undeniably feminist

For whatever reason, I began this blog with the intention of presenting myself in an androgynous way; to avail myself of the freedom offered by the web and experiment with my identity in the absence of gender constraints. While this remains an enticing possibility, I have determined that it must be set aside for a special project, one that is decidedly dedicated to investigating questions of gender and identity.

For the purposes of this blog, I now realize that I cannot stifle my femininity or my feminism; for better or for worse, gender has stamped its permanent mark upon my life experience and, consequently, my world view. If I am to be wholly myself on this blog and accurately transcribe my thoughts and experiences, I simply cannot skim over the fact of my gender and the ways that my life is shaped in this gendered world.

Thanks are owed to Robert Reich for helping me to come to this realization. And also to the cult of anti-feminism, exemplified by sites like this (and blogs like this and this), which I happened to stumble upon recently and which likewise inspired me to own up to my feminism and stand up in the blogosphere for human equality.

abortion in historical perspective

I wrote this a while back, but came across it recently and realized that it ought to be posted here:

Abortion has always been a women’s issue. It has not always been a medical issue, or a legal issue, but it has always been an issue of personal liberty and reproductive freedom for women.

As a historian-in-training, I’m convinced of the value of perspective. All too often people don’t stop to consider the larger picture, and so they fail to see the context surrounding our many “contemporary social problems.” I think that, just as with any number of other such problems, abortion can and should be analyzed and considered in historical context; not as some abhorrent aberration, but as the result of complex historical happenstance. By seeking to understand the history surrounding the current debate we can reach a more nuanced, profound comprehension of the issue.

This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive telling of the history of birth control; rather, it is intended as a sketch of the sexual politics and power that have held sway over women’s lives for so many millennia, which is being played out presently, in part, in the abortion debate.

Before the advent of a reliable oral contraceptive in the 1950s, women’s lives were controlled by birth. Prior to that, a woman could not exert much control over her sexual and reproductive functions – that was the province of her father, her husband, or her brother. There was no such thing as reproductive freedom; ordinary women’s very lives were at the mercy of their husband’s sex drives. Who can imagine the countless sorrowful women who died in childbirth or from pregnancy complications? And how many of those pregnancies were unintentional?

Abortion is a form of birth control. For as long as women have been sentient they have dealt with issues of birth control, including abortion and infanticide. Since the dawn of civilization The Powers That Be have legislated dictates proscribing when and how such acts are acceptable. These are not new issues.

Women have not historically been afforded the personal liberty to determine for themselves when they might reproduce. They have been beholden unto their husbands' desires, and not free to decide whether or when they wanted to be mothers. It was a given: women were, by their biological nature, wives and mothers.

Only in the modern world have women been granted the freedom and – through the birth control pill and other, newer contraceptive innovations – the license to exercise any significant influence over the sexual and reproductive aspects of their persons. The abortion debate is about how much reproductive freedom society is willing to allow women. It is not about the sanctity of human life; that is an issue in the debate, no doubt, but it is not the central issue. The central issue of the abortion debate is female autonomy, and it always has been.

Women have always sought to control their procreative function — be it via contraception or abortion or infanticide — as a way to exert some measure of influence over their lot in life, and they always will. And that is precisely why they continue do so today, and why ardent feminists will always be in favor of granting women access to safe abortions.

how advertising promotes the patriarchy

Watch this and learn:

of sex work and feminism

To be, or not to be a feminist? I've recently had to reconsider my position. This is no doubt because I've been consumed lately with the idea of sex work. From writing aresearch paper about prostitution in Mississippi to wrap up my last undergrad semester, to perusing pleasure reading since graduation about the Dancing Girls of Lahore and an escort in San Francisco, I've had many perspectives to consider.

FRAMING SEX WORK AS A FEMINIST ISSUE

I’m taking the position that sex work is, indeed, a feminist issue. While I realize that men, too, participate in sex work and that it affects those men’s lives in very real and profound ways, I’m convinced that male sex workers are a minority in the global sex trade, and that males’ lives have not historically been as shaped by their sexual value as have the lives of females. Males have historically been afforded more avenues of achieving success in any given society, while women, in the absence of other means of subsistence, are more often left to rely upon their sexuality as their sole agency for survival.

If anyone has any evidence to offer that might convince me that sex work should not be framed as a feminist issue, please do share.

THE OWNERSHIP OF FEMALE SEXUALITY

Historically, women’s sexuality was not their own; ownership of female sexuality reverted to a male relative or husband. Throughout history proper, some form of femme covert or another has existed, which consistently included a woman’s sexuality as a part and parcel of her legal identity. That is, the male with the most immediate interest in a woman’s procreative activity – which will not always be one man; that will change as a girl grows into a woman and her marital status changes through divorce or death – exerted the most direct influence over her life course.

This is, of course, an phenomenon which primarily affects upper class women. The sexuality of women of the lower rungs of society, those who have already been ascribed a deviant label by virtue of their poverty, is less valuable, freeing such women to flout the dominant society’s moral dictates, and take ownership of their own sexuality in order to exploit it economically as a means of survival.

THE COMMODIFICATION OF FEMALE SEXUALITY

Since the very earliest literate societies, women’s sexuality has been commodified by the dominant patriarchal society. This is a pattern that has had millenniums to become etched into human society, and which we have only recently begun to question. Women's exploitation via their participation in sex work is but one manifestation of a primordial control-mechanism of the patriarchy, but a telling one indeed.

It is because of the realization of this truth that I have lately been questioning my hesitancy to embrace the feminist label. Perhaps it is, after all, an ism with which I ought to associate myself.