This is a song I wrote about my emotionally abusive father, who has been dead to me for two years. (He was never physically abusive, though I sometimes feared he would lash out at me in his anger.) I really do have nightmares about him, although these last few months they've been fewer and farther between. I actually did dream once, back when I was in high school, that he was choking me "just for fun" (in front of other people, too, which made it humiliating as well as painful), and belittling me when I didn't see the humor in it. Fortunately, he never really did anything that extreme, but I was regularly the butt of his mockery when I was growing up, and he couldn't bring himself to understand why I didn't exactly appreciate it.
So why does it have to be this way?
You ask when I'll come home and I say
When you stop showing up in my nightmares
You might find me at your door one day
So don't wait up
Don't leave the light on for me
Playfully you try to choke me
Back off and say it's just a joke, see?
It's so damn funny to provoke me
But the red marks on my neck are sore
And my throat hurts too much to laugh
So why does it have to be this way?
You ask when I'm coming home and I say
If these wounds ever heal without scars
You might find me at your door one day
So don't wait up
Don't leave the light on for me
And get angry when you see the electric bill
It's not my fault but go ahead, blame me
If it makes you feel better, go ahead, maim me
If it's so damn funny then go ahead, shame me
You say you're laughing with me, not at me
Funny thing is, I'm not laughing
So go ahead, strike me, push me, shove me
Tell me it's because you love me
All bulbs burn out eventually
So don't get up now
To turn the light on for me
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Pudendum
The thing itself is lovely, but
the woman who has taken unto herself
that timeless synecdoche -
a shameful thing indeed.
the woman who has taken unto herself
that timeless synecdoche -
a shameful thing indeed.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Vernal Verdancy
When I was fourteen I wrote this poem to celebrate the coming of spring. It's an intricate paean elaborating upon the parallels between the vernal equinox and the sunrise. (It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I grew up to be fascinated by tables of correspondences.) Reading back over this poem for the first time in a decade, I'm almost surprised how truly awful it isn't. Actually, though half a lifetime ago I thought it quite an ambitious project, it pretty much does exactly what I wanted it to do! Enjoy it for what it's worth, along with my best wishes for a season of happiness.
The sun is rising in the east
O'er 'scapes still marked by winter's hand,
For only now has newborn Spring
Come in to warm and wake the land.
O sun, now rise, and fill the skies,
And summon vernal verdancy!
Come, morning sun, for Spring's begun!
Arouse the land from dormancy.
How fast the sun seems now to move!
How much the day in brightness grows!
How eagerly the plants awake,
Released from burdens nights impose!
The birds all sing their songs of Spring,
Their praises of the verdant land.
They all rejoice, each in its voice,
Elated in this season grand.
O sun, bring warmth, bring light, to make
The flowers from their buds explode!
Bring warmth, bring light, that there may be
New wonders bursting from each node.
May ever flower bloom this hour,
This time of new Spring's sun's first light,
When night and day in balance play,
When day is pushing back the night!
The sun has risen now at last,
And vernal verdancy is near.
The night, like winter, now is past.
The day, like newborn Spring, is here!
The sun is rising in the east
O'er 'scapes still marked by winter's hand,
For only now has newborn Spring
Come in to warm and wake the land.
O sun, now rise, and fill the skies,
And summon vernal verdancy!
Come, morning sun, for Spring's begun!
Arouse the land from dormancy.
How fast the sun seems now to move!
How much the day in brightness grows!
How eagerly the plants awake,
Released from burdens nights impose!
The birds all sing their songs of Spring,
Their praises of the verdant land.
They all rejoice, each in its voice,
Elated in this season grand.
O sun, bring warmth, bring light, to make
The flowers from their buds explode!
Bring warmth, bring light, that there may be
New wonders bursting from each node.
May ever flower bloom this hour,
This time of new Spring's sun's first light,
When night and day in balance play,
When day is pushing back the night!
The sun has risen now at last,
And vernal verdancy is near.
The night, like winter, now is past.
The day, like newborn Spring, is here!
Saturday, March 12, 2011
The Last Acceptable Prejudice
I've had the subject of "the last acceptable prejudice" in mind as a topic to write about for a long time, having heard that expression used several times in the course of a two- or three-month period last year, referring to a different "prejudice" each time. As part of my research I Googled the phrase, and quickly discovered a whole website dedicated to the concept of "last acceptable prejudices." It seems to be the personal project of one Adam Kotsko, who promises "Up-to-the-minute coverage of who it's okay to make fun of" (although judging from the tone of his commentary, his primary target of mockery is the persecuted, whiny attitude the phrase represents, rather than any of the allegedly mistreated groups). Kotsko has managed to collect no fewer than fifteen "last acceptable prejudices." Clearly the human tendency to divide the world into "us" and "them" isn't going away any time soon - and neither is the smug outrage that rises from a sense of being broadly and singularly persecuted.
Some of the prejudices that have made Kotsko's list clearly don't belong there. If an "acceptable" prejudice can be defined as one that goes unchallenged by a majority of society, including those channels (such as the mainstream news and entertainment media) that speak for the culture as a whole, "anti-Semitism" and "homophobia" clearly don't qualify. I'm not at all denying that bias against Jews or gays exists, or suggesting that there's anything trivial about such bias when it does manifest itself. What I find hard to believe is that anyone could consider either one to be a socially acceptable prejudice. If anything, these are two groups mainstream society - mainstream American society, at any rate, and much of European society as well - bends over backwards at every turn not to offend. Of course, the condescending "tolerance" so often shown to both groups clearly indicates that we still see them as outsiders to a considerable degree. It's increasingly hard to find a series on network TV that doesn't have a lovable homosexual or two among the cast of characters, but central characters are almost universally straight: gays may be good to have around, but we're not really expected to be able to relate to one. The cause of gay rights, in particular, has a long way to go, with the debate still open as to whether marrying the person you love can authentically be considered a civil right. On the whole, however, really cruel treatment directed at either Jews or gays is swiftly censured in this society. Not so for several other groups.
Take atheists, for example. If an American presidential candidate told a gay journalist that he didn't consider homosexuals to be real American citizens, his political career would be over - but that's exactly what George H.W. Bush allegedly did to an atheist news reporter on the campaign trail in 1987. "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens," Bush said, "nor should they be considered patriots." The ensuing offended uproar was confined almost exclusively to the atheist community. Twenty years later, Mitt Romney, defending himself against those who claimed that his Mormonism made him unfit for the highest office in the land, insisted that "the nation does need to have people of different faiths, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country." "Freedom requires religion," he opined. Anti-atheist bigotry isn't limited to the sphere of politics, either. The Boy Scouts of America has been repeatedly condemned for refusing to allow known homosexuals as adult volunteers or youth leaders, but there's far less sound and fury about the fact that atheists and agnostics are barred from membership entirely. (The BSA, as a private organization, has a right to set its own standards for membership and to exclude those who don't meet the requirements, but as far as "acceptable prejudice" goes, there seem to be far more heterosexuals who object when a private organization excludes gays than theists, however casual, who protest a private organization's exclusion of nonbelievers.) Ceteris paribus, a churchgoing parent is often given preference over an atheist parent in a child custody case, and some schools have refused to support the formation of atheist student groups. Although a handful of TV shows have featured atheist characters (including the protagonists of two of my favorite dramas, House and Bones), they're often, in the words of an anonymous Wikipedian, stereotyped as "profoundly emotionally screwed-up intellectuals" (in the shows I mentioned, Dr. Gregory House is a curmudgeonly, misanthropic antihero, while Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan is an outspoken elitist who disdains anything that smacks of sentimentality or superstition to her rational mind, but the audience loves her anyway because we can tell that her callous posturing protects a tender heart).
Then again, it's hard to find an intellectual on TV who's not "profoundly emotionally screwed-up," in one way or another. "Bones" Brennan is typical of the way intellectuals are portrayed in the media: snobbish, out of touch with people and their feelings, and completely clueless about modern mass culture, while bursting with knowledge on more esoteric subjects. Characters such as Dr. Spencer Reid in Criminal Minds and Dr. Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory may be quite likable, but they're presented as objects of admiration, amusement, and/or curiosity rather than truly relatable protagonists. (Perhaps this is unintentional, but the fact that a number of these characters have been depicted as having the gift of eidetic memory only serves to emphasize how isolated they are in their ivory towers. I'm not at all interested in the personal lives of celebrities, so it's almost embarrassing how many times I've found myself able to fill in the blanks for a more starstruck acquaintance trying to remember whatshisname, you know, the guy Britney Spears is dating now, simply because I skimmed an issue of People in a friend's bathroom for five minutes.) Just as often, it seems, "nerds" are depicted as hopeless losers with messy hair and thick, ugly glasses: targets for mockery, pure and simple. Does anyone stop to ask what message this sends to unusually intelligent children who love to read and study but also yearn for acceptance and respect? Perhaps more crucially, what message does it send to people of more average intelligence about where their priorities should lie, and how it's appropriate to treat people they don't always quite understand?
