Bioethics, healthcare policy, and related issues.
Allah has picked a fight with several feminist bloggers over his perception of their perception of anti-woman sex politics.
As we’ve discussed here before, nearly every argument that comes out of the feminist camp depends on bad-faith assumptions about their opponents’ motives. Jill, for example, never tires of reminding us that what the pro-life movement is really all “about” is controlling women. Concerns about dead babies? Just a big smokescreen for misogyny and uterus-harvesting. . . .
The more doctrinaire or powerful a conservative is, the more conscious his misogyny is assumed to be. For those less doctrinaire and powerful—well, they might not be evil per se, but at the very least they’re acting according to a false consciousness. . . . If you could dig deep into our unconsciousness, you’d see we’re all just cheerleaders for the patriarchy too.
I suspect, however, he and his cohort would not be accused of controlling women and hating women’s sexuality if they didn’t consistently take positions that served invariably, and often exclusively, to control women and punish their sexuality, irrespective of any impact on, or relation to, the issue of “dead babies”.
The anti-sex right is consistently anti-contraception and anti-sex-education no matter how much evidence mounts up that that contributes to unplanned pregnancies, and to abortion. Many of them are opposed to condoms and HPV vaccines, because they are beside themselves at the thought of actual sex and are not moved from that position by little things like AIDS and cervical cancer. They demand the right both to control and to judge women’s sexual behavior, not merely determining how and whether women can prevent or terminate unwanted pregnances, but also whether they (the right-wingers) personally will allow women to have access to legal medications for doing so. Prominent anti-sex activists refer to women as “murderers” and “baby-killers” for having abortions; some have proposed criminal penalties for women aborting unwanted pregnancies. Some have actively promoted “shaming” for unapproved sex as a cultural practice; others – including the recent past Director of the President’s Council on Bioethics – have encouraged “courting” and fathers’ determination of daughters’ marriage choices for adult women. Right-wing organizations often actively distort information about sex (James Dobson’s Web site claims that rape cannot result in pregnancy), and actively seek to prevent young people from learning simple facts about sex and contraception. More and more legal efforts are made every day not only to prohibit abortion but to intervene in pregnancy, forcing women to carry pregnancies to term even when abortion is legal, or punishing women for their behavior while pregnant. Right-wing groups are promoting “covenant marriage” to prevent straight women from leaving bad marriages, and “defense of marriage bills” to prevent lesbians from entering into good ones. They have demanded fathers’ vetos over abortion, and abandoning careers for full-time homemaking as a preferred life for mothers.
It’s possible that the people who do all these things are sincerely concerned about fetuses – in fact it seems clear they like them far more than they like the women in whose bodies the fetuses reside – but every one of their policies can be explained by hostility to women and women’s sexuality, while many of them are irrelevant to sex, and many of them are actively counterproductive from the perspective of reducing abortions. The only reasonable conclusion is that they hate women more than they hate abortion, and in fact there is little evidence that they really hate abortion anyway (since all their anti-abortion positions can also be explained by misogyny, while some of their anti-woman positions are incompatible with a strong commitment against abortion).
When they stop acting like misogynists, they’ll stop being accused of misogyny.
6 Responses to “The Accidental Misogynist”
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December 12th, 2005 at 9:27 PM
Are you insane?
Seriously, that’s not a rhetorical question. I’m actually curious. Because anybody who would characterize me as being part of the “anti-sex right” has never read my site.
Couldn’t you be bothered to do a little bit of research before throwing out the misogynist card? Or is it okay just to, y’know, throw it out there based on the cartoon image of “the right” you have in your muddled head?
December 12th, 2005 at 9:30 PM
I mean, I have sex with rimless eyeglasses right on my site. Just so you know.
December 13th, 2005 at 6:35 AM
At the very least, someone could use a little therapy.
BTW, “Allah” is just a bit of schtick. He’s not really the misogynist Moon God of Mohammadean lore. You knew that, right?
