Q:*sigh* Nice to see you missed my point, although i suppose I can hardly blame you. It is, by nature, a subject that gets people passionate, and it should. I said nothing about abortion as it stands legally. I only made my feelings known. I know that to make abortion illegal would only open the gateway to more dangerous means of doing it, and I don't want that. I am not imposing how I feel onto anyone. And I am absolutely a feminist. Good day, madame.
Yeah…except…no, I really didn’t miss your point. You’ll notice that I only briefly mentioned legally banning abortion, and then only in the context of asking you if you would support it as a determiner of whether you should identify as pro-life or pro-choice (since you’d expressed uncertainty of that in your post). And I specifically went on, then, to say that even if you wouldn’t make abortion illegal, your moralizing what-about-teh-preshus-baybeez tripe was contributing to an atmosphere of shame and pressure that negatively affects people who become unexpectedly/unwantedly pregnant. My tearing-down of your post did not in any way hinge on your opinion of whether abortion should be legal or not; you didn’t mention it, so I didn’t really mention it, either.
If you want to take this to my inbox and try to reassert your position, please try to *actually address* the criticism I presented.
You talk about “only making my feelings known” as if that has no effect on anyone or anything; if you feel that “only making your feelings known” is such a small, inoffensive thing, why would you go to the time and effort of writing a post about it, anyway? When you “just make your feelings known” in this manner, talking about “killing children”, you are stigmatizing those of us - yes, us. I’ve had an abortion, and have never felt ashamed or guilty for it, no matter how hard those of your opinion have tried to make me feel that way - who have accessed abortion care in the past, and contributing to a culture in which ever-more-extreme barriers to accessing abortion seem totally reasonable (because it’s such a Serious Decision To Kill Your Child, you know) even as they make abortion *functionally* illegal for increasing numbers of people. You are not directly leveraging the legal system to impose your opinion on other people’s bodies, no, but you are contributing to a culture in which that happens and indirectly lending your support to those who would do so. Which is distinctly NOT a very feminist thing to do, I must say.
As to whether or not you are a feminist, well. You can, of course, call yourself anything you want. I can call myself the Grand Empress of California, but that doesn’t mean other people are obligated to give me a crown and obey my pronouncements. Likewise, you can call yourself a feminist - even “absolutely” a feminist - and that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to legitimize your claim by accepting you as a fellow feminist. And I choose not to do so.
And a good day to you as well,
- The Grand Empress of California
