Choice, Motherhood, and Being a Woman.

By: Liberate Zealot

Sometimes it is difficult for me to reconcile my feminist identity with that of me as a part of my family. Other times it's it nearly impossible to reconcile my upbringing with that of a woman (in the United States).

No matter the aspect of myself, or my actions and beliefs, there seems to be an incongruence.  This touches every part of my life, but for most it is the idea that my identity as a person is not completely recognized, within society or even my family.

I imagine this is a recognition many people experience.  Those of us who are in some way outside, be it because we're queer, or people of color, or disabled, and non-Christian or women.  And rebelling against the established norms only exacerbates our lack or personhood and belonging.

So often society/politics/my family makes me feel incomplete. A not fully actualized version of a person.  And oddly enough it is my upbringing that makes me able to recognize this incongruence.

I was brought up to be opinionated; and confident in my voice and experience and opinions. I was brought up to see myself as a being of worth, as a full and independent entity. And yet, as I age, that full and independent worth and identity is stripped from me.

Once upon a time I saw myself with children, even if I never had a partner.  But as I've left my upper middle class upbringing, and as political and social spheres has turned more pro-fetus and anti-woman, I've experienced a great change in that regard.  Now I know I'll never be willingly pregnant or a mother.  And when I expressed that to my (mainly feminist) parents the question wasn't centered around what had made me change my mind, but what my male partner thought of this. As if my decisions about my body and life were incomplete without a man's opinion.

And I have a brother who goes to pro-life marches and studies to become a priest in the Catholic Church.  And I have so many other family members who seeks to do right and help others but cannot conceive an existence of worth without it being one in line with their own views and beliefs.

And these views and beliefs are the ones that say I should be incomplete without offering up my body and life to motherhood.  That my male partner is the primary actor in our partnership.  That to be a true  women I must be a mother.  And that to be a mother I must sacrifice all for my children.  And that my body, mind, and desires are secondary to that.

And so many of them cannot understand my virulent objection of these ideas.

They cannot understand that my primary objective to motherhood is that of being unwilling to sacrifice my personhood. Instead they convince themselves that it is about a lack of love and understanding of children (despite my decade of work with children).

I cannot conceive of being pregnant in a country where so many people prize the life and humanity of a pregnant person as secondary to the fetus they willingly (or unwillingly) carry.  And that this is a devaluation of humanity that only effects pregnant people.  No one else is expected to sacrifice their organs or living conditions for another person.

And I cannot conceive of being a parent, a mother, in a world that devalues mothers.  Where father's are praised where mothers in the same situations are hated and mocked.  Where women are hated for being working mothers, or for needing more than motherhood to experience a complete life.

I am a person, a human, first and foremost.  And many aspects of my identity means that society seeks to take that personhood away from me.   And I cannot imagine willingly ceding more of my personhood.

Some people must give up parts of their personhood to live the lives they want, and I cannot blame them for such.  Certainly I have done the same in different areas.  Some do not see these identities or lives as a ceding of their personhood.  Some glory in the chance of rebellion.

All of these lives and choices have worth.  And I hope, with all my heart, that they are centered around a freely made choice.

I just wish society recognized the choices of women.  And saw us as full humans worthy and capable of making choices about our own lives.

Women's History and Reproductive Rights

By: Liberate Zealot

It's the last days of Women's History Month in the US and in that time I haven't really written anything about the topic for Feminist Armchair Regime.  Women's History Month is a time to celebrate woman and their achievements from the past and sharpen our gaze on the continuing concerns and causes faced by women.  This year much of the focus is on women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, but like every year, it’s important to consider reproductive justice and the role family planning plays in equality for women. 


The individual women who achieve notice in the annals of history, the Elizabeth's and Hypatia's, had extraordinary privileges for their times, one of the most significant being the ability to choose not to marry or have children.  And so it seems obvious to me to state that family planning is the bedrock of women’s rights.  The ability to plan when to have children, and when not to, is a necessary part of achieving parity in education, in income, in the work force, and in government.

