Feminists for Life: Refuse to Choose?

In the time of my life before Andrea Smith's Conquest and Jennifer Baumgardner's Abortion and Life, I was one of those 'Against abortion? Then don't have one' bumper sticker-havers that was INYOFACE about my prochoicenss. I've mellowed some since then--to the extent that I'm willing to have a civil conversation or only slightly heated Facebook debate about the issue of life v choice. But really, life v choice isn't what's at hand here--at least not in its traditional political sense. No, what's at stake is the bodies of women--itself a random happenstance of biology--bodily integrity itself. I went through their site and Youtubed their videos, coming to the conclusion that it's about fifty-fifty for trite and legitimacy. Italicized are direct quotes from their official Youtube channel; below are my comments.

Abortion is a reflection that we have not met the needs of women.

Acutally, I absolutely agree. Abortion is a product of social problems, NOT the cause. American women face systematic discrimination in terms of birth control; anti-choice pharmacists are not held accountable for "running out" of contraception, nor are birth control methods easily accessible or affordable. Though I don't get the vibe that the Fems4Lyf were going quite in this direction with the quote, but adoption is often not a viable choice for women--prenatal care is hella expensive (just like any other health care in America without upper midde class insurance), and legal action can be taken against women who give up their babies to adoption if they do not have regular check ups. Bull. Shit. This is where CPCs, or "crisis" pregnancy centers (I use the quotes ironically because I do not believe a natural process of women's bodies constitutes an emergency) come in handy, because they do indeed provide women with care, physically and otherwise. My beef with them, however, comes in that they deliberately lie and give women misinformation about abortion, usually from studies done circa the 1970s that have since been disproven several times over (abortion does NOT cause breast cancer. SERIOUSLY. STOP.).

Almost half of all abortions are performed on college-age women.

I technically can neither affirm nor disprove this as they fail to cite their source, but considering that a lack of citation often denotes a crock o' opinionated-rather-than-factually-based bullshit, I'm gonna just go ahead and say women from all walks of life choose abortion. AND THAT MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT AND OTHER FIRST-WAVE FEMINISTS WERE NOT NECESSARILY PRO-LIFE, AS SUCH A POLITICAL CONCEPT DID NOT EXIST DURING THEIR TIME. Plz to stop decontextualizing history to put cherries in yer bowl of non-argument. Kthnxbai.

Without housing, daycare, or maternity coverage, it doesn't feel like I have much of a choice.

Again, I absolutely agree. So what are Feminists for Life as an organization doing to aid women who desire to keep their children? To tell you the truth, I have no idea--their website tells me jack doo except how to purchase bumper stickers and other "covetable stuff." And no, I didn't make the "covetable stuff" part up, they legit have a trademark symbol after it. [Barf.] I can find out how to book speakers--woo hoo! That will solve the problem of the feminization of poverty and the myth of everyone being middle class!

Women deserve better.

You know what? Women do deserve better. They deserve not to be lied to; they deserve health without wealth*; they deserve the right to move within public space wearing whatever they damn well please without threats to their bodily integrity. Most of all, they deserve to be heard--our stories and lives are personally and politically valid, and whether we self-identify as feminist, pro choice or pro life, we deserve a space to be heard. It is only through honest and open discussion that these contentious topics are resolved. And you know, I'm not even sure if that's the right word, resolved...come to terms, perhaps? In current polical framing, I'm pro choice, but within my own conceptions of the implications of abortion, I feel I'm pro life--I'm pro people who are already alive and are struggling to be seen, heard and validated in a society that so belittles them socially and politically. I'm pro universal healthcare and pro public funds for education beyond high schoool, because the most effective way to prevent poverty is through health and education. Most of all, I'm pro choice in the most literal sense of the word: "preferential determination between things proposed; selection, election (OED choice n.1a)."

*In the sense that health is a human right and you shouldn't have to take wealth to have access to basic services. Didn't want to muck up that alliterative brilliance with this explanation. :)

Bewbz and Brahz

Fun fact: something like 90% of American women are wearing the wrong bra size.

Quick poll: who cares?