How about introversion? How often have you seen the word used as if it were synonymous with "shyness"? How often do you see the assumption go unquestioned that introverts are either lonely losers, or antisocial misanthropes? Motivational speaker Florence Littauer is perhaps best-known for her promotion of a system of personality typing based on the four humours of ancient medicine; in the assessment test she uses, the taker is presented with groups of four personality traits (not connected in any way, except that all four start with the same letter), and asked to choose the one most applicable to him- or herself. There's a section for strengths, and one for weaknesses. Guess what section "Introvert" appears in? (Hint: the other items in its cluster are "Inconsistent," "Intolerant," and "Indifferent.") "In our extrovertist society," writes Jonathan Rauch, "being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable. . . . Extroverts are seen as bighearted, vibrant, warm, empathetic. 'People person' is a compliment. Introverts are described with words like 'guarded,' 'loner,' 'reserved,' 'taciturn,' 'self-contained,' 'private' - narrow, ungenerous words, words that suggest emotional parsimony and smallness of personality." I've had people try to convince me that I'm not really introverted, in the same tone they'd use to contradict me if I'd said I was boring or physically unattractive - as if no one with a positive self-image could possibly identify as an introvert. (Their evidence? I'm friendly, caring, and interested in people. I occasionally make small talk with a neighbor when I'm out for a walk. I'm not particuarly shy, I can be quite outspoken, I enjoy the spotlight on occasion and I've never been nervous performing in front of a crowd. None of this changes the fact that I am most refreshed and stimulated by solitary activities or one-on-one interaction with a close friend.) This prejudice takes a damaging turn in the mental health system, where "isolating" is treated by default as a symptom of emotional disturbance. I can't tell you how many doctors I've had observe that I'd been spending most of the day holed up in my hospital room instead of out in the dayroom associating with the other patients, and ask me if I thought maybe I needed a medication adjustment - only to hear me respond, "No, the meds are working great! It's been so long since I had the peace of mind to lose myself in a book for hours!"
Neither anti-atheist bias, nor nerd-bashing, nor loner-labeling has yet made an appearance on Kotsko's site, although all three clearly, to at least some degree, fall into the category of socially acceptable prejudices. One subject Kotsko does have covered - in fact, it has four entries in its category, more than any other single item on the list - is obesity. Now, I'll freely admit that I could easily stand to lose about half of my body weight - and I want to. I'm not going to argue, as some do, that morbid obesity is beautiful. I'm not campaigning for wider chairs and doors. I believe fat people should be encouraged to get their weight within a more healthy range. That said, there's no excuse for some of the hateful invective that's been directed against the overweight. Is it any wonder, though, considering how fat people are portrayed by the media? In 2009, BBC News Magazine published an article on the subject of anti-fat bias. Although the article is framed around the story of an overweight woman who was physically assaulted on a train by a fellow passenger, who berated her for being a "big fat pig" who took up two seats, Marsha Coupe's stunned, battered face doesn't appear until halfway down the page. The first (and largest) picture included with the article is of a bare, hairy, bulging male torso, with a tailor's tape measure wrapped around the abdomen. The "face" BBC News Magazine puts on the issue of anti-fat prejudice isn't a face at all. Do a Google Images search for "obesity" and you'll see dozens of images of flabby butts and massive bellies with no faces attached. These are images calculated to inspire disgust and contempt, not sympathy or interest - and yet a number of them accompany serious news articles.
If anything, the treatment given the overweight by our storytelling media is even worse. You'll never see a fat person in a movie or on a scripted television program, particularly a fat woman, unless his/her weight has something to do with the storyline, and/or s/he is an object of mockery. Even children's books get in on the act. Writer and bookstore owner Elizabeth Bluemle has written about her disgust with "descriptions of fat used deliberately as shorthand to indicate a character's villainy, isolation, absurdity, and/or repulsiveness," which she claims to have seen with increasing frequency over the past two decades. "Maybe it's just me," she writes, "but I've grown particularly weary of pudgy-fingered villains with small 'piggy' eyes in big moon faces. And the fat kid who serves as clumsy comic relief, or is automatically assumed to have no romantic prospects. Etcetera. We all know the cliches." I know exactly what she's talking about, and it makes me cringe. In a day when one in three American youngsters is overweight, it's almost beyond comprehension that writers who claim to take a great interest in the emotional lives of children would continue to take cheap potshots at a considerable plurality of their target market - and yet they do. It's no wonder that size-acceptance activists have dubbed anti-fat bias the last acceptable prejudice.
Do a search for the phrase "last acceptable prejudice" on Amazon, and you'll pull up two volumes with the phrase as subtitle. The main titles are The New Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in America. If you're interested in the subject but aren't willing to shell out fifteen dollars for one of the books, you can get a pretty thorough introduction by scanning the annual Reports on Anti-Catholicism issued by the Catholic League, each one an exhaustive collection of offenses divided up into categories such as Arts, Business, Education, Government, and Media. Some of the so-called anti-Catholic activity seems rather more directed at conservative social opinions or Christians in general (and indeed, fundamentalist Christians have also laid claim to the "last acceptable prejudice" title), but the Arts and Media categories in particular are full of blatant examples of Catholic-bashing. I can't help thinking the Catholic League can be a little hypersensitive; sometimes I get the impression they can't tell the difference between gentle ribbing, harsh but well-meaning satire, and brutal mockery, and the idea that sober and respectful criticism of Catholic doctrines and traditions has a legitimate place in a free society often seems to be lost on them. But there's no denying that Catholicism and its adherents are fair game for derision in America these days in a way that other religions simply aren't - a point driven home by conservative activist Brent Bozell in a column titled "A Year of Anti-Religious Bigotry," in which he recasts some of the incidents described in the 2009 Catholic League report as if they'd been directed at Islam and Muslims. "None of the foregoing was true," he admits at the end. "Hollywood would never dare ridicule Islam this way." He's right; anyone who dared to suggest in public that all Muslims were suicide bombers just looking for the opportunity to detonate would be immediately, harshly, and rightfully denounced as a religious bigot - yet pedophile-priest jokes have become a staple of late-night television talk show host monologues.
Catholic-bashing may result in a lot of hurt feelings, but in the case of transsexuals, hatred and fear can be deadly. I hesitated to mention "transphobia" here, because there's been so much progress lately in the way transsexuality and transgenderism are treated by the mainstream media. Several TV shows have featured transsexual characters, and a beautiful transwoman named Isis King appeared on the eleventh season of America's Next Top Model. Except for conservative or religious news outlets, which regularly describe transsexuals in terms of chromosomal sex rather than gender identity (the most respectable organizations, at least, can usually resist the smug, hateful temptation to refer to a person as "it"), the media have generally adopted the habit of referring to transsexual individuals by their names, pronouns, and other descriptors of choice. Yet beneath the surface, the transsexual-acceptance movement has a long way to go. Even reasonably open-minded people often miss the point that transsexuality is about what's between a person's ears, not what's between his/her legs. (The friend who told me about Isis King hastily pointed out that she wasn't "really" a woman "yet" at the time she appeared on the show because she still had a penis; my response was that the reason she didn't want a penis is that she's a woman.) Transsexuals often have difficulty finding or keeping a job. Few insurance plans cover sex reassignment surgery, as it's still widely considered, like cosmetic surgery, to be an "elective" procedure, instead of a form of reconstructive surgery (which many plans do cover). Perpetrators of violence against transsexuals have used a "trans-panic" defense: the idea that a reasonable person, discovering that someone's (particularly a potential sex partner's) genitals don't match the gender s/he believed that person to be, could be provoked into such a state of shock and anxiety as to use deliberate deadly force - and that this mitigates his/her culpability.
Perhaps most horrifying, and least comprehensible, is the treatment some transsexuals have received at the hands of the medical profession. When Robert Eads, a transman who still had female reproductive organs, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, over two dozen doctors refused to treat him, fearing that taking him on might harm their reputations. Even more egregious is the story of Tyra Hunter. When a firefighter treating her at the scene of a car accident uncovered her genitalia, he backed away from her and joked, "This ain't no bitch." One of his colleagues mocked, "Look, it's got a cock and balls." These professional rescuers abandoned her treatment while they stood around laughing at her. There's no guarantee that either Eads or Hunter would be alive today if they'd received more compassionate and timely care, but the fact is that they're both dead and we'll never know if they would have had a chance. What we do know for sure is that they both suffered more than they had to, emotionally as well as physically, because those they should have been able to trust as healers betrayed them. Both these incidents happened in the mid-1990s, but it was only eight years ago that I was shown to my room in a psychiatric hospital and found several members of the staff taunting my new roommate, laughing and insisting, "You're a woman, Rosalyn," while my roommate earnestly protested, "I'm a man, and my name is Ross!"
Of course, in a long-term psych facility, a "woman" who thinks "she" is a man, no matter how earnestly and consistently, could very well pass for just another psychotic. (Believe me, Ross had other problems.) But even if we can safely assume that the hospital staff thought his masculine identity was a delusion arising from his mental illness, that raises another question: what were nurses and psych techs - licensed medical professionals - doing making fun of a patient? Can you imagine a physical therapist mocking an amputee's clumsy walk as he stumbled around getting used to his prosthesis? How about the career prospects of a hospital janitor who poked fun at the skinny bald kids on the pediatric oncology ward? Over the course of my years in the mental health system, I have been mocked, been dismissed when raising a serious concern in a sane and respectful manner (including matters of health and safety, and provable inaccuracies in my medical record), had my personal preferences and values inappropriately disregarded (when I was served fish for dinner one evening and I protested that I was supposed to get a vegetarian meal, a nurse snapped "Vegetarians eat fish!" - shouldn't I know what I do and don't eat?), and even been lied to outright. I find this disheartening, not only in its own right, but because I'd like to think that those who spend their days caring for the mentally ill would be at the front lines in the battle against the stigma that runs rampant in society.
