people without clout.
And that’s key. We need to be stressing the intimacy of the decision; the fact that this decision will impact this woman, her family (if she has one), and the resulting child if she is forced to carry to term. And that all the extraneous folks who want to stick a hand in this intimate decision, have no obligations, and will take on no obligations to any of the people impacted in that decision. They only offer the message, “Screw you! That’s your problem.”
We need to stress the numbers of women getting abortions in the U.S. This isn’t “those women”. These are our sisters, mothers, aunts, friends, co-workers. It’s a rare cross-section of the U.S. female public.
We need to stress that abortion is and will remain more popular than adoption, because abortion is either non-emotionally painful, or less emotionally painful to the woman having one, than giving up a child at birth. Our opponents stress adoption as a happy alternative. Happy for whom? Not for the birth mother.
And we need to recognize—and stress—that the abortion rate is going down not just because of fewer abortion clinics (although yes, that does play a part), but because of greater opportunities for women in education and the economy. The right to legal abortion was originally fought and won against a landscape that still allowed women to be kicked out of school if they were pregnant, fired from their jobs (even if they were married). Other feminist gains made it easier for women to choose motherhood, rather than just dealing with its inevitability. And that is perfectly consistent within our worldview. We want women to have clout. We don’t set limits upon the equality of women. Our opponents do, and we need to counter that by pointing out their actions every damn step of the way. I think that’s something Amanda does quite well on this blog.
Ambivalence toward abortion doesn’t stem from some core belief that motherhood is the true calling of women. It comes from the visceral knowledge that most of us are devalued. And motherhood, and childhood, is especially devalued in this society. Women, including myself, who have some ambivalance toward abortion don’t believe that a fetus is a full-blown human being, but we recognize the possibility. Possibility. And so goddam many of us have had so many of our possibilities in life shot down one way or another, the termination of a pregnancy is just another opportunity lost. Our opposition makes the most of this conflation of the fetus with this general devaluing of women and children.
Now, clearly not everyone feels this way. But like I said before, we’re not all located in the same place. The language of our opponents is classic “divide and conquer”. Like the word “demand”, specifically chosen to resonate with women who don’t feel they have the right to demand a damn thing in their own lives. Women who know in their bones their demands, their desires—mostly unspoken—will go unmet.
To recap: consistency, intimacy, equality, and a full range of opportunities. That’s our message. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
La Lubu: *applause*
Pinky: I am ‘uncomfortable’ with abortion…
Fine: don’t have one, then. That solves that problem.
La Lubu: *more applause*
Which is why we must remind people that to truly be “pro-choice” means a lot more that just to support legalized abortion.
MAJeff, thanks for the links. More reading for me (if there is a downside to dating someone who owns (well, owned) a bookstore it’s that there is a neverending three-foot stack of galleys on the nightstand)…
Anyway, it’s regrettable to me that you feel that way. Seriously. It seems to mean that we can agree in principle and yet “not agree” on potential bridge issues. For instance: I can argue against the wage gap by pointing out that employers claim to be offering men and women the same, yet “different” benefits package–they say women get pregnant so they deserve less money and more medical. But this violates (supposed) conservative principles like “being able to choose your compensation package” and “being able to do with your money what you want.”
If we were sitting next to each other in the Senate we’d both vote for a bill that addressed the wage gap; so on what exactly do we disagree, and how does it profit us?
And for the record, La Lubu is my latest internet crush.
The fact is that the article’s findings haven’t ever been refuted by any scientific or statistical proof. The deaths are in excess of what would have been expected had there been no occupation. That does not mean that the occupying forces are the direct killers. This shouldn’t have to be repeated. Although I wouldn’t have called your response gleeful, I did think it was beside the point.
The numbers in the Lancet study are suspect because there is NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE (i.e., graves) backing them up. This was the reason I and others asked Jes repeatedly to provide some link to photos or other data backing up the 655k figure. I provided pictures of actual Iraqi casualties and that’s when Jes went off the deep end. Which is nothing more than I expected, to be honest.
You had plenty of opportunity to say you were for all those things while Dana, Sharon, Eric, and the rest of the anti-choice gang were vociferously arguing that these things were all horrifyingly wrong. And somehow, you never found time to do so. To whine now that I should have noticed you were silent is pathetic.
Just because someone doesn’t choose to participate in your threadjacks at Dana’s site doesn’t mean they don’t support some issue of yours. And I don’t have a problem with “women’s pleasure.” I do have a problem with your “let’s lower the age of consent to 12 and it will solve teenage sex” argument. But at least you are at home here with people who will support your arguments.