The right to reproductive control over ones own body is a right that has long been denied to the majority of women.  And the more intersectional oppression one faces the harder it is to access ones reproductive rights.

For decades before the legalization of the Pill or Abortion wealthy and middle class white women knew how to access safe options of birth control.  Not so for poor women and women of color. This disparity is the reason Margaret Sanger (who is also not the massive racist so many people believe her to be) protested the Comstock Laws and opened the majority of her clinics in neighborhoods with high populations of poor people, immigrants, and people of color.  Currently access to contraception and abortion in the US is still very much based on class, race, and location.

And we know the limiting of reproductive rights is about hurting women.  It isn't about viewing fetus' as children and thus worthy of protection, because the protections of poor children are being stripped away.  And it isn't a secret that many of the states which are the focus of the anti-choice movement have high populations of people of color and people living in poverty.  Mississippi, the state with the most focus around Personhood Bills, and until this month was the state with the most restrictive abortion ban, is also the state with the most African-Americans and the most people living in poverty.

If we can't control our own bodies and whether we become pregnant or not than it's much harder to control our education and careers.  Certainly if we can't control out bodies or plan when, or when not, to have families then we can't live full lives of relationships and pursuits outside of the heart and home.  And should we pick one we'll be shamed for being lazy, for denying our womanhood, for being cold-hearted, for "mooching" off a man.  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

There is no chance for us if we're denied the most basic human right of deciding what to do with our own bodies. 

I've learned the history of women.  How one must be exceptional, come from immense privilege, to be afforded a place as a woman in general history. How the many amazing unrecorded women faced impossible choices, if they had any choice at all.

The Familial Divide and "Choice" vs "Life"

By: Liberate Zealot

As I've mentioned in the past one of my brothers is studying to be a priest and this has caused a certain divide and tensions between us.  However, this last Saturday we met up in DC and spent seven lovely hours together.  We visited the National Gallery and wandered through many exhibits before getting dinner and talking for hours about language, logic and philosophy, various countries, silly things on the internet, and our spring break plans.  It was very enjoyable, but still...

On Friday I was filling out another application to volunteer with Planned Parenthood and writing about Roe v Wade and how it hasn't done enough to guarantee body autonomy to people.

On Friday my brother attended a mass presided over by Cardinal Sean O'Malley and the March for Life a "pro-life"/anti-choice protest that happens yearly at approximately the same time as the passage of Roe v Wade.

The website for the March for Life discussed the apparently 55 million "people" (read fetus) who have died since the passage of Roe v Wade.  My own post on the subject discussed the women who have died from illegal abortions and the effects of not being able to access abortions has on an unwillingly pregnant person's life.

I could write about the meaning of choice, and trusting people to know what's right for their own bodies and lives.  I could write about how fetus are not people, and how even if they were in no other instance does right to life trump right to body autonomy.  I could write about the myriad issues and duplicity of the "pro-life" movement.  I could write about the recent hypocrisy of a Catholic hospital arguing it's way out of a wrongful death suit by stating that fetus aren't living humans.

But when it comes to my family and my brother the future priest most of my logic and argumentation fails me.  I'm only left with the (very logical) hurt of having a brother that values fetus over women (or anyone able to get pregnant).  Who would value the life of my potential unwanted fetus over myself.  A not yet living sack of growing membranes, nerves, and organs, over my physical and mental well being, over my human right to determine what happens to my own body and organs.

I have a brother who thinks women, pregnant people, potentially his own sister cannot be trusted to make the best decisions for their (my) life and body.  Who finds not a yet sentient fetus more valuable than them (me).

This removes the joy from any pleasurable get together or conversation.

Roe v Wade - 40 Years Later

By: Liberate Zealot

It was the 40th Anniversary of Roe v Wade a couple of days ago, and I meant to write something then, but work and masters/internship applications got in the way.