Years before I ever heard anyone talk about "the last acceptable prejudice," I observed on my own that it seemed to be socially condoned to talk about and treat the mentally ill in ways that would be considered unacceptably degrading if they were directed at almost any other group of people. "Dehumanizing slang still has a place in society," writes Jenny Westberg, "as long as you're talking about mental illness. And it's not merely tolerated, it's defended. If a reference to 'the crazies' hurts someone, that person is being overly sensitive. They can't take a joke. It's just a word. They're getting upset over nothing. They're - well, they're nuts." Last summer, my mother and I were discussing unhealthy messages in advertising, when my brother walked into the room and heard what I was saying. "You're mentally insane!" he sneered, before he launched into the reasons he disagreed with my position. My mother didn't say a word; either it honestly didn't occur to her how an epithet like that would feel to someone with my history, or she was more worried about offending my brother by calling him on it than about reinforcing the insult by letting it slide. (She's a lesbian, and I'm tempted to wonder how she would have responded if I'd stooped beneath my dignity and told my brother his use of degrading language was "so gay.") I'm so used to hearing cruel slurs about mental illness and mental patients that I'm almost used to it. Almost. Nearly as bad, though much less frequent, are the times a well-meaning friend, whom I have trusted with the facts of my own condition, tries to convince me I'm not mentally ill after all, because I'm intelligent and a good person. "If I hadn't known when I met you, I never would have guessed," a certain friend has told me more than once. I know she means it as a compliment, but I can't help feeling like a light-skinned Negro trying to "pass." The stigma isn't always just verbal, either; the dating service eHarmony refuses to provide matches for those who suffer severe depression, as if a person with a treatable chemical imbalance couldn't possibly make a good life partner.
Perhaps worst of all is the too-often unchallenged stereotype of the mentally ill as dangerous and violent. This is inaccurate; the mentally ill population is only slightly more prone to acting out violently than the general population, and some mental disorders - including clinical depression, the most common mental illness - are associated with no greater risk of violence. However, it's still painfully common to hear criminals described as "crazies" or "lunatics" even in cases when they were clearly motivated by some perfectly comprehensible motive such as greed, jealousy, or revenge. Last year, mental health advocacy groups were outraged by a Burger King commerical that depicts the fast-food chain's cartoonish "King" character running through an office building, breaking windows, starting a fire, and shoving a man violently into a copy machine. He's pursued by a team of white-coated psychiatrist types, shouting "Stop that king! He's crazy!" They finally catch up to him in the break room and tackle him to the floor. "This king's insane," one of them remarks as they struggle to restrain him; he'd have to be out of touch with reality to offer his hamburgers at such a (debatably) low price while the rest of the world is cutting back. Burger King has run some controversial, "edgy" ad campaigns before, but somehow I can't imagine even they would have dared to show the King being herded into a special education classroom, under the assumption that anyone who would set his prices so low must be retarded. Perpetuating the stereotype of the violent mental patient is perfectly acceptable, however - and even some of the journalists who covered the story of the controversy generated by the "crazy King" ad couldn't bring themselves to take it seriously. Washington Post staff writer Monica Hesse not only gave the official Burger King statement the last word in her article, she joked no fewer than three times in her article about the challenge of choosing language that wouldn't offend the mentally ill. In the first paragraph, she claims that the ad "can best be described as completely bonk . . . er, nut . . . er, cucko . . . er, in poor taste." There's more of same in the next paragraph, and then she turns her attentions to actually describing the ad and quoting some of the mental health advocates who were offended by it before concluding, "The real problem with the Burger King ads is that the King is a giant freak of nature with a grotesque plastic head, and that sane . . . er, normal . . . er, average people would look at him and be persuaded not to buy a hamburger but to sleep with a baseball bat next to their beds." Apparently creepy mascots are a bigger problem than advertisements that stereotype and ridicule an entire group of people, or else we've got a case of socially acceptable prejudi . . . er, bigotr . . . er, journalistic bias on our hands.
Clearly the notion that there's any such thing in our society as a last acceptable prejudice, a single holdout against the all-encompassing wave of tolerance, is almost pathetically laughable. Acceptable prejudices are a dime a dozen - if you know where to look. The hardest part is looking there.
Actually, there's something dangerous about the concept of a "last acceptable prejudice" in the first place. Too often, those who get swept up in this special kind of victimhood forget that there are other prejudices out there doing just as much or more damage, even those that aren't by any stretch of the imagination socially acceptable. Those who harbor bigoted views about homosexuals or minority ethnic groups know that their opinions go against the grain, but that doesn't necessarily change the way they act. Plenty of "unacceptable" prejudices are still very much a problem in the real world. Jesuit priest James Martin, in an excellent article on anti-Catholicism, acknowledges the scope of the problem but admits that "anti-Catholicism is clearly not as virulent or violent as the prejudice directed against blacks, Jews and gays." Of an archbishop who compared a Catholic-bashing television show with the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, Martin states, "This is solipsism at its worst and most dangerous."
You'd think that those who had been victimized by prejudice in any form would hate it enough to take a stand against it in all its forms. Sadly, this is often not the case. Hiding behind a notion of singular persecution only serves to isolate marginalized groups of people from each other, as well as from society. The aforementioned Brent Bozell, who's written any number of columns about the media's repeated assaults on Catholics, Christians in general, and social conservatives, is a writer I can usually count on for logic and common sense, even when I happen to disagree with what he says - but he played right into another socially acceptable prejudice when he reported on the BBC's "contemporary nativity play" depicting Mary and Joseph as foreign asylum seekers in Liverpool. "Someone should be seeking asylum, all right," Bozell opined, "to put the BBC in a straitjacket and leave them there." With that sentence, he managed to alienate me just as surely as he must feel alienated when Jay Leno makes a pedophile-priest joke. Do we never learn?
That's the trouble with socially acceptable prejudices. It's not always easy to recognize them for what they are, because they're so deeply ingrained into our collective consciousness that it's easy not to see them as prejudices at all. As an overweight, depressive, introverted intellectual, I'm confronted on a daily basis with some of the biases I've discussed here. Coming from a different background, I might have identified an entirely different set of "last acceptable prejudices" worth writing about. I don't have any strong personal connection to the Catholic church, but discussions of anti-Catholicism have so often labeled it "the last acceptable prejudice" that I can't imagine any discussion of the phrase in question would be complete without it. But I might never have thought to discuss bias against atheists and transsexuals, if it weren't for the years I spent in high school identifying as an atheist, or the dear friend who came out to me as transgendered a couple of years ago.
It makes me wonder: what have I neglected to include here? Not for want of space, or because it was too esoteric or too similar to something else I'd already mentioned - but simply because it never occurred to me? Whom have I been hurting unknowingly with my own thoughtless words? What cruelties have I never opened my mind and heart enough to notice?
What is my last acceptable prejudice?
Some of the prejudices that have made Kotsko's list clearly don't belong there. If an "acceptable" prejudice can be defined as one that goes unchallenged by a majority of society, including those channels (such as the mainstream news and entertainment media) that speak for the culture as a whole, "anti-Semitism" and "homophobia" clearly don't qualify. I'm not at all denying that bias against Jews or gays exists, or suggesting that there's anything trivial about such bias when it does manifest itself. What I find hard to believe is that anyone could consider either one to be a socially acceptable prejudice. If anything, these are two groups mainstream society - mainstream American society, at any rate, and much of European society as well - bends over backwards at every turn not to offend. Of course, the condescending "tolerance" so often shown to both groups clearly indicates that we still see them as outsiders to a considerable degree. It's increasingly hard to find a series on network TV that doesn't have a lovable homosexual or two among the cast of characters, but central characters are almost universally straight: gays may be good to have around, but we're not really expected to be able to relate to one. The cause of gay rights, in particular, has a long way to go, with the debate still open as to whether marrying the person you love can authentically be considered a civil right. On the whole, however, really cruel treatment directed at either Jews or gays is swiftly censured in this society. Not so for several other groups.
Take atheists, for example. If an American presidential candidate told a gay journalist that he didn't consider homosexuals to be real American citizens, his political career would be over - but that's exactly what George H.W. Bush allegedly did to an atheist news reporter on the campaign trail in 1987. "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens," Bush said, "nor should they be considered patriots." The ensuing offended uproar was confined almost exclusively to the atheist community. Twenty years later, Mitt Romney, defending himself against those who claimed that his Mormonism made him unfit for the highest office in the land, insisted that "the nation does need to have people of different faiths, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country." "Freedom requires religion," he opined. Anti-atheist bigotry isn't limited to the sphere of politics, either. The Boy Scouts of America has been repeatedly condemned for refusing to allow known homosexuals as adult volunteers or youth leaders, but there's far less sound and fury about the fact that atheists and agnostics are barred from membership entirely. (The BSA, as a private organization, has a right to set its own standards for membership and to exclude those who don't meet the requirements, but as far as "acceptable prejudice" goes, there seem to be far more heterosexuals who object when a private organization excludes gays than theists, however casual, who protest a private organization's exclusion of nonbelievers.) Ceteris paribus, a churchgoing parent is often given preference over an atheist parent in a child custody case, and some schools have refused to support the formation of atheist student groups. Although a handful of TV shows have featured atheist characters (including the protagonists of two of my favorite dramas, House and Bones), they're often, in the words of an anonymous Wikipedian, stereotyped as "profoundly emotionally screwed-up intellectuals" (in the shows I mentioned, Dr. Gregory House is a curmudgeonly, misanthropic antihero, while Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan is an outspoken elitist who disdains anything that smacks of sentimentality or superstition to her rational mind, but the audience loves her anyway because we can tell that her callous posturing protects a tender heart).
