I read Gloria Steinem’s interview in Buzzflash when it came out, but didn’t think it was especially fascinating; I didn’t even link to it from “Alas.” Then I read this entry at Diotima, in which Sara – one of my favorite conservative bloggers – is reduced to what can only be called sputtering incoherence by the task of responding to Steinem’s interview.
I’m not going to rebut every instance in which Sara’s points are illogical or based on a failure to comprehend Steinem’s arguments. But for example, consider this quote from Steinem, about right-wing religious activists:
Sara responds by saying that she learned from this that…
The Anglican line is an easy put-down, but it ignores the meaning of Steinem’s quote. Steinem’s quote explained in what sense modern religious conservatives are like 17th century Anglicans; both groups “cite unproveable arguments — arguments that take place in heaven and life after death — as reasons why we should obey them now.”
Steinem’s statement is a simplification, but also fundamentally correct. Conservative intellectuals like Sara aren’t what’s driving the Republicans to oppose same-sex marriage (actually, Sara favors same-sex marriage) and reproductive rights. In those areas, the 800-pound gorilla in the Republican party is the religious right. And those folks use unprovable arguments all the time, just as Ms. Steinem said.
Yesterday, Rhode Island Representative Victor Moffitt (R) justified his anti-gay-marriage bill by saying “The sanctity of marriage needs to be defined, protected. I am a Catholic. I view marriage as a sacrament.” How can one argue with that? Mr. Moffitt has a right to his beliefs, and to vote based on his beliefs. Nonetheless, he’s clearly attempting to use the law to force all Rhode Islanders to obey his religious beliefs; and that’s typical behavior from religious conservatives in America today, on issues ranging from same-sex marriage to reproductive rights to “Terri’s law.”
If Sara actually believes that folks like Representative Moffitt are a scare tactic made up by feminists – or if she believes that they are not a powerful force in the Republican party – then I’d say that Sara exhibits less understanding of the modern conservative movement than Ms. Steinem does.
Here’s another Steinem quote with Sara’s response:
Sara at Diotima: Sputter. Read that again. “If he is elected [not “re-elected”] in 2004, abortion will be criminalized in this country.” What kind of alternate universe is this woman living it?!?! We’re going to injure and kill millions of women? What about the millions of unborn babies we’ve killed right here in the past 31 years? Rrrrraaggrrrr! We LOST on Title IX! They won! This woman is on crack! She’s completely lost it!
Clearly Sara’s wacked-out tone here is tongue-in-cheek, but her logic is just as wacky.
First, Sara implies that it’s insane to think that a Bush re-election might lead to criminalization of abortion. Why? It’s certainly possible (I’d say likely) that both O’Connor and Stevens will retire from the Supreme Court in the four-year period following the 2004 election, and if so Bush might intend to choose anti-Roe justices to fill those seats. The result of this would almost certainly be criminalization of abortion in much of the USA.
This is not an obscure scenario; the Buzzflash interviewer brings it up during Steinem’s interview. Nor is it so implausible that only an insane person could worry about it.
And yes, feminists won on Title IX. But there is a continuous movement among conservatives to water-down or overturn Title IX; it’s quite reasonable for Steinem to think that Title IX and other feminist victories will be “endangered” by continuing Republican dominance in politics.
Finally, I am puzzled – and appalled – by this bit of total illogic from Sara: “We’re going to injure and kill millions of women? What about the millions of unborn babies we’ve killed right here in the past 31 years?”
Is Sara honestly saying that because she finds abortion morally wrong, injuring and killing millions of women is somehow unimportant or justifiable?
When Steinem referred to the withdrawal of funding for family planning and AIDS prevention, I took that as a reference to the way pro-lifers and the Bush administration blocked $34 million earmarked for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA for short – yes, I know the initials don’t match up, complain to the UN). $34 million is almost 15% of UNFPA’s total funding.
A few facts about UNFPA: UNFPA does not provide support for abortions or abortion-related activities anywhere in the world. In fact, they prevent abortion, by providing family planning services and birth control in developing countries all over the world. They also help prevent AIDS, provide medical care which makes pregnancy and childbirth safer for mothers and babies, and work to prevent and treat obstetric fistulas. (More on what UNFPA does here).
According to UNFPA, “UNFPA estimates that $34 million applied to family planning programmes could prevent some 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and 77,000 infant and child deaths annually worldwide.” That’s only deaths – the total would presumably be much higher if non-fatal conditions such as fistulas were included.