December 13th, 2005 at 2:30 PM
anybody who would characterize me as being part of the “anti-sex right” has never read my site. Couldn’t you be bothered to do a little bit of research before throwing out the misogynist card?
So, you’re the entire right wing?
Cool. If you’d just knock it off, then, everything would finally get back to normal.
At any rate, it’s not about you. When you undertake to defend “conservatives” and “opponents of feminism”, you have to defend the things they say and do. Claiming you personally are innocent of one particular offense hardly absolves you or them of misogyny in the general sense. (Kind of like when you attack the entire “feminist camp” – presumably you wouldn’t regard your argument as refuted if one particular feminist said that she had had sex with rimless eyeglasses, or whatever the hell you’re talking about.)
December 13th, 2005 at 5:23 PM
So you don’t deny Allah’s point that feminist critiques consist largely of imputing bad faith motives to their political opponents. Your only defense of them is your tortured self-assurance that, indeed, their political opponents have bad faith motives. You conclude “logically” that they must be women-haters through your transparent attempts to establish that conclusion, e.g., claiming that the “defense of marriage bills” are designed to specifically hurt “lesbians.” (Hot man love is cool with everybody, though, right?) Reminds me of Steve Martin’s clueless imputation of hate in The Jerk when a sniper keeps missing him and hitting cans of motor oil: “He hates these cans!”
December 13th, 2005 at 7:51 PM
So you don’t deny Allah’s point that yadda yadda yadda . . .
I don’t deny many things that aren’t true and aren’t worth the trouble of refuting. (But if you want proof that feminism consists of much, much more than “imputing bad faith motives” to anti-feminists, try reading any feminist literature or Web sites; you’ll find extensive discussion of many issues from many perspectives. Feminists do deplore misogyny, but they have a lot more going on than spending their time obsessing over misogynists.)
However, I do endorse the feminist claim that much anti-sex and anti-abortion posturing is driven by hostility to women. The proof of that, far from “my tortured self-assurance”, is the actual argument contained in my post above: that anti-feminists take stances on many issues that are hostile to women’s interests and that have nothing to do with “saving babies”; that the positions they take on sexual issues are often counterproductive from the point of view of reducing abortions; and thus that their positions are invariably compatible with hatred for women but only marginally and inconsistently compatible with a sincere concern for fetuses. I thus conclude that misogyny is a better explanation for much right-wing behavior than is “pro-life” ideology.
Finally, though it’s not particularly germane, allow me to make some suggestions regarding your argumentative style: learn what your words mean, use them correctly, and pay attention to what you’re saying.
“Bad faith” does not mean “hostile” (conservatives are hostile to women, but they’re probably not acting in bad faith – i.e., insincerely – in fact, they really, really do hate women); “self-assurance” does not mean either “fantastical” or “delusional” (I am certainly self-assured – i.e., confident – in making my arguments, since I am convinced they are right, but the arguments are supported by evidence and logic, thus not made-up or delusional); “specifically” does not mean “exclusively” (the anti-gay-marriage bills do target lesbians specifically – i.e., as a group ["species", in the non-biological sense] – but do not target them exclusively [they target gay men also, which I did not deny, though I do think that hot man love is cool]). Surprisingly, you got “imputation” right.
As for logic, if you say in one sentence “Your only defense of [your arguments] is your tortured self-assurance [sic]“, you should not say in the immediately following sentence “You conclude ‘logically’ . . . through [a particular piece of evidence regarding lesbians]“. Since you note both the logic and the evidence cited in my argument, you entirely undermine your preceding claim that there is nothing to that argument. See how that works? You can disagree with my arguments if you like, but the mere fact of doing so acknowledges that there are in fact arguments. And since your refutation of my “logic” consists entirely of a pair of “scare quotes” “like” “these”, and your disproof of my evidence consists of a logical error (saying the law affects lesbians, which I did, does not imply that it affects only lesbians, as you gropingly tried to claim), your counterargument serves only to refute your own previous claim while establishing no grounds for support of your general case. The Steve Martin reference was OK, though.