College Feminists Connect!

Toward Feminist Accountability

    As I shared in a previous post, I have been reading Colonize This! with fervor and enthusiasm for a couple of weeks now.  In my WGSS Senior Seminar, we have discussed extensively the complications of reading this text as a white-identified person; I am not the intended audience as outlined in the essays, nor as defined in most women of color feminisms.  However, I struggle with my alienation from these texts, because on emotionally real and visceral levels, they resonate with day-to-day experiences I have had as a feminist, as a student, and as a woman.  It is too simple to merely highlight difference or draw a line where my experiences end as a white woman and where theirs begin as women of color; it is also too simple to take advantage of our similarities and shared knowledges as women dealing with similar gender-based oppressions.  My professor, Sonita Sarker, assured us that this messy space between camaraderie and respectful distance is okay – and she urged us to consider that while the text may be provoking our acknowledgment of white privilege, it also might be provoking us to engage in a dialogue about whiteness as it is racialized (not as a neutral default or non-race). 

            So this is my attempt to speak from my position as a white, middle-class, woman, who has to negotiate the everyday experience of these identities while also practicing a feminist perspective.  I want to hold myself accountable by acknowledging my privilege, but I don’t want to assume that my experiences of oppression are therefore invalid.  I want to live in the mess of what it means to be a feminist, who cannot always combat sexist or racist encounters with a cool wit or charisma; who cannot always muster the courage or energy to confront people who have hurt me; who is not an expert, but a careful listener and deeply sensitive being; who makes mistakes, that I can only promise to try and learn from.

     Every week for the past eight months, I have taken the hour-long commute on the 21 westbound bus from Saint Paul to my boyfriend’s house in South Minneapolis.  Most of the time (maybe sixty-percent of the time, when it’s not negative blank degrees outside), I genuinely enjoy the unique solitude I find on the bus, surrounded by strangers and a self-consciousness that feels safe to explore in this setting.  I find myself thinking more about my class and race privilege on the bus than I do in school sometimes, and more about how I can articulate my feminism in a way that can materialize in real-life benefits for people other than myself.  Which sometimes makes getting off the bus, at a stop that is a ten-minute walk from my boyfriend’s home, a rough transition into the depressing realities of my position as a woman.  And this is where I hesitate to say, “as a white woman,” but where I NEED to in order to understand how the racialization and sexualization of my body socially construct my identity – via both privilege and discrimination.

    I have been catcalled or sexually harassed walking down the street more times than are worth counting; this is not something specific to me, but to all women (street/online harassment are not the focus of my musings here, but there is an abundance of scholarship and personal writings about this issue out there that I encourage everyone to explore).  Usually, my tactic for surviving these situations with as much dignity as possible is pure denial; I look ahead, keep a straight face and a quick stride.  But some of the most layered, twisted, and confusing harassment I have experienced is from Black men in South Minneapolis, who call me out on my whiteness while degrading and mocking my sex.

PBS Documentary "Makers: Women Who Make America" Thoughts and Criticism

I finally got to watch PBS' new documentary charting the women's rights movement in America (thanks PBS for posting the entire 3 hour film online for us to enjoy here).  As much as I (someone majoring in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) or anyone else may know about the eruption of second wave feminism in the 1960s and 70s, it is still powerful to reflect on these histories.  The film does a great job of featuring countless interviews with men and women, including people involved in organizations that countered feminist movements (pro-life activists, anti-ERA activists, etc).  It is impossible to feature every aspect of a social movement, especially one as far-reaching and revolutionary as the women's liberation movement - which affected men, women, children, the economy, popular culture, law, education policies, labor rights, etc.  However, I was a bit disappointed with the gentle highlight of women of color and their response to the second wave, which I think could have been better handled; especially considering that these fierce conversations between women of color feminisms and tradtionally white, middle-class feminism are what brought on the third wave.  As many others have recognized, I also wish that the film had ventured into the late 1990s up until now, with young feminist movements and their utilization of the Internet (hello!).  Perhaps they will continue making segments of "Makers," and continue this story, but for now, here are some articles and reviews that I find critical to the film:

Leave the NFL Alone; Gun Control Will End Domestic Violence, Just Be Careful Dumping Your Boyfriend

On December 1st, Jovan Belcher shot and killed his long-time girlfriend and mother to his child, Kasandra Perkins, before shooting himself. 