Why was UNPFA defunded? Because some US pro-lifers accused UNPFA of supporting coercive abortions in China. Several independent fact-finding missions – including one from the Bush administration – have refuted this claim. (A more recent group of US religious scholars and ethicists, organized by Catholics for Choice, came to the same conclusion – pdf file).
I understand that to pro-lifers, there is little or no difference between the death of an 8-week embryo and the death of an adult woman. However, how can concern for unborn children possibly justify defunding an agency that doesn’t provide abortions, helps women and reduces the need for abortion?
Sara seems to feel that while abortion is legal in the US, it’s somehow ridiculous for Steinem to object to pro-life attacks on health care for women in the third world. Sara’s position (if it is indeed her position, and not just a momentary flash of anger) is unsupportable and immoral; the deaths of unborn fetuses in the US do not justify deaths and injuries to women in the third world.
Illogical as Sara’s statement is, it’s also typical of the pro-life movement in the United States. To the best of my knowledge, not a single pro-life organization in the US – not even the pro-life “feminists” – objected to the defunding of UNFPA. This calls into question the pro-life leadership’s commitment to opposing abortion – apparently an agency that reduces abortion through non-coercive needs, like UNFPA, is seen as the enemy by pro-life organizations.
Actually, pro-lifers who don’t think Bush’s election (not, as Sara correctly points out, “re-election”) will lead to overturning Roe would be well advised to vote for the Democrat instead. By reauthorizing funding for UNFPA (which had been cut off under Reagan), Bill Clinton probably prevented more abortions than President Bush ever has.
* * *
More generally, I think part of Sara’s difficulty with Steinem is due to the cultural difference between the IWF and feminism. Gloria Steinem is a type of leader that the IWF has never had. Steinem isn’t an academic or a think-tanker; she’s a popular leader and organizer. That’s a kind of leadership that’s completely foreign to the IWF culture, because they’ve never had any popular support.
Sara thinks that Steinem should embarrass feminists because she says something silly in an interview (and I admit, Steinem’s quasi-Marxist interpretation of the pro-life movement was cringeworthy). But that completely misses the point – Steinem’s accomplishments and contribution to feminism has primarily been as an organizer, not as a theorist. As an organizer, Steinem contributed to a huge advancement of feminism, equality and justice in the USA; on balance, a mistaken statement about pro-lifers in an obscure interview is insignificant.
[Edited on 2-16-04 to correct typos, grammer and to make it slightly less snippy.].
“Is Sara honestly saying that because she finds abortion morally wrong, injuring and killing millions of women is somehow unimportant or justifiable?”
Maybe not her, but I’ve met prolifers who take it for granted that mothers, in a state of sin on accounta they’ve had sex, count for nothing next to the innocent, sinless, untainted embryos, by which reasoning the injuring and killing of millions of women is indeed relatively unimportant.
Sara, however, might just be saying that a person who’s indifferent to the fate of the “unborn children” is probably not honest in her claims to be concerned about adult women. In other words, “Steinem can’t be morally wrong on one issue and have credibility on another.” Not an uncommon argument, really–people on the Left too can unfairly write off someone whom they violently disagree with.
This is the reason i am angry at Kerry. [Yadda yadda yadda… rest of post deleted by Amp. I don’t like Kerry all that much, either, but it’s just not relevant to this thread.]
Hey Ricky,
What is the name of the 20 year old? Who are the witnesses? What evidence is there?
Oh, right. You’re either a troll or a wingnut willing to believe any spurious rumor involving sex about a Dem.
Go ‘way now.
Yeah, Ricky’s like a spam troll. How the hell do you end up on an anti-Kerry diatribe when you’re on a post that has nothing at all to do with Kerry or Democrats or anything else?
He posted the exact same thing over at Body and Soul, almost word for word. Whatta dork.
“Is Sara honestly saying that because she finds abortion morally wrong, injuring and killing millions of women is somehow unimportant or justifiable?”
I read her two questions (“We’re going to injure and kill millions of women? What about the millions of unborn babies we’ve killed right here in the past 31 years?”) not as a statement of cuasality, but as two seperate objections that make a comparison. Steinem is using hyperbole to construct a scare tactic; will “we” really kill millions of women with the gag rule? Unlikely. Do we know what percent of women who intend to get abortions but who are stopped entirely because of the gag rule will be injured or killed as a result?