Then again, it's hard to find an intellectual on TV who's not "profoundly emotionally screwed-up," in one way or another. "Bones" Brennan is typical of the way intellectuals are portrayed in the media: snobbish, out of touch with people and their feelings, and completely clueless about modern mass culture, while bursting with knowledge on more esoteric subjects. Characters such as Dr. Spencer Reid in Criminal Minds and Dr. Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory may be quite likable, but they're presented as objects of admiration, amusement, and/or curiosity rather than truly relatable protagonists. (Perhaps this is unintentional, but the fact that a number of these characters have been depicted as having the gift of eidetic memory only serves to emphasize how isolated they are in their ivory towers. I'm not at all interested in the personal lives of celebrities, so it's almost embarrassing how many times I've found myself able to fill in the blanks for a more starstruck acquaintance trying to remember whatshisname, you know, the guy Britney Spears is dating now, simply because I skimmed an issue of People in a friend's bathroom for five minutes.) Just as often, it seems, "nerds" are depicted as hopeless losers with messy hair and thick, ugly glasses: targets for mockery, pure and simple. Does anyone stop to ask what message this sends to unusually intelligent children who love to read and study but also yearn for acceptance and respect? Perhaps more crucially, what message does it send to people of more average intelligence about where their priorities should lie, and how it's appropriate to treat people they don't always quite understand?
How about introversion? How often have you seen the word used as if it were synonymous with "shyness"? How often do you see the assumption go unquestioned that introverts are either lonely losers, or antisocial misanthropes? Motivational speaker Florence Littauer is perhaps best-known for her promotion of a system of personality typing based on the four humours of ancient medicine; in the assessment test she uses, the taker is presented with groups of four personality traits (not connected in any way, except that all four start with the same letter), and asked to choose the one most applicable to him- or herself. There's a section for strengths, and one for weaknesses. Guess what section "Introvert" appears in? (Hint: the other items in its cluster are "Inconsistent," "Intolerant," and "Indifferent.") "In our extrovertist society," writes Jonathan Rauch, "being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable. . . . Extroverts are seen as bighearted, vibrant, warm, empathetic. 'People person' is a compliment. Introverts are described with words like 'guarded,' 'loner,' 'reserved,' 'taciturn,' 'self-contained,' 'private' - narrow, ungenerous words, words that suggest emotional parsimony and smallness of personality." I've had people try to convince me that I'm not really introverted, in the same tone they'd use to contradict me if I'd said I was boring or physically unattractive - as if no one with a positive self-image could possibly identify as an introvert. (Their evidence? I'm friendly, caring, and interested in people. I occasionally make small talk with a neighbor when I'm out for a walk. I'm not particuarly shy, I can be quite outspoken, I enjoy the spotlight on occasion and I've never been nervous performing in front of a crowd. None of this changes the fact that I am most refreshed and stimulated by solitary activities or one-on-one interaction with a close friend.) This prejudice takes a damaging turn in the mental health system, where "isolating" is treated by default as a symptom of emotional disturbance. I can't tell you how many doctors I've had observe that I'd been spending most of the day holed up in my hospital room instead of out in the dayroom associating with the other patients, and ask me if I thought maybe I needed a medication adjustment - only to hear me respond, "No, the meds are working great! It's been so long since I had the peace of mind to lose myself in a book for hours!"
Neither anti-atheist bias, nor nerd-bashing, nor loner-labeling has yet made an appearance on Kotsko's site, although all three clearly, to at least some degree, fall into the category of socially acceptable prejudices. One subject Kotsko does have covered - in fact, it has four entries in its category, more than any other single item on the list - is obesity. Now, I'll freely admit that I could easily stand to lose about half of my body weight - and I want to. I'm not going to argue, as some do, that morbid obesity is beautiful. I'm not campaigning for wider chairs and doors. I believe fat people should be encouraged to get their weight within a more healthy range. That said, there's no excuse for some of the hateful invective that's been directed against the overweight. Is it any wonder, though, considering how fat people are portrayed by the media? In 2009, BBC News Magazine published an article on the subject of anti-fat bias. Although the article is framed around the story of an overweight woman who was physically assaulted on a train by a fellow passenger, who berated her for being a "big fat pig" who took up two seats, Marsha Coupe's stunned, battered face doesn't appear until halfway down the page. The first (and largest) picture included with the article is of a bare, hairy, bulging male torso, with a tailor's tape measure wrapped around the abdomen. The "face" BBC News Magazine puts on the issue of anti-fat prejudice isn't a face at all. Do a Google Images search for "obesity" and you'll see dozens of images of flabby butts and massive bellies with no faces attached. These are images calculated to inspire disgust and contempt, not sympathy or interest - and yet a number of them accompany serious news articles.
If anything, the treatment given the overweight by our storytelling media is even worse. You'll never see a fat person in a movie or on a scripted television program, particularly a fat woman, unless his/her weight has something to do with the storyline, and/or s/he is an object of mockery. Even children's books get in on the act. Writer and bookstore owner Elizabeth Bluemle has written about her disgust with "descriptions of fat used deliberately as shorthand to indicate a character's villainy, isolation, absurdity, and/or repulsiveness," which she claims to have seen with increasing frequency over the past two decades. "Maybe it's just me," she writes, "but I've grown particularly weary of pudgy-fingered villains with small 'piggy' eyes in big moon faces. And the fat kid who serves as clumsy comic relief, or is automatically assumed to have no romantic prospects. Etcetera. We all know the cliches." I know exactly what she's talking about, and it makes me cringe. In a day when one in three American youngsters is overweight, it's almost beyond comprehension that writers who claim to take a great interest in the emotional lives of children would continue to take cheap potshots at a considerable plurality of their target market - and yet they do. It's no wonder that size-acceptance activists have dubbed anti-fat bias the last acceptable prejudice.
Do a search for the phrase "last acceptable prejudice" on Amazon, and you'll pull up two volumes with the phrase as subtitle. The main titles are The New Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in America. If you're interested in the subject but aren't willing to shell out fifteen dollars for one of the books, you can get a pretty thorough introduction by scanning the annual Reports on Anti-Catholicism issued by the Catholic League, each one an exhaustive collection of offenses divided up into categories such as Arts, Business, Education, Government, and Media. Some of the so-called anti-Catholic activity seems rather more directed at conservative social opinions or Christians in general (and indeed, fundamentalist Christians have also laid claim to the "last acceptable prejudice" title), but the Arts and Media categories in particular are full of blatant examples of Catholic-bashing. I can't help thinking the Catholic League can be a little hypersensitive; sometimes I get the impression they can't tell the difference between gentle ribbing, harsh but well-meaning satire, and brutal mockery, and the idea that sober and respectful criticism of Catholic doctrines and traditions has a legitimate place in a free society often seems to be lost on them. But there's no denying that Catholicism and its adherents are fair game for derision in America these days in a way that other religions simply aren't - a point driven home by conservative activist Brent Bozell in a column titled "A Year of Anti-Religious Bigotry," in which he recasts some of the incidents described in the 2009 Catholic League report as if they'd been directed at Islam and Muslims. "None of the foregoing was true," he admits at the end. "Hollywood would never dare ridicule Islam this way." He's right; anyone who dared to suggest in public that all Muslims were suicide bombers just looking for the opportunity to detonate would be immediately, harshly, and rightfully denounced as a religious bigot - yet pedophile-priest jokes have become a staple of late-night television talk show host monologues.
Catholic-bashing may result in a lot of hurt feelings, but in the case of transsexuals, hatred and fear can be deadly. I hesitated to mention "transphobia" here, because there's been so much progress lately in the way transsexuality and transgenderism are treated by the mainstream media. Several TV shows have featured transsexual characters, and a beautiful transwoman named Isis King appeared on the eleventh season of America's Next Top Model. Except for conservative or religious news outlets, which regularly describe transsexuals in terms of chromosomal sex rather than gender identity (the most respectable organizations, at least, can usually resist the smug, hateful temptation to refer to a person as "it"), the media have generally adopted the habit of referring to transsexual individuals by their names, pronouns, and other descriptors of choice. Yet beneath the surface, the transsexual-acceptance movement has a long way to go. Even reasonably open-minded people often miss the point that transsexuality is about what's between a person's ears, not what's between his/her legs. (The friend who told me about Isis King hastily pointed out that she wasn't "really" a woman "yet" at the time she appeared on the show because she still had a penis; my response was that the reason she didn't want a penis is that she's a woman.) Transsexuals often have difficulty finding or keeping a job. Few insurance plans cover sex reassignment surgery, as it's still widely considered, like cosmetic surgery, to be an "elective" procedure, instead of a form of reconstructive surgery (which many plans do cover). Perpetrators of violence against transsexuals have used a "trans-panic" defense: the idea that a reasonable person, discovering that someone's (particularly a potential sex partner's) genitals don't match the gender s/he believed that person to be, could be provoked into such a state of shock and anxiety as to use deliberate deadly force - and that this mitigates his/her culpability.
