Abortion: not a right/left issue

I am writing this in response to an article posted on the New Statesman a few days back, penned by Mehdi Hasan. Clearly it has riled me enough to get me back to keyboard warrioring my way out of my reading list, so here goes.

On reflection, what I – and I would imagine many other feminists – found concerning was not the fact that Mehdi is a man, and of course I do not wish to preclude him or anyone else from having opinions on ‘women’s issues’ because of one bothersome little chromosome. No, rather it is this. He will never find himself in a position where he has to choose between giving birth to a child he doesn’t want, or terminating the development of that child. Nor will he ever have to read opinions like his being fired back at him about how awe-inspiring it is to see your child-to-be on an ultrasound scan; he will never be made to feel demonised for choosing what will keep his life from becoming materially, emotionally, psychologically worse.

In his piece, Mehdi cites a statistic from a recent YouGov poll showing that 49% of women support a restriction on the current abortion time limit. What I’d like to know is how many women from that 49% also come from comfortable backgrounds where access to family planning advice and contraception was adequate and unwanted pregnancies posed no threat to their or their families’ well-being. Respondents of this sort, like Mehdi himself, desperately need to take a step back from their own circumstances to see why abortion services are so important to people in much more disadvantaged and, dare I say it, vulnerable positions than them.

And that’s another thing – making out that the unborn are the weakest and most vulnerable in our society is a cheap shot at those on the left who do support the rights of women and girls and other wombed people and their families to do what’s best for them in their situation. What Mehdi seems to have overlooked in appealing to other lefties to stop questioning his own left-wing credentials is that we often tend to think of abortion as an option that needs to be there for people as part of the safety net that makes up a state looking out for its members’ best interests. Many of us do indeed feel a duty to make the world a better place for all the people in it. If you think that a foetus in the womb is of the same status as a person in the world then there is very, very much to be done to make damn sure that the world is one that’s worth coming into.

Even having said that, however, we are still faced with the fundamentals of the situation. That is, for Mehdi, the foetal right to life trumps the woman’s* choice not to bear children, and for me, the reverse. Even in a perfect world where all people had access to good family planning services and contraception, as well as all the other necessities involved in a decent basic standard of living, who is to say that it will never be the case that an expecting mother might have a drastic change of heart? I don’t usually think of myself as radically right-wing but if that’s what supporting a woman’s* right to have an abortion up to 24 weeks makes me then so be it. As much as the right want to deny it, it is possible to be leftwing and have a desire to protect and cultivate individual autonomy and agency; respect for the individual is crucial, as far as I’m concerned, to any credible left movement. I find it particularly uncharitable to paint so many well-intentioned lefty people as rampant individualists with no concern for the voiceless and vulnerable; even more so when he finds the audacity to brand me ‘selfish’ for having contemplated the possibility that had I somehow, due to some grave and unforeseen misfortune, fallen pregnant while still in full-time education, I would have decided to go ahead with an abortion. Perhaps we need better information about, and greater insight into who exactly is getting abortions, especially later on within the restriction period, but my hunch is that this group is not one populated exclusively by whimsy, frivolous women who, at the end of the first trimester decided that the responsibility of a child was really just too much – they couldn’t be bothered, so a little casual infanticide would do the trick.

Nor do I think for one second that it is entirely populated by career-driven wannabe CEOs who see their future chances of a career flushed down the pan with the first glimpse of kids on the horizon. It was this that infuriated me most; the charge that pro-choice feminists have betrayed their roots by heralding abortion as the modern woman’s way into a man’s world. What an insulting load of horse manure. The pro-choice movement is not one characterised by succumbing to “a system devised and run by men for male convenience” and quite rightly, too. It is about respecting the fact that people have to make decisions about the best possible way to live their lives, which, upsetting as it may be (more for us, I might add, than the developing foetus), may entail choosing to end a pregnancy. I don’t think it’s right or fair to characterise that ‘choice’ as ‘fetishised’ or ‘individualistic’; if we genuinely want to take abortion out of the left/right dichotomy, not pointing those fingers of blame would be a good first step.

