choice as symbol

I experienced something like a paradigm shift. I think I understand what it is that conservatives respond to so powerfully in the abortion debate.

This realization came to me several hours after my brain melted, after reading through blog after blog of people commenting that the first female in the White House is not really historic and not good for women because the issue is all about CHOICE CHOICE CHOICE and how women are not really dumb enough to vote for an anti CHOICE candidate, and what is galling is that even so-called feminists who defend Palin still talk about this CHOICE worldview as if it were the only thing defining womanhood in America, as if it just goes without saying that this is what is important to women - all women - and any woman who does not agree is a stupid childlike thing that does not deserve a vote, and they don't seem to get how narrow the whole "choice" rhetoric really is.

At first what mostly upset me about this was the mindless drone-like insistence that this one issue is so important that it doesn't matter what else gets traded away so long as we hold onto this.

For women who do not define feminism all about the right to having sex without having children, to those women who care more about the issues that lead to women and children in poverty, which in turn are issues of power for mothers and married women - from this viewpoint, Sarah Palin in the White House would be a real victory. The working mother of a young child entrusted with such awesome responsibilities, "a heartbeat away from the Presidency", while her husband stays home to care for the child? Hell yes!

This is real world here. And feminists are rejecting it because they don't have faith in their worthless Congress (and they don't know how to solve the real problem, so they collaborate in making Palin a scapegoat when the real problem is that Palin's "wrong" views are actually very popular).

choice
Then I began to realize that what is really driving me nuts is the flawed logic behind what liberals call "choice" - specifically, the lopsided idea that

(a) people are entitled to choice and

(b) therefore, you must do/think/agree to what I tell you, because that is what THEY need for THEIR choice.

And if mothers with kids are asked to make choices that are not in their own self-interest? What matters is that we benefit women who want to retain their power to stay sexually active with that guarantee of childlessness. The mothers who want children - who would cheerfully sacrifice for the sake of a child - who cares about them? Mothers with kids have always been viewed and treated as traitors to the cause. The view has softened considerably - they're not militant about it anymore (most of the time) - but for all that they have developed new rhetoric to encompass motherhood, they have not solved the underlying issue. That pretty rhetoric holds only so long as there is no conflict of interest. The minute the conflicts appear, the woman who actually joins with man to make a family is an appeaser.

So much for "choice".

Choice is, of course, what we all get. You do have choice. You choose how you can behave. In doing so, you choose your consequences.

The real issue is not about "choice" but about the fact that some people need and deserve more CHOICE than that. And they don't even see the irony in their demands that people should change their behavior and do as they are told so that this person or that person can have CHOICE.

I'm all for sexual freedom. If you could do it without taking anything from anyone else, I'd be all for it. But where is the CHOICE for the Roman Catholic male who believes that his girlfriend's baby is a gift from God? Ohhh wait he does not get any CHOICE....he can take responsibility for the consequences of his actions!

What's good for the goose is most certainly not good for the gander. His sexual freedom is as reliable as a leaky condom. But his views on God are wrong anyway, so who cares?

But he's a man, and men are soaked in the guilt of privilege, so who cares?

(Typical of the Democratic party, CHOICE rhetoric - like identity politics in general - is based on the belief that some people don't deserve equality.)

entitlement
Reading all those blogs, I felt this growing choking tide of revulsion. These people started making me feel sick. Their sense of entitlement overwhelms me.

It's the sense of entitlement that is at the heart of it - well, half of the image, I should say. (Entitlement plus a dead baby photo - the consequence of entitlement run amok.)

So what is so bad about entitlement, the liberal asks. We are all entitled. We should live in a world where everyone gets whatever they want, all the time. What's so wrong about wanting that? (The world really would be a better place if only.)

Well, nothing, except that liberals have a blind spot when it comes to recognizing that power and freedom behave like any other type of scarce resource. That is, whenever you choose to give more power and freedom to one group, it tends to cost another group something, somewhere down the road.

