Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
I had this argument with a Democrat female friend of mine in 2007. She was afraid that voting Republican would overturn abortion laws. I pointed out to her that we had just lived through eight years of a very socially conservative president and the abortion laws were intact. I also asked her if that is a big issue for her in the election.
I know that there were historic bra burnings. But really, who burns their bras these days? I spend a fortune on them and take very good care of them, thank you very much!
I own my own business, travel and entertain a lot, have many hobbies that I don't always get enough time for, and am considering writing a memoir. I donate money and time to causes I believe in. Birth control has never occupied more than one percent of my time ever in my life. I suspect the actual lifetime number is much lower than that.
So what is up with the entire birth control debate? Am I just a walking vagina? Is this insulting just to me or others?
Do I not care about the jobless rate in this country? The economy?
Do I not care about the failure of K-12 education? Unions, waste, opportunities denied the next generation?
Do I not care about inflation? The overreach of the Federal Reserve? The executive overreach?
Do I not care about our freedoms? Warrantless wiretaps under the guise of our safety? The increase in SWAT raids in the name of drug war?
Is this some kind of sick male fantasy - just focus on the vagina - leave the rest to us? Seriously?
Why don't the women in the media call on this? (both on the right and the left). Why are more women not outraged by this?
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Comments:
Nov '11
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
I always thought it was kind of condescending to assume women have a different set of political values that need to be adjusted for. People are people.
Mar '11
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
Couple of thoughts on this:
1. Men have been more or less excluded from the abortion debate. They have no legal say, and the media ignores the fathers always. The men are given no responsibility and are therefore left out of the debate (except when it's convenient to brand them as oppressing patriarchs), putting all attention on the women.
2. Abortion has been used (along with civil rights) as a tool for stereotyping all conservatives. It is an issue which, for far too many people on the left, generates a purely emotional response - fear. They see Pro Life = Klansmen = Old White Guys, and will never go beyond that, short of a major conversion event (not necessarily religious except in the sense that socialism is a religion).
Dec '10
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
Perfectly stated. I suppose the left sees abortion as a go/no-go for women. For many it is, but it's still very demeaning to not accept that women have a lot more on their minds than their crotches.
Being as I'm at work and haven't been admonished by the editors for a while, I should propose a trade. We men will give over all the problems of the world to the women in exchange for being allowed a singular focus on the vagina (with an exception to pay some attention to the breasts.)
Mar '11
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
Actually Fred, women, statistically speaking, do vote differently from men and do respond differently to issues. It's just down to men and women being wired differently. Women have always, statistically speaking, voted more Democrat than otherwise.
The belief that "People are people", as you have used it, implies a certain sameness - you assume that most folks, when presented with the same facts, would respond in the same manner - this is not borne out by experience.
People will gravitate towards other like themselves, so whether it is logical or not, people are susceptible to racial, sexual, ethnic, and linguistic clumping in their belief systems. People are also vulnerable to peer pressure reinforcing the view of their group.
So, while it may be condescending (and polarizing) to pander to different groups, it does make sense from both a tactical and a practical point of view.
Different groups will have different priorities - in this case pregnancy is uniquely female, hence the pandering.
May '10
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
The left depends for its success on the moral debasement of the public, so they're bent on convincing their constituents to think that their happiness in life depends on having neither limits nor responsibilities. They fall for it.
Also, as Rush puts it, leftism is a religion and abortion is its sacrament. Reason can't touch it.
Mar '11
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
Well said!
katievs: The left depends for its success on the moral debasement of the public, so they're bent on convincing their constituents to think that their happiness in life depends on having neither limits nor responsibilities. They fall for it.
Also, as Rush puts it, leftism is a religion and abortion is its sacrament. Reason can't touch it. · 4 minutes ago
Nov '11
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
skipsul:
The belief that "People are people", as you have used it, implies a certain sameness - you assume that most folks, when presented with the same facts, would respond in the same manner - this is not borne out by experience.
Turn that around, my friend. That's not how I meant it, I'm an individualist not a communitarian, so I wouldn't think that way.
I assume that people, given the same information, will have a very broad spectrum of analyses and responses. So, the condescension comes in thinking that women will all respond the same way.
My comment that people are people was meant to mean they'd all respond differently, as to contrast with "Women are women, so X" or "Men are men, so Y."