The comparison part comes in like so: Steinem is assuming that if Bush makes a policy change, “we” will bear the collective guilt for the indirect effects of that policy change, some of which might be (in the minority) injury (and even more in the minority) or death. But Bush isn’t (in this case) directly killing or injuring anyone. At the same time, from Sara’s POV, abortion is murder, and having one means being directly responsible for what will assuredly and always be a person’s death. Her questions contrast the two concepts: the hyperbolic elision of a policy change and one of it’s possible outcomes with the certain and willful outcome of killing an unborn child.
How the hell do you end up on an anti-Kerry diatribe when you’re on a post that has nothing at all to do with Kerry or Democrats or anything else? The same way he wound up on an anti-Kerry diatribe on the Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You blog (and boy is that a topical strain).
To the best of my knowledge, not a single pro-life organization in the US – not even the pro-life “feminists” – objected to the defunding of UNFPA. OK, on reading this, I had to find out what, if anything, Feminists for Life are saying about UNFPA. And it turns out that they have a “Crimes Against Women Around the World” document (http://www.feministsforlife.com/taf/2002/SpringSummer2002/SpringSummer2002.pdf), which looks like an obvious place to put anything, positive or negative, about the UN.
This document covers several topics: sex trafficking, honor killings, obstacles to women in the workplace, and obstacles to women getting an education and a paycheck. And it has a “six billion is a crowd” section about international family planning, which turns out to be critical of UNFPA.
Amp — do you really think that abortion would be “criminalized in much of the USA” if O’Connor and Stevens were replaced? Where, exactly, would abortion be criminalized? You do realize that it would be a state by state decision, and that majorities in most states (including the most populous — CA, NY) would certainly not outlaw abortion. I could see criminalization happening in Utah or Louisiana or maybe a couple of others. But that’s not “much of the USA.”
I am pro-choice, but I have moved in anti-abortion circles and speak the language. John is on the right track in regard to Sara’s comment that so puzzled Amp.
Sara is not rating the deaths of women less important than the deaths of fetuses; she’s expressing indignation that Steinem doesn’t rate the deaths of fetuses as being as important as the deaths of women.
From the anti-abortion viewpoint it’s a reasonable point, but that provision carries its own response: Steinem doesn’t share the anti-abortion viewpoint, duh.
Joe, and we sure as hell don’t care about women from Louisiana and Utah. Am I right? Am I right?
I seem to find it frighteningly common among more educated conservatives to be ignorant of the stated goals of modern conservatism. Whenever I ask my Dad questions like these (Dad, do you realize that a second vote for GWB could allow for 2 Supremes appointed by him, and thus the overturning of Roe v Wade?), I get a response like I am talking about tin-foil hat, crazy conspiracy theory stuff. Same deal if I ask him about G. Norquist’s desire to ‘drown in the tub’ the US gov’t. Same thing when I ask him about massive business de-reg.
And he is not the only one that seems to be this way.
I don’t understand it.
Tin-foil hat. Us wacky liberals.
This is the very issue in abortion discussions that riles me up – that conservative assume that feminist thinkiers believe there is a better or worse between dead fetuses and dead women.
It’s all bad. That’s why we’re trying to avoid it with family planning organizations.
This seems like a logical “duh” to me, but the demonization of feminists for our stance on abortion seems to undo the logic every time.
Nonetheless, I, too, cringed at Steinem’s analysis of the issues. I don’t think that generalizations can be undone with more generalizations. While I respect Steinem, I agree with you, Amp, that there are other more reliable sources for contemporary feminist theory that one should look to for a better understanding of feminist thought.
Regarding the reasons people left England and came to this land mass.
“But these are the people that our European ancestors came to this country to escape.”
I believe the Puritans left because they couldn’t impose their beliefs on the Anglicans, and the Quakers left because the Anglicans thought they were too wacky. I think the Anglicans were moderate, and the Puritans & Quakers were too radical for the society. The religious right are modern day Puritans. The Quakers are still the Quakers, though they don’t run around naked protesting war (or maybe they do…)
Lauren wrote, “This is the very issue in abortion discussions that riles me up – that conservative assume that feminist thinkiers believe there is a better or worse between dead fetuses and dead women. It’s all bad.”
This is the line of thought that led me to a pro-choice position: a refusal to impose, on other people, a personal belief in one of these badnesses being worse than the other.
That, incidentally, is why it’s called “pro-choice” and not “pro-abortion”.
Lauren and Simon: Damn straight!!!
Bill, Quakerism started as a response to Puritanism. The Quakers came to America as Puritans and then – I dunno what the best word is so I’ll say “defected”. Then of course you have the Separatists, who just wanted to get away from the Anglicans, worship their own way and kill any natives they came across. Mmmmm, history.
Raznor: You’re free to care about women in Louisiana and Utah. Of course, my own view (like that of Feminists for Life) is that people who care about the real well-being of women wouldn’t support the legalization of killing babies.
But leaving that point aside, I’m still puzzled: When pro-choice activists pretend that abortion would end the day after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, they’re just trying to scare people into donating funds to their organizations. But Amp seems to actually believe that if the Supreme Court overturned Roe, abortion would be illegal in most of the country. And that just wouldn’t happen, not unless a lot of citizens and legislators had a drastic change of heart on the issue.
No, I believe William Penn was a Quaker in England. Let me find some background…
How’s this?
“(a) WHEN did Quakerism begin?
Is the answer to this really important? Yes, it is; just as it is important for an understanding of Christianity to realise that it began at the time of the Roman occupation of the Middle East, which followed the Greek civilisation.
Quakerism began in the middle years of the Seventeenth Century. This century has aptly been called “The Century of Revolution”. This does not mean simply the political revolution in England, which led to the Civil War. There was a revolution in science, in religion, in thought generally; people were questioning authority in a number of ways, all about the same time. Thus:
Round about 1630, Galileo was questioning the wisdom of the ancients: of Aristotle with regard to falling bodies and to mechanics in general; of Ptolemy with regard to the motion of the planets. As a result he came into conflict with the established thought of the Church.
About the same time, William Harvey was questioning the established anatomical teaching of the Greek scientist, Galen, and developed his own view of the circulation of the blood.
In 1620, a small body of religious dissenters (often known as “The Pilgrim Fathers”) who had gone to Holland to escape persecution, sailed to America in the “Mayflower”.”
If they went to Holland first, then they were not a response to Puritans in this part of the world.
Here’s more:
“Penn was the only person who made major contributions to liberty in both the New World and the Old World. Before he conceived the idea of Pennsylvania, he became the leading defender of religious toleration in England. He was imprisoned six times for speaking out courageously. While in prison, he wrote one pamphlet after another, which gave Quakers a literature and attacked intolerance. He alone proved capable of challenging oppressive government policies in court–one of his cases helped secure the right to trial by jury. Penn used his diplomatic skills and family connections to get large numbers of Quakers out of jail. He saved many from the gallows.”
William Penn was a Quaker in England, before he came to the U.S. Remember, there was a bloody history between the Protestants & Catholics in the U.K. (still ongoing in some parts). The ruling Anglicans weren’t big on religious freedom. The Quakers were, but the Puritans were not (remember all the witch burning, not a PA thins). The religious right we battle with today are descendants of the Puritans (not literally). The Quakers are still cool (and prop-peace). I love PA.
Okay, Bill, I stand corrected. You apparently know more than little old me. I guess I suffered from a misconception.
Joe, he didn’t say “most” he said “much”. Interpret as you will. Secondly he didn’t say it would happen, he said it could happen. Possibility vs probability, so stop putting words in our mouths.
Yes, the way to show that you care about fetuses is to defund organizations that prevent abortion and then spread long-disproven lies about those organizations. That makes lots of sense.
Joe, my suspicion is that a lot more than two states would outlaw abortion (with the usual exceptions). Since there are already three states that have outlawed abortion (counting South Dakota, which just passed a ban through its House), and that’s during a time when such bans are illegal to enforce, I don’t feel too off-base thinking that many more would pass a ban if there was a point. I think many of the red states could pass abortion bans next year, if it were legal.
[Edited later on – but before anyone posted a response – to improve my wording.]
Nonetheless, I, too, cringed at Steinem’s analysis of the issues. I don’t think that generalizations can be undone with more generalizations. While I respect Steinem, I agree with you, Amp, that there are other more reliable sources for contemporary feminist theory that one should look to for a better understanding of feminist thought.
I have to take exception to this comment. While I agree that Steinem was using too many generalizations in this interview, I don’t think you can simply toss out all of Steinem’s contributions to contemporary feminist theory based on this one interview. Sure, go to more reliable sources — including Steinem’s own writings. I don’t agree with everyting Steinem says or believes, but I wholeheartedly disagree that she should be tossed out altogether, particularly based on what she said in one interview.
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