One of the main axis of female oppression is reproduction. Glosswitch expounds on this theme, I recommend viewing the entire post here.
“The trouble with reproductive choice isn’t that most of us are in mourning over embryos gone to waste. It’s that, if you really believe in it, you have to give people with uteruses the final say in who gets to be born, 100% of the time. That’s quite a big deal; men know it’s a big deal. After all, it means admitting that some people with uteruses can do something that no one with a penis ever can. Patriarchy, in seeking to establish paternity as the central social relationship, cannot allow for this. Instead we are meant to think that babies develop not with the help of the flesh and blood of the person who gestates them, but solely from men’s seed or, in our more progressive age, partly of his seed, partly of hers. As Barbara Katz Rothman points out, in such a system “children […] might as well have grown in the backyard.” So why not treat women as mere potting soil?”
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
11 comments
December 5, 2015 at 5:18 am
john zande
Potting soil… That’s one I’m going to have to remember.
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December 5, 2015 at 8:47 am
carmen
I read the article about no abortion services being offered on PEI. (Next province ‘over’, to us). My understanding (our daughter is a Midwife) is that there are no doctors who will perform abortions on the island – which is what people mean when they talk about restrictions in a country where access to abortion SHOULD be available. :(
Sorry to write on this thread, Arb, but I didn’t seem to be able to comment on the original entry. (Maybe b/c I’m on my iPad, dunno….)
Good article by Glosswitch, btw…
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December 5, 2015 at 9:07 am
The Arbourist
@carmen
Glosswitch has closed all of her articles to comments because of the stream of threats/harassment she experiences from entitled male dudes.
It is the price one unfortunately must pay when confronting patriarchy. :/
We are far ahead of the US when it comes to the reproductive rights of women, but, seeing the dismal state down there, it isn’t saying very much.
No worries, that is what the post is for, raising awareness and fomenting discussion. Looks like wins across the board to me. :)
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December 5, 2015 at 9:21 am
VR Kaine
“That’s quite a big deal; men know it’s a big deal.” Wow. Who’s this enlightened and apparently so clairvoyant person we’re supposed to be fawning over this month?
These authors (hypocritically) keep 1) assuming/pretending they know ‘how all men think’, 2) demanding to tell all men how they should think, and 3) keep making statements which indicate that they LOVE wallowing in loserism and victimhood. And as a result, once again, valid points from feminists get ruined by their rhetoric and once again lost on the very class they’re trying to convert. Slow. Golf. Clap. Well done, whomever this likely broke intellectual panhandler is.
I’m not talking about the cause here – that’s more than sound and more than justified. I’m targeting the rhetoric you praise all around it as well as the hypocrisy of it and I’m calling it not only loser-fodder, but a joke that as a result ends up in the feminist movement sounding like a bunch of hypocrites, thugs, and freaks similar to Occupy or Black Lives Matter. Once again a noble cause gets lost in a slew of loser rhetoric and ultimately falls upon deaf ears – even amongst women – whom this kind of rhetoric alienates as well.
Just my perception? Perhaps – but I doubt there’s anyone here who’s more for your cause while at the same time embedded amongst the populations you are trying to win over. More than that, I’m in the business of understanding how these populations think – both individually and collectively – *so that they can actually be influenced*. If there are any actual leaders in here then you’d know: you don’t appeal to leaders by whining or complaining, you don’t win or achieve anything by demanding ‘fairness’, and you certainly don’t win or achieve anything by telling the other side what they think and why. Isn’t this what you call ‘mansplaining’ on the other side, and isn’t this what you all say you hate when the other side does it? Does it win you over to ‘their’ side?
So I guess I don’t get the purpose of these types of articles. Looking for self-validating and agreement among those who already agree? Looking for new perspective on the issue? Looking to have a circle-jerk or a hug-out and not feel so alone in the world? Or just trying to feed the frustration that “if only people on the other side understood things from our acute intellectual perspective then we’d have our justice” kind of b.s. looking at lives some want but don’t have? To me those generalizations and hypocritical statements such as the “all men” ones presented above are just fodder for the liberal masses used to once again rally around some “big” cause – and then ultimately let their hypocrisy, loser-whining, and total lack of leadership alienate everyone but a fringe blogger minority – and in the end run yet another good cause right into the ground through an embrace of it.
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December 5, 2015 at 9:51 am
carmen
@vrcaine
The one point I’ll make from the screed above – the term ‘circle jerk’ (specifically confined to one sex) can be used as a verb and a NOUN.
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December 5, 2015 at 10:25 am
Mystro
@VR Kaine “What all men think”
This is an important point that you continually miss, and I think it’s a critical error that leads to everything else you said being wrong. So I just want to focus on that.
At no point did anyone say “This is what all men think” or “This is what all men should think”. Nothing even close was said, intended, insinuated, or even hinted at.
If you don’t agree with that last paragraph, I’ll explain in a moment, but at least consider, that if it is true, then your objections don’t make sense as they don’t address what’s actually being said.
If not speaking of the thoughts of every man on the planet, what then, do these posts refer to? Culture. Ingrained stories that tell us how things are and how we ought to deal with them.
Culture does not require that every mind must agree with it whole heartedly. If it did, culture could never adapt or survive. Indeed, cultures all have a narrative on what is, and how to handle, dissent.
Back to these posts, they focus, specifically, on a nasty bit of culture that tells us that women are inferior and that men ought to have all the power. This story has had a long history; many iterations and variations; and plenty of time to weave itself into many parts of the stories that culture tells us. Being wrapped up in everything, it is rather difficult to get rid of. Posts like these try to highlight exactly this situation, show how it is in our culture, how sneaky it can be, and how we are all influenced by the current of culture. Ultimately, the aim is to steer culture in a better direction, to a state where such destructive and unfair stories hold less and less sway.
Most of these posts are worded carefully. In this case it says, ” Patriarchy, in seeking to establish paternity as the central social relationship, cannot allow for this.” It does NOT say “Men…cannot allow for this”. It is worded that way exactly because it is trying to avoid confusion like the one you expressed.
Of course, one cannot guarantee great wording 100% of the time, but it would only take the smallest bit of charity and intellectual honesty to read posts like these as they are intended: a highlighting of a pervasive, yet stealthy problem in our culture that needs fixing.
TL;DR version – You’re making up and ranting against a position that isn’t being posited. Listen better if you want to engage in a more productive conversation.
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December 5, 2015 at 1:01 pm
syrbal-labrys
As my household became all adult, we made a new rule: “The person doing the job decides how to do it, when to do it, IF to do it.” That is an idea the religious right males might consider. They can decree what they like about reproduction as soon as they are the ones personally bearing the risk and the child!
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December 5, 2015 at 1:04 pm
The Arbourist
@syrbal
Sounds like what the idea of “personal responsibility” was like before the fundamentalists contaminated it.
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December 5, 2015 at 1:07 pm
syrbal-labrys
In neo-paganism, if there is any single idea that seems to cross multiple traditions, whether humanistic like me or theistic — it IS the idea of accepting personal responsibility. But then, patriarchal “values” DO tend to treat women like children incapable of decision making or responsibility claiming. As fucking IF…
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December 5, 2015 at 1:09 pm
The Arbourist
@Syrbal
As always, IBTP.
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December 6, 2015 at 5:36 am
Cindy
@vr Kaine
She is using “men” as a general term. I know plenty of pro choice men and I bet she does too.
She was making a general point about the politics of reproduction.
Chillax.
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