Or, for those who do not have time for such arguments (which can get complicated), simply think of the waiter in Vonnegut - the rich man who waves his hand, too busy with his phone call to pay attention, and says "just give it to the dog" . This man does not see and does not know what the waiter sees and knows, and it is this contrast that makes it horrific. Giving a dog a steak is not normally something that makes us cringe. It is the contrast between what the waiter sees (starvation outside) vs. what the rich man sees (nothing but his own rather selfish concerns). The rich man is horrific because he is in a bubble and being bubbled is increasingly becoming a dangerous position to be in.

It is exactly this sort of bubble that conservatives have been using to get the lower classes to hate liberals. Liberals are bubbled and anyone who tries to break the bubble is treated as a threat - and attacked. And it is the contrast that is horrific. If you are inside the bubble, everything looks great. But when you are outside where I am, those people in the bubble look very self-absorbed.

We cannot all be entitled. We must choose and the choices we make determine the flow of goods and services - and power. And feminism as a whole has chosen to empower the childless woman at the expense of the woman who wants to be part of a larger unit, rather than a solo act.

what women are
At its heart is a powerful question about about who women are and what they really are good for. IMO both positions are wrong and a new vision is needed. Desperately needed.

Feminists make women out to be just like men, and they're not. Women do want and need extra protection and support, and when feminists alienated the men who traditionally provide that support, they failed to offer anything worthwhile as a substitute.

Conservatives acknowledge the ways in which women differ - but exaggerate those differences, make a straightjacket of them, and they leave women vulnerable. Too vulnerable.

The first vision of womanhood leads to lonely old women left to fend for themselves, working minimum wage jobs in their old age, while the second vision of womanhood leads to women as possession, forced to trust entirely in the whims of those they must please for their bread and butter. Neither vision is satisfactory. Elements of both must be combined to make a vision of womanhood that we can all live with. Women need a place in this world, one that gives them both freedom and support. That, to me, is the most pressing woman's issue there is.

what's important about abortion?
I realize that the great divide between pro-abortion rights advocates vs. myself is that what I care about is freedom from suffering*, while what they care about is freedom to choose to do whatever they want, which in this case means freedom to be as carefree and reckless as the boys have always been allowed to be.

But to the conservative - and lately to me - it is not clear that recklessness and freedom from the consequences of one's actions is the sort of equality that makes our society better.

Unlike most liberals, I am not committed to the view that sexuality is a harmless game that should be played often and with as many people as possible. That myth is beautiful but it's not what I see when I look at the world I live in**.

Of course, I cannot imagine what it is to live in the world true liberals inhabit. I have never lived in a reality where "choice" was really as limitless as they seem to think. It has always been obvious that every action you take affects everyone around you - that is what poor people know; poor people are the ones who jump to get out of the way when the aristos in their carriage come zooming through at breakneck speed, and they cannot imagine the liberty that comes with being able to simply drive your carriage wherever you like, and not worry about the bodies struck down and driven over.

imagery and symbols
And that is where the word 'choice' is a trap for liberals. Over the past decade the rhetoric of abortion has come to emphasizes an image of the typical rich, sheltered kid, demanding the very thing that has always separated the privileged from ordinary citizens:

total liberty from the consequences of one's actions, and to hell with what anyone else wants.

In fact, everyone else should be supportive. (It's all about me.)

The real power of the photos of dead babies lies in the conservatives recognizing those gruesome images as what is left over when the rich, spoiled kids are through partying.

It conjures up images of reckless, destructive behavior done by people who just don't care; so long as they enjoyed their bacchanal, who cares if elsewhere humanity suffers? The image roused by the dead baby metaphor is that of a group of privileged people who don't recognize human life as sacred or even important. These spoiled, over-entitled aristos don't see a human being when they see these photos - just like they don't see a human being when they see us. On some deep subconscious level, that baby could be us, peasants run over with their carriage and they do not stop, they do not look, they do not see, they do not care - because they simply shrug and say we are not human (which is about what I read on the blogs this week: what repulsed me was this overwhelming and hateful tide of you are either one of us or you are not human).