While it is not clear the exact catalyst for this murder, apparently the couple's relationships was strained and they had been arguing frequently. It would be unsurprising to discover Perkins had attempted to initiate a break-up before Belcher had shot her. Eight times. Clearly there was a lot of anger involved in this situation, and according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, women who leave their batterers are at a 75% greater risk of severe injury or death. Belcher's mother, who was living with them, reported hearing him say "You can't talk to me like that" shortly before shooting Perkins. The couple had also been getting counseling.

NBC's Bob Costas' response to the tragedy was a call to action for gun control. This is a huge problem. The response of the media blames weapons and excuses domestic violence as the root of the problem. Remember the old adage 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people'? True story. 

Anything can be a deadly weapon, including a person's bare hands. Gun control will not eliminate domestic violence or murders, these horrible things will still happen via different means. The root of the problem needs to be addressed, and the root is domestic violence. 

Approximately 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence during there lifetime. Domestic Violence results in nearly 2 million injuries and 1300 deaths in the US every year. 31% of all women murdered are killed by a current or previous intimate partner.

It is extremely unfortunate that Costas didn't take advantage of such a prime opportunity to address the dangers and unacceptability of domestic violence. He had millions of viewers tuned in, a large percentage of which who would likely not otherwise be reached by anti-violence campaigns. 

The NFL itself may be an important target area for addressing domestic violence. While many NFL coaches claim to uphold certain standards for their players, ultimately those players are hired who will be the best athletes, not the best role models. 21 of 32 NFL teams, at one point this year, had employed at least one player with a domestic violence or sexual assault charge on his record.

Well Done, Sister Suffragette!

It's Election Day! You know what that means, get out there and vote!

No matter who you are, there is a lot of history in how you came to get your right to vote today. Somebody at some point in time stood up for your rights, said "enough is enough" and fought for your opportunity to have a say in the governing of your country. Whether it was the men fighting in the revolutionary war to form a democracy (instead of a monarchy), the many people who stood up (or sat down) in protest during the civil rights movement to insure that men of all races could vote, or the women suffragettes marching for the right for women to vote---a lot of hard work and determination went into your ability to be involved on this day.

One of my favorite movies as a child was Mary Poppins, and one of my earliest introductions to feminism. I didn't know at the time, but I know recognize that it was the strong female role models that I loved this film for. Granted, as with most films, it is certainly not perfect in its representation of women, but it does illustrate an important time in history, that is often forgotten: the Women's Suffrage movement.

                        

"Cast off the shackles of yesterday!
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters' daughters will adore us
And they'll sign in grateful chorus
"Well done, Sister Suffragette!"

As women, let us not forget the women who fought long and hard to give us the right to vote today. 

And no matter who you are, many people fought to give you your right to vote today.

Make sure you use it!

~Meghan

On Twitter Trend: #SorryFeminists

Some of you who are more avid Tweeters than I may already be aware of a new trend (literally, it's trending on Twitter) called #SorryFeminists.

I don't know about you, but I find this trend VERY confusing. There appear to be three conditions in which it is used:

1. Someone is tweeting about something unfortunate (to do with women) and (appears to be) pointing out that feminism failed in this instance, or isn't addressing this issue, or may be genuinely sorry that feminism is not present in this instance. (Or something else I'm missing. It's really not clear...)

2. Someone is making a statement either about a thought or action of their's which they feel is not feminist, and is essentially saying; "I'm aware that my actions are sexist or hypocritical, or even misogynist, and I don't care." 

Living in the Knowledge of Imperfection

Cross posted from Teen Skepchick:

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about personal choices, personal neuroses and one’s paradigm. This post is going to be pretty personal, and a little bit confessional, which may not be the best idea on the internet, but I think that the readers of teenskepchick are pretty awesome, and when we talk about important things like feminism and skepticism, it’s important to be open with each other. Also, I think my personal neuroses are part of a bigger, important question, and it’s one that I want to talk about: how do we integrate intellectual decisions into the down and dirty of real life?

 

Here goes.

I have an eating disorder. Now what on earth does that have to do with feminism and skepticism? Why am I telling all of you about it? Because I want to talk about how sometimes we’re all hypocrites when it comes to our demons and the lives we have to life that don’t always mesh with the people we want to be.

Much (if not most) of the time, I feel like I’m a failed feminist and a really bad skeptic because I have an eating disorder. I know I’m not the person with this particular blend of traits out there, and I feel like we never really get addressed in general discussion or allowed to discuss these two aspects of ourselves together.