J, I never said you and I share the same views. We most certainly do not. Pease do not confuse what I said with an apology, which is what you seem to be doing as I certainly do not owe you one. I was being polite in the way I was “framing� my remarks, I see now that was a mistake.
Here is the deal put simply; you lie when you characterize Dana and the rest of the “anti-choicers� are opposed to a woman’s pleasure, comprehensive sex education/free access to contraception/welfare support for parents and health coverage. That is not reframing, it amounts to misrepresenting material facts, otherwise known as lying.
You use words like “Uniformly, anti-choicers will then argue…� I gave myself as an example, and I asked you to show me where I ever did, so far you have declined. The truth, I believe, lies closer to “Uniformly, anti-choicers will then argue� positions on a woman’s pleasure, comprehensive sex education/free access to contraception/welfare support for parents and health coverage that do not coincide with J’s views and J reserves the right to twist them. I think a good example of where things start to diverge might be your advocacy of lowering the age of consent to 12.
The Lancet article you tried to “reframe� by saying , “(They)…were uniformly against the notion that the Iraq war was a bad thing because it had killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. “Pro-life� is such a misnomer for these people.)�, is another example of a misrepresentation of a material fact, a lie. It does not follow that taking issue with how the Lancet study was done makes a person “against the notion that the Iraq war was a bad thing because it had killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.�. I take issue with the report, please show me where I ever indicated the deaths of innocent Iraqis was anything other than, to use your term, “bad�?
BTW, it is partially true “…that in the US a woman on a low income will not be helped by Medicaid to get a legal, safe, and relatively low-cost abortion if she wants one - but if something goes horribly wrong with an illegal abortion, then Medicaid has to cover the thousand$ that the emergency medical/surgical support will cost.� In Colorado a pregnant woman’s health (pre-natal also) and even dental care is covered during her pregnancy, and the baby’s coverage continues after birth. Of course, it is not good that the mother’s health care is not continued after birth. Funny, I do “actively support� and work at getting that policy changed. You mention an “illegal abortion� in your comment? It is not illegal for anyone on Medicaid to get an abortion, is it? Nino has not got that far yet, has he?
I realize in the end it is only a matter of degrees with you. That all this buys me is possibly being a semi-shit instead of a total shit. In the future just get a smaller brush that makes finer lines. The beauty is in the details.
Just stop the lies. It is very right and proper to reframe an argument so the opposition does not hijack the truth, don’t ya think?
I am a marketer–I work for a NYC ad agency. Quick delurk here, ‘cause I’m at work.
Amanda is exactly and powerfully correct. We are going up against a marketing machine–one that’s been extremely well-funded and has had the top marketer’s minds at its service for over thirty years. So, yes, we have to do what works. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Good people can use good marketing to accomplish good things. It’s simply effective communication.
Amanda, if you have time, you might want to read Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion.” It’s a great one.
Another book that’s useful is Seth Godin’s “All Marketers Are Liars,” although his point there is so simple I can tell it to you now: yes, we have to communicate in narratives–we have to tell people stories, but we also have to tell people the stories they’re already telling themselves (which ties back in with Lakoff).
Amanda, you’re doing great work, you’re tremendously smart and strong. Keep it up.
PG Warner: That all this buys me is possibly being a semi-shit instead of a total shit.
You take yourself more seriously than I’m able to, after this performance.
Is that all you have J?
Is that all you have J?
*shrug* You’re an extremely silly and arrogant person, to come over here and complain that I didn’t single you out, personally, by name, when I referenced the misogynistic anti-choicers who post regularly on Dana’s blog.
Petey: And for the record, La Lubu is my latest internet crush.
Get in line!
wayward; Which is why we must remind people that to truly be “pro-choice� means a lot more that just to support legalized abortion.
Exactly. Being pro-choice means opening up as many options as possible to women: being “pro-life” means forcing women to do what you want them to do, against their will.
Well J, I did not come over to complain that you did not “single me out”. I came over to say you are a liar and you misrepresent the views of others (not just me). I have said it politely, I have said it directly.
For ease of reference: Pgwarner’s first comment on this thread, a lengthy complaint that I didn’t single him out but included him with all the other misogynist anti-choicers who blog with Dana.
Fine J, have it your way, you win, I whined and groveled. Judging by appearances so far, you and I are the only ones who care at all. I reaffirm what I said originally (what you linked to) and it can stand alone.
