Abortion: whose debate? July 2, 2008

There are probably too many thoughts for one post here, but here goes.

Following on from the discussion about women bloggers (see here here and here), liberal conspiracy brings us this post, which is full of interesting points. In particular, the author makes some observations about the fact that strategies for tackling domestic violence, and provision of services for survivors of domestic violence, are woefully low (if at all) on the list of local council priorities:

• ‘In terms of the numbers of councils choosing it as a priority, domestic violence services are somewhere on a par with tackling litter, graffiti and fly tipping.’

Also observed is the shocking fact that

• ‘rape doesn’t appear to be included in targets for tackling serious violent crime (go figure???), and while I found the target I’m still looking for a council, any council, that’s put rape support services up as priority any time in the next three years.’

How does this relate to the abortion debate? Bear with me, I’m getting there…

The author insightfully writes that one of the contributing factors to these distorted local council priorities is that such matters are usually dicated by knee jerk reactions to media attention and public opinion , and that the issue of violence against women just doesn’t get the coverage or the public outrage that would push it up the agenda. Thus the author calls on women and feminist bloggers to do more in raising the profile of such issues:

• ‘Okay, so this is, and should be, a two-way street in which male bloggers should have no qualms about flagging up news items that are, perhaps likely to be more of interest to female bloggers but, to some extent, I think there’s some justification for the rest of us to look to the feminist sector and say ‘well, how about it?’ simply in recognition of the fact that people are naturally inclined, in following their interests, to pick up on stories that the rest of us might well miss’

In particular, (and I’m getting to the point now!) he prompts writers to start something up with the amendments to the abortion act on the table and up for debate (see here for more details), and writes, addressing feminist bloggers:

• ‘the lead on this has to come from women and from the feminist sector - this is the point in this debate where women need to take centre stage, not just because its the right thing to do but because we’re at the point at which the key reference points for the debate lies on ground that women, and feminists in particular, are likely to be most comfortable and most effective… on the issue of supporting the liberalising amendments that are shortly to put to parliament, this is unequivocally your show.’

Ok, so here’s my concerns:

Of course, it is right that whether, and when, and how easily women have access to abortion are issues that need to be considered in light of the impact of pregnancy and potential parenthood on women’s lives. And in this respect, right on, women’s experiences and voices in the debate need to be attended to, and heeded.

But:

First, that women and feminist bloggers have had trouble getting their posts and blogs noticed has been mentioned (and experiences on this are still coming in). So the assurance that this is the ground in which feminists and women can be more effective is unclear; this will only be so if their lead is, in fact, taken up.

Second, whilst pregnancy and abortion has obvious and significant impacts on women’s lives, this doesn’t mean that it is an issue that *only* concerns the interests of women. Having an unwanted pregnancy is often the property of *a partner*, and unwanted pregnancies yield children with *fathers*. Perhaps male bloggers who are pro-choice can think a bit about how women’s lack of access to abortion might impact on their lives too, and give voice to that.

Third, and this plugs in to the previous point about flagging attention to violence against women; feminist issues are not just issues of interest to women! Stopping rape, stopping violence against women, stopping enforced pregnancies because women can’t get access to abortion within the prescribed time limit… all of this should be of interest to men as well as women.

Indeed, the author, unity, shows his sensitive eye for catching feminist issues (see top of this post). It has been asked how men might engage with feminist blogs. Here’s some advice for left liberal male bloggers: Notice that feminist issues are your issues too, and start blogging and campaigning on them!

 Final note: LC piece links this pro-choice site. worth flagging up!

FEM 08, I: rape and men’s activism May 2, 2008

Last weekend Jender and I went to FEM08, an activism conference for women and men. It was generally excellent - interesting and inspiring, and great to be in the same place as so many other people interested in feminst issues!

 

We’ve had time to reflect on all we saw and heard and discussed, so now its time to join the blogging about it (plenty already going on see here for fword blogging and links to more, including here)! As Laura over at the fword writes, one thing the conference could have involved more of is *discussion time* - the hectic schedule meant there was little time for dwelling on the issues and sorting through problems and potential solution.

