Blog for choice: I’m pro-choice because I love life

[phantom power]

I read Amanda Marcotte every day, but this is one of her masterpieces.

...In this contrast, you really begin to see the perversity of calling the anti-choice movement “pro-life"---it’s an oxymoron. They’re motivated, on a base level, by a hatred of life. Or, life as most of us define it, when we use phrases like “what I want to do with my life”, “living my life”, “life is good”, and pretty much every other use of “life” outside of anti-choice propaganda. Life, for most people, is about being in this world. It’s about enjoying food, enjoying sex, having goals, making plans, creating relationships, loving each other, developing beliefs, thinking thoughts, learning, enjoying a good night’s rest, listening to music, enjoying drama, enjoying quiet, kicking your feet up and petting the cat, diving into your work, making a difference, helping others, selfishly hiding away and doing for yourself, falling in love, grieving a loss, the thrill of winning, the sorrow of losing, the ambiguities of the human spirit, the bright light of reason, the joy of discovery, the curiosity inspired by mystery, a walk in the park, a Christmas with family, a loud concert, a good book.

But when anti-choicers speak reverently of “life”, they don’t mean this. They imagine things that are technically alive, but have no relationship to this word---Terri Schiavo laying in bed with no brain to speak of, a mindless fetus, a fertilized egg, a stem cell. They relate to these beings, who are not really living, and scrounge up nothing but anger and hatred at those of us who are perceived as actually living in the impure, disgusting, life-having world with connections to family and friends, brainy intellectual engagement with reality and of course, dirty, filthy, despicable sex. The impure wetness of real life disturbs them. They dwell endlessly on the medically disgusting aspects of abortion---aspects that exist in all medical procedures---because their minds are enraptured by hatred of the perceived filthiness of human bodies and life. The world with all its squirming, actually living life---it’s bothersome. Better to dwell on the imagined peace of the fetus, the immoveable quiet of a person in a vegetative state. Someone who is recognizably human but not really living---the purest, simplest, least disgusting way of being. Purity is always under threat, from fluoride to uncontrolled sexuality.

...

Over and over again, this is what it comes down to---you are told, over and over again, that you should simply stop fucking. I have no idea if people who believe this are into fucking themselves, or if they find fucking unbelievably disgusting and perverse. Actually I do have an idea; most of them do both and try to reconcile their own self-hatred at being corporeal beings with desires, needs, and pleasures by attacking others, especially those who aren’t haunted by self-hatred at one’s self for actually living in this world. Of course, I suspect this shit gets even more perverse when you’re talking about the broken people who protest at clinics, seething with hatred at women, trying to hurt them for having the nerve to jump into life and take risks---risks for love, for pleasure, for simple human connection. We should stop fucking, they say. Why? Because fucking is all those things---an expression of love, a moment of intense pleasure, a messy reminder that we have real bodies in the here and now?

Is it because fucking reminds us that we’re really alive?

...

Freedom is obviously very scary to anti-choicers. If you’re allowed to fuck, then you have all these decisions to make! You have to know what you’re in to, what you’re not. You have to experiment. You have to be vulnerable---and that’s very scary! You fall in love, but that can mean that you fall out and your heart is broken. If we’re allowed to decide for ourselves, then people will make different decisions, and that’s very scary! Diversity reminds one of the messy complexities of living, and that’s anxiety-provoking. Better instead to have exactly one path to follow---don’t fuck, get married, have a couple of kids, stop fucking, and don’t look sideways or you might accidentally invite tumultuous passion into your life. It’s a life half-lived, for sure, but there’s no danger, diversity, or fear. You’ll still die at the end of it, but maybe if you’re lucky, you won’t know the difference.

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/blog_for_choice_im_pro_choice_because_i_love_life/

[niyad]

1. k and r