1 Comment

by catwayland on 15 October, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged abortion, choice, feminism, leftism, pro-life

Posted by catwayland on 15 October, 2012

https://notesfromthevulvaground.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/abortion-not-a-rightleft-issue/

Analysing behaviour: structure-agency duality

I’m back! Sorry for the hiatus – exams and subsequent partying followed by inevitable illness are now mostly out of the way. So, today I am picking up on a thread from my Alternative Perspectives in Economics course, and contemplate how we think about choice and behaviour.

My starting point is the paradigmatic human agent in the mainstream study of economics. This agent is fully rational and individualistic: ‘he’ is a self-interested individual whose goals are entirely formed from what he believes to be what he wants for himself. By and large, economists assumes that what an agent wants is what an agent believes will furthest increase his utility, and also that which he perceives to be ‘best’ for himself. Finally, this agent is atomistic – his existence is entirely autonomous; there is nothing relating him to the world in which he functions. It may or may not surprise you to learn that these assumptions about human behaviour – instrumental rationality and methodological individualism – lie at the very heart of mainstream economic theory, and as such, they have some considerable impact on how forces operating in the economy view us as individuals (ever noticed targeted advertising on Facebook or Google, for example?)

However, I digress. This isn’t a rant about the implications of the assumption of consumer sovereignty or a radical critique of corporatist economies. What I’m more concerned with is how the behavioural assumptions outlined above play off against sentiments we often find in feminist discourse about how our behaviour is constructed by societal expectations.

It has long been noted amongst economists working in heterodox schools (i.e., not mainstream economics), such as the old institutionalist tradition that neoclassical economics is doing itself no favours by refusing to consider how individual behaviour may be influenced by forces external to the individual hirself. Some theorists have postulated an approach known as structure-agency duality (see for example, Jackson 2009) – this way of thinking about the determinants of human behaviour acknowledges the interdependency of (e.g., social) structures and institutions on the one hand, and individual human agency on the other, thus removing any ‘necessary’ conflict between the two. A common objection from the side of the individualists is that an overreliance on structure underdetermines agency: it robs us as human beings of the faculty to make meaningful autonomous decisions. The interdependency acknowledged by duality, however, diminishes the chances of allowing one or the other to dominate any analysis of behaviour – though indeed, it is as delicate a balancing act as ever not to allow either aspect to undermine the significance of the other.

From my perspective, it seems a matter of common sense that one ought to consider both structural influence and individual agency when analysing human behaviour and arguably this idea is often at the forefront of feminist thought. In almost every ‘feminist’ issue we come across, there is some conflicting interplay between agency and structural influence that must be deconstructed before any useful analysis can be made of the situation. It’s vital to at least attempt to distinguish between that which is driven by genuinely individual choice – if indeed there is such a thing – and that which is driven by social or economic circumstance, expectation, and so forth, whether one is looking at motherhood, prostitution or any other decision made as part as a woman’s life (or anyone else’s, for that matter).

Often, I believe, it will be the case that even when I claim that I do x because I alone chose to and because I alone wanted to, there will be other forces at play – such as whether I have been socialised in a culture that sees wanting x as acceptable if not esteemed but wanting y as deviant and therefore frowned upon. The problem with having to consider structure/agency duality is, of course, that concepts such as ‘choice’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘voluntariness’ become far less clear-cut when it comes to assessing the conditions under which decisions are made. This, however, is possibly a topic for another day.

Of Bricks and Beards

Yesterday the DM presented us with another delightful offering from the one and only Samantha Brick – you know, of ‘women hate me because I’m beautiful’ fame. Now, in no way am I setting out here to lambast Ms Brick for her appearance; that would be unkind, and also beside the point. What is deserving of further scrutiny is her claim that ‘some women ARE too ugly for TV’. So, there’s the bombshell. I’m not entirely sure why I expected anything less from the Mail’s editorial team, it seems to be an accepted fact that their sole mission in life is to make women look and feel stupid, fickle and worthless (anyone else taken a peak at the stories on Femail Today recently?) all the time. This, however, is a whole new level of in-your-face, ratings-and-viewings-driven misogyny, and I can’t decide whether Brick is stupid enough to believe what she’s saying, or greedy enough to write it anyway for the pay check.

