“Pregnant woman” is not an identity. It is a social reality. A pregnant woman’s ever-contracting rights – whether she can choose to end this pregnancy, whether she will risk imprisonment for drinking too much, whether she will lose her job, whether she will be murdered by her partner – can only be seen through the filter of her inferior social status: that of woman. She neither chooses nor identifies with this status and it matters that the restrictions it places on her and others be fully acknowledged. Hundreds of women died today because of the way in which pregnancy intersects with their political and social status as women. The term “pregnant people” denies them the specificity of their deaths and masks the cause.
What gender-neutral pregnancy campaigning has achieved is wholly negative, making it impossible to articulate why there exists a class of people who are not granted full sovereignty over what lies beneath their own skin. It has located the abortion debate (which should not be a debate at all) back where conservatives want it: on the status of the foetus, not that of the gravida. It has allowed the misogynist left to consolidate their definition of woman as “passive fantasy girl with tits” as opposed to “person with independent physical functions, emotions and needs.” Above all, it has created the illusion of an opt-out to being placed in the inferior sex class. Well, there isn’t, at least not until you can be bothered to challenge the fundamental idea that half the human race is inferior (oh, but that’s so much harder than messing about with words!).
13 comments
October 17, 2015 at 5:41 am
tildeb
Hundreds of women died today because of the way in which pregnancy intersects with their political and social status as women.
Although achieving equality rights is a vital matter in all spheres of human activity, the cause of maternal death according to the WHO report is almost entirely related (99%) to a lack of adequate access to medical care. Piggy-backing the lack of equality rights on this cause is a bit of a misrepresentation in that improving medical care would substantially reduce the rate of death without ever once addressing the very real concerns about a lack of equality rights and the deleterious effects produced by it. Although it looks convenient, this death rate is not a sound approach to supporting a very important rights issue.
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October 17, 2015 at 11:03 am
syrbal-labrys
It seems to me that if pregnancy is to be a thing that trumps all else in a woman’s life, it makes the right to choose abortion even more vital. It reminds me of what my former military son said about getting a job with the hazmat training he got while in the Army. “Mom, they can jail or fine you for the tiny mistakes – even if a lie told to you caused it; I will not work in those conditions – and that doesn’t even touch the actual physical hazards of the job!”
Sure sounds like modern pregnancy risks to me; all pregnant women get their lives subsumed in assumptions of guilt and culpability, so that “job” better be voluntary!
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October 17, 2015 at 11:19 am
The Arbourist
@tildeb
So women, because they happen to be women, are at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to receiving medical care – in general.
This is a systemic feature (women being the lowest of the low) and thus one would think that maternal death rates would be an important indicator of equality/status of women.
Access to healthcare is intrinsically linked to equality. When women are deemed important enough to spend medical resources on, equality follows. \
No?
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October 17, 2015 at 1:41 pm
roughseasinthemed
Women are fucked every way round. Get pregnant, higher risk of complications if you go for childbirth. Want an abortion? Can’t do that. Your body isn’t as important as a foetus. Bodily autonomy? Haha. Equal rights? Ha ha ha.
Do you have any role in this world apart from as a breeder?
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October 17, 2015 at 2:19 pm
The Arbourist
@RSITH
Well said. :) I was trying to skirt gently around the WPM assumptions being made.
Nothing like going up straight up the middle.
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October 17, 2015 at 2:30 pm
roughseasinthemed
Subtle isn’t my strong point …
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October 18, 2015 at 7:56 am
Muffy
The fact is, women *do* die from pregnancy, and it isn’t possible to predict or even eliminate risk.
Every pregnancy is fraught with risks and only the woman who is pregnant can decide what is best for her. Not strangers.
Oh, and in no other case do we force people to risk life and limb on behalf of another.
So kindly explain what makes fetuses so special that they get rights that no one else has?
Oh. And I was reading something the other day. Apparently “breastfeeding” erases trans men, and should be replaced with “chestfeeding”.
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October 18, 2015 at 8:03 am
The Arbourist
@Muffy
Your reading doesn’t seem to be doing much for your blood-pressure. :/
Transactivists are riding a wave right now it is before people have had a chance to analyse the convoluted nest of snakes that is ‘queer theory’ and the subset we all know and love ‘gender identity’.
Once it is understood that most of it is so much bullshite, things should calm down a bit.
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October 18, 2015 at 8:42 am
Muffy
@arb
Oppression Olympics. Every single abortion article that I take part in has at least one person stating that “men can get pregnant too”.
FYI, every trans man that I have met has been wonderful and gracious. It is their allies and many of the trans women who are *abusive*
It is the abusive behaviour that I can’t stand. But many think that it is justified, since ” most oppressed” is a license to act like a jerk.
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October 18, 2015 at 8:45 am
The Arbourist
Men centring debate on themselves? I’m completely shocked.
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October 18, 2015 at 10:34 am
Muffy
@arb
I don’t mind being inclusive. Pregnant person is fine by me. Like I said, my big issue is with aggressive people who claim oppression because the rest of us wont roll over and pretebd that biological sex is purely a social construct. And that lesbians are bigoted for not wanting to have sex with women who have penises.
Case in point:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2015/09/23/woman-is-a-gender-not-a-marker-of-fecundity/
Lily Cade @160
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October 19, 2015 at 8:05 pm
Muffy
http://aoifeschatology.com/2015/06/24/on-living-and-surviving-as-a-controversial-construction-full-text/#more-4864
“”In my view, ‘gender identity’ and its harmful effects are a political gambit of biological denialism. Because it is an act of aggression and a denial of consent to demand women accept ‘identity’ as the sole criteria for a queer ideology developed and enforced by males in opposition to female boundaries and dignities.
Identity politics has appropriated and conflated gender and sex dysmorphia, which are psychiatric conditions resultant from the perverse culture of Gender, in politically exploitative ways. Trans* is an unconscionably diffuse term, a badly incoherent form of identarianism that’s inflating exponentially. And the refusal to even hold a discussion is suggestively alarming. Is there no allowance for a critical pause? Are emotions our only theatrical affect of activism? Is this just about us? Who’s afraid of the Gender Crit? The toxic absurdity of ideological totalism in transland was cultic. It’s consistently hostile and nasty. And it’s nastiest to women (you know, what we mean when we coyly say “cis people”.)””””
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October 26, 2015 at 5:37 am
Cindy
https://mobile.twitter.com/AoifeLovesOwls/status/658403731420000256
Transwoman activist makes death threat
https://mobile.twitter.com/AoifeLovesOwls/status/658403731420000256
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