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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Can I be pro-choice, but still really dislike some reasons and timing?

106 replies

CuntyBunty · 24/04/2014 12:04

Can I?
I really dislike celeb culture and try not to expose myself to it, if at all possible.
I think we all know who I am talking about here, but didn't want to go on the other AIBU as it was "too too" and I wouldn't get much out of a piley-in to put the boot in.
In this case, can my contempt transcend gender? I had to Google who JC was the other day and we have very different values, but I do know that I am more privileged; better start in life, higher expectations etc.
I in no way think she should have the baby if she doesn't want it, no good could come of an enforced pregnancy, but I don't think my feelings really come from a concern for her welfare.
I have been honest here in an attempt to be better educated by the FWR posse, but I'm a bit of a mediocre feminist, aren't I?

OP posts:
TheDoctrineOfSnatch · 25/04/2014 12:37

Yy creeping.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 25/04/2014 12:48

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

almondcakes · 25/04/2014 12:54

Buffy, I don't think you are being confrontational at all, particularly given that at the core of what I'm saying is a position usually argued by people who don't care very much about women's rights at all.

I think there are very many decisions made all the time in medicine that force people to do things with their bodies that they don't want to do. There are treatments denied to people based on the financial cost, which force people to die or become disabled when they don't want to do that with their body at all. There are people who suffer in pain for months or years because they are denied treatment for avoidable reasons - waiting lists, conditions of being allowed treatment, prioritising some patients and conditions over others. There are lots of situations in birth where women are made to have treatments or give birth in ways they do not want.

One that sticks in my mind from a few years ago was a woman with mouth cancer, where HCPs diagnosed her not as having cancer and instead of having some kind of mental health problem where she was inventing or imagining illnesses. She was eventually diagnosed, but not after a long period of counselling for a mental health condition that she didn't actually have because she wasn't imagining the symptoms at all.

All these issues would still be applied (and in a sexist manner) to abortion.

The difference of course is in the principle and the way that gets discussed, which is that many people don't want women to have abortions because they don't think those people matter specifically because they are women, and so apply a set of principles to abortion that wouldn't be applied in making ethical decisions about the law for anyone else. And that's why (I assume) so many people will come back to defending the principle that women should have equal rights to bodily autonomy, because it is under attack. And it is under attack in so many ways, from the most smallest forms of boundary crossing to the biggest human rights abuses, that feeling that we don't have bodily autonomy is a common experience (I certainly feel that way), and women not having the right to a late abortion has an impact on specific people in the circumstances, but it also reinforces the feelings many of us have about our own experiences of harassment, lack of safety, sex, birth and even things like food.

TheDoctrineOfSnatch · 25/04/2014 12:59

The other things we get "on demand" are usually entertainment, like movies. It also has connotations of immediate - press a button and get it.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 25/04/2014 13:16

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

GeraldineFangedVagine · 25/04/2014 13:16

It seems to me, from that BPAS report, that services for women requiring late terminations need to be vastly improved. It seems unacceptable that due to lack of services, appointments or properly informed doctors women have to continue with a pregnancy due to the current law. Terrible that someone should visit a GP (in a position of power) to be told its too late or not possible and even worse to then find services to assist but run out of time.

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