A couple years ago, that would have been a resounding "Not I." I had smaller, proportional breasts that didn't call unwanted attention to myself**, and besides that, I wore nothing more revealing than parka-esque tee shirts. But wouldn't you know, boobs grow 'till your early twenties.

Ass. Hole.

The star star I put re: not wanting to call attention to myself is something that, as a cisgendered female feminist (mouthful, lawl), I have strugged quite a bit with. I personally prefer to have smaller breasts because a) they're a fucken nuisance when you're trying to lay on your stomach to read and b) I HATE having attention drawn to my body for any reason. Unfortunately, being that the UK is epically less humid than the US, this summer has hit me like a shit ton of bricks, forcing me to bust out the dreaded tank top. And I'm using 'bust out' in the most literal sense.

Since I have copious amounts of free time, I thought a lot on this bust and outing. I felt oh so enlightened because I now knew what it was like on the other side--boobage spilling out of regularly cut v necks and, well, everything else in my summer wardrobe that isn't a tee shirt. As of this writing, the ladies are spilling out of this cute little grey dress I just purchased; I'm not deterred from wearing it because of this fact, but I am hyperaware of how people perceive me as I walk through public (re: not for women) space.

Am I sending the wrong message?

Does this make me look like a slut?

Maybe not everyone has these feelings, and perhaps I'm just hyperaware because it's not something I've ever had to deal with. But I know from professional dealings that large breasted friends of mine have experienced that the realms of boobs and professionalism are mutually exclusive. Which is fucking ridiculous, because boobs are pouches of fat that contain ducts to feed infants.

THERE IS NOTHING SEXY ABOUT EDIBLE POUCHES OF DUCT.

I would love it if I could one day live in a world where women wouldn't get harassed in the street or fired for work "unprofessionalism" on account of biology.

And don't even get me started on the breastfeeding in public "controversy."

Inexplicable Self

I awoke this morning feeling not like P. Diddy, but myself. The self I have always wanted to be and the self that I am sometimes, the self I want others to know and love and the self that all too often is lost in translation. The self I'm describing is just that; it's me. Perhaps this is a convoluted explanation, but for me, waking up feeling like me again is a BFD (big fucken deal).

My last few posts feel very 10th grade emo throwback to me, so I just wanted to quick update that I'm feeling like myself again and I know I continue to be myself again with a little help from my friends. Whom I love and hold so very dearly. =D

Proz[ac] n' Conz

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

3,000 miles from ED, depression, academic pressure, everything and everyone I knew.

It was supposed to be a break.

Turns out, no amount of miles can save you from yourself. It's a myth, you know; they tell you that new places and new faces are a fresh start. They'e not. You're just more alone than ever because you don't have the same faces to feel lonely with.

And now, a passage from Elizabeth Wurtzel's "Prozac Nation:"

The brief relief of seeing other people when I leave my room turns into a desperate need to be alone, and then being alone turns into a terrible fear that I will have no friends, I will be alone in this world and in my life. ... I thought it was all going to stop at Harvard. I thought it was just a matter of getting away from the physical site of so much of my depression. Instead it was even worse.

But was it really that much worse? I can certainly attest that having a break from my life was something I needed at that point, but was the break needed from myself or from other people? Sometimes I feel so oppressed by the people around me that I can't breathe, yet it is these selfsame people I cling to in the hopes that they'll love me and never leave me.

Some days I feel I'm completely off my rocker, and other days I am fine--dandy, even. I guess I thought that going to a foreign country for five months would automatically transform me, and that I wouldn't have to do any work to fix whatever it is that's wrong with me. I've stopped the Prozac, it never seemed to help much anyway. The only real affect I feel thus far is that I am much more animated, more uppity and pissoffable.

I'm a work in progress, and I just hope that I haven't used up all my chances of really fitting into a community.



Also I think I've lost my blogging edge from the entire lack of Allegheny College-level writing for the past six months. D:

Hate the Game, Not the Player

Been reconsidering my hatred of Snow White of late, and have decided to hate the movie itself instead of the character. After all, what kind of feminist would I be if I hated a woman who had no other choice but to be stupid, defenseless and vapid if that's what she was created to be?