Jun '10
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
The other question is, has modern feminism improved respect for women, or ruined it? I think if feminism has done anything, it's ruined it. Equal treatment in employment and in contract law could've been achieved without turning women into men, in all the bad ways.
Dec '11
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
Does anyone have any idea how many women who have had abortions? If this number is significant than naturally this is a major issue for them.
Why are the same people who push for children's rights are so against fetal rights?
Feb '11
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
Well said. If one were to take their claims at face value, one could reasonably draw the conclusion that, for liberals, women are only about sex. Of course, it's really just the bright shiny object ruse to distract from Obama's disaster of an administration.
Jun '12
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
Abortion is a co-gender (transgender?) subject for many liberals. To them it means not only carefree sex for women, but the spector of 18 years of child support vanishes for the males. So although the issue is framed as a women's issue through words, it is really a call to all who think with their genetalia, rather than thinking with their brain. Republicans want to end your hedonistic lifestyle. Vote for Democrats because we'll let you (CofC violation verb) yourself into oblivion.
Jul '11
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
10 cents: Does anyone have any idea how many women who have had abortions? If this number is significant than naturally this is a major issue for them.
Why are the same people who push for children's rights are so against fetal rights? · 6 minutes ago
Even if we say that 100% of women have abortions (not true, of course), I still claim that there is more to women than abortion. To throw out the word "abortion" or "free birth control" for that matter every time there is any discussions of politics with women is downright insulting.
Could this be why Nancy Pelosi is being haunted by the suffragettes, perhaps?
Dec '11
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
Well, I dont think its that women are only about them so much as they are only about women (for the most part).
Its another outcome of big data.
Mar '12
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
I believe the current number of abortions in the US is pushing 60 million. I am aware that there are women who use abortion as birth control (eg, multiple abortions), however the number of abortions would indicate a large number of women have had one.
Note that there at least a small contingent of women for whom this procedure was so distressing that they became visibly and vocally pro-life.
While those who advocate the pro-life position is growing, there is a follow up question: How many decide who gets their vote based on their pro-life position?
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
Great post. There's an additional area of annoyance for me. The media routinely refer to support for abortion-on-demand through all 9 months of pregnancy as a "women's issue." This ignores the fact, the reality, that half of women are pro-life. Are we not women?
Is there anything more offensive than denying me my sex simply because I don't believe in killing unborn children? It doesn't even make sense.
Jul '11
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
I could walk in to a room of super models and the last thing on my mind would be their vaginas. I've inspected, detected, cut, stitched, frozen, painted medicine on, and dissected them. I've removed babies(one of my own), foreign objects, cancers and possibly space aliens from hundreds.
All of your sex are far more interesting to me with your clothes on.
Mar '11
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
Our contemporary view of both sexes is extremely impoverished.
Manly virtues have been replaced by the more biologically/psychologically friendly term "masculinity", and as such has been reduced to some bizarre alternating collage of frat-boys getting wasted on a Sunday watching football with their buddies and hipsters in skinny jeans listening ever so closely to soft music on their headphones. Both are isolated from the other sex in unhealthy ways.
Nov '10
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
Of course they're not women -- it was all profoundly captured in Gloria Steinem's description of Kay Bailey Hutchinson as "a female impersonator." Politically conservative woman are not authentically woman. Authenticity! Abortion is a form of identity politics, pure and simple.
As Katie intimates above at #5, the essence of nihilism is: no limits. The overcoming of nature for the sake of will. All institutions and practices and mores are reduced to a matter of will or appetite.
Mansfield's description of feminist "transcendence" in his "Womanly Nihilism" chapter of Manliness captures the problem in a quite striking way.
Nov '10
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
Not only are half of women pro-life, but according to Ramesh Ponnuru's recent analysis of Gallup results, women are more likely to take an absolutist, ban-all-abortion-including-in-rape-and-incest approach than men. (And more likely to take the absolutist opposite position that all abortions should always be legal.)
Nov '10
Re: Are We Just Walking Vaginas?
As a conservative woman, I wish I really believed that women were always rational in their voting. Unfortunately, I know many, many intelligent and educated women who vote on the basis that liberals are for "good" and conservatives are for "bad." I suppose that there are men who vote in the same way, but I am not sure that there are as many intelligent and educated men whose politics are this simplistic.