Perhaps most horrifying, and least comprehensible, is the treatment some transsexuals have received at the hands of the medical profession. When Robert Eads, a transman who still had female reproductive organs, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, over two dozen doctors refused to treat him, fearing that taking him on might harm their reputations. Even more egregious is the story of Tyra Hunter. When a firefighter treating her at the scene of a car accident uncovered her genitalia, he backed away from her and joked, "This ain't no bitch." One of his colleagues mocked, "Look, it's got a cock and balls." These professional rescuers abandoned her treatment while they stood around laughing at her. There's no guarantee that either Eads or Hunter would be alive today if they'd received more compassionate and timely care, but the fact is that they're both dead and we'll never know if they would have had a chance. What we do know for sure is that they both suffered more than they had to, emotionally as well as physically, because those they should have been able to trust as healers betrayed them. Both these incidents happened in the mid-1990s, but it was only eight years ago that I was shown to my room in a psychiatric hospital and found several members of the staff taunting my new roommate, laughing and insisting, "You're a woman, Rosalyn," while my roommate earnestly protested, "I'm a man, and my name is Ross!"
Of course, in a long-term psych facility, a "woman" who thinks "she" is a man, no matter how earnestly and consistently, could very well pass for just another psychotic. (Believe me, Ross had other problems.) But even if we can safely assume that the hospital staff thought his masculine identity was a delusion arising from his mental illness, that raises another question: what were nurses and psych techs - licensed medical professionals - doing making fun of a patient? Can you imagine a physical therapist mocking an amputee's clumsy walk as he stumbled around getting used to his prosthesis? How about the career prospects of a hospital janitor who poked fun at the skinny bald kids on the pediatric oncology ward? Over the course of my years in the mental health system, I have been mocked, been dismissed when raising a serious concern in a sane and respectful manner (including matters of health and safety, and provable inaccuracies in my medical record), had my personal preferences and values inappropriately disregarded (when I was served fish for dinner one evening and I protested that I was supposed to get a vegetarian meal, a nurse snapped "Vegetarians eat fish!" - shouldn't I know what I do and don't eat?), and even been lied to outright. I find this disheartening, not only in its own right, but because I'd like to think that those who spend their days caring for the mentally ill would be at the front lines in the battle against the stigma that runs rampant in society.
Years before I ever heard anyone talk about "the last acceptable prejudice," I observed on my own that it seemed to be socially condoned to talk about and treat the mentally ill in ways that would be considered unacceptably degrading if they were directed at almost any other group of people. "Dehumanizing slang still has a place in society," writes Jenny Westberg, "as long as you're talking about mental illness. And it's not merely tolerated, it's defended. If a reference to 'the crazies' hurts someone, that person is being overly sensitive. They can't take a joke. It's just a word. They're getting upset over nothing. They're - well, they're nuts." Last summer, my mother and I were discussing unhealthy messages in advertising, when my brother walked into the room and heard what I was saying. "You're mentally insane!" he sneered, before he launched into the reasons he disagreed with my position. My mother didn't say a word; either it honestly didn't occur to her how an epithet like that would feel to someone with my history, or she was more worried about offending my brother by calling him on it than about reinforcing the insult by letting it slide. (She's a lesbian, and I'm tempted to wonder how she would have responded if I'd stooped beneath my dignity and told my brother his use of degrading language was "so gay.") I'm so used to hearing cruel slurs about mental illness and mental patients that I'm almost used to it. Almost. Nearly as bad, though much less frequent, are the times a well-meaning friend, whom I have trusted with the facts of my own condition, tries to convince me I'm not mentally ill after all, because I'm intelligent and a good person. "If I hadn't known when I met you, I never would have guessed," a certain friend has told me more than once. I know she means it as a compliment, but I can't help feeling like a light-skinned Negro trying to "pass." The stigma isn't always just verbal, either; the dating service eHarmony refuses to provide matches for those who suffer severe depression, as if a person with a treatable chemical imbalance couldn't possibly make a good life partner.
Perhaps worst of all is the too-often unchallenged stereotype of the mentally ill as dangerous and violent. This is inaccurate; the mentally ill population is only slightly more prone to acting out violently than the general population, and some mental disorders - including clinical depression, the most common mental illness - are associated with no greater risk of violence. However, it's still painfully common to hear criminals described as "crazies" or "lunatics" even in cases when they were clearly motivated by some perfectly comprehensible motive such as greed, jealousy, or revenge. Last year, mental health advocacy groups were outraged by a Burger King commerical that depicts the fast-food chain's cartoonish "King" character running through an office building, breaking windows, starting a fire, and shoving a man violently into a copy machine. He's pursued by a team of white-coated psychiatrist types, shouting "Stop that king! He's crazy!" They finally catch up to him in the break room and tackle him to the floor. "This king's insane," one of them remarks as they struggle to restrain him; he'd have to be out of touch with reality to offer his hamburgers at such a (debatably) low price while the rest of the world is cutting back. Burger King has run some controversial, "edgy" ad campaigns before, but somehow I can't imagine even they would have dared to show the King being herded into a special education classroom, under the assumption that anyone who would set his prices so low must be retarded. Perpetuating the stereotype of the violent mental patient is perfectly acceptable, however - and even some of the journalists who covered the story of the controversy generated by the "crazy King" ad couldn't bring themselves to take it seriously. Washington Post staff writer Monica Hesse not only gave the official Burger King statement the last word in her article, she joked no fewer than three times in her article about the challenge of choosing language that wouldn't offend the mentally ill. In the first paragraph, she claims that the ad "can best be described as completely bonk . . . er, nut . . . er, cucko . . . er, in poor taste." There's more of same in the next paragraph, and then she turns her attentions to actually describing the ad and quoting some of the mental health advocates who were offended by it before concluding, "The real problem with the Burger King ads is that the King is a giant freak of nature with a grotesque plastic head, and that sane . . . er, normal . . . er, average people would look at him and be persuaded not to buy a hamburger but to sleep with a baseball bat next to their beds." Apparently creepy mascots are a bigger problem than advertisements that stereotype and ridicule an entire group of people, or else we've got a case of socially acceptable prejudi . . . er, bigotr . . . er, journalistic bias on our hands.
Clearly the notion that there's any such thing in our society as a last acceptable prejudice, a single holdout against the all-encompassing wave of tolerance, is almost pathetically laughable. Acceptable prejudices are a dime a dozen - if you know where to look. The hardest part is looking there.
Actually, there's something dangerous about the concept of a "last acceptable prejudice" in the first place. Too often, those who get swept up in this special kind of victimhood forget that there are other prejudices out there doing just as much or more damage, even those that aren't by any stretch of the imagination socially acceptable. Those who harbor bigoted views about homosexuals or minority ethnic groups know that their opinions go against the grain, but that doesn't necessarily change the way they act. Plenty of "unacceptable" prejudices are still very much a problem in the real world. Jesuit priest James Martin, in an excellent article on anti-Catholicism, acknowledges the scope of the problem but admits that "anti-Catholicism is clearly not as virulent or violent as the prejudice directed against blacks, Jews and gays." Of an archbishop who compared a Catholic-bashing television show with the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, Martin states, "This is solipsism at its worst and most dangerous."
You'd think that those who had been victimized by prejudice in any form would hate it enough to take a stand against it in all its forms. Sadly, this is often not the case. Hiding behind a notion of singular persecution only serves to isolate marginalized groups of people from each other, as well as from society. The aforementioned Brent Bozell, who's written any number of columns about the media's repeated assaults on Catholics, Christians in general, and social conservatives, is a writer I can usually count on for logic and common sense, even when I happen to disagree with what he says - but he played right into another socially acceptable prejudice when he reported on the BBC's "contemporary nativity play" depicting Mary and Joseph as foreign asylum seekers in Liverpool. "Someone should be seeking asylum, all right," Bozell opined, "to put the BBC in a straitjacket and leave them there." With that sentence, he managed to alienate me just as surely as he must feel alienated when Jay Leno makes a pedophile-priest joke. Do we never learn?
That's the trouble with socially acceptable prejudices. It's not always easy to recognize them for what they are, because they're so deeply ingrained into our collective consciousness that it's easy not to see them as prejudices at all. As an overweight, depressive, introverted intellectual, I'm confronted on a daily basis with some of the biases I've discussed here. Coming from a different background, I might have identified an entirely different set of "last acceptable prejudices" worth writing about. I don't have any strong personal connection to the Catholic church, but discussions of anti-Catholicism have so often labeled it "the last acceptable prejudice" that I can't imagine any discussion of the phrase in question would be complete without it. But I might never have thought to discuss bias against atheists and transsexuals, if it weren't for the years I spent in high school identifying as an atheist, or the dear friend who came out to me as transgendered a couple of years ago.
