Why are so many women hellbent on acting against their own interest?

I am saying woman A telling woman B what to do while working to make other choices socially unacceptable or illegal is control.

Most of the choices that have been raised in this context are issues where Woman A is completely unaffected by Woman B’s choice.

sorry, i meant prosecuting customers is legal route - had brain fart there

the thing is that women who rely on sex work for their income and who are already vulnerable do not profit from prosecution of their customers, in fact they are still at a risk of blackmail and violence, especially because it is in the interest of customers to not be found out

I used to have very similar black-n-white views until I spoke to sex workers. Sending law enforcement after them / their customers is not saving their lives

easy - its impossible to not know you're killing someone.

Can you explain how you will know when something that happened is bogus when one party is dead?

there are places where prosecuting customers is illegal

I am saying customers will be prosecuted. This also protects women as if they do get hurt, the customer will be prosecuted, not the women. Making prostitution legal leads to trafficking as demonstrated in the Netherlands and Germany.

the logic use by anti-abortionists is exactly the same
In the case of abortion it is very easy to demonstrate anti safe abortions is not protecting women at all, so their 'logic' falls down at the first hurdle. I don't get why women must not argue for the banning of (commercial) surrogacy and prostitution because some people will try and reuse (and fail) to use the same type of logic to ban safe abortions.

In all these situations (making surrogacy, sex work illegal and providing safe abortions) the goal is to protect vulnerable women from being exploited and endangered. Yes, you have the right to bodily autonomy but you should not have to decide between food or a penis in your mouth. Stating a penis is ok because it will get you food is a massive failing by society.

@sanluca skimmed it for now, but what jumped out at me was some of these cases carried previous history of actual violence - would it not make more sense to just simply not allow bogus claims in court

it sounds very similar "she wore lace knickers so it clearly wasn't rape"

I purposefully added it to the list because the logic use by anti-abortionists is exactly the same - they are "protecting" women and their "babies", abortion is harmful, it leads to depression, prevention is better and so on, and Im sure some of these people genuinely believe those arguments

there are places where prosecuting customers is illegal and yet prostitution still exists and the illegality of it puts women at risk...so how are you exactly helping anyone by making it harder for women to report assault if this is their line of work?

Yes. It has
Just reading a 14 page article on the issue but have things to do.

www.lancaster.ac.uk/law/blog/how-the-law-enables-the-use-of-the-so-called-rough-sex-defence-despite-r-v-brown

This defence works really well. Not just for murder.

The way to go imo is not to make it illegal for women to do things (surrogacy, sex work) but to prosecute the buyers. And also ensure women have better educational and economical prospects so they don't have to resort to renting out the usage of their bodies for acts that may kill them for a pittance of money.

Abortion is a weird one to add to your list. Sex work and surrogacy harm women, safe abortion rights protects them. What made you do that?

@WhatWouldJeevesDo genuine question, has this defence actually ever worked? given that it is an obvious lie that you can kill someone accidentally this way?

Because nobody can give consent to actually be killed you know

You can't consent to being murdered.

Rough sex is a vague term, but as a defence against the accusation of murder it hasn’t only been used in cases of strangulation. Consent can be difficult to disprove if the person alleged to have consented is dead.
Feminism has always been about reducing the damage wrought by male sexual irresponsibility. Demanding the same standards of behaviour from men and women in the interests of the common good is entirely consistent with feminism.

what needs arguing for is consent - what do people consent to when it comes to sex is really up to them (the very definition of rough sex is a bit vague)

since when slut shaming became a part of feminism?

Most early twentieth century feminists very aware of the sexual double standard wanted votes for women and chastity for men. For a combination of biological and economic reasons free love was a bit of a luxury belief.
It still seems to me that biological factors still make arguing for tolerance of ‘rough sex’ a bit of a luxury belief. ‘Choice’ isn’t everything.

the goal of feminism has always been for women to have equal rights - both in legal and in social sense

and there is also an argument that if you make things you disagree with illegal (e.g sex work, surrogacy, abortion etc.) you are not eliminating an issue, but making conditions of it more dangerous to women involved - so effectively, you are penalising women for not doing what you would like them to

The trouble is this seems rather like thought control to me. It seems self evident that what person A does to person B affects person C but you seem to be saying that It’s anti-feminist to say so.

I agree, but any feminist who is against analysing and condemning certain choices by pretending they are class issues is labelled a “choice feminist”

It’s a bit of a sneery, reductive label stuck on many of us, but not how we describe our own feminism.

”Women today only have the choices they have as individuals because older women recognised the limitations on them as a class and fought to have more.”

Yep, among those women were myself and my mum.

What we fought for were for women to have more choices and more societal freedom to take those choices. We didn’t fight to stop women choosing to be SAHMs and bully them into being child free or working mums. Feminism wasn’t about making women more like men and only valuing what was traditionally the public and private roles of men. Feminism has always been about liberating women and adding value to the traditional public and private roles of women.

“Back to 'we want to control women' based on nothing but projection and assumptions. It reads as insecurity in your own choices ironically, as if other people's negative judgement equals a desire to control which you need to push back against.”

It’s not a projection or an assumption. Eliminating women’s choices all starts with making a choice socially unacceptable. Once that is accomplished, the next step is to get the public will riled up enough to ostracise those who choose it or even outright outlaw it.

We did not fight for more choices only for other women to set about judging certain choices as ‘feminist’ or ‘anti-feminist’ because that is step 1 of rolling back feminism. It is making choices socially unacceptable, so that hypocritically, this “no one makes a choice in a vacuum” is purposely exploited to pressure women down a certain path- the path deemed ‘most feminist’ by a cabal of self appointed matriarchs. Ironically by claiming any woman choosing otherwise that they are brainwashed and keeping women back as a class. If the choice is something especially problematic to the matriarchs, like women daring to choose to donate eggs or be a surrogate mother, the ultimate goal of making it socially unacceptable is to then get it outlawed. You know “feminist” activists are pushing for these things.

”That's assuming we all want to judge individual women when actually we're discussing class issues.”

Whether a woman wants to go by Ms, Mrs, Miss or keep or change her surname when married is not a class issue. Nor are even larger issues where women choose one way or another- like having children at 18 and then pursuing a career in her 40s. Your issue is the fact that women have choices and you think there is only one ‘right’ choice, one correct way to live as a feminist woman, when this is the opposite of liberation.

The end goal is to control women. Anything other than validation, tolerance and acceptance of women having autonomy and agency to make their own choices is anti-feminist.

Also, I think you guys are being deliberately misleading about the hospital bags. I saw the same lists.

Make-up was mentioned in the same category as having oil diffusers, a good book and your favourite playlist - ie non-essential things that may make you feel better at different points of your hospital stay.

I sure wasn't thinking of listening to music when my contractions kicked in before my c-section, but I'm not here wondering what social pressure makes people crave soundtrack for each activity

@thedankness I don't have to be insecure in my choices to be annoyed by some random person who tells me my choices are wrong because they are causing this person inconvenience

I absolutely value freedom of choice - otherwise we will end up with a twisted version of feminism that promotes every other type of discrimination, including sexism as it assumed women just don't know what is good for us all!

Yes - make up going home from hospital? Dear God - I was focused on whether I could fit back into my own shoes or would still have to borrow DH’s size 8s.

Focussing on the root causes is radical feminism, not liberal feminism.