This year’s Blog for Choice focus is “Trust Women,” which, coincidentally, was the title of a post I wrote last May. In that post, I wrote:
“When anti-choicers raise the spectre of a woman carrying a baby for several months and then casually deciding that, meh, she's just not into it, they're more than disingenuous. They're sexist. They're coming from a place of deep distrust of women's ability to make decisions. I've got news for you: any pregnant woman who simply doesn't want to have a child will schedule that abortion ASAP. If a woman's getting an abortion at 21 weeks, or 24 weeks, there are almost always other issues at play - tragic, heart-wrenching circumstances that are not remotely the business of the president, my Congressman, the guy from the pro-life Catholic group or anyone else.”
When anti-choice demonstrators outside clinics yell at arriving patients that their children will look like them, they’re distrusting women. When lawmakers pass legislation requiring a woman wanting abortion to look at a sonogram, they’re distrusting women.
But here’s the kicker.
They don’t trust women who DO make the choice to have children, either.
Those of you out there who are mothers – how many times has someone (family member, random person at church, perfect stranger at the grocery store, etc.) critiqued the choices you’ve made relating to your pregnancy, your childbirth and your child-rearing? How many times has this “advice” made you feel like nothing you’re doing is right, and that you’re going to horribly scar your child for life?
Your choice to have natural childbirth is wrong. Having a C-section is wrong. Buying your two-year-old French fries is wrong. Feeding the same child an organic diet is wrong, too. You let your child watch too much TV, or not enough. Homeschooling is bad. Public schools are bad. You don’t have enough kids. You have too many kids. Etc., etc.
It may take a different form, but it all comes from the same place: this idea we still have in our culture that women are public property and so our choices are up for public debate. They most certainly are NOT.
Whether or not you identify as feminist, this is a feminist issue because it disproportionally affects women. Men certainly suffer from patriarchy-inspired peer pressure, but when was the last time you read about a father getting arrested for feeding his kid in public? A male former Cosmopolitan centerfold got elected to the US Senate this week, while Sarah Palin still gets told to get back in the kitchen.
This will only stop when women collectively stand up and tell the Greek Chorus of Ur Doin it Rong to mind its own damned business. And that will only happen when we stop being good little girls and give up the illusion that everything will be okay as long as we go along with the status quo.
Stop feeding the beast. It won’t be easy, because there are multiple billion-dollar industries devoted to convincing women that everything about us needs fixing, from our hair to the color of our genitals. It means that we have to stop tearing one another down, and that we have to shake the mortal fear of hearing ourselves called “bitch.”
Ultimately, if we want others to trust us, we have to start trusting one another. Most of all, we have to start trusting ourselves.
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