08 May 2022

I think it was Andrea Dworkin who said - ages ago - something along the lines of to men, women are private property. Or at least, men think this is the case. The way drivers think that public roads are made for cars, never mind the rest of the public. I realise, this is not necessarily the best analogy but I am mostly travelling by bicycle and it is Sunday evening and I have yet to recover from the week behind me while getting in shape for the week ahead. I did cycle today and yesterday and the day before, as a means of getting from A to B on public roads. Also, Andrea Dworkin probably meant right wing men.

Anyway, I have just worked my way through my usual Sunday paper reading tasks and here is my top find.

To All Those Who Dare Rob Us of Our Bodily Choice, I ask you:

What is it about our bodies that makes you so afraid, so insecure, so cruel and punishing?

Is it their singular autonomy or mere existence?

Is it their capacity for immense and unending pleasure – orgasms that can multiply orgasms inside orgasms? Is it our skin? Is it our desire?

Is it our openness that rattles you and reminds you of where you are closed?

Is it the pure strength of our bodies that allows us to bleed and birth and bend and carry and continue on in spite of all the ways you have reduced us and objectified us, humiliated us and disrespected us and tried to shape us into baby-making machines? Our strength that is inherent and doesn’t need to prove itself or show off or rely on weapons or violence to control and terrorise? Doesn’t need to abolish laws, or lie to become supreme court judges or president or rig the decks when they get there.

Do you know this power? Can you imagine it? A power that comes from respecting life, caring for others before oneself, holding communities together?

. . .

What is it about our bodies that make you think you have the right to invade them, determine them, control and legislate them, violate and force them to do anything against their will?

Perhaps you mistake our generosity for weakness, our patience for passivity, our vulnerability for fragility.

 . . .

This is our world now. And these are our bodies. We know what you are up to – this is just the beginning of your diabolical plan to rob us of contraception and marriage equality and civil rights and on and on. This is all part of your desperation to prevent the future that is on the verge of being born – a future where we know our past and begin to reckon with it, a future where we teach critical race theory and the truth about white supremacy and sexism and transphobia.

A future where we care for our Earth and devote our lives to protecting air and water and forests and animals and all living things, a future where people have autonomy over their bodies and wombs and gender and marry who they want to, and don’t get married if they don’t want to, and have babies if they want to, and don’t have babies if they don’t want to. Despite all your lies, strategies and devious ways you are simply never going to stop us.

You have unleashed our fury, our solidarity, our unity.

 (to read the whole commentary article by V (formerly known as Eve Ensler) click here)

I live in a country where abortion is generally punishable for all parties involved but exceptions apply which means that abortion is exempt from punishment in certain situations incl. medical indications such as if the woman's life is in danger or there is a risk of serious impairment of her physical or mental state of health. Also, if the pregnancy is based on a sexual offence such as rape. The costs are covered by statutory health insurance, i.e. everybody. But we are watching. We know there are (mostly) men who are getting very excited watching what's happening across the Atlantic.


8 comments:

Ms. Moon said...

You want to know the truth? I think that men (not all men!) just love the idea of women and children being chattel. What handy animals we are to them. Now if we'd just keep our mouths shut...
And they have been trying to shut our mouths since the beginning of time.

Pixie said...

That article written by V pretty much says it all. I don't why republicans seem to hate women so much. Usually republicans are so much about freedoms, except when it comes to women apparently.

NewRobin13 said...

It's all about power wrapped up in the language of protecting the unborn. They couldn't care less about the unborn, children, women, or anyone else who doesn't fit their white (fake)Christian shield that covers their dark power-hungry state of being. It's a nightmare.

am said...

Your information about abortion laws in Germany led me to wonder about the rest of the world.

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/map-abortion-laws-around-the-world/2883475/

Steve Reed said...

I didn't realize Germany doesn't have legal abortion aside from those exceptions. That's surprising. The long arm of the Catholic church, I suppose.

I don't understand how men can vote for these laws without realizing (or while disregarding) their apparent hostility toward their own daughters, sisters and the other women in their lives.

ellen abbott said...

It's quickly becoming obvious that it's not really about abortion over here as much as controlling women with some of the laws some of the states have written or are writing. They want to ban some forms of birth control, the morning after pill or Plan B, make it illegal for a pregnant woman to travel to a state where abortions are legal or to aid and abet the same, punish companies that provide travel benefits for their women employees to go to another state for an abortion, and the first reference to making interracial marriage a state choice.

I just wonder if these same people who support the state having control over a woman's body would feel the same if their state passed a law making donating a kidney mandatory if you are a match. It would be saving a life after all. Can you imagine the uproar if that happened?

Joared said...

Unfortunately, there are many V describes. Would there could be a comparable way to place limitations/restrictions on choices males had for their bodies so they could get some sense of that experience. A belief of being innately superior and entitled to having control is what drives the anti-abortion view of many men supported by some women who share such a perspective. Religious views seem to be a misguided force also. This issue should never have been taken out of the realm of decision-making between a woman and her doctor. Nothing quite like the holier than thou folks who want to dictate other's behavior well beyond what is common sense and basic respect for an individual's rights. The so-called fetus right to life is a specious argument requiring judgement in each individual woman's case. Those justices in our Supreme Court misinterpret our U.S. constitution to be denying women control over our bodies if they allow this to occur.

37paddington said...

They care nothing for the unborn child, or the born child, and certainly not for the woman whose body carries this new life, they care only to put women "in their place," to curtail their power, to ensure that we cannot birth the world we are already in the process of birthing. The men will fail. But first they will try to bury us, but as the saying goes, they do not realize we are seeds.