So perhaps some of that can happen in the comments here! It would be great to hear from those in attendance what they thought, or from those who couldn’t make it, what they make of the issues raised in the de-brief!

There was much to offer - more sessions that we could attend - so this is necessarily a partial review of the parts that we experienced - we’ve enjoyed reading about others’ experience of the day and hearing about the other sessions! There are parts where we no doubt fail to do justice to the complexity of what was said - but we hope to add to some of the parts as well. This will be a series of posts, because there’s so much to say!

Panel on rape

The conference was opened by Kat Banyard, from Fawcett. She introduced the first session of the day, Julie Bindel and Kira Cochrane, who spoke on the appalling statistics for rape conviction.

One of the key points from Kira Cochrane was the way that rape was treated as anomalous, an uncommon atrocity; she called for an attitudinal shift to acknowledge that rape was an EVERYDAY atrocity for women. Julie Bindel likewise criticised the media focus on the very small number of false rape allegations, contributing to the deficit in women’s perceived credibility when reporting rape. She called on men to play a key role in challenging sexist attitudes.

Such criticism is, of course, absolutely justified, and the low conviction rate was rightly criticised by panelists as ‘an absolute fucking disgrace’. However, the failure to locate the discussion in a broader context was somewhat disappointing. For example, insufficient attention (in my view) was paid to the connection between women’s material inequality and rape rates. That women cannot leave abusive relationships because in doing so they would face poverty; that women are predominantly primary caregivers and are hence excluded from the workforce, financially dependent upon their partners; that extreme poverty often drives women into vulnerable roles such as prositution; addressing such issues seems of fundamental importance to addressing the high rape rate.

Panel on men’s activism

Following Julie Bindel’s call for men to do their bit in challenging sexism, the next session was from two men involved in feminist activism. Chris White introduced us to the white ribbon campaign, which works with men to end ‘destructive masculinities’, and Damian Carnel (from NFDV) who talked about his work with men, and in particular, the strategy of ensuring that when men were referred to men’s groups, his work to ensure that those groups were *constructive* and concerned for gender equality (rather than those which encourage resentment against women, making ‘feminism’ a scapegoat.)

This leads me to another critical point about the day; there was a lot of focus on individual men, and what they should be doing. Now I absolutely agree that men should be feminist. But to be honest, if I were a man, I would have felt a bit sheepish (at one point, Julie Bindel directly addressed the men there: ‘what are you doing to help feminism?’). [Jender adds: It was clear they did feel sheepish. In fact, they were very apologetic about how little they were doing. And these were men who were running organisations doing incredibly important outreach work trying to change men's attitudes. I'm really not sure why they should be feeling sheepish. Many of the women present, myself included, do far less and nobody was trying to make us feel sheepish. Our sex/gender should neither get us a free pass nor make us instantly blameworthy!] Three concerns:

i. the men there are already on board! We need to keep them on board, and encourage more men to do so - i’m not saying there shoudl be any pandering to men, but I don’t think the most constructive atmosphere is created by personal challenges. This is not least because…

ii. there’s some really interesting work, by Paul Benson amongst others (see his paper ‘Blame, Oppression and Diminished Moral Competence’ in Moral Psychology: Feminist ethics and social theory, Peggy DesAutels and Margaret Urban Walker, eds), about the degree to which agents can be held fully blameworthy in contexts in which oppressive social norms and structures pervade. Roughyl speaking, the claim is that insofar as men, like women, may have their ‘moral competence’ distorted by gender oppression, full blame may not be fully justified. [Jender adds: This is an important point, and a very tricky one to implement. But I think my main concern was that blame/suspicion seemed to be getting apportioned based not on what we do, but on our sex or gender. And that just seems wrong.]

iii. whilst we need individuals on board, we also need *structural* change; with all the well intentioned men and women in the world, unless issues such as the pay gap, the structure of the workplace, the expectations with respect to domestic roles etc are addressed, inequality will persist. [Jender adds: Of course, individuals can work toward those structural changes. But there was very little discussion of the need for such changes in these sessions.]

More to come…