On a topic long dreaded...

[danalwyn]

There is no way I think I can say this without getting into lots of trouble. Yet I don't think I can keep my mouth shut, another one of my less admirable traits. So feel free to fire away, or hate me forever, or whatever. I think I deserve it

Comments

[madra_liath]

Speaking as a woman who can't legally obtain an abortion without travelling abroad unless having a baby will kill her, or unless there is a high chance she'll commit suicide if forced to continue with the pregnancy, it's all very well for you to sit and pontificate about the dangers of assuming bad faith on behalf of your idealogical opponents. You will not have your right to bodily autonomy effectively terminated, reduced to the status of an incubator, should you find yourself expecting a child. It's difficult to go "oh well I don't agree but they probably think they're doing good" when the other side's belief system is a) so toxic and harmful to your gender, b) shaping legislation to further erode not only the right to an abortion, but the right to contraception too. Specifically those forms of contraception available exclusively to women.

[danalwyn]

True. I didn't say I think they were right. But I find it a very bad idea to think that they don't believe what they're saying. So while I would encourage you to keep fighting against them, I would warn you about believing that they are arguing entirely out of a desire to hurt your gender.

To be honest, they've been doing the same thing for a long time. I don't think repeatedly calling pro-choice people baby-killers got the pro-life movement anywhere, and made them look rather stupid. I expect engaging in the converse won't do any good either.

And I find people who genuinely believe in some of the things I oppose (or which there seem to be many, both people and things), to be much more disturbing, and much more dangerous opponents than those who are embracing it out of an ulterior motive.

[lookingforwater]

It's not a question of them not really believing their own bullshit; it's a question of unpacking the bullshit and trying to get at the truth. If I hit my child because I come from an authoritarian religion that believes their will must be broken before they can achieve salvation, that doesn't change the fact that it is wrong. All the good faith in the world won't undo the damage done to my child. And it doesn't mean that I'm not doing it for toxic reasons, just that I'm unaware of the reasons, or unwilling to face them.

[danalwyn]

True.

But remember that they have their reasons, and most of them, if you could magically sift through their mind and extract them, would claim they were doing it for the child's own good. It doesn't mean that they are really doing the child any good, but it means that they believe they are, and any attempt to pretend the opposite is pretty much doomed to failure.

As I said, good people, or at least well-meaning ones, do bad things all the time. This, however, doesn't make them incurably evil, just people who need to be confronted. The idea that there is a universally accessible and recognizable "morally right" choice is a conceit we would do well to avoid.

[danalwyn]

I agree with the extremists thing. Extremists always think they're doing the right thing.

Once I leave the US though, this argument doesn't work as well - because the issues at hand change. There are plenty of places where I think that people may think that they're doing the right thing - and that suppressing women's rights is the right thing. Witness FGM in Africa. I don't think men encourage it because they think they're doing evil, I genuinely think that they believe they're doing the right thing in putting women under their power. In these cases, the answer is pretty clear cut. In the US though, I think even the majority of anti-abortion people think that women should have some form of equal rights, they just can't figure out what equal means.

In the US though, I think a lot of your opponents believe that they are putting the interests of the fetus first, regardless of how much damage they end up doing later on. I think though that trying to confuse the two groups has gotten more then one group into trouble.

[la_belle_laide]

Keep in mind that when Loki talked about the people who see women as incubators, not as human beings in their own right, and in their view, the lives of these women are of far less importance than a clump of cells, which is in turn of far less importance than their backward belief that women belong barefoot and pregnant, and let's put them all in the kitchen while we're at it? were specifically the ones in power.

And you already know how I feel about the people in power in this government so we don't need to get into that whole thing.

[danalwyn]

I feel much the same way, but I objected to the way that it seemed to imply that the non-handful were involved, and I don't even know about the ones in power. Deluded idiots are far more dangerous than scheming madmen. I highly suspect that the first is true; some of them have gone so far to the extreme they've become fanatics, but they still think they're fighting "the good fight". So does Osama Bin Laden I expect.

[eye_of_a_cat]

Agreed with lookingforwater that people's stated motivations don't always cover the full range of what's going on inside their heads. I wouldn't dispute that acting as if pro-life people don't truly believe their own words isn't helpful, and in lots of cases isn't accurate, but sincerity isn't quite the same thing as honesty. In particular, the correlation between anti-abortion stances and anti-feminist, or downright misogynist, ideas is strong enough to suggest that there's some connection there. Pulling one example out of the ether, I heard someone whose views I often respect and agree with described women who seek abortions as 'Sex-and-the-City wannabe sluts' the other day. I'm absolutely sure that this person is genuine about her pro-life views - she really does believe abortion is murder. But when 'sluts' is the first place your brain goes when you're talking about the issue, you might want to examine your motives a little more carefully

[fierynotes]

Stealing that link, thanks.