Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Women's Rights & Issues
Related: About this forumThere’s a Reason Gay Marriage Is Winning, While Abortion Rights Are Losing
Theres a Reason Gay Marriage Is Winning, While Abortion Rights Are Losing
Are these two culture wars issues really that similar?
Why are reproductive rights losing while gay rights are winning? Indianas attempt to enshrine opposition to gay marriage under the guise of religious freedom provoked an immediate nationwide backlash. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has allowed religious employers to refuse insurance coverage for birth controlnot abortion, birth controlto female employees; new laws are forcing abortion clinics to close; and absurd, even medically dangerous restrictions are heaping up in state after state. Except when the media highlight a particularly crazy claim by a Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock, wheres the national outrage? Most Americans are pro-choice, more or less; only a small minority want to see abortion banned. When you consider, moreover, that one in three women will have had at least one abortion by the time she reaches menopause, and most of those women had parents, partners, friendssomeonewho helped them obtain it, the sluggish response to the onslaught of restrictive laws must include many people who have themselves benefited from safe and legal abortion.
The media present marriage equality and reproductive rights as culture war issues, as if they somehow went together. But perhaps theyre not as similar as we think. Some distinctions:
§ Marriage equality is about love, romance, commitment, settling down, starting a family. People love love! But marriage equality is also about tying love to family values, expanding a conservative institution that has already lost most of its coercive social power and become optional for millions. (Marriage equality thus follows Pollitts law: Outsiders get access when something becomes less valued, which is why women can be art historians and African-Americans win poetry prizes.) Far from posing a threat to marriage, as religious opponents claim, permitting gays to marry gives the institution a much-needed update, even as it presents LGBT people as no threat to the status quo: Instead of promiscuous child molesters and lonely gym teachers, gays and lesbians are your neighbors who buy Pottery Barn furniture and like to barbecue.
Reproductive rights, by contrast, is about sexsexual freedom, the opposite of marriagein all its messy, feckless glory. It replaces the image of women as chaste, self-sacrificing mothers dependent on men with that of women as independent, sexual, and maybe not so self-sacrificing. It doesnt matter that contraception is indispensable to modern life, that abortion antedates the sexual revolution by thousands of years, that plenty of women who have abortions are married, or that most (60 percent) who have abortions are already mothers. Birth control and abortion allow womenand, to a lesser extent, mento have sex without punishment, a.k.a. responsibility. And our puritanical culture replies: You should pay for that pleasure, you slut.
§ Same-sex marriage is something men want. Lesbian couples account for the majority of same-sex marriages, but even the vernacular gay marriage types it as a male concern. That makes it of interest to everyone, because everything male is of general interest. Though many of the groundbreaking activists and lawyers who have fought for same-sex marriage are lesbians, gay men have a great deal of social and economic power, and they have used it, brilliantly, to mainstream the cause. ********Reproductive rights are inescapably about women. Pervasive misogyny means not only that those rights are stigmatizedalong with the women who exercise thembut that men dont see them as all that important, while women have limited social power to promote them. And that power is easily endangered by too close an identification with all but the most anodyne version of feminism. There are no female CEOs pouring millions into reproductive rights or threatening to relocate their businesses when a state guts access to abortion. And with few exceptions, A-list celebs steer clear.*****
. . . .
http://www.thenation.com/article/205049/theres-reason-gay-marriage-winning-while-abortion-rights-are-losing
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
1 replies, 1028 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (1)
ReplyReply to this post
1 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
There’s a Reason Gay Marriage Is Winning, While Abortion Rights Are Losing (Original Post)
niyad
May 2015
OP
Novara
(5,754 posts)1. There's also fighting to gain something versus fighting not to lose something.
I am not sure why that makes a difference but I think it does. Because women have had rights, a lot have become complacent, thinking those rights would never be stripped away. After all, this country has historically given rights to the disenfranchised, the unequal, the downtrodden. We're not used to fighting to keep something once given. I think that there's also a sense of disbelief and shock - and we need to get over that and start making noise and start working to KEEP the rights we do have. And then we need to expand them with the ERA.
(I also agree that since the LGBT movement has men, it benefits in a way women's rights can't. And that really pisses me off.)