That is what I think the real symbolism and imagery of the dead baby. The power in it isn't that people really care about the baby. The real power in it is what the baby signifies. The real power in it is that they fear the sort of human being who can inflict such gruesome harm on a living being (an innocent baby, even - their own innocent baby!) and not care.

The words "pro-life" have resonance because it's about respect for human life. Liberals don't even seem to understand why conservatives care about abortion - it's not your problem, it doesn't feel anything, it's not a big deal, it's only a fetus, it's not worth much....the more they go on, the more the peasants shudder; the power to define what is and is not human - and therefore what can be mistreated, murdered, made bloody, treated as disposable - is a power that goes deep and visceral to those who recognize themselves as potentially disposable in a world where humanity is not viewed as particularly special.

what is most worth fighting for?
I hope Sarah Palin gets into the White House, because I think it will be good for women to have a woman do so.

I also hope Sarah Palin gets into the White House because I don't care about choice and I right now I really feel rage at those who don't see her as a person, a human being, because she wants to interfere with their right to party when and where they please and therefore she's not worthy of basic human rights. And all women "ought" to feel the same way, even though in reality there are many women who would choose to put their own liberty second to the baby's welfare - and those women lose, not win, by the pro-choice argument, because they've been defined as women in possession of a luxury good ("if you didn't want that baby you shouldn't have chosen to have it!"), and this provides the justification that takes away the real-world support that they need, and throws them into poverty.

But as long as those who choose not to have a kid have the right to be careless about birth control, who cares about women who choose to have the kid? Let them live in poverty. (After all, they made the choice let them take responsibility for it! )

I do care about the abortion debate. I do care about not subjecting human beings to cruelty or injustice.

But promiscuity is not a right worth fighting for, nor is the right to freedom from the consequences of one's actions.

What will really be good for women is when they have real power, real liberty, real opportunity and real choices available to them - not CHOICE, but choices, options to choose from, based on realistic expectations about sharing the costs and consequences fairly.

The right to whore around like the boys do, and just Hoover out any unintended consequences, has not brought women happiness - if anything, I see exactly the reverse.
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*I view the abortion debate as being about freeing females from the threats and dangers of unintended pregnancy, and the dangers of being too vulnerable in a world that is too controlled by men. All females should be entitled to a certain minimum level of control, including not only control over their body but also control over their life and their ability to influence their own life outcomes.

To me, the abortion debate is about minimums - a natural extension of FDR's four freedoms. Nobody should be forced into a situation that feels like servitude. Dangerous things can happen to women when their unborn children's rights are prioritized over their own.

** what I see when I think of the argument that sex is just harmless fun, not anything special or sacred, I think of girls locking themselves in the bathroom and crying their eyes out and boys slamming their fists into walls and friendships falling apart,. I think of kids waking up in puddles of someone elses' vomit and feeling dirty and not knowing exactly what happened last night. I think of hard, cynical kids who feel secretly ashamed for being so naive, so trusting, so vulnerable - because they don't understand that what went wrong is not something wrong with them. I think of boys bullying girls into things they don't want to do - first to create the baby, then to get rid of it.

***The simple act of saying "well okay why can't we extend to men the same freedom over sexuality that women demand?" exposes the inherent selfishness of the "choice" posiiton. One of the things women want is control over how much and when and whether men are even involved in that child's upbringing - this is about women's rights, after all - and so it becomes zero sum.

Besides, we are told, men already have enough freedom. This is about women catching up with men.

(On a purely practical note, the real reason is because if men were allowed to be this reckless with sexuality and fertility, it would be out of control. Sex may be fun and it might make one hell of a party game, but ultimately cannot be without consequences - there are emotional and physical consequences even when unintended pregnancy is not involved. It is not a coincidence that most of the conservatives I know are the people who clean up the consequences of other peoples' behavior, while most of the liberals I know are - coincidence? - the ones who need cleaning up after....)