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I'm pretty irritated right now. That happens a lot when I crochet; unfortunately, I already had plenty on my mind when I foolishly took up my hook and yarn and disengaged my hands from their ability to distract my mind-- the inevitable result being, I am pissed, excuse my French. |
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This phenomenon isn't your usual PMS-laden peevishness, though. When I crochet, I think about the big issues of life-- things that usually get snowed under by the incessant flakes of everyday concerns. Crocheting has a clarifying effect on the mind that way; I recommend anyone who hasn't thought a deep thought in a while ought to take it up. |
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| I crocheted, and crocheted, and thought, and thought, and at the end of my twelfth 45-stitch row, the ringing conclusion to my extensive ruminations rose up before me, like a blazing, monumental, beacon of pissiness and disquietude: They are out to get me. |
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I have never considered myself to be a feminist. Not because I am some sort of right-wing, Uncle Tom lackey (but that is a subject for another rant); not because I think that all feminists are hairy legged, man-hating lesbians; but mainly because I am reluctant to identify myself with any sort of -ism. The moment I do so, I run the risk of compromising my own integrity by allying myself with a movement whose extended logical conclusions clash with m ethics, or my faith. I am a Christian in belief and ideology, and beyond that I do not wish to assign my beliefs any one name. |
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| There are plenty of things about feminism that I like. Most obviously, I am a woman, and so movements that promote the well-being of women naturally appeal to me. But it does not go much farther than that; I carry no chip on my shoulder, I have no resentments or compunctions toward any sort of social system; I feel repressed by no -archy. I've never been a Daughter Taken To Work, I've never left fingerprints on either side of a glass ceiling, and I've never "taken back the night." My social conscience runs in other, smaller, more grass-roots directions. I'm not really much of a feminist at all. |
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Nevertheless, I wandered onto the website of Feminists For Life, an activist group that focuses particularly on the relationship between the pro-life movement and feminism, and was at first interested, then intrigued by the rhetoric I found there. I am unwaveringly pro-life, and so am both inured to and jaded by the vitriolic attacks on my beliefs launched by the overwhelmingly feminist pro-choice side; I was therefore quite understandingly skeptical of any purported connection between the two systems of thought. After surfing the site awhile, I shut it down and attended to my handiwork. That was when the trouble started. |
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| The argument for legal abortion is typically couched in what I call "power-language": phrases like reproductive rights, control over my own body, imposing your morality on me, and the like abound. Further back in the feminist historical lexicon lurk things like the patriarchy, chauvinism, economic independence, and the inevitable glass ceiling; I had always studiously ignored these things as well, until they began to percolate in my yarn-entangled brain this evening. That was when The Wrath started to rise up. |
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When it comes down to the feminist bare bones of it, women have not gained a single thing through abortion. Rather, they have capitulated to a system that continues to victimize women. For thirty years the pro-"choice" have cheerfully tossed the lives of children and the hearts of women into the meatgrinder of the capitalist patriarchy, leaving a trail of disillusioned, ashamed, fear-filled, emotionally torn victims while shamelessly whoring their principles to continue feeding the bottomless sucking maw of the Man. Have I learnt my feminist rhetoric well?
Women deserve better than this. They deserve better than the tripe the pro-choice lobbyists feed them; they deserve better than to be pushed into abortion by socioeconomic factors or selfish boyfriends or husbands; they deserve better than the shrill, meaningless catchphrases they have been left with. Women deserve to live in a world where all children are welcome, where mothers don't have to feel like they are something less than full people because they have given up careers, where childbirth is seen as a form of empowerment rather than the crappy job that got shuffled off on Eve. Women are the carriers and (in a sense) the creators of life, and we have the nerve to place this capacity on the butcher block and sacrifice it to a career? God forbid. God forbid that any woman, regardless of her age or economin situation, have to kill her own child to feel that she can "make it" in a world of men. Children are a precious gift from the Lord, whether the circumstances of their conception be palatable to the intelligentsia or not. |
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Flowery words aside, the ugly truth remains that they believe the underlying problem is that there are Too Many Black People. Too many mamas in the ghetto, too many Negroes on the streets, too many dark little pickaninnies running round the yard-- shoulda all been taken care of before they started sucking away our tax dollars for welfare. Racism, stripped of its many gauzy veils, is almost too ugly to behold with the naked eye. For thirty years, they have been fighting for the right of my mother to kill me; they further the outrage by pretending to fight for my right to kill my child. Eventually, I suppose, they'll be sated; but how many of those Too Many Black People have to be eliminated before they're satisfied? How many of us do they have to kill before we wake up and realize that enough is enough? |
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