People with eating disorders have a remarkable ability to hold themselves to different standards than they hold the rest of the world, and I find that particularly true of how I view myself as a body. I objectify myself. I am my size, and I only matter if I lose weight. I would NEVER hold another person to those standards or even think about them in a manner similar to the way I think of myself, and I find it really difficult to come to grips with the fact that I am a feminist and believe no person should be reduced to their body, but that I do that to myself every day of my life.

Even worse, on particularly bad days I find myself doing it to other women in order to compare myself to them.

As a skeptic I wonder where my brain has gone when I think in an emotional, illogical way, viewing myself in a way different from other people and in a way that simply makes no sense. I feel particularly torn as someone who prides themself on having a good brain when I think of myself strictly as a body.

Now this is a personal problem. Clearly mental disorders do not listen to our more logical brains, and for anyone that has a mental disease this makes having strong beliefs about humanity, equality, and respect extremely difficult. Ideologically I firmly believe that all women have the right to feel comfortable in their bodies, that no body is inherently ugly, and that the human body in and of itself is astounding. I believe that all human beings should be respected for more than their bodies. So why is it that my deepest held emotions contradict the strongest held intellectual beliefs I have? How do I live day by day with this kind of disconnect?

I’m sure I’m not the only person who finds themself running into personal hypocrisy. All of us bump up against our emotional sides and our emotions do not listen to what we tell them. Most often this seems to be our negative emotions: when we’re angry, anxious, lonely or afraid, we judge more harshly, we forget that others and ourselves deserve our respect, and we forget to think clearly. And for any skeptic who has a mental disorder, trying to keep a clear head and think skeptically when in the grips of your illness is perhaps the most difficult task in the world.

So how can I be a good feminist and a strong skeptic while still feeling this way? How do any of us integrate our day to day lives, all the pressures we feel about our bodies, how we view ourselves, how we present ourselves, who we are, etc. etc etc. into the paradigms of feminism and skepticism? Personally I feel this is particularly difficult for young women (although I’m not trying to say that young men don’t have a struggle too), but we’re asked to walk a fine line between having to be beautiful in order to be noticed, and yet not too beautiful that we’re not taken seriously. Every girl likes to feel good about herself. Every human being gets emotional, but girls are encouraged to be more emotional than boys. How do we accept and encourage these traits, yet retain our intellectual beliefs and act out of logic?

I think the most important piece of this question is to understand that we have multiple ways of thinking and being. We cannot expect ourselves to be fully integrated all the time. Particularly when we’re young, we’re still trying to sort out how the intellectual, the emotional and the physical all fit together. If the best we can do for now is to get each piece right by itself, I’d say we’re doing pretty well.

We cannot hold ourselves responsible for our emotional responses to the world around us. And although this is cliche, what we can control are our own choices. While I may treat myself only as a body, view myself only as an object to be perfected, I make the choice never to do that to anybody else. I make the choices in my relationships to act as if I did not believe these things about myself, to only date those men who ask for consent in sexual acts, to be a strong voice for women, to speak up when I feel threatened or objectified. It’s amazing the things we can hold in contradiction in our own lives, and if I have to hold my emotions in contradiction with my actions in order to live out my values, I will do that. I think that this is not a bad thing. It’s a stop gap measure until I can address my own emotional problems. All of us have to do this at times in our lives, and I think that it is actually an important and effective tactic in life. Fake it till you make it as it were. If emotionally, you feel rotten and are inclined to act out of that rotten feeling, then force yourself to make the intellectual choice until you can believe in it on a guttural level. It’s better than nothing.

But I also think it’s important to cut ourselves some slack. There are certainly days I feel guilty for objectifying myself. But human beings cannot universally live out their logical decisions. Reality doesn’t match up with the idealized situations in which we made our intellectual decisions.

So here’s my advice to the young ladies (and men) who are trying to understand how to be a skeptic, a feminist, and an all around good person in a world that forces us into corners pretty often: do your best. Don’t hate yourself when you don’t live up to your own expectations. Allow yourself sometimes to be shallow, silly and pointless. But always live by the principle of no harm. If you slip up on your feminist and skeptical principles, try not to let it be when your girlfriend needs you to support her against harassment in the workplace or when someone is being ostracized for being an atheist. And something that I have a great deal of difficulty with: you deserve all the respect and love you think other people do.