There's a saying that Roe v Wade wasn't the start of abortions, but rather the end of women dying from unsafe and illegal abortions. However, that's not actually the case.  The financial and legal restrictions on abortion mean that illegal abortions continue, and people continue to die from them. At much smaller numbers than the 5,000 annually from before Roe v Wade, but one person who dies from their inability to access a safe and legal abortion is one person too many.

Between 1975 and 1979 a third of all women who died from illegal abortions did so because they couldn't access or afford legal abortions.  Other reasons included religious pressure to not get abortions and a need for secrecy.  The vast majority of these women were African American and Hispanic.

The current increasing restrictions around abortion have forced many people to look for other ways to terminate their pregnancies.  In Texas people are crossing the boarder to get abortion pills from Mexico.  Often the lack of information provided means this doesn't work.

And then there's the fact that many people are doing without the abortions they want and need.  As the TurnAway Study makes plain this can have disastrous consequences for the women and her children. Instead they're having another child, to tax their health, income, emotional well being, make employment harder, and increase their slide into systematic poverty. Women in abusive relationships are more likely to stay in them if they are denied an abortion.

As many of us know, and many more of us are learning, Roe v Wade is not enough to to protect people's right to a safe and affordable abortion.  And often it is people in poverty and people of color who are paying this price.

We Are Women Recap

By: Liberate Zealot

So after some issues (damn metro!) the roommate and I made it to the We Are Woman Rally right around noon.

Check out our Facebook Album for more imagines!

We missed several speakers and one performer. Mara Keisling, who spoke at the Unite Against the War on Women Rally, was back, but sadly I didn't see her speech.  However, all the speeches are up on-line if you care to check them out yourself.  And the bands, sounds system, and over all organization of the Rally was the best I've seen yet.

My favorite speakers were Rev. Charles McKenzie of the Rainbow Push Coalition in Florida and Soraya Chemaly of the Huffington Post, fem2pt0, Btchflcks, and more.  They were both eloquent and impassioned speakers who, in my opinion, out shone the other speakers, in their ability and skill and the resonance of what they were saying.  Both spoke about current political and social issues, discussed individual acts, and connected them to the larger mentality and methods of the Kyriarchy.  Soraya Chemaly spoke about internalized misogyny and how the social and political issues are related to that and society's failure to see women as fully human.  This tied very nicely into discussion about the ERA which was the focus of most of the speakers. (along with plenty of disparaging comments about Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan).

As a reminder the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) which would result in Constitutional recognition of women's humanity and personhood, has never passed.

However, I have to admit to a sense of disappointment with the We Are Woman Rally. Maybe it was the heat, or the length of the rally (10:30-4:00), but it just wasn't as good as other ones.  The speakers became repetitive after a while, and while they were all knowledgeable and "accredited feminists" many of them just weren't stirring speakers.  Most disappointing was the diversity of the speakers.  The vast majority were late middle aged white women. Few of them self disclosed as queer or from the "lower" class.  It was too homogeneous to feel representative of all US women.  And if I noticed this I can only imagine how alienating it might have felt to women of color, or those who've grown up without class privilege.

I can't help but compare it to last week's #sheparty which was led by Flyover Feminism and about the diversity within the feminist movement. To go from a discussion about needing better representation and the feminists in power, the privileged feminists, needing to be the ones to open their conferences, to reach out and gain the trust of our less privileged sisters, to a rally full of "official" feminists, dominated by white women.  Well, it was upsetting, and it made me angry.  We're supposed to be getting better in truth, not just paying lip service to diversity and intersectionality.