It makes me wonder: what have I neglected to include here? Not for want of space, or because it was too esoteric or too similar to something else I'd already mentioned - but simply because it never occurred to me? Whom have I been hurting unknowingly with my own thoughtless words? What cruelties have I never opened my mind and heart enough to notice?
What is my last acceptable prejudice?
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Needful
Need you? No. Without you I
would carry on living, certainly. The only thing in nature
stubborner than death is life itself.
I think of the bacteria
that boil colorfully in hot springs, the eyeless fish
that swim in black water at the bottom of
a cave, or the fungus that grows tightly
on the inside of a rock.
The structure of my days, without you in them,
would hardly change at all. I'd plug along
with a fortitude that I'm sure would make you proud,
and it would be like knowing
that never again would I breathe the scent of moss and pine
on the side of the forested mountain, or walk into
the ocean to be carried by a surge
of swelling sea -
or that there would be no heaven
when I die. From moment to moment there would be
nothing in the world different, nothing different at all.
would carry on living, certainly. The only thing in nature
stubborner than death is life itself.
I think of the bacteria
that boil colorfully in hot springs, the eyeless fish
that swim in black water at the bottom of
a cave, or the fungus that grows tightly
on the inside of a rock.
The structure of my days, without you in them,
would hardly change at all. I'd plug along
with a fortitude that I'm sure would make you proud,
and it would be like knowing
that never again would I breathe the scent of moss and pine
on the side of the forested mountain, or walk into
the ocean to be carried by a surge
of swelling sea -
or that there would be no heaven
when I die. From moment to moment there would be
nothing in the world different, nothing different at all.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Driftin'
Over a decade ago, when I was in high school, I started writing songs. I don't play an instrument or write musical notation, but I enjoy composing lyrics, and often the tunes just come to me. I've made up silly little ditties since childhood (a heartfelt ballad I loved to sing in the bathtub when I was about eight, on the subject of "Green beans, stretched across the highway for miles and miles," seems to have earned a permanent place in our family lore), but I believe this was my first serious attempt at songwriting. I've written several dozen more songs since then, but "Driftin'" remains a favorite.
Technically, the song doesn't begin with the first verse. It's meant to open with a repeated "Na-na-na," sung to the tune of the chorus. I wasn't about to type it all out, but in the interest of completeness I thought I should mention it. Oh, and there's meant to be a second voice joining the singer for both the opening "Na-na-nas" and the final chorus.
It takes some sorrow now and then
To show how love can grow again
Without a few unhappy scenes
We could not know what true joy means
So stand up tall when things go wrong
For struggling will make us strong
Will make us strong
CHORUS:
And I know we're driftin' apart
But you have a place here in my heart
Too much we've shared, too much we've cared
To let this fall apart
So can we make a new start
No matter how far we're apart
I am always gonna find my way right back to you
And you will find you're driftin' back to me
We must forgive and be forgiven
If we desire joy in livin'
The seed of love that we two hold
Can linger through the winter's cold
And when the warmer breezes blow
That little seed will grow and grow
Will grow and grow
CHORUS
You are always gonna find your way right back to me
And I will find I'm driftin' back to you
Well, it won't always be easy
But we can make it through
There are some depths in me
That I can only share with you
Well, I know you need your space sometimes
And yeah, I need some too
But this is not the end, you see
Because I know that you love me
And I love you
CHORUS
I am always gonna find my way right back to you
Yes, we shall find we're driftin' back to us
Technically, the song doesn't begin with the first verse. It's meant to open with a repeated "Na-na-na," sung to the tune of the chorus. I wasn't about to type it all out, but in the interest of completeness I thought I should mention it. Oh, and there's meant to be a second voice joining the singer for both the opening "Na-na-nas" and the final chorus.
It takes some sorrow now and then
To show how love can grow again
Without a few unhappy scenes
We could not know what true joy means
So stand up tall when things go wrong
For struggling will make us strong
Will make us strong
CHORUS:
And I know we're driftin' apart
But you have a place here in my heart
Too much we've shared, too much we've cared
To let this fall apart
So can we make a new start
No matter how far we're apart
I am always gonna find my way right back to you
And you will find you're driftin' back to me
We must forgive and be forgiven
If we desire joy in livin'
The seed of love that we two hold
Can linger through the winter's cold
And when the warmer breezes blow
That little seed will grow and grow
Will grow and grow
CHORUS
You are always gonna find your way right back to me
And I will find I'm driftin' back to you
Well, it won't always be easy
But we can make it through
There are some depths in me
That I can only share with you
Well, I know you need your space sometimes
And yeah, I need some too
But this is not the end, you see
Because I know that you love me
And I love you
CHORUS
I am always gonna find my way right back to you
Yes, we shall find we're driftin' back to us
Monday, February 28, 2011
Beyond Life and Choice: A Call for Clarity
"Sometimes it is not what you say that matters but what you don't say," political consultant Frank Luntz wrote in the introduction to a list called "The 14 Words Never to Use." Luntz specializes in emotional reactions and how they apply to political decision-making, and in particular, how the average person responds to the use of words. Sometimes his polls discover markedly different percentages of the sample group supporting a particular course of action, based on the terminology used. Far more people oppose a "death" tax than oppose an "estate" or "inheritance" tax. "If you want to kill the estate tax," he advises his Republican readers, "call it a death tax." The man on the street doesn't quite understand what "corporate transparency" even means, but everyone believes in "corporate accountability." And the phrase "drilling for oil" conjures up images of "an old-fashioned oilrig that gushes up black goop," but there's something so clean and modern about "exploring for energy."
Perhaps no issue is more fraught with emotion than the abortion debate, and perhaps there is no argument in which both sides have engaged in quite so much verbal and ideological "framing" of this sort. Both sides have been guilty of emotional appeals, selective use of evidence, red-herring arguments, and ad hominem attacks. And each side seems to have its own language to describe what happens during an abortion, who and what is being acted upon, and even why it matters. Sociolinguists have discovered that people feel more positively about an issue, whatever that may be, when it is framed in positive terms, so perhaps it's not surprising that both those who favor legal abortion on demand and those who oppose it most often prefer to refer to themselves as "pro-" something: "pro-choice" on one hand, and "pro-life" on the other.
I refuse to use either term. I despise euphemism on principle; I believe in calling a thing by its name. It's the words we're afraid to speak that have power over us. Moreover, abortion is an issue that emcompasses both life and choice. What's in dispute is the moral import of that life, and the moral significance of that choice. To reduce the abortion question to a matter of either life or choice is an insult not only to well-meaning people on the opposite side of the issue, but to those who have been personally affected by it and didn't have the luxury of obviating the nuances with a neat turn of phrase.
I'm anti-abortion, but you won't hear me refer to myself as pro-life. I believe that term is only correctly used by those who embrace a consistent life ethic, which, as I favor capital punishment in very select cases and euthanasia for those who thoughtfully request it, I cannot say I do. In fact, there are many who lump opposition to euthanasia with opposition to abortion under the "pro-life" label, but relatively few of them take their belief in "life" so far as to oppose capital punishment, the slaughter of animals, or war, as a consistent life ethic would demand. I've always considered it dangerous to lump issues together haphazardly in this manner (considering the number of Christians I've heard who always mention "abortion and homosexuality" in the same breath when discussing social evils, I'm not surprised how many gays and lesbians favor legalized abortion on principle simply because to oppose it seems somehow like being in bed with the enemy), and to slap a label on your platform that doesn't quite represent what it stands for is plainly dishonest.
I also despise the easy reversal employed by some self-identified pro-lifers (yes, I'm accusing people who share my viewpoint, on this issue at least, of low tactics!), dubbing the opposition "anti-life" or even "pro-death." This is a gross reduction that aims to shut down thought by portraying a group of principled individuals, however misguided their principles might be, as cartoon villains, rejoicing in evil for its own sake. I have a number of dear friends who identify as "pro-choice," and not one of them thinks of abortion as an innately good thing (though I know very well that there are people who do, which I have more to say about presently).
Using the term "pro-life," and denouncing the other side as murderous monsters, makes it easy for those of us who oppose abortion to rest smugly on our moral laurels, without taking it upon ourselves to promote and develop alternatives or work to change the societal norms that make abortion sometimes seem like a desirable choice. How many folks are there who are positively aghast at the notion of teenagers being provided with condoms and taught to use them, who rant and rail against any family structure other than the traditional nuclear family presided over by a married husband and wife, then condemn the young woman who finds it easier to schedule an abortion than to let people she respects find out she's been sexually active? Use of such weighted language makes it easy to demonize others, while doing nothing to examine our own attitudes.
I choose the term "anti-abortion" to describe my position. Yes, I'm resigned to that politically off-putting "anti," because I think it's important to speak plainly about what I mean, and "pro-illegalization of medically unnecessary abortion" is just too wordy. Ironically, even though framing one's position in "pro" terms is supposed to have a more favorable sound, I've never heard anyone object to being called "anti-abortion," even those who preferred to call themselves "pro-life" - but the moment I refer to the other side as "pro-abortion," I find myself in a heated debate over terminology.
"I'm not 'pro-abortion,'" I've been told, over and over again. "I believe in a woman's right to choose." I'm sick of hearing "choice" used as a euphemism for "abortion," as if that were the only kind of choice a person were ever faced with. Whenever I hear someone say s/he believes in "a woman's right to choose," I always want to ask (and whenever possible, I do), "Choose what?" "To choose" is a transitive verb, and "abortion" is the rarely-spoken object, the elephant in the room.
