Lately i’ve seen a fair number of debates and comments on these two issues: Abortion and Feminism. Arguements i hear annoy me a fair bit.
In regards to abortion: One arguement i heard that made me think some pro-lifers are hypocrites is the issue that while they say ‘Put it up for adoption’ they aren’t prepared to adopt themselves.
Various life issues aside, i feel it is very hypocritical to want someone to take a child to full term and put it up for adoption yet have no thoughts on wanting to adopt… whether it be now or in the future when you are in a better position to adopt.
I’ve heard every reason from ‘it is too expensive to adopt’ to ‘the one who opened their legs should be responsible for it’. Which means everything boils down to responsibility.
If a pro-lifer was to force to you that you have to carry it to term and you can put it up for adoption, then wouldn’t it be the pro-lifer’s moral responsibility to ensure the child is looked after? It’s like saying ‘you must do as i say but i don’t care what happens next’.
This is why I’m pro-choice. My personal feelings don’t enter what other people want to do with their body. If you want to keep it due to a religious or some other belief then that’s fine, but if you want to abort it then that’s fine too. The point of being pro-choice, in my view, is that you aren’t forcing your opinions on others.
Despite this little rant, i have heard some pro-lifers define their stance as pro-life personally/pro-choice politically. Which displays a higher intelligence level. What they believe in doesn’t interfere with how they will approach others on this topic.
One example is a close friend of mine. He’s pro-life personally/pro-choice politically. He told me that if he and his wife had an unplanned pregnancy that he would let her know he would want her to keep it but that it is her choice whether to keep it or not. He explained that it wasn’t his place to tell someone else what to do with their body. Just like if they wanted to exercise birthcontrol that it wouldn’t be his wife’s place to tell him to have a vasectomy.
I feel this is an admirable stance for a pro-lifer. You aren’t restricting the actions of others by forcing your views on them. Informing them of what you things is like giving advice. You give your feelings and freedom to someone in a difficult situation.
In addition to this view, is the view that there isn’t enough children to be adopted. This simply isn’t true. To be specific, there isn’t enough children of a certain type. This is particularly evident in terms of healthy, young, white babies.
With so many options for adoption such as interracial and intercountry, how is it that people still say there isn’t enough children to adopt? Simply, people don’t want to adopt a child that doesn’t look similar to them/black (in the racist view)/with special needs/spend a lot on a child that isn’t originally theirs.
Enough of the abortion/adoption topic. Onto the other topics… Femanism.
It seems that some of my friends, both here in Australia and overseas, get weirded out if they have to do something like open a door for a guy or have to do anything related to the ‘Gentleman’s Code’ as i like to put it.
But in the same breath they say they are femanist.
What i think? That they’re idiots. If you want freedom from men yet still want all the chivalry and olden day courtesy then you aren’t seeking equality… you’re seeking dominance. It is like telling a slave to rebel and make his master his slave in turn.
To me, any guy who ends up with me and acts in a chiverlous manner gets the rough edge of my tongue. I’m not fragile and don’t wish to be treated so. However, after talking to him and he still wishes to act this way then i drop the issue as it is their choice.
But in an every day situation, why should a woman expect this sort of attitude when they themselves don’t have the attitude? Why should a girl expect a guy to open a door for her when they themselves don’t open doors for guys?
I asked this question once to one of my friends and she said ‘it’s because that’s how they’ve always acted’. But when she comes across a very modern man who won’t open doors for her or treat her like a porcelain doll, she gets incredibly upset and says he’s being disrespectful to her and breaks up with them.
I feel this really is hypocritical. What if a man said ‘it was always a woman’s place to make my food, clean my clothes and basically be my maid’. Does that mean that if he was to meet a modern female that he has the right to be upset?
For equality to exist, there has to be equal distribution of thought and resposibility. Therefore, in my friend’s case, her thought is that she wants the man to stay in the medieval, chiverlous approach while she becomes the dominant femanist. That isn’t equality.
In my case, i confronted my partner on his attitude and found it to be his choice to act that way. From choice, comes equality. He chose to act that way and without pulling the dominant female card on him. Same goes for if i had a modern male partner. It is his choice to act that way.
Feminism was great during the times when females were oppressed. But now that the genders are close to equal, femanists shouldn’t be looking to liberate the female gender but rather to balance and cancel out the differences in thought between the genders.