We Are Women Rally

By: Liberate Zealot

Tomorrow one of the roommates and I will be down in DC to attend the We Are Women Rally whose

mission is to bring national attention to the ongoing war on women's rights being fought by conservative representatives in federal and state legislatures throughout the country. We believe that women have the right to control their own bodies, make their own decisions about healthcare, receive equal pay for equal work, and be treated with respect by the men and women who represent them in their own state houses and in Washington.  Women are not a special interest group seeking special privileges; we comprise 50% of the population, and we are citizens deserving of the same freedoms and protections awarded to our male counterparts.  We Are Woman supports the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and the restoration of all the rights that have been limited or destroyed by governors and other legislators across the nation.  It is our goal to bring thousands of men and women together at the Capitol on August 18th, 2012, to tell our politicians, "No more!"  We are strong, powerful, loving and brave. We are America. We Are Woman.

Now, I also attended the Unite Against the War on Women's DC Rally in April which I planned to live tweet as @femarmregime but I forgot my phone.  Hopefully that doesn't happen again.  So if all goes according to plan I'll live tweet the We Are Women Rally, and then post pictures and do a write up. 

But before the Rally happens I thought it a good idea to go over exactly what's going on in the US that we need to Rally about. 

Here's a write up on the various acts that make up the War on Women as of April.  But more has happened since then, and there's also the specifics of who is running for election in November. 

Updates on the Bills and Laws of the War on Women

• Since January 2011, there has been a federal attack on the rights of Women every single week that Congress has sat. 
• Michigan introduced Bills limiting the time people have to get abortions to 20 weeks, virtually eliminating medication abortions, and that would force closed almost all the abortion clinics in the state. 
• The International Business Times offers a break down of what State law makers are doing to restrict abortion. 
• The GOP is working in various ways against Equal Pay for Women. At the Federal level they blocked a bill in the Senate that would help close some of the wage gaps that still exist.  As Forbes explains, this is problematic as the pay-gap has actually slightly increased in recent years, and less women are filing discrimination suits as legal support has declined. At the state level Wisconsin repealed their Equal Pay Rights. 
• The Violence Against Women renewal continued to be fought over.  Republicans don't want to include protections of Immigrants and Queer couples. In May the House passed a VAWA option that didn't include protection of lgbt people, Native Americans and illegal immigrants. As of the end of July the Senate has refused to pass the House's version of VAWA and continues to encourage the House to pass the version that includes protection of Queer people, Native Americans, and illegal immigrants.
• Luckily the Affordable Care Act was ruled Constitutional by the Supreme Court and more of it's provisions, such as the completely covered contraception in new plans, has gone into effect.  

The Social War on Women

• Conservatives have been using a lot of language that compares women to animals. Immigrant women come to the US during their "breeding season", women on welfare are "stray animals."  It's primarily racist, and intentionally dehumanizing. 
• And who can forget the sex-shaming and "Slut" smeer campaigns against women speaking out about their need for affordable birth control?

Mitt Romney

• As Governor of Massachusetts Romney was much more liberal than the average conservative, but his time before and after shows otherwise.  Unfortunately, as Romney hasn't been in any officer for several years his anti-woman record isn't as easy to break down as Paul Ryan's. 
• He's very into the sexist/racist dog whistles of "Traditional America".
• Before becoming Governor of MA Romney was extremely anti-choice.  He protested outside of family planning and abortion clinics and even went so far as to physically restrain a woman who was attempting to enter one.  
• Romney is anti-choice (abortion) and anti emergency contraception. 
• He would repeal the ACA (Obamacare). 
• He has political relationships with various anti-women advocates. 
• He picked Paul Ryan as his running mate. 

Paul Ryan

• So Paul Ryan is basically all around horrible for women.
• He's co-sponsored a Fetal Personhood Bill which would outlaw abortion and many forms of contraception.
• He supported the "Let Women Die Act," 
• He voted to cute off all federal funding for Planned Parenthood
• He voted against allowing US service women over seas from using military hospitals to access abortions
• He's voted in favor of forcing women to hear about their fetus's "pain" should they get an abortion
• His budget plans includes defunding or eliminating programs that support poor women and children such as VIC, Head Start, and Title X Family Planning Act, the Home Affordable Mortgage Program, and Medicaid.
• Paul Ryan has a 0% rating from the HRC.  I'm sure they'd give him a negative percent if it were possible. 
• He has a 13% rating by the ACLU, meaning he has an anti-civil rights voting record. 
• Check out Ryan's full voting record.
• Along with being on the GOP ticket as the potential VP, Paul Ryan is also running for re-election as a Representative in his home state of Wisconsin. 

