Feminist Choice

Yes to that Buffy.

To talk about choice, without acknowledging that the same choice is different, depending on whether it is made by a woman or man, is to ignore society. We don't choose to be the ones that carry and birth babies. What is chosen is the social organisation within which we are the sex that makes the babies - just it isn't chosen by women.

As well, much of feminist discourse around prostituion is about the men's choices. The punters, the pimps, the traffickers and the boyfriends choices. Their choices are the real issue.

Choice alone is a very limited concept for women - we are born into the lower status position of a gendered binary hierarchy. None of us chose our biological sex and none of us chose that hierarchy. We start out from a position of lack of choice - what we do from then on is make the best of it depending on the hand that fate deals us.

I have been thinking quite a lot recently about the choice to have children and what a completely different choice it is depending on if you are a man or a woman.

It's why I also find the concept of equality flawed WRT to women's rights (although I think it works reasonably well in other movements such as civil rights). We need to be more specific: equal status is what we aiming for surely (which IMO is the same as liberation from male dominance, liberation from the gender hierarchy).

Buffy "I find it confusing the way that people conflate the observation that being a porn star or sex worker is a) harmful to women as a class because it perpetuates that idea that we are objects that can be bought and sold and b) often directly harmful to the women concerned with denying these women their choices."

Thank you so much for this - a one sentence explanation that's so beautifully clear.

I do find the concept of "choice" problematic when it leads to outcomes that are apparently harmful to those making them, such as the "choice" to be a porn star or a sex worker. Actually I don't believe that those particular choices are made in a societal vacuum, since many socio-economic factors enter into the "choice" to sell sexual favours or visual services, but I cannot and must not deny women the freedom to make a proper choice. I do believe that the basic reasons why women "choose" to enter sex work should instead be addressed- education, earning potential etc. Even after women have achieved equality (still a long way off imo) , I think that there will still be candidates for sex work and porn. But maybe those women will have had more freedom to arrive at that choice. And it would be crass to deny anybody choice on the grounds that they are making what I might view as the "wrong" choice.

We are still in a transition stage to equality (and have come a long way in the last decades) but there is still far to go, especially wrt women with children. Even women without children (especially of child-bearing age) do not have entirely the same employment opportunities as men.

And yes, liberation leads to more, better and fairer choices. Of course it does, but the context within which those choices are made is about having real control over one's life.

Such as in abortion, and the 'right to choose' as already mentioned on this thread. For women to have real and meaningfull reproductive rights, the right to choose is only part of the picture. It is an important part, of course, but the other parts are just as important. Such as societal pressure, attitudes and expectations, the influence of religous instituions, the influence of the instituion of motherhood, a women's personal circumstances and relationship with the father of the baby, and so on.

Having the actual right to choose enshrined in law is only the beginning. Look at some states in the US where women officially have the right to choose under federal law, but do not have local access to a clinic that performs abortions because state law is (purposely) so restricitve as to which establishments can perform abortions.

These women have the right to choose but they do not have control of the circumstances within which they try to exercise that right. Choice is not enough, we need control. Which of course means we need power.

As usual, I entirely agree with Buffy.

I think the problem is with the way in which the concept of choice has been suborned by neoliberalism, rather than with the concept itself.

Choice is great. I have infinitely more freedom in terms of making life decisions than I would have had 100 or even 50 years ago, and I am grateful for it every day. And we all believe in the 'right to choose' when it comes to abortion.

Working for a society in which women have freedom to make the life decisions that work best for them is surely a key aim of feminism. But for this freedom to have any real meaning we need a society in which men and women are wholly equal, and in which life chances are not decided by class and material advantage. This is, er, not yet the case.

I see western women keeping their original surnames in marriage as a personal choice today, not a feminist act.

Why does it have to be one or the other?

It can be both. You cannot know the personal circumstances within which each and every women in the west made that decision. We do know the wider political circumstance however - which is that not taking your husband's name is to reject a misogynistic custom. That sounds like a feminist act to me.

This is what we mean in feminism when we say 'the personal is political'. People often think that this means that individual women's choices are being judged as 'political' or not. It doesn't - it means that we recognize that women's individual personal lives always exist within a wider political context of female oppression.

The confusion is that feminism HAS been about choice, but in the sense that scallops has stated.

If a black person votes for the BNP, is that a sound anti-racist choice purely because the person is black and has the freedom to choose? I don't think so.

And it is very odd when people seem to think that feminists snorting at the concept of 'choice' is us questioning or attacking the agency/intelligence/cluedupness/whatever of individual women.

I think mainly people who say that just want to attack feminism and potentially divide women.

Surely it is obvious to anyone who understands politics that 'agency' is a sliding scale. And that is the case for everyone, not just women.

Agency, like everything else in society, does not exist in a vacuum.

I agree. Choice is a con/hollow goal - as so well articulated already by women on this thread.

It does nothing to address structural institutionalized oppression. It is also very sly in the way that it individualizes class issues.

I only ever see 'choice' used to;

a) justify and or invisibilize oppression and exploitation of women

b) victim blame

c) help a woman deal with cognitive dissonance that she doesn't want to, or cannot deal with, in another way.

I see western women keeping their original surnames in marriage as a personal choice today, not a feminist act.

You seem to believe the whole western world is as open-minded about surnames as you are. Many (most?) women will tell you it's not. On MN alone there are plenty of threads demonstrating that it's still a contentious subject.

I honestly fail to understand your point Ria, This thread is made up of people questioning and opinioning what is and what is not feminist:

'can choosing to use your husband's surname ever be hailed as a feminist act?'
'women consider that feminism is about choice'
'Isn't choice a liberal, rather than feminist concern'
'The whole 'choice' feminism is a con'
'It's not really a choice.'
'The majority of women who reject feminism do so out of a need to self protect.'
'I wanted to be able to discuss it for the very reason that I wanted to challenge my thinking, not because I think my view is the only one '

Should I not say what I think of parts of feminism and issues of concern? Only you or I can tell each other what our personal life experiences are. You bring up the 'collective life experience' of women yet you know that sections of feminism have often heated disagreements with their stances and observations of feminism, society, sex, etc.

scallops "Feminism has created choice. It has never been about choice." exactly that.

sparkly I agree that individual choice is a liberal issue rather than necessarily a feminist issue.

I'm pleased to have the opportunity (yet again) to post this:

www.theonion.com/articles/women-now-empowered-by-everything-a-woman-does,1398/

For me choice and agency are the most important social mechanisms for people who already have power and control in and over their lives, through privilege, wealth and/or education. For people who don't have power or privilege, they are hollow goals. Worse still, where people do not have power or privilege, emphasising choice and agency places responsibility on those people for their shitty life outcomes by ignoring structure and oppression and focussing on "it's their choice, they are exercising agency". This is deeply right wing and smacks of Thatcher's "there's no such thing as society" and an "I'm all right Jack" outlook. I cannot get on board with this attitude at all and I perceive it to be fundamentally anti-feminist.

I'm sure it's not deliberate Dad but in both your posts you've told us what is and isn't feminist, what is and isn't an issue for women today. I'm sure you know we don't need you to tell us what our individual and collective life experiences are :)

Blistory, if taking your husbands name is not a feminist act what of the reverse? Are women who keep their surname performing a feminist act?

I see western women keeping their original surnames in marriage as a personal choice today, not a feminist act. Feminists took arrows for it in decades past, like the proverb 'pioneers take the arrows and settlers take the land'; back when it was a socio-political principal that needed to be made. My second wave feminist relative was one of that vanguard, and she had to deal with family and social flack for keeping her name. But little is in a name IMO, it did not protect her from a physically abusive marriage that from the outside projected nothing but happiness. I am not going to get particularly worked up about how people interpret choices of names, too much else is more important. If a woman wants to regard taking her husbands name as an empowering feminist decision, and perhaps it is in some special circumstance I cannot imagine, more power to her. In general I do not see such an attitude to a name as a benefit to feminism nor do I see it as a weight against it.

Its probably worth mentioning that within certain ethnic groups keeping your own surname would still be a feminist act (ie has dimensions beyond personal choice for a broader female community) and in some situations to make such a choice; I suspect it would be so dangerous as to cause the woman to be beaten and murdered if she would not comply.

Well, this is really a TAAT and you are misrepresenting what I said.

Replace taking husband's surname with 'removal of body hair' and it's the same isn't it? It's not really a choice.

Isn't choice a liberal, rather than feminist concern? Obvs, there are lib fems whose primary feminism is about extending the same choices to women that they perceive men as having, but I think if individual choice is your primary concern then you are a liberal. In one place I worked, describing someone as a liberal was the polite way to call them a twat.