"Pro Life" - UR DOIN IT RONG

Here I am, banging on about abortion again. It’s almost like I’m a progressive feminist or something, innit? Anyway, Ireland, not exactly known as a safe haven of open-minded attitudes to reproductive rights, was in the news last week (I know, I am behind, bad blogger) in the darkest way possible. Normally things trend on Twitter for the fluffiest and harebrained of reasons, but if you haven’t read the story already I advise you to spend some time on the #Savita hashtag to get yourselves up to speed.

In simple terms, from what we know from the press coverage of the case, a 31 year old (married) woman (intentionally) pregnant for the first time went to A&E at University Hospital, Galway presenting with back pain. She was found to be miscarrying but her requests for a medical termination were alledgedly denied by staff at the hospital as a foetal heartbeat could still be detected. At one point it is alledged that she was told, “this is a Catholic country”, by way of explanation for the non-intervention. The dead foetus was removed once a heartbeat could no longer be found but on the 28^th October 2012, Savita Halappanavar died of septicaemia.

For a thorough and accesible historical overview of the legal situation in Ireland I recommend this as further reading. For a historical overview of what happens when you make abortion illegal, read this, but be warned it comes with a great big content warning as it contains very distressing and disturbing imagery and content.

Now, there are small-scale arguments as to why Savita was not given a termination on arrival at the hospital, principally driven by the argument, which from an intellectual point of view I can understand, that doctors might be fearful of losing their livelihood, of being struck off and so on, given the current legal position on abortion in the country (see above). And you know what? I hear that. Losing your job is pretty terrible, especially given the global north’s current state of fiscal meltdown. But more terrible than knowing that your intervention would likely have prevented a woman’s death? I’m not so sure about that. But my contention with all of this isn’t just at this level, but on a macro scale.

The pro-life argument on a larger scale (i.e. devoid of domestic legislation and divorced from individual experience) is usually that human life, however we define that, begins at conception. Now, I am not going to make a secret of the fact that I think that this is total garbage (and here is a solid scientific explanation of why), but that is a strongly-held belief and while I think it is moronic, I do understand it, as in I understand what its supporters mean by it. So, fine. But here is the thing that I really, truly do not understand. If you believe that a zygote, embryo or foetus is a human life, and you also believe that an adult human is a human life, then the thing that I need explained to me is why the first life trumps the rights of the second. Why? I am not asking this to be facetious, I really just do not understand. Because the argument that the foetus has equal rights with the carrier doesn’t square with the argument that it also has greater rights. I’m no mathematician, but even I can see that that equation just doesn’t work.

And it makes me so, so angry that women – actual human women who are definitely alive and participating in their human lives – are still, STILL dying over this issue – not just in some far-flung corner of the globe where we all ‘know’ (or tell ourselves) that women’s rights and human rights are backwards or non-existent, but here, HERE in the global north on the doorstep of my country, the UK. It should make you angry, too. Because we seem to be wholly prepared to get very fired up about the failed deportation of a radical Muslim preacher who may very well be repellent but, y’know, has never actually been convicted of a crime here, but we are strangely mute about the fact that a different religion has a stranglehold not just over the reproductive rights but the actual right to life of half of its citizens. It is twenty fucking twelve, people. How many more Savitas have to die to uphold the ‘sanctity’ of life?

Professional Overreacting

Well folks, I’m back from the Balkans (holiday) and ready to smash the gender binary and dismantle the kyriarchy in my lil ol’ corner of the interwebs! Bet you’re pleased? Let’s get started.

So of course while I was away gasping in awe at Russian Orthodox churches, stunning lakes, and ludicrously low beer prices, the world continued to grind away. I heard there was a devastating storm, and then an American election? More of that later though, because I’m keen to focus on an issue both global and domestic today – I’m sure the USA can live without my commentary for another week or so.

Everyday Sexism (and if you are not already following them on Twitter then by gum you bally well should be), have an op-ed piece in the Independent today which touches on the idea that sexism is still a socially-acceptable prejudice. Now, I don’t think that it's the only socially-acceptable prejudice which we need to tackle, given how many times a week I hear the word ‘gay’ or ‘retard’ being used as a pejorative (that list is by no means exhaustive), but I want to expand on the point the piece was making about sexism towards women, partly because it’s Twitter-topical but chiefly because it touches on one of the aspects of sexism which absolutely INFURIATES me – that women* are generally and habitually overreacting to sexism.

Firstly, I would like to know what the definition of overreacting is? If someone insults you or otherwise does something damaging to you and you ignore them, I would think of that as non-reactive (NB by non-reactive I don’t mean neutral, as neutral implies not being bothered at all whereas non-reactiveness can be read as a decision to ensure one’s personal safety). Anything beyond that is a reaction. So where is the mythical cut-off point? I would imagine if someone groped my arse and I murdered them then that would be a clear overreaction (jokes aside), but below the level of physical retaliation, what counts as an overreaction? Because it seems to me that the very act of saying anything negative at all about sexism is deemed an overreaction. Read the comments (or don’t, EVER, if you value your sanity) under any piece expressing even the most mild feminist view and I will pay you ten pounds** if no-one tells the writer (or other commenters) that they are overreacting. David Cameron’s infamous, “calm down, dear” is a prime (and very public) example of this fuckery. Why are we so uptight all the time about sexism? Why can’t we see that sometimes it’s all a bit of fun, a bit of a laugh with the lads? What’s wrong with us?

What’s wrong with us? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me. I am sick and fucking tired of being made to treat sexism as if it were a joke. Would you tell a black person to calm down about a shop selling golliwog dolls? Why not? After all, they’re a bit of harmless fun, aren’t they?! A children’s toy! STOP OVERREACTING. Do you see what I’m getting at here? We all (or most of us, hopefully), innately understand that while golliwog dolls are unlikely in themselves to bring about a new era of apartheid, they symbolise one race’s casual and brutal disdain for another’s. Their intentions might be harmless fun, but their reality is sinister. We can see this, so why can’t we see it for sexism, and why are we unwilling to even engage with the idea that sexist behaviour is fucking damaging? For women, a lot of the time, I think it’s because we are afraid not of actually overreacting, but of being labelled in that way. No-one wants to ruin the fun, do they?*** Apart from humourless feminists that is! Ho ho.

Now I want to tell you a lovely little story which illustrates this conundrum. Once upon a time (longer ago than I care to remember in fact), I was walking along a residential street in an undodgy area of London towards the tube, to go out in town. It was about 7pm, but because it was November it was already dark. I had a skirt on, stripey knee socks, and boots – the skirt was short, and the boots were chunky, because back then I was a bit of a goth (in fact I was heading to the legendary Intrepid Fox for a night of drinking cider and listening to the Cult). I had headphones in, so I didn’t hear the group of men (boys?) come up behind me. Maybe if I had I would have avoided what happened next, but probably not, because I suspect they were pretty determined to do what they did anyway, to whichever woman happened to be walking along the street that night. Anyway, one of them grabbed me from behind and slid his fingers up between my legs. Right the way up – I don’t mean he was just checking the close shave of my bikini line. I jumped, and he and his mates laughed and ran away.

And do you know what I did? Absolutely nothing. I carried on walking to the tube station, where I didn’t tell the station agent. In fact I can’t even remember if I told my friends, including my boyfriend at the time, when I got to the pub. I certainly didn’t tell the police. I hadn’t seen the faces of any of the group who had assaulted me, so I wouldn’t have been able to identify them anyway. Besides, by that point (I was nineteen), I had already started to buy into the bullshit of this kind of thing happens all the time, and don’t make a fuss, and at least they didn’t rape me. As in, you’re overreacting. And although this was probably the “worst” thing of this kind that has happened to me (yet) given that had I not had knickers on there would have been genital contact; I completely sympathise with the Everyday Sexism tweeter who tweeted that this kind of thing just begins after a while to register as “not really serious”, because I could tell you of literally dozens of similar incidents which have happened to me, and I am one individual who is lucky enough to live in a fairly safe, fairly liberal first world society.

My point is, what would you call my reaction? Because I wouldn’t call it an overreaction – I did what I explained in the paragraph above, non-reaction – partly as a self-preservation method and partly because at nineteen I had already learned the mantra of not overreacting.

Well, you know what? FUCK THAT FUCKING SHIT. Fuck that dangerous bullshit right back where it belongs, and what is more THREE HEARTY CHEERS  for overreacting, because if overreacting means publicly objecting to the continual, relentless, publicy ignored and sometimes actively encouraged damage and debasement of women then I am all bloody for it. To everyone who’s reacted with a pithy epithet to a cat-call, to everyone who’s told a guy to fuck off in a nightclub when he’s ground his semi against your backs, to everyone who’s called out the sexist joke in the work meeting, I SALUTE YOU ALL, and to all the rest of us who have our days when we can’t do that, when we are too upset or afraid or already damaged to react, we’ve got your fucking back too, because no-one on earth deserves this daily fuckery and I really hope that one day society will finally, finally understand that it is not ok for it to be like this.

 

The only way that is going to happen is if we keep calling it out, if instead of avoiding “overreacting” we make sure that it is in fact one of our main priorities. Think I should calm down, dear? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

 

 

 

*By this I don't exclude the differently-gendered, but I want to talk about the kind of sexism which is directed towards those who have been identified (erroneously or not) as women by the person or people perpetrating the sexism.

**Not really.

***For anyone who would like an absolutely kick-ass and vital illustration of this problem, I urge everyone reading this to go and read this blog post.