I’ll say it again, Jesugislac, do you think you might be painting with too broad of a brush? You and I have had our tussles and some of your advocating tactics I find maddening as you know. I am quite sure my sarcasm has grated you, but does that justify me being painted as insensitive and heartless?
I guess you think your brush is fine, and I am heartless are cruel. Cool, I can live with that.
I do not have a problem with you thinking I am a “misogynist anti-choicer”, truly I don’t. I just don’t think you should lie about me or anyone else in reaching and relaying that conclusion.
Oh, and what is the problem with me coming on here and saying this, am I not allowed? There was a trackback or something on Dana’s blog and I just followed it. If I am not welcome that would be fine too. I will say that this two-way between you and me is definitely not what this thread is about and I will honor that.
pgwarner: Judging by appearances so far, you and I are the only ones who care at all.
I think you’re the only one who actually cares. I’m just having fun.
I’ll say it again, Jesugislac, do you think you might be painting with too broad of a brush? You and I have had our tussles and some of your advocating tactics I find maddening as you know. I am quite sure my sarcasm has grated you, but does that justify me being painted as insensitive and heartless?
Bwahahah!
Oh dear God, I think my head just fell off laughing.
Why does God never give wingnuts a sense of perspective into their own actions? At least I know I’m an asshole much of the time.
While I’d never have let you get me to leave a blog I actually wanted to spend time on, either, PiaTor, another reason why I’m glad to leave Common Sense Political Thought behind me is that you think it’s fun to call me a liar in an environment where you know the right-wingers I’m arguing with will enthusiastically agree with you. You were publicly embarrassed by being called out as a rape apologist troll on Pandagon and on my journal: you cope by pretending I’m a liar: and on Dana’s blog you found the right-wing, conservative audience of your dreams. Enjoy it, troll.
You were publicly embarrassed by being called out as a rape apologist troll on Pandagon and on my journal: you cope by pretending I’m a liar: and on Dana’s blog you found the right-wing, conservative audience of your dreams. Enjoy it, troll.
Uh-huh. I’m really just sucking up to Sharon and the rest of the mouth-breathers on Dana’s site when I laugh at you because, you know, the world revolves around you and your fantasies….
As always, Pinocchio, your inability to read for content and your tendency to jump in the deep end with both feet based on that lack of understanding is highly amusing. I believe you’ll find anybody with a sense of proportion is quite capable of mocking the hysteria of excitable members of the left-wing at the same time they’re dueling with wingnuts - in your particular case, it’s like teasing one of those yappy lapdogs.
But I am disappointed you left, since you made a good foil for the wingnut idiocies when you weren’t busy trying to tell people what they had themselves written. Do you intend to keep it up on some other wingnut site, or have you retired with your tail between your legs for good?
The OpenLeft diarist is at it again, and just as clueless as ever.
Shit, Americablog and Craiglist are on their blogroll, but not Pandagon or CultureKitchen or Shakes or Feministe or other feiminist sites. Nice to see where feminists are located in the “left” blogosphere led by that whole Bowers/Kos sphere of reality.
PG,
You missed the point of Jes’s link. Like the toddler who throws a screaming fit because nobody notices his/her temper tantrum, Jes linked back to CSPT in an attempt to get MORE attention from the people it supposedly “walked away from.” The truth, of course, is that Jes had lost every argument, both at my own site and at Dana’s, because it chose to lie and mischaracterize other people’s positions rather than engage the topic of each post. And, since it lost at these other sites, it came to a more friendly venue to continue lying about the arguments made (mine specifically, in this instance).
I had assumed Jes would leave soon anyway, since its arguments had become so predictable and unhinged. Let’s face it, when you are still arguing about the 2000 election and whether Valerie Plame was covert or not on nearly every thread, you’ve sort of run out of steam as a troll. Jes just isn’t creative enough to keep it going.
Notice that Jes was never banned from either my site nor Dana’s. It could continue participating in discussions if it chose (albeit, with a restriction on the lying bit on my own site). Instead, it chose to run away and continue lying about people’s motivations on a more accepting site. Shameless.
Sharon, next to you Pinocchio looks like Mother Theresa. I’m amused by her; I despise you.
PiaTor, next to you Sharon looks like a poisonous fruitcake: but you look like a piece of shit.
Sharon hasn’t got the brains to be anything but a little Republican fruitcake soaked in rummy anti-fascism, covered in poisoned marzipan.
For you, being a rape apologist troll was a choice. I’m amused/annoyed by Sharon, once I’m no longer reading her idiocies on a regular basis: but you still disgust me.