--Olivia

Confronting Rape Culture

I've recently had a spate of upsetting experiences at my college campus that demonstrated to me how alive and well both sexism and rape culture are, as well as the attitude of victim blaming. One of my professors outright dismissed any feminist criticisms of the fact that the Bible appears to condone wife beating, and my class as a whole seemed to agree with her on the grounds that "as long as the man (or God) apologizes, it's ok". Far worse, some acquaintances put a white board in a dorm hallway that suggested men should emotionally abuse and manipulate their significant others, and that if they can't get a date they should use drugs or alcohol to get sex. This was posted in a public hallway. When I mentioned it wasn't funny, I was accused of being a "humorless tightass" who wanted to censor them.

I think all of us can see what's wrong with these behaviors: they make light of problems that are already not taken seriously, tell women that their bodies are the site of someone else's power and pleasure, condone harming another person, and stand as a huge trigger risk. Hundreds of other people have identified why things like this constitute rape culture and why they are harmful and create an atmosphere that leads women to a state of constant discomfort. What is not talked about nearly as often is what to do when we encounter it.

I'm going to admit straight out that I don't have huge amounts of experience with confronting those who perpetuate rape culture, and I'm still trying to sort out how to react to these incidents. Part of writing this has been for me to sort out my thoughts, and hopefully those thoughts can help someone else make more sense of similar situations. Additionally, I hope that this can start a discussion or that anyone with experience of pitfalls and success will speak up in comments.

So how do we react to people that blatantly perpetuate rape culture? The first possible reaction is to remain silent. This is completely understandable. One of the purposes of rape culture is to intimidate and silence, and often if you speak up you will be vilified or accused of being wound too tight, overly sensitive, crazy or overly angry. I don't think anyone ever has an obligation to call others out or to speak up in a situation in which they feel uncomfortable. Keeping yourself safe is extremely important, and sometimes staying silent is the best way to do that. However if you do tend to do this, it is quite possible (and likely) that you will continue to have to hear people who will say and do offensive, triggering things. I don't generally recommend silence because I feel that it's extremely important for women and allies to be vocal about what is unacceptable if rape culture is ever to change, but self-protection is a priority and there are some situations that call for it.

Another possible reaction is to do what I did: I anonymously called them out. Unfortunately this option is not always available, and sometimes your identity will become known (as mine was), and then you have to deal with all of the problems associated with straight out confrontation, with the additional difficulty that some people may now judge you to be a coward. However if this is an option (for example online), it seems to be a good balance of protecting yourself and calling attention to the problem. Your anonymous comments may be attacked, but no one can attack you personally if they don't know who you are and you are still free to say whatever you like about the inappropriate nature of a behavior. There are some downsides though. Anonymous criticism is easier to dismiss, and when people attack some on anonymous, they can be really nasty. On the flip side, it can also be very easy to go overboard when you are anonymous, and in all of these cases it's important to remain calm and present a good face (we don't want to perpetuate "feminazi" stereotypes. Sadly we have to be the adults here). So as an anonymous criticizer you have to be more careful to self-censor and be aware that your the impact of what you're doing could be lessened by the fact that you're anonymous.

What may seem to be the most obvious way to react is direct confrontation: telling the perpetrator they did something wrong and why. I personally feel this method requires you to gauge your audience: there are many people who rejoice in getting a rise out of others when they say something offensive and will take it as an opportunity to continue to ridicule and use your behavior as evidence that women are irrational and oversensitive. However if you think the person is actually open to hearing a new viewpoint, go for it. Here again, we have to take the high road and remain calm and rational. One major problem with confrontation, and the reason I hesitate about doing it myself is that it can result in personal attacks, anger on all sides, drama, potentially the loss of friends, and sometimes can make others thinks badly of you (because for some reason identifying yourself as a feminist or as someone who doesn't take kindly to rape is viewed poorly in our culture). Confronting people on sensitive issues is difficult. It requires courage and commitment to your position, but it is also one of the strongest ways to effect change, especially if more people were to do it.

A final method that may be appropriate in some circumstances is seeking the help of an authority (a mod online, an administrator at school, etc). This is especially appropriate if you feel that the incident could fall under the category of sexual harassment. A major problem here is that it rests on whether or not the authority sees the problem in the same way as you do, so it can be a gamble, but it does have the benefit of real consequences for the offending party and an authority voice on your side. It can offer you some protection, but requires you to do the work of having evidence and an argument of how the behavior violates a rule or code of conduct in order for any action to be taken.

None of these approaches is perfect, works all of the time, or is free from risks. That in and of itself is evidence that we are in a culture which does not sexual violence and sexism seriously. I hope that these thoughts are illuminating, but each individual situation is of course complicated by the many factors involved: what your relationship is with those you want to confront, how is authority involved (what if it's a teacher, boss or parent making inappropriate comments?), what resources exist in your context, how threatened you feel, whether you have support from others...clearly there is no right answer here. But we should be talking about and sharing effective strategies. Hopefully this can start that conversation. Talk to me in comments :)

 

What are we afraid of?

