"It helps no one when women feel that their feelings about their own personal experiences with abortion and contraception are somehow 'not okay.'"

"Which is why it’s wonderful that New York and Elle are reclaiming these stories from religious conservatives."

 Writes L.V. Anderson in a DoubleX article titled "Feminists Are Sharing Abortion Horror Stories. And That’s a Good Thing."

The phrase "not okay" caught my eye because, in the legal analysis, the right to have an abortion is framed in terms of the human individual's authority over a decisionmaking process which is presumed to involve a profound examination of the meaning of life. The woman's feelings matter in this moral struggle, but I don't see why the "personal dignity and autonomy" at the "heart of liberty" includes an entitlement to feel good about it. It's closer to the opposite. If the woman is the idealized individual the Supreme Court imagined exercising the right to choose, then she should feel a heavy weight. Anguish, sorrow, and regret belong in the process. To say I want to choose and feel good about it is to argue against the foundation of the right.

But examine that quote again:

"It helps no one when women feel that their feelings about their own personal experiences with abortion and contraception are somehow 'not okay.'"

"Not okay" is a quote within a quote. It's from this essay in Feministing written by a woman who says that poverty forced her to have an abortion:

Maybe regretting my aboriton [sic] isn’t the feminist thing to do. Maybe it’s not okay that I was attached to a clump of cells in the vague shape of an embyro. Maybe it’s not okay that the pain of abortion still hurts, four years layer. But it still hurts – feminist or not. I would have been a good mother.

She's not asking to feel "okay" about her decision to have an abortion. She reports the kind of feelings that correspond to the Supreme Court's ideal of the autonomous individual who is entitled to authority over her body and the not-yet-viable body of the unborn entity within.

What she's asking to feel "okay" about is her status as a good feminist. And Anderson is, essentially, telling feminists not to define feminism so narrowly that those who have somehow internalized the desire to be regarded as feminists are stuck with a feminist in their head telling them to stop feeling their own feelings. Another alternative, of course, is to kick that repressive nag out of your head and be free.

"Men Should Pay for Maternity Care Because BABIES."

Headline at DoubleX about babies, written in babytalk. Here's the argument:

The long-term prosperity of the U.S. depends on healthy citizens, men supply the sperm, it’s just a genetic lottery that made you a man and not a woman, and think of your mother who had to bear you!

But even if you don’t care at all about the women bearing the children, you should care about live human babies that are going to be born regardless of whether their mothers get adequate prenatal care. And really, really bad things happen to babies whose mothers don’t get adequate prenatal care. 

At the point when you purchase insurance, the individual customer would like only to insure for things that are possible. Everyone at the point of purchase knows whether they are male and thus naturally and absolutely immune to the risk of pregnancy. So why can't they get a price based on what they need to insure? The argument at the link is coherent only if you concede that we are no longer talking about insurance. We're talking about taxation to pay for a welfare benefit. 

If we weren't so deeply embroiled in Obamacare, it might be interesting to talk about whether the government should subsidize all maternity care. To do so would nudge women away from abortion. Perhaps the government could use the opportunity to gather information about the quality of the parenting that is likely to ensue and to take stronger actions to protect the "long-term prosperity of the U.S."

Remember, women's bodies are the portals through which all future generations of humanity must enter the scene. Old-school feminism took umbrage at thinking about women as containers of babies, but today's feminists are more like old-fashioned wives, and the message is: Pay the bills!

"There is a sharp, mildly enraging profile of clothing designer and retailer Eileen Fisher in the style issue of The New Yorker this week."

Notes DoubleX blogger Jessica Grose:

The writer Janet Malcolm, concealing a shiv in her “interestingly plain” Eileen Fisher duds, paints Fisher as frustratingly meek, and her business style as passive aggressive. What’s the mildly enraging part? Fisher refers to this business approach as “feminine,” as if women leaders can’t be straightforward about their demands....

Malcolm sits in on a meeting at Fisher Headquarters (in my hipsturbia hometown, Irvington, New York), where the exclusively female workers speak in incomprehensible code about “facilitating leaders” and “delegation with transparency.” Then the meeting ends with the ringing of a bronze bell. “I ring a bell to remind us of timelessness,” one woman says. Then a gourd is passed around and each woman says something when she gets her hands on it, like, “I feel humbled and honored.”

Grose emphasizes the gender stereotyping (which includes joking that the male employees are all in the warehouse, as if everyone forgot, because it's against men, that sex discrimination is illegal). In addition to that, I find the religionish rituals creepy. It's awful — or maybe for some it's great — to have a job that feels like you're in a cult.


This reminds me of some of the comments on yesterday's post about the "Lean In" circles. For example, Deirdre Mundy wrote (using some stereotypes that I am noting, not endorsing):

Actually, "women supporting other women" often just acts as a new iteration of the classic "gossipy office clique." It's why I prefer to work in mostly male environments. The men are happy if everyone does their job and goes home. The women want to make it all about supportive relationships and bonding and over-analyzing every social interaction.

So, if you're an introverted woman who just wants to do a good job and who has a life outside of work... these circles of 'leaning in' are positively Dante-esque.

"Feminism, in short, doesn't just empower women. It empowers me."

"It allows me to take on roles that have traditionally been associated with women. It gives me more flexibility in my career. As a man, feminism has had a huge positive effect on my life. It seems like the least I can do in return is own it."

Writes Noah Berlatsky under the heading "All the Selfish Reasons to Be a Male Feminist," posted at Slate's XXfactor. He's certainly not telling us all the selfish reasons, since I can think of at least one additional reason: You can get your free-lance writing published at Slate's XXfactor.

Berlatsky talks about having a wife with a full-time job and health insurance benefits and his own role as primary caregiver for their child while he does his writing, and that catches my eye, because it's the family life I had from 1981 to 1987. He says:

There was a time not so long ago where doing any of those things would have made me the object of ridicule, and quite possibly self-loathing as well. Today, though, it's no big deal — and the reason for that is feminism.

Well, there was feminism back then too, but it didn't save men from the inner turmoil of switching traditional gender roles. We thought we were really sophisticated, advanced, hip, and evolved in the early 1980s. Does that come as a surprise to you, Noah? You say, "it's no big deal," but you're writing at XXfactor, where it's in your interest — you have a selfish reason — to say that. But these things work until they don't work, so don't be smug, and good luck. Have you really thought deeply about your masculine self-esteem? Because, to my ear, your thanks feminism sounds shallow.