DC - Unite Against the War on Women

By: Liberate Zealot


So I promised to live tweet the rally, and then lost my phone (yay ADD!) right before heading down.  However, I had a roommate to be my photographer and I'm doing a post on it now.

The Washington DC rally was in the same place the Feb. March for Choice was last year (Upper Senate Park)  which I went to last year.  This one was much better organized, they had more time, so the sound equipment was so much better (there was a stage and we could hear everything, even at the back of the crowd).  There was music and a wonderful variety of knowledgeable and skilled speakers who came from a variety of organizations and perspectives.  It really was, at the title of the rally said, about uniting against the War on Women. 


The speakers included Catholics, protestants, atheists,  college students, middle aged people, men, women, immigrants, people born in the US, white people, people of color, cis and trans women, and poor and middle class people.  They were all very talented and insightful, but I did have 3 or 4 favorites. 

  Mara Keisling is the founding executive director for the National Center for Transgender Equality. In her own words she's a white, over educated, middle class, middle aged, transgender women.  She spoke about trans people having politically controlled medical care, how that and trans people in general relate to and suffer from the War on Women.  She also spoke about intersectionality, and violence and hate. She specifically spoke about CeCe McDonald.  A young, poor, black trans women who is undergoing trial this week for murder charges related to her and her friends defense of them selves while being targets of what should be classified a hate crime. 

Callie Otto and Eric Orantes started and head the The Catholic University Students for Choice.  They discussed the differences between Catholics and Catholic institutions when it comes to abortion, contraceptives, and the separation of church and state.  They also spoke about their work to educate their peers about safer sex and to help them get access to contraceptives (condoms) while facing the risk of expulsion if they didn't successfully navigate following the letter of the law. 

Melody Hensley is with the Center for Inquiry an organization that works for a secular and scientific society.  She spoke about being a foster child, and poor, and a statistic.  She spoke about her own abortion at the age of 20.  She spoke about the importance of choice and trusting women.  How having an abortion when you're not ready or able to be pregnant or a parent is just as responsible as having a child when you are able and ready.  She spoke about the connection of reproductive rights and economics. And the law and politics being based on science, not religious dogma. 

Derrick Ashong is a naturalized citizen.  He spoke about growing up in West Africa and Arabia among Muslims (while not being one himself).  He spoke about how the US can be an example to other countries, and a source of hope among people who are striving for equality.  He also spoke about the importance on continued struggle and not resting on our laurels.  How rights must be fought to get, and how we must fight to keep them while also fighting for all our rights and real, true freedom and equality.





Now one of my favorite parts of any protest/rally/march is seeing all the signs...

The US War on Women

By: Liberate Zealot


I'm attending the marches in DC tomorrow and plan to live tweet and post pictures and a write-up afterwards.

Tomorrow is the National protest Unite Against the War on Women.  For the last several years the GOP has been rolling back and fighting against the rights of women in this country.  For many of us the most obvious signs of the war on women are the repeated attacks against abortion, contraceptives, and Planned Parenthood. There's so much going on at the local, state, and national level that it's nearly impossible to keep track.  Here's my compilation of the various acts of the War on Women.

Signing

By: Liberate Zealot

Content Warning: rape/rape culture, homophobia

Every week brings something objectionable into the world, or some important bill or law up for debate/vote.  I can't write equally about all of these (the whole Hive Mind working constantly couldn't address everything).  But what I do try to do is sign petitions for the various causes I care about.  Here's a sampling of what I've signed this past week.