“It’s tragic that in a country as wealthy as the United States and with all the medical expertise we have that so many girls will live shorter lives than their mothers,†Mokdad said.
Coincidence that it’s in the heartlands of the American south that this development is the most pronounced?
Amanda Marcotte explains why the idea of value free choices in a feminist context can be harmful:
The problem with presenting “choice” as some abstract concept unmoored to social pressures and therefore as beyond critical analysis as the preference of the color of red over blue is that conservatives are happy to exploit that to continue supporting a system where women are systemically underpaid. As this exchange shows, it gives them cover even to push their favorite argument for continuing inequality, which is that the people who aren’t doing as well simply aren’t as worthy. Rachel calls it the “math is hard” argument, and Castellanos basically says, “Yep, that’s my argument.” To unpack that, what’s going on here is the argument from conservatives is that since women are mentally inferior, work outside the home is just harder for their wee female brains, and so they “choose” supposedly easier work that taxes their tender lady nervous systems less. Because of the “I choose my choice” rhetoric, they can bury this essentialist argument about inferior women in the language of “choice”, and it sounds nearly feminist-ish.
Choice in this context has been appropriated by the anti-feminist backlash in the same way “tolerance” has been appropriated by racist douchenozzles, to disguise reactionary bullshit with a bit of fake progressive covering. It works slightly better in this context, mainly because there was an argument to be made that second wave/post-war feminism was too dogmatic in its rejection of the traditional feminine roles of wife/mother/housemaker, which third wave feminism with its emphasis of empowerment and free choice reacted against, inadvertently providing cover to anti-feminist backlash as well.
As Amanda indicates though, while of course you should be careful about criticising individual women for their choices, feminists should always be aware that these choices are still far from free, that they carry consequences. It is therefore right and proper to criticise Ann Romney, not so much for her choice of being a stay at home mother, but more for how she allows herself to be used by those who’d want to see all women being forced into this, as well as for how her simplistic portrayal of mums vs career women carefully erases working mothers.
Melissa McEwan on how for some women, not being harassed on the streets by assholes like they see happening to other women makes them question their own self worth, even though they’re fully aware that this harassement is not in any way desirable:
It’s a terrible predicament, this place of horrible and shameful “envy,” that most women (especially feminist women) probably experience at one time or another during their lives. An older woman finally free of being hit on and cat-called and told to smile may suddenly “miss” the harassment the despised, because its void is not born of a long-sought respect, but of a silent commentary on her diminished worth as a sex object per the Patriarchy’s horseshit standards. Two female friends of different races might alternately “envy” each other for the unique forms of objectification by which they’re respectively targeted: She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks like the Girl Next Door. She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks Exotic. Etc.
Erica Jong mistrusts modern parenting:
Indeed, although attachment parenting comes with an exquisite progressive pedigree, it is a perfect tool for the political right. It certainly serves to keep mothers and fathers out of the political process. If you are busy raising children without societal help and trying to earn a living during a recession, you don’t have much time to question and change the world that you and your children inhabit. What exhausted, overworked parent has time to protest under such conditions?
The first wave of feminists, in the 19th century, dreamed of communal kitchens and nurseries. A hundred years later, the closest we have come to those amenities are fast-food franchises that make our children obese and impoverished immigrant nannies who help to raise our kids while their own kids are left at home with grandparents. Our foremothers might be appalled by how little we have transformed the world of motherhood.
Many American states have some kind of law requiring parental notification for underage women wanting an abortion. The point of these laws is to enable proper communication between parents and children on this topic, that parents are not kept in ignorance of their daughter undergoing a (supposedly) dangerous medical procedure. Some girls however can’t tell their parents even they required to by law and those girls end up in the courts getting a waiver. But who are those girls?
Harriet J. has the answer, based on her own experience dealing with them. Ranked from most often to least often, these are girls who:
And she also knows who these girls are not:
The girl who just whimsically doesn’t want her parents to know grows up to be the woman who just whimsically gets an abortion, all nail-biting and hair-twirling and “Gosh! I didn’t realize my baby has fingernails WHAT.â€
And the upshot is:
So, there you go. Girls who can’t tell their parents about their abortions? After you pass a parental notification law, they still can’t tell their parents. Girls who can tell their parents? After you pass a parental notification law, they still tell their parents, unless they fall into an ill-defined legal loophole – then they tell their parents but still have to come get a bypass. A parental notification law accomplishes two things: 1) it takes the girls who can’t tell their parents and penalizes them for not being able to tell their parents and, 2) it takes a portion of the girls who can tell their parents and makes them go through the process anyway.
But of course, as Harriet J. and her commenters are fully aware of, the overt reasons why these laws are passed are horseshit. The real reason is to a) make it that much more difficult to get an abortion, b) make it easier to shut down abortion clinics for “breaking the law” and c) perhaps most important, punish these girls for having sex in the first place. It’s the last impulse that makes abortion and sexual politics so frustrating in the US, as this is something that you can’t reason people out of, as it’s not a position they have reached through reason.