There’s a great article up over at Pandagon right now about why some people find women’s sexuality scary, and it really hit home for me because it focused on the fact that many people who look to limit women’s sexual choices have a strong emphasis on how absolutely different men and women are. I’ve actually been in the process of writing a distinction paper about the religious extreme of this position, gender complementarianism, which says that God made men and women inherently different, and that each one needs to act according to his/her position or the whole world will fall apart (including our relationship with God).

So what is it with this obsession for saying that men and women HAVE to be different and that chaos will follow if they aren’t? I think one of the reasons that difference is so important to a lot of people is because it helps to tell you what you are: as a man, it’s easy to tell that you are powerful and wise and strong if you are NOT like a woman (which is one of the reasons “sissy” and similar terms are used to police male boundaries so frequently). Saussure suggested that we only gain meaning for terms by defining them negatively against each other...we don’t know what black is until we’ve said it’s not white. And for something as important as gender, something society tells us is an integral way to define ourselves, the first split made in us versus them, it becomes very very important to know who you are. It also seems as though a lot of these people are afraid of the idea that they might have to define themselves as individuals: that they can’t pick a pre-created character as it were, but they have to make an original. I think we can all understand that fear. Figuring out who we are is a rather daunting task, and it may make it easier for us to have some empathy towards people who push strong gender roles if we realize that they’re afraid we will take away their identities by creating our own. I also think it’s possible that understanding where the fear and anger is coming from might be able to help us reassure those who are afraid of liberation.

Any thoughts? Olivia

Praxis and Thought

As I begin posting here at College Feminists Connect, and also in my personal life of thinking and reading and similar things, I’ve been wondering why I choose to devote my time the way I do. There are many people who choose to live their beliefs by going out and making physical changes in the world: I live my beliefs by thinking and sharing thoughts. Am I really doing anything useful? How much good does it do for CFC to have a blog? Would our resources be better used simply providing info on internships, jobs, and events? I’d like to suggest that the blog and the thought exchanges are an integral part of what we aim to do.

I recently got to read a rather fantastic exchange between Judith Butler and Martha Nussbaum in which Nussbaum (http://www.akad.se/Nussbaum.pdf) accused Butler of theories with no practical application (primarily aimed towards Gender Trouble). Butler’s suggestions of parodying genders in order to introduce more space for difference gender identities, seemed useless to Nussbaum. As she criticizes: “For women who are hungry, illiterate, disenfranchised, beaten, raped, it is not sexy or liberating to reenact, however parodically, the conditions of hunger, illiteracy, disenfranchisement, beating, and rape. Such women prefer food, schools, votes, and the integrity of their bodies.” (Nussbaum, The Professor of Parody). We see that Nussbaum is calling for theories and works that give concrete practical avenues of change for those who are in difficult situations. Butler would have her own response to Nussbaum’s proposition, but here I’d like to say that yes, it is important for academics or for those with some measure of privilege to try to create intellectual propositions that link to actual change. But is there also a place for the more nuanced approach, for changes to thought and paradigms?

There is another layer to this question as well. John McGowan (http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/2005/08/) chimes in on the debate by pointing out that even Nussbaum’s very practical approach is not itself practice: “If our criteria for true or real politics is that the formerly hungry now get fed, what academic work will meet the test?...Thinking is not politics.” While Butler’s style of thinking about gender may be less practical than literal suggestions of how to feed the hungry, even suggestions of how to feed the hungry do not themselves feed anyone. So what good are any of us doing by thinking? Do any changes come about through thinking or should we abandon all academic attempts to understand gender and social structures and simply work to create job opportunities for women?

McGowan gives a proposal for how to judge thoughts:

My proposal, then, is straight-forward.  1) Thinking in ways to help the material conditions of others may prove useful indirectly.  But there are crucial and complicated intermediary steps between the thinking and the helping.  Someone who just thinks a lot about the hunger of others is not morally superior to or more politically involved than someone who thinks a lot about his red car.  2) Therefore, any thinking that is going to qualify as even potentially political needs to articulate its political implications clearly and suggest some ways to act upon those implications in the world.  3) But political action per se only begins when one leaves the library or the study.  Even the rhetorical urging of others to embrace this or that political cause is preliminary to political action itself.