Unsurprisingly, there is very little to substantiate the central claim that Professor Mary Beard, presenter of BBC 2’s Meet the Romans, is too ugly for television. No, she doesn’t appear to be wearing a great deal of make up. Yes, her hair flies untamed in the wind. And so what? We’re talking about one of the great classical civilisations here, not Extreme Make Over: Rome Edition. Nevertheless, the sad thrust of the article seems to be that women should not only expect to be judged by their appearances, but embrace it as the rightful order of things. Indeed, it is our womanly duty (as the DM hammers home time after time after time) to make sure we keep ourselves adequately spruced up the moment the fractures of age begin to show. And thanks so much, A.A. Gill, for having our backs on this one – as far as I can tell, his equally repugnant diatribe on the evils of intelligent, idiosyncratic women is behind a paywall but I’ll post something as and when I find it.

Anyway, three things jump out at me at this point. First of all, poor old SB seems to think that the way she sees the world somehow holds as a universal perspective for the rest of us. She got knocked back by a cynical, ratings-driven TV exec because her niche was already taken. So basically, she’s jealous that Prof Beard (amongst other excellent women presenters) gets a shot at the limelight when clearly it’s Sam that’s the real beauty here and therefore rightfully deserves her close-up. Do I even need to mention, after the last SamBo fiasco, how cutting that internalised misogyny really is? Brick is so utterly preoccupied with her own looks and how the rest of the world turns its gaze on her that she fails in the very basic yet significant human capacity of being able to say ‘good on you – I didn’t get what I wanted but I’m glad you’re doing okay. Let’s take this as a good example and a way to move forward.’ Clearly she’s too busy telling us how maligned she is for her ~~magnanimity~~ sorry, gorgeous good looks.

Second, how patronising is it of the author to suggest that a ‘clever’ woman like Mary Beard ought to know better than failing to undergo a makeover, and then criticise the BBC itself for not getting her shipshape for the series? Has it not occurred to Ms Brick that actually, when it comes to decent, informative and educational programming like Meet the Romans, it doesn’t matter an iota whether or not the presenter is a prowling sex kitten? Yes, viewing figures would probably be higher if the presenter was, say, Tulisa Contostavlos (number one on FHM’s Sexiest Women of 2012 list, as the DM helpfully informed me, ahead of Cheryl Cole and Rihanna, in case you were wondering), strutting around in a cute little two-piece, but I don’t really think that’s a good reason to get Tulisa Contostavlos to present Meet the Romans. Then again, on planet Samantha Brick, everything is about looks. Helpfully, she’s got her buddy A.A. Gill on board to remind us that men are such barbaric, club-wielding troglodytes that anyone trying to talk to them that isn’t a post-lobotomy Tulisa Contostavlos or one of her chums from FHM won’t be able to hold their attention or command their respect long enough to explain what an aqueduct is. And frankly, the suggestion that Professor Beard, for her intellect and idiosyncrasies, should be considered “this far from being the subject of a Channel 4 dating documentary” is such thinly veiled ableism, and in itself entirely reprehensible let alone the contention that her appearance is unfit for the small screen. Anyway, I digress. The sad truth is that for whatever reason, what’s going on between the ears is all but irrelevant. It’s all about what’s going on between the shoulders.

This brings me on to my final gripe. Why is it that what goes on between the ears of women, be they the Mary Beards or the Tulisa Contostavloses of the world, is considered less important than their onscreen sex appeal? I mean – in contrast with those great beauties we all know and love such as David Starkey or Simon Schama? No one would bemoan the sullying of our airwaves because of their failures to submit to the surgeon’s scalpel, and, I would contend, the reason for this is none other than the main: we as a society still fail to value most women by virtue of their intellect alone. Mary Beard is a rare beacon of sheer relief in that she hasn’t succumb to this inane obsession with looks, and if anything, we should bloody well applaud it.

‘The Experiment’

Over the last few months I’ve come across more and more women declaring their desire, if not their intention, to remain hirsute. Today, the Guardian picked up Emer O’Toole’s fantastic piece from the Vagenda mag on ‘the experiment’ – an eighteen-month trial of non-intervention in the realm of body hair.