Self-professed pro-choicers often refer to their opponents as "anti-choice" or even "pro-coercion," and this is every bit as unfair as the use of "anti-life" or "pro-death." I, for one, believe in choice. I don't know anyone who doesn't. I believe you have the right to choose soup or salad or spaghetti or a sandwich for lunch. I believe you have the right to choose Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T, or to shun modern technology altogether. I believe in school choice and cable choice. I believe you have the right to choose if, when, and with whom you have sex, and what kind of sex (if any) to have. If you're with someone of the other gender and both of you are of reproductive capability, you have the right to choose to conceive a new life together, or not. If you choose not to, you have the right to choose the rhythm method, a barrier method, chemical contraception, permanent sterilization, or abstinence from any activity that could introduce semen into the vagina. (I don't mean to state that all of these choices are equally wise, practical, desirable, or even necessarily in some cases ethical - just that they're legitimate choices.) I also believe that some choices necessarily preclude other choices. I choose not to go to jail, but if I commit a felony, that choice becomes meaningless. Unwanted pregnancy is, in most cases, the direct and logical consequence of a person's choices. (Fewer than ten percent of abortions, even according to the most liberal sources, are perfomed as a result of rape, maternal health concerns, or fetal abnormality; the actual number seems to be somewhere around two percent.) I believe a pregnant woman has choices too. I believe she has the right to keep her child or give it up for adoption. I believe she has the right to be as involved in the adoption process as she wants to be, whether that means signing the papers immediately after delivery without ever looking at the baby, or cultivating a relationship with carefully selected adoptive parents who will encourage her to be active in the child's life. If she chooses to keep her child, I believe she has the right to devote herself single-mindedly to motherhood or to pursue education and/or a career, and I believe she and her child deserve the social support systems in place that will keep them from falling through the cracks.
Abortion is just about the only thing I don't believe she has the moral right to choose!
Those who claim to be "pro-choice" surely don't believe that all choices are legitimate. No one's speaking up for a thug's right to choose to make a living stealing cars, or a six-year-old's right to choose to have a beer with lunch, or a mother's right to choose to murder her ten-year-old child. Granted, those are extreme examples - the equivalent of "But surely you don't believe a frail ten-year-old who was gang-raped by her father, uncle, and brother and ended up pregant with anencephalic quadruplets should have to carry that pregnancy to term?" However, those who favor legal abortion often quite openly advocate restricting some kinds of choice. For example, some of those who are most vocal about a woman's "right to choose" abortion staunchly oppose a pharmacist's right to choose not to participate in it by fulfilling prescriptions for chemical abortifacients.
"Pro-choice" sounds like a winning term, because in a society in which we are endlessly focused on individual rights, no one wants to be accused of limiting another person's freedoms. The fact is, no one really believes there should be no limits on human behavior. (Even the most flamboyantly nihilistic anarchist will take offense if you decide you have a right to steal his stereo or punch him in the nose.) "A woman's right to choose" is simply a euphemism for "a woman's right to have an abortion." If it really were all about personal freedom, pro-choicers would be as adamantly determined to make sure that no woman was ever coerced into an abortion as they are to keep abortion legal. They would have been the first to express outrage when an undercover investigation by an anti-abortion group caught Planned Parenthood employees on camera offering advice to a man posing as a sex trafficker looking for confidential treatment, including abortions, for underage girls in his "care." Instead, those who made the video were widely condemned for employing deceptive methods.
"But I don't believe women should be encouraged to get abortions, or anything like that," I'm told. "So you can't say I'm 'pro-abortion.' I just think they should be able to make the decision themselves." To those who make this argument, I can only point out that to be in favor of something doesn't mean you believe it should be universal or compulsory, or even that it's right in every circumstance. For example, I am pro-gay marriage. That doesn't mean I believe that all gays should be encouraged to get married, or that any behavior is acceptable if it advances the gay-marriage cause, or that officiants should face legal repercussions if they refuse to solemnize same-sex weddings. As a woman who was in an abusive relationship with another woman this time last year, and who is now very much in love with a man, I certainly don't believe that homosexual couples have any innate superiority to heterosexual pairs, or that only gays should be allowed to get married! What I believe is that two people who want to spend the rest of their lives together, who happen to be of the same gender, should be able to get a marriage license - even though a same-sex marriage is not the right choice for me, or for a majority of the population. If you believe that abortion is a valid option that should be available to those who feel it is right for them, you are pro-abortion, even if you'd never have (or encourage/support) one yourself.
Some who disdain the use of the term "pro-abortion" do so because they're well aware that there are people in this world who do view abortion as a fundamentally positive thing. Radical feminists have repeatedly claimed that abortion is an empowering experience for women, a statement that is not only a slap in the face of every woman (I've known at least five personally) who has been tormented with guilt and grief in the aftermath of her "choice," but which also seemingly contradicts their professed intent to bring about a world in which abortion is "safe, legal, and rare" - if it's truly empowering, why should it be rare? I've gotten into debates with trolls on an online anti-abortion forum who tried to persuade me that adoption is dangerous for the adoptee and for society as a whole; their arguments were transparently flawed, and it seems to me that if they really believed in women having choices, they shouldn't actively discourage an option that millions of women, unready for motherhood but uneasy about abortion, have embraced. I'll never forget the time I brought the wrath of an entire college campus down upon my head (or so it felt at the time) for simply daring to suggest that abortion wasn't something to celebrate. And then there's Ginette Paris, whose monograph The Sacrament of Abortion (later reissued under the much less offensive title The Psychology of Abortion) declares that abortion is a symbolic sacrifice to the archetypal principle represented by the goddess Artemis, and goes a long way toward making the absurd claims I've seen on some paranoid Christian anti-abortion websites sound almost plausible.
I can see why those whose support for abortion is much more reluctant, who've heard enough horror stories about wire coat hangers to conclude that legal abortion is a tragic social necessity, would want to distance themselves from adoption-bashers and Ginette Paris. My knee-jerk reaction here - and yes, this is pure tu quoque with a hefty helping of overgeneralization on the side - is to tell "pro-choicers" that I will happily embrace their preferred terminology, so as to set them apart from the abortion-loving lunatic fringe, as soon as they learn to tell the mainstream anti-abortion movement apart from its lunatic fringe. The overwhelming majority of abortion opponents soundly and unreservedly condemn any acts of violence against abortionists, abortion clinics, or the women who use them, yet regularly see themselves portrayed, in the mainstream media as well as in "pro-choice" propaganda, as murderous fanatics. In my experience, there are more "pro-choicers" willing to use "celebrate" and "abortion" in the same sentence than there are "pro-lifers" who applaud the murder of a Barnett Slepian or George Tiller. When you acknowledge that Eric Rudolph doesn't speak for me, I'd like to tell the indignant "pro-choicers," I'll acknowledge that Ginette Paris doeesn't speak for you. Of course, this is an emotional response on my part, not a logical argument, and if that were all there were to it, I'd grit my teeth and leave the pro-abortion crowd to their euphemisms.
I'm not shy about my anti-abortion views - I believe abortion is a craven, irresponsible act that destroys a human life - which is why I'm sure what I have to say next would come as a shock even to those who know me well: I actually have more respect for some pro-abortion folks than I do for certain wishy-washy moderates I've known. I'm not talking about hypocrites, trolls, or Ginette Paris, who needs to be (figuratively! figuratively!) taken out and shot. I'm talking about the likes of Camille Paglia, who embraces the "pro-abortion" label and scorns the use of "pro-choice" as "cowardly." Although she supports "unconstrained access to abortion on demand," Paglia has, in her own words, "always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful" and "results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue." Her contention that the individual's "absolute right to control his or her body" justifies making legal "the extermination of the powerless by the powerful" is contemptible, but I can't deny that Paglia has genuinely grappled with the ethical ramifications of what she believes. Compare that to, say, my mother, who claims to believe that abortion is morally evil, but considers herself "pro-choice" because it's not her business to try to force anyone to agree. On the surface, that may sound exactly like Paglia's position, but Paglia, an atheist who presumably doesn't conceive of "evil" as a moral absolute in the religious sense, is weighing innocent life against individual liberty, while my Christian mother is weighing innocent life against . . . the possibility of offending somebody. Hiding behind the concept of "choice," she doesn't have to think too hard about the ramifications of her position. She can vote for candidates who proudly proclaim their belief in abortion as a right, while distancing herself from the ugly reality of what happens in an abortion clinic.
What I want to say to her, and to everyone else who claims to be "pro-choice," is this: if you think it ought to be legal, why do you distance yourself from it? Why is abortion too terrible a thing to admit outright you believe should be legal, but not terrible enough that it shouldn't be legal? Are you ashamed of the word, or are you ashamed of the concept? Are you afraid that if you were confronted head-on with the reality of that "choice" you believe in, you might not find it so easy to believe in anymore? Why are so many of you offended when anti-abortion activists distribute pictures of aborted fetuses? If you believe it should be legal, why can't you bring yourself to look it in the eye?