At first glance this seems like an entirely reasonable proposal. However I’d like to suggest that there’s far more to the thought changing approach than McGowan allows for. The idea that in order to spread change we must physically leave our homes and change situations seems ludicrous to me. There is great evidence that combined thought can create social change: signing petitions, blog writing, and online activism have created change in the modern world. I do not believe these things are entirely thought or entirely action. They blur the lines between distinct practice and simple thought. For this reason, I think that the sharp distinction McGowan draws between thought and praxis is untenable: often simply by thinking something new and sharing that thought with another person we are acting. 

McGowan does acknowledge that thoughts have their role and they can be beneficial, but when he points to Butler as evidence of this he says “Can her thinking aid in that political work of alleviation?  Yes, insofar as it alerts people to the existence of a problem, gives them a vocabulary and concepts for the articulation of the problem, and suggests some forms of action that would remedy the problem.” This seems off-base to me. Butler is addressing the problem that individuals feel pain because of restrictive gender roles. The way to change this is to open up the possibility of new gender roles. Since gender is constructed, it is possible that simply through thinking in a new way, people can create a new gender role for themselves. This then has to be put into practice, and there are practical problems that need to be dealt with, but the internal mental struggle of understanding oneself is alleviated through new thought patterns. In reading her thought, readers are instantly opened to new gender possibilities: these possibilities are entirely internal and in thought. Butler’s thoughts can literally change lives, and those changed thought patterns for individuals then lead to new actions which can lead to larger social change.

I’d certainly like to believe that the hope someone can find through new thoughts is itself a change and a practical effect that comes from the thinking that academics, bloggers and others do. Therefore, I suggest that while there are definitely instances of complete thought or complete praxis and we can do with both of those for difference reasons, there are also instances in which thought is praxis, and those are often the most subversive and change-oriented. Changing thoughts creates different people, different paradigms and allows us to imagine the options in new ways. These reimaginings are the first step to deep change. This belief is what keeps me blogging and talking and thinking.

 

Let's Talk About Being Pro-Choice

The legislative session of 2011 was fraught with ridiculous attacks on reproductive rights. Limiting access to abortion is a hot issue right now - and abstinence only education is (and likely will be for the foreseeable future) a problem in regards to how people are educated about sex.

When you feel so strongly about an issue it can be difficult to see clearly when people constantly attack it. Reproductive rights are such an intense topic for everyone because they are so personal. I cannot imagine someone telling me I can't have access to birth control or adequate information about sex. And those who are not so liberal as I can't imagine talking about such a holy and personal topic as sexuality in the public realm. Personal, right? This issue goes right to the core of almost everyone's personal behavior and identities. It makes sense for people to be so passionate.

But with passion comes problems. Problems like not looking at an issue from all sides. Problems like not considering several opinions and understanding (though not necessarily agreeing) with opposing viewpoints. Some people struggle to  maintain a logical standpoint and argument to back up that standpoint. And here's the thing - lately I see my pro-choice comrades falling into that "passion trap". We're under attack - and it doesn't just feel like our ideas are being attacked - it feels like our bodies and our reproductive freedom is being attacked. It's quite the unpleasant situation. I understand why people feel the need to protect reproductive rights more than ever before - it's scary to think some of the bills being proposed could become law (remember the Personhood Amendment?) but that is no excuse to become narrow minded, even if it is on the pro-choice side of things.

It started in the blogs I read, then it showed up in my classes, and now it's appearing in pop-culture analysis. It's an intense attitude of disdain for women who exercise their right to choose. The women who are scorned (whether real or characters in a book, TV show, or movie) either become pregnant and decide to have the baby or decide to opt for a birth control method like Natural Family Planning. And they are scorned implicity or explicity for not having an abortion or not using birth control. See, I was under the impression pro-choice was about having access to the choice. Being able to have an abortion safely and using birth control or not having an abortion and using (for lack of a better word) "natural" methods of birth control. As pro-choicers we CANNOT scorn those women who do not make the choices we would have made. Pro-choice should not end at access to birth control and safe abortion. It needs to include resources for women and men who choose to remain pregnant or practice Natural Family Planning.

It is narrow minded, and frankly, detrimental to the fight for reproductive rights to scorn women and men who do not use birth control or abortion. What everyone does with their body is their business. We need to recognize that the pro-choice movement could fall into a narrow minded, birth control filled black hole. We need to stand strong and form bonds with those who believe in personal freedom - but perhaps don't make the same choices in regards to their person as you would. We need to be the real embodiment of pro-choice. -Jen Kaltveit, Hamline University