I have a confession: I too am in the intermediate stage of ‘the experiment’. I haven’t so much as looked at a hot wax jar, epilator or razor (apart from my housemates’ SUPER-MAGIC-SEXY-UNDERARMS ones stacked on the bathroom windowsill) for the last seven months. And, I am glad to say, I have even garnered a convert or two along the way. That said, winter might (all contingent on the great British climate) be nearly over and the most commonly expressed sentiment I have come across is ‘of course I don’t bother in the winter but I can’t let the hairy beast be seen in that minute window of clement weather we of this nation call summer.’ And herein lies the dilemma. It is largely due to fear of public reprisal that my commitment to hairiness wavers.

Wearing a tanktop and shorts in the gym, I spend my entire workout anticipating raised eyebrows, gaping mouths and snide comments. Of course, none of these arise, and by the time I finish, I realise that the tomatoey hue of my cheeks is probably a greater cause for concern. During that brief patch of warm, sunny weather in March, I ventured out in shorts, bearing my hairy pins to the world. I don’t believe I even did so much as to turn a head. The crux of what I’m getting at here is that by and large, Jo Public isn’t going to turn round to you on the street and berate you for your pit kittens or chastise you for your foul, forest-like thighs (although your family/friends/partner(s) might, but, y’know, if they don’t want you to do what makes you happy, then the validity of their input is questionable). No, Jo Public is only going to shoot hir mouth off on the comments section of Comment is Free, and that’s the tragedy of the interwebz, ladies and gents.

Even so, the knowledge that in theory, your ‘experiment-turned-aesthetic-lifestyle-choice’ might ruffle a few feathers, so to speak, is in many ways an obstacle to the successful transition from temporary experiment to lifestyle choice. And yes, the concept of ‘choice’ suddenly appears awkward and immensely difficult to negotiate. That is why when feminists and other marginalised groups and power minorities talk about ‘oppression,’ it often involves implications of the sort such as ‘having one’s choices unreasonably curtailed in a manner not affecting the dominant social group.’ Just to labour the point, feeling like you have to choose to spend £xxx per year on a selection of friendly household brandname infantilisation products and trips to salons where you undergo ritual torture, it’s not really a choice.

I digress. The point is, there are significant psychological obstacles to the successful adoption of an anti-ritual when it comes to body hair. And there isn’t really an easy way to deal with these. My personal tactic has been to utilise the virtues (yes, they are virtues) of being frightfully stubborn and poking fun at myself wherever possible to relieve the tension you must all feel being sat next to a repulsively hairy woman. The second, as much as anything else, is really only the simple act of talking to people. Talking to family, friends, my work mates, my seminar group, anyone who’ll listen, or is unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity at the time. Normalise it. Get in there and do the self-deprecation before anyone else has the chance. Eventually, you will have argued with hundreds of people. And not only about body hair, but also about make-up, diets, body image, niqabs, why racist jokes aren’t okay, why rape jokes aren’t okay, why it’s not okay to call someone a ‘retard’ and whether women should drink from pint glasses. But that is a story for another day.

1 Comment

by catwayland on 2 May, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged arm pits, body hair, experiment, feminism, shaving

Posted by catwayland on 2 May, 2012

https://notesfromthevulvaground.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/the-experiment/

Ruminations on the self

Recently I’ve been reading up on the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy’s article, Feminist Perspectives on the Self.

In it, the author declares ‘Separatist practices relieve women of the burden of Otherness.’ For a little bit of context, this alludes to the idea that the act of creating a space in which women associate exclusively with other women who share their frustrations and concerns allows for the development of the ‘self’ away from the crush of the patriarchy. It provides an opportunity for the burden of isolation to be relieved, and this is something I can certainly relate to at a very personal level. When I first became involved with the little corner of the feminist movement I currently inhabit, I felt as if I’d come home, albeit to a home I’d never realised I had. Coming to realise and understand that I was not alone in my confusion, frustration and desire for change was not only immensely comforting, but motivating as well. Critically, it provided a sort of arena, or even a safe space, if you will, where I was able to test my boundaries, explore my own thoughts and exercise my cognitive powers without fear of reprisal or vitriol. Most importantly of all however was the opportunity to forge powerful friendships and foster a sense of camaraderie that I’ve not come across in many other spheres. Perhaps this is at least in part due to the fact that we are all very aware of what a marginal group we are.