As of this writing, I am on chapter two of Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth entitled "Culture." Only about two pages in, but thus far I have learned some and reconsidered much; like my friend Kirsten has attempted to tell me time and time again, my hatred of her is unreasonable. Wolf discusses the tradition of beauty in the novels of women writers, often citing the characters of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte to prove her point. "Women's writing," Wolf argues, "is full to the point f heartbreak with the injustices doe by beauty--its presence as well as its absence" (60). The tradition as Wolf describes it pits beauties against the "subtle": vapid Jane Fairfax against Emma in Austen's Emma; frivolous, blond Rosamond Vincy against "nun-like" Dorothea Casaubon in George Elliot's Middlemrch; "remarkably pretty" Isabella Crawford against self-effacing Fanny Price in Austen's Mansfield Park; fashionable, soulless Isabella Thorpe against Catherine Morland, unsure of herself "where the beauty of her own sex is concerned" in Austen's Northanger Abbey; the prodigious cleavage of Blanche Ingram against Jane's spirited personality in Bronte's Jane Eyre (list borrowed from page 60 of the 1991 version of The Beauty Myth).

Wolf goes on to discuss the socialization of young Western children via the myths of Pandora and Prometheus, which now comes in comic-book form for third grade American children:

It teaches that a great man risks all for intellectual daring, for progress and for the public good. But as a future woman, the little girl learns that the most beautiful woman in the world was man-made, and that her intellectual daring brougt the first sickness and death onto men. (61)


Exhibit A: Intellectual daring: ur doin it wrong

I'm grateful to have been born in the time period I did, because I don't think I could fucking handle this bitch being my Disney idol. I grew up idolizing Belle, Ariel, Pocahontas and Jasmine--all having their faults, sure (chief of which being the unlikelihood that they'd survive with a three inch waist), but ultimately these women followed their hearts and PERSUED things rather than sitting docilely, waiting for a penis to solve all their problems. Wolf mentions a female character fro Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but since I've never read it I'll just cut to the chase: a girl learns that stories happen to "beautiful" women, whether they are interesting of not. Case in point:


Exhibit B: Do you wanna share my apple pie?

Wolf goes on to say that "interesting or not, stories do not happen to women who are not 'beautiful'" (61). Jane Eyre and a few choice others aside, she's right--even the women of Disney who are motivated go-getters are ALWAYS attractive (which is how you can differentiate them from the villainous women, because nine times out of ten they're wearing a hell of a lot of purple eyeshadow). We've finally got our first black princess, which I was stoked about and I loved the movie, but we're still a long way--she's very light and has mostly caucasian features. Oh, and heterosexual, but I don't see that changing any time soon.

If it were up to me, and it's not, I'd revamp the entire Disney franchise by empowering women to be single or to be in relationships, be they hetero or queer, and mix n' match princes and princesses of different races. Oh my GOD, would I freak patriarchal social conservatives the fuck out.


Exhibit C: OMGWTFBBQ

An Excerpt from My WS 580 Final Paper

I should preface this by saying that I finished the bulk of this in a 36-hour no-sleep marathon in the library with Sarah. Not necessarily because I'm a procrastinating asshole (which, admittedly, was part of the problem) but because my other English junior seminar paper consumed my entire finals life. What I'm posting is basically just my intro, which ended up being four pages because a) I needed to take up space and b) I like talking about myself. Enjoy!


It’s funny.

Sitting here in the library, over caffeinated, sleep-deprived and futile in my attempts to write an eloquent introduction, I think about all the ways I shouldn’t, by most logical standards, be here. A product of the multiple oppressions of gender, class and ability, I have experienced my fair share and more of the cold, harsh reality of living in a white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. Having never really had a sense of security in my formative years, I spent a great deal of my adolescence alienated from my peers, depressed and anxious, always searching for something I could never quite put a name to. Fast-forward some odd years, and I’ve matriculated into high school—I’ve got a fairly stable social life, and I flourish academically. Yet there was always that oppressive sadness and knowledge that I was very different from my peers. At the risk of over-sharing, when I said that by most logical standards I shouldn’t be here, I also meant that in my sophomore year of high school, I attempted suicide. I had been in therapy for about a year with the childhood psychologist I seen when my father died when I finally decided that I couldn’t go on like I had been for a good portion of my life, just going through the motions and doing my best to live up to the standards others set for me.

