The Wolf at our door

Katha Pollitt reports that Naomi Wolf - author of The Beauty Myth, and occasional public face of feminism - has recently finished an article calling for a ban on abortions after the first trimester. Phaon's response: "Naomi Wolf should've been banned after her first book."

Look! Leftists support censorship! We have proof.

Wolf's books, notable for their solipsism masking as political analysis, offer a strange perspective on feminism. She was one of the first to talk about "victim feminists" in her book Fire With Fire, but she never said who she was talking about. Who are the victim feminists? Well, she probably had Andrea Dworkin in mind. Yet "victim feminism" is a strawman. Feminist writers who focus on the victimization of women, as Dworkin did - even those writers who, like Judith Butler, deny our ability to "get outside" relations of power - nevertheless also attribute agency to women. They don't think women are passive victims. Indeed, they think women actively participate in, as well as resist, our own oppression. That's why I was taught, in my rape crisis training in the early 90s, to refer to women who'd been assaulted as survivors, not victims. We deliberately focused on what women had accomplished: survival. It may be a bummer to hear about violence against women, or internalized oppression, or women's continued second-class economic status (and Wolf's argument against victim feminism seems to come down to: bummer). But acknowledging the reality of women's lives isn't the same as denying women agency. How can we act - to protect ourselves, to change things - if we don't face up to what's real?

Speaking of which, women need abortions after the first trimester. That's real. If women had unfettered access to birth control and abortion, the need for abortions past the first trimester would decline. But barriers to access: that's what's real. If I don't know or can't face the fact that I'm pregnant, if I don't know abortion is an option, if I think I'm a bad person for getting pregnant or wanting an abortion, if I can't find someone in my area to perform an abortion, if I have to travel, if I have to raise the money first, if I have to get signed permission from my parents or a judge, if I have to pay for a hotel room so I can stay overnight while bound by a 24 hour waiting period, if I need a friend or family member to take time off from work so they can travel with me and accompany my release from the clinic, if I'm psychogically manipulated into believing that I'm causing a baby great pain or risking my own future health by having an abortion, if I can't get the money or help or sympathy I need ... then, if I manage to get an abortion, it may well be after the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. We don't solve the problem of second and (very rare) third term abortions by calling for the stigmatization or criminalization of women trying to take care of themselves.

In what way could Naomi Wolf, formerly avowed feminist, claim to be helping women by calling for a ban on abortions after the first trimester? You know who you're helping, babe? You're helping the conservative Right, the people who want to take my rights, and your rights, away.

Posted by Cleis at April 16, 2005 01:10 PM