What struck me about the article I mention above is the way we are able to trace the differentiation between notions of the masculine versus the feminine self. The masculine on the one hand has provided the paradigmatic rational agent – autonomous, decisive, forward-planning and self-interested, the model on which much of contemporary economics, for example, is centred on. Consequently, we see the erasure of the ‘feminine’ self, that which is ruled by emotion, spontaneous urges and a total lack of rationality. Even now, it is all too easy to dismiss the feminine as inferior, weaker, somehow a lesser ‘self’, but this entirely misses one of the key points the article reaches – that by systematically playing the masculine self card, we do an immense disservice to what I would call simply the other half of humanness. Think about mothers and other carers – because the idea of dependency is eradicated from the masculine, a vital and deeply meaningful part of what it means to be a social creature such as a human is lost. Similarly, when we consider the role of friendship and other social interaction, these are phenomena that exist in a wholly different realm to the Kantian moral or the rational economic agent.

One of the aspects I’ve found most engaging with regard to this topic is what appears to me to be the need for a more reconciliatory approach to the masculine/feminine dichotomy. The more people I meet over the course of my day-to-day life, the clearer it is that it’s simply not the case that men are (and should be, all the time) ‘masculine’ and that women are (and should be, all the time) ‘feminine.’ People are just as they are; each self is unique and irreducible to an essentialist idea of what masculine or feminine selves are like. I think this has some major implications for the way we think about what the myriad purposes of the multiple varieties of feminisms might be – and it’s certainly something that is beginning to emerge in the mainstream in a more pronounced way: when we talk about the uniqueness of each self and the importance of appreciating what has historically been viewed as an irreconcilable rift between the masculine and the feminine, we need to open up the opportunity for everyone to access the potentially disparate and heterogeneous aspects of their selves. In doing this, I believe it would be possible to open up feminism even more to people of different genders, paving the way for a productive and constructive dialogue not only about what it could mean to be a man or a woman, cis or trans, genderqueer or otherwise, but for what it means to be human and how to embrace the diversity of the self and put it to its very best use.

1 Comment

by catwayland on 22 April, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged feminism, gender roles, philosophy, the self

Posted by catwayland on 22 April, 2012

https://notesfromthevulvaground.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/ruminations-on-the-self/

Introductions

Recently it has been brought to my attention that I have yet to join the twenty-first century, and all attempts thus far to integrate myself into the world of social media have fallen somewhat flat. I tweet infrequently; my Facebook is more a glorified instant messenger than fertile ground for networking. Once upon a time I made myself a linkedin profile; I have little else to say on the subject.

So, enter my final attempt to carve out a corner of the interwebz for myself – final because this time I intend to achieve something in the vicinity of success (whatever that looks like). In the pie chart of my life, the two larger segments are invariably dedicated to mucking about with my friends and working for my degree (in that order, despite my best efforts). The third, I can safely say, for the last couple of years, has been knocking about with those infamous rabble-rousers of the Women’s Committee – my student union’s gender equality contingent. This month has marked the end of a deeply stressful but ultimately rewarding year as one of the Women’s Officers (you can find my wonderful co-officer, the one and only Nell Beecham, over here), the experience of which has in a pretty big way given me the kick up the backside I’d needed to get myself a blog and start haranguing the cyberpublic. My first steps into this can also be found at the fantastic new feminist startup, Shrillblog, and I have to give a much-deserved mention to Dominic Falcao and Amy Beecher for their drive and initiative in getting it off the ground.

With all this in mind, I’m feeling pretty excited to finally start writing stuff, and hopefully I’ll be aiming for a couple of posts a week. It’s not going to be ground-breaking stuff by any stretch of the imagination, but one of my principle goals is to incorporate some of the academic stuff I’ve been (and will be) working on. On this basis, I’d be thrilled to have any thoughts, feedback or criticism anyone cares to provide.

notes from the vulvaground

Abortion: not a right/left issue

Analysing behaviour: structure-agency duality

Of Bricks and Beards

‘The Experiment’

Ruminations on the self

Introductions

Recent Posts

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