To this day, I have never forgotten the moments leading up to my decision to end my life—I haven’t forgotten them because they were something I have felt ever since I can remember. All the therapy, mood-altering drugs, friendships and familial support in the world couldn’t help me at that low point in my life. I had meticulously kept journals from that year in an attempt to better understand what it was exactly that lead me to the point of no return, and what I realize now that I didn’t know then is that there are an inordinate and unfortunate amount of people who have suffered and continue to suffer from the same systems of oppression that I do. Though I was chock-full of experience, I had no means to articulate them constructively to better understand myself. My introduction to feminism and feminist theory has quite honestly and literally been life-saving for me. Because it was my life experience that sparked an interest in learning from and engaging with other feminists before me, I feel—I know, rather—that my social location informs every facet of my being—the way I speak, think, and write—how I resist and exist. Though I will fully admit I’m biased in my cracker-ass whiteness and fondness for the sixties and seventies (feminist movements and otherwise), I disagree with the current shift of feminist theory from identity politics to politics of difference and decolonized solidarity.

Over the course of the semester, my thoughts, opinions and preconceptions have been constantly challenged by theories of so-called “third world” feminist thinkers. Be it general disinterest in things not directly related to my existence or unwillingness to open myself up to any additional feminist heartaches , I hadn’t the remotest interest in transnational feminisms pre-WOMST 580. Yet because of the way I have been constantly bombarded with my own complicity in the white capitalist patriarchy and have been forced to reflect upon and challenge my own dearly held feminist ideals, I don’t know that I’ve ever been as sincere, devoted or grounded in my feminist beliefs as I am because of this class. Though I continue to struggle on several levels with the transnational feminist paradigms of understanding and challenging the multiple systems of oppression, I know that it is helping me to construct a much more fluid feminist identity that will grow and evolve as I further my education and life experience under white capitalist patriarchy.

Despite my belief that having my entire world flip-turned upside-down strengthened my commitment to a feminist agenda and politic, my engagement (or lack thereof) left something to be desired with some of the theorist’s use of language. As an English major, I’m all for subversive use of language and reclaiming one’s own identity through a particular word or style of writing, but when it becomes inaccessible even to students of feminist theory, I’d argue that it’s gone too far. For all the talk of decolonizing theory and practicing solidarity, I saw almost no attempt on the part of Chandra Talpade Mohanty to actualize her theories. For the life of me, I cannot understand why someone supposedly so committed to the cause of “third world” women would write in such a way that the women themselves wouldn’t understand (plus there’s the whole issue of being published within academia’s masculinized publishing frameworks that are a part of the systematic oppression of everyone who is not a white heterosexual mid-to-upper class male).

Because I tend to lean towards the tangential when it comes to things I disagree with, for the purposes of this essay I’m going to specifically focus on the works of Mohanty and the theorists that she draws upon. I realize that this limits the scope of my essay in several ways, but Mohanty’s work was the one I reacted the most strongly to and rather than just dismiss her as just another full-of-herself academic diva, I’d like to really engage with her theories and understand why it is that I’m so drawn to and opposed to her style of writing and why I resist some aspects of her theory. As a brief overview, I’m going to begin with an overview of the state of feminism in the nineties, followed by my own personal views on the state of feminism now and the direction I see it going in. Then I’ll be discussing an article of Mohanty’s that centers around identity politics, in addition to her engagement with her contemporaries, and vice versa. Finally, I’d like to propose some activist applications of theory in addition to reclaiming the politics of identity and experience as inherent steps to the path of feminist theory.

Shit List Revisited: Chad Kroeger

Exhibit A: In 2007, USA Today reported that "few bands inspire such intense hatred as Nickelback."

Well played, USA Today. Well played.

Exhibit B: In 2010, membership in a Facebook group entitled "Can this pickle get more fans than Nickleback?" rose to 1.5 million Facebook fans. The pickle did indeed garner more support, adulation and fandom than the group itself.

Exhibit C: When posited the question, "Have we got any Nickelback fans in Portugal?," Kroeger's noggin was met with the wrath of a thousand pissed off Portuguese plus a rock.

Exhibit D: