My gf seems to be bothered that I am 'white and privileged'.
funeralxempire
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But also, she told me in a conversation, that she also felt the birth control pill was sexist too, because it was made by men.
This I also find to be very contradictory, because first guys want to keep women from getting abortions out of sexism but they also want to prevent them from getting pregnant out if sexism? Those two are the complete opposite MOs and you can't say they are both sexist if they are the opposite. It just felt contradictory and having your cake and eating it too or so I thought.
But this is why I have trouble agreeing with her or seeing her perspective because her beliefs seem to have contradictions and holes, but that's just my perception on it.
I think you need to consider the broader picture to stitch some of her different criticisms together.
Things that contribute to reducing women's agency in sexual matters are by their very nature sexist.
A lot of things will interact with that basic premise in more than one way.
Birth control and access to abortion both can contribute to giving a woman more control over her body and reproductive choices, however if a woman is pressured into using them either by society in general or by her partner that pressure reduces her agency in making those choices.
The availability of both can also serve as pressure towards participating in sex that isn't entirely desired, which again serves to reduce agency. If every potential male partner has the expectation of sex right away because of those things being available that serves as coercive pressure.
You're seeing these perspectives as contradictory when really the issue is multifaceted. Pressure can exist in more than one direction and ultimately anything that serves to reduce one's ability to freely consent can be understood as sexist, whether the is pressure to engage or to never engage.
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They can be both. I wouldn't bother trying to change a persons views and this may be the problem with the OP here. He is quite evidently "fixed" and is coming to terms with a girl who is quite fluid and developing.
But there are a lot of women out there who are anti-abortion and they are for birth control pills so are they just being 'Uncle Tom's' then, when it comes to sexist pressure on women?
Not quite sure what you mean?
AngelRho
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Consider Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.
Now…what a lot of people don’t seem to know is that Sanger was anti-abortion. She believed life began at conception and that the key to liberating women was not destroying life but rather preventing it in the first place. She was also a nurse and had seen firsthand the results of back alley abortions. She noticed that this happened most frequently among poor working class people and minorities, particularly among immigrants. Her big idea was to make b.c. available to the poorest of Americans and even took a large donation from a Klansman to support her work.
Sanger never thought of herself as a racist, but let that sink in. Fact is that blacks at the time were denied civil rights and represented the poorest among Americans at the time. So making b.c. freely available would have impacted the growth of which ethnic community in the USA?
You guessed it…BLACKS. And while Sanger never saw herself as racist, she merely failed to recognize herself as a product of her own culture—the dominant culture—that was and still is racist. Whether she meant to or not, she was working to reduce the black population. She can’t really be blamed for it because her racism is systemic. She was “born that way.” But had she lived in the present day and age, perhaps she could have admitted that the Pill is systemically racist BUT also has the benefit of allowing black women more sexual freedom. That way, black women can take the Pill on THEIR terms, fully understanding what they’re doing along with the risks—not health risks/side effects of the Pill, but the risk to the black COMMUNITY.
Beyond this point, CRT gets convoluted and confusing with academics disagreeing on all the nuance. Sanger noticed that SMART people (the wealthy and educated) were already limiting their family size, while intelligent but marginalized groups were taking more responsibility by avoiding having more children than they could afford. It was the poor and uneducated who were mating like rabbits (i.e. black people). The pill was never meant to encourage people to have more sex. It was only meant for women to determine when they would get pregnant and how many children they would choose to have.
With that in mind, what does this mean for black people? On the one hand, it gives single, black mothers, who are among the most marginalized of all oppressed groups, control over being overburdened with a large number of children. It gives them freedom, in other words. It gave them the opportunity to have a similar quality of life as wealthy, educated, and responsible white people…
Uh oh…
So the pill is really to make black people more white? There’s the real problem. If you are black and you take the pill, you are either giving in to the white idea of reducing the black population, or you are trying to be white. And what does that even mean, anyway? Well, how do we define what it means to be wealthy, educated, and responsible? To be wealthy, you have to do what white people do. To be educated, you have to learn from white teachers or from black teachers teaching a state-approved curriculum designed by white educators and approved of by white legislators. Responsible—by whose standards? White people? Why would blacks want white people to tell them what it means to be responsible? What sense does that make?
And you just thought this was about the Pill, right? Nope. The Pill is RACIST.
Oh…have you ever seen the Pill? What color is it?
funeralxempire
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I'd anticipate most people hold a more nuanced understanding than that interpretation.
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I'd anticipate most people hold a more nuanced understanding than that interpretation.
But if they did, why would so many people consider these character traits to be misogynistic, when a lot of women also have these same traits, and not just men.
AngelRho
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I'd anticipate most people hold a more nuanced understanding than that interpretation.
Exactly. I mentioned Margaret Sanger who was strongly opposed to abortion but promoted the heck out of the Pill. But her attitude was not that women should have more sex, just the ability to have children on THEIR terms. Back then a doctor might tell a woman to just keep her legs closed if she didn’t want to get pregnant. Back then, sex education was more about telling women how to have their 7th baby rather than telling them how to NOT have an 8th.
A woman would be considered a traitor more if she only took the Pill because her bf didn’t want to use a condom. In other words, she’s only on b.c. because of male pressure and encourages other women to do the same—to please men rather than themselves. Wanting to have autonomy over how, when, where she conceives is pro-woman. Being against abortion is a matter of when a baby is considered a person and whether women have the right to end the life of a person growing inside them. If you are a women and anti-pill, anti-abortion, or both, you’re pretty much a traitor for thinking women's access to those things should ever be limited in any way.
funeralxempire
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I'd anticipate most people hold a more nuanced understanding than that interpretation.
But if they did, why would so many people consider these character traits to be misogynistic, when a lot of women also have these same traits, and not just men.
If something has a disproportional impact on women is it unfair to view it in that way?
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"Many of us like to ask ourselves, What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now." —Former U.S. Airman (Air Force) Aaron Bushnell
I'd anticipate most people hold a more nuanced understanding than that interpretation.
Exactly. I mentioned Margaret Sanger who was strongly opposed to abortion but promoted the heck out of the Pill. But her attitude was not that women should have more sex, just the ability to have children on THEIR terms. Back then a doctor might tell a woman to just keep her legs closed if she didn’t want to get pregnant. Back then, sex education was more about telling women how to have their 7th baby rather than telling them how to NOT have an 8th.
A woman would be considered a traitor more if she only took the Pill because her bf didn’t want to use a condom. In other words, she’s only on b.c. because of male pressure and encourages other women to do the same—to please men rather than themselves. Wanting to have autonomy over how, when, where she conceives is pro-woman. Being against abortion is a matter of when a baby is considered a person and whether women have the right to end the life of a person growing inside them. If you are a women and anti-pill, anti-abortion, or both, you’re pretty much a traitor for thinking women's access to those things should ever be limited in any way.
Well I am just trying to understand why being anti-abortion is sexist in the sense that men do not want women to have abortions. I mean are there a lot of guys out there, who think "man I really wish I could accidentally get a woman pregnant, just so I can have a kid, and I really wish the woman would go through with that"? Are there a lot of men throughout history who thought this way, which would be the motivation for men being anti-abortion?
funeralxempire
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If an issue (like say control over their own reproductive choices) impacts women more significantly, is it unfair to describe those negative impacts as misogynistic or anti-women?
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"Many of us like to ask ourselves, What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now." —Former U.S. Airman (Air Force) Aaron Bushnell
That's not unfair I would say, but it seems that when people such as my gf present this argument they never mention how other women are against these issues as well. They never mention the "Benedict Arnolds", and why they are on the misygonists side. So I feel I need that piece explained to me before I can consider the issues to be misogynistic if plenty of women are for them too.
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