If you believe abortion should be legal - own it. Take pride in it. Get out from under that spineless euphemism of "choice." Maybe you and I will never find common ground on this issue, let alone come to any sort of agreement. But however much I may hate what you espouse, at the very least you'll finally have my respect.
Perhaps no issue is more fraught with emotion than the abortion debate, and perhaps there is no argument in which both sides have engaged in quite so much verbal and ideological "framing" of this sort. Both sides have been guilty of emotional appeals, selective use of evidence, red-herring arguments, and ad hominem attacks. And each side seems to have its own language to describe what happens during an abortion, who and what is being acted upon, and even why it matters. Sociolinguists have discovered that people feel more positively about an issue, whatever that may be, when it is framed in positive terms, so perhaps it's not surprising that both those who favor legal abortion on demand and those who oppose it most often prefer to refer to themselves as "pro-" something: "pro-choice" on one hand, and "pro-life" on the other.
I refuse to use either term. I despise euphemism on principle; I believe in calling a thing by its name. It's the words we're afraid to speak that have power over us. Moreover, abortion is an issue that emcompasses both life and choice. What's in dispute is the moral import of that life, and the moral significance of that choice. To reduce the abortion question to a matter of either life or choice is an insult not only to well-meaning people on the opposite side of the issue, but to those who have been personally affected by it and didn't have the luxury of obviating the nuances with a neat turn of phrase.
I'm anti-abortion, but you won't hear me refer to myself as pro-life. I believe that term is only correctly used by those who embrace a consistent life ethic, which, as I favor capital punishment in very select cases and euthanasia for those who thoughtfully request it, I cannot say I do. In fact, there are many who lump opposition to euthanasia with opposition to abortion under the "pro-life" label, but relatively few of them take their belief in "life" so far as to oppose capital punishment, the slaughter of animals, or war, as a consistent life ethic would demand. I've always considered it dangerous to lump issues together haphazardly in this manner (considering the number of Christians I've heard who always mention "abortion and homosexuality" in the same breath when discussing social evils, I'm not surprised how many gays and lesbians favor legalized abortion on principle simply because to oppose it seems somehow like being in bed with the enemy), and to slap a label on your platform that doesn't quite represent what it stands for is plainly dishonest.
I also despise the easy reversal employed by some self-identified pro-lifers (yes, I'm accusing people who share my viewpoint, on this issue at least, of low tactics!), dubbing the opposition "anti-life" or even "pro-death." This is a gross reduction that aims to shut down thought by portraying a group of principled individuals, however misguided their principles might be, as cartoon villains, rejoicing in evil for its own sake. I have a number of dear friends who identify as "pro-choice," and not one of them thinks of abortion as an innately good thing (though I know very well that there are people who do, which I have more to say about presently).
Using the term "pro-life," and denouncing the other side as murderous monsters, makes it easy for those of us who oppose abortion to rest smugly on our moral laurels, without taking it upon ourselves to promote and develop alternatives or work to change the societal norms that make abortion sometimes seem like a desirable choice. How many folks are there who are positively aghast at the notion of teenagers being provided with condoms and taught to use them, who rant and rail against any family structure other than the traditional nuclear family presided over by a married husband and wife, then condemn the young woman who finds it easier to schedule an abortion than to let people she respects find out she's been sexually active? Use of such weighted language makes it easy to demonize others, while doing nothing to examine our own attitudes.
I choose the term "anti-abortion" to describe my position. Yes, I'm resigned to that politically off-putting "anti," because I think it's important to speak plainly about what I mean, and "pro-illegalization of medically unnecessary abortion" is just too wordy. Ironically, even though framing one's position in "pro" terms is supposed to have a more favorable sound, I've never heard anyone object to being called "anti-abortion," even those who preferred to call themselves "pro-life" - but the moment I refer to the other side as "pro-abortion," I find myself in a heated debate over terminology.
"I'm not 'pro-abortion,'" I've been told, over and over again. "I believe in a woman's right to choose." I'm sick of hearing "choice" used as a euphemism for "abortion," as if that were the only kind of choice a person were ever faced with. Whenever I hear someone say s/he believes in "a woman's right to choose," I always want to ask (and whenever possible, I do), "Choose what?" "To choose" is a transitive verb, and "abortion" is the rarely-spoken object, the elephant in the room.
Self-professed pro-choicers often refer to their opponents as "anti-choice" or even "pro-coercion," and this is every bit as unfair as the use of "anti-life" or "pro-death." I, for one, believe in choice. I don't know anyone who doesn't. I believe you have the right to choose soup or salad or spaghetti or a sandwich for lunch. I believe you have the right to choose Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T, or to shun modern technology altogether. I believe in school choice and cable choice. I believe you have the right to choose if, when, and with whom you have sex, and what kind of sex (if any) to have. If you're with someone of the other gender and both of you are of reproductive capability, you have the right to choose to conceive a new life together, or not. If you choose not to, you have the right to choose the rhythm method, a barrier method, chemical contraception, permanent sterilization, or abstinence from any activity that could introduce semen into the vagina. (I don't mean to state that all of these choices are equally wise, practical, desirable, or even necessarily in some cases ethical - just that they're legitimate choices.) I also believe that some choices necessarily preclude other choices. I choose not to go to jail, but if I commit a felony, that choice becomes meaningless. Unwanted pregnancy is, in most cases, the direct and logical consequence of a person's choices. (Fewer than ten percent of abortions, even according to the most liberal sources, are perfomed as a result of rape, maternal health concerns, or fetal abnormality; the actual number seems to be somewhere around two percent.) I believe a pregnant woman has choices too. I believe she has the right to keep her child or give it up for adoption. I believe she has the right to be as involved in the adoption process as she wants to be, whether that means signing the papers immediately after delivery without ever looking at the baby, or cultivating a relationship with carefully selected adoptive parents who will encourage her to be active in the child's life. If she chooses to keep her child, I believe she has the right to devote herself single-mindedly to motherhood or to pursue education and/or a career, and I believe she and her child deserve the social support systems in place that will keep them from falling through the cracks.
Abortion is just about the only thing I don't believe she has the moral right to choose!
Those who claim to be "pro-choice" surely don't believe that all choices are legitimate. No one's speaking up for a thug's right to choose to make a living stealing cars, or a six-year-old's right to choose to have a beer with lunch, or a mother's right to choose to murder her ten-year-old child. Granted, those are extreme examples - the equivalent of "But surely you don't believe a frail ten-year-old who was gang-raped by her father, uncle, and brother and ended up pregant with anencephalic quadruplets should have to carry that pregnancy to term?" However, those who favor legal abortion often quite openly advocate restricting some kinds of choice. For example, some of those who are most vocal about a woman's "right to choose" abortion staunchly oppose a pharmacist's right to choose not to participate in it by fulfilling prescriptions for chemical abortifacients.
"Pro-choice" sounds like a winning term, because in a society in which we are endlessly focused on individual rights, no one wants to be accused of limiting another person's freedoms. The fact is, no one really believes there should be no limits on human behavior. (Even the most flamboyantly nihilistic anarchist will take offense if you decide you have a right to steal his stereo or punch him in the nose.) "A woman's right to choose" is simply a euphemism for "a woman's right to have an abortion." If it really were all about personal freedom, pro-choicers would be as adamantly determined to make sure that no woman was ever coerced into an abortion as they are to keep abortion legal. They would have been the first to express outrage when an undercover investigation by an anti-abortion group caught Planned Parenthood employees on camera offering advice to a man posing as a sex trafficker looking for confidential treatment, including abortions, for underage girls in his "care." Instead, those who made the video were widely condemned for employing deceptive methods.
"But I don't believe women should be encouraged to get abortions, or anything like that," I'm told. "So you can't say I'm 'pro-abortion.' I just think they should be able to make the decision themselves." To those who make this argument, I can only point out that to be in favor of something doesn't mean you believe it should be universal or compulsory, or even that it's right in every circumstance. For example, I am pro-gay marriage. That doesn't mean I believe that all gays should be encouraged to get married, or that any behavior is acceptable if it advances the gay-marriage cause, or that officiants should face legal repercussions if they refuse to solemnize same-sex weddings. As a woman who was in an abusive relationship with another woman this time last year, and who is now very much in love with a man, I certainly don't believe that homosexual couples have any innate superiority to heterosexual pairs, or that only gays should be allowed to get married! What I believe is that two people who want to spend the rest of their lives together, who happen to be of the same gender, should be able to get a marriage license - even though a same-sex marriage is not the right choice for me, or for a majority of the population. If you believe that abortion is a valid option that should be available to those who feel it is right for them, you are pro-abortion, even if you'd never have (or encourage/support) one yourself.
Some who disdain the use of the term "pro-abortion" do so because they're well aware that there are people in this world who do view abortion as a fundamentally positive thing. Radical feminists have repeatedly claimed that abortion is an empowering experience for women, a statement that is not only a slap in the face of every woman (I've known at least five personally) who has been tormented with guilt and grief in the aftermath of her "choice," but which also seemingly contradicts their professed intent to bring about a world in which abortion is "safe, legal, and rare" - if it's truly empowering, why should it be rare? I've gotten into debates with trolls on an online anti-abortion forum who tried to persuade me that adoption is dangerous for the adoptee and for society as a whole; their arguments were transparently flawed, and it seems to me that if they really believed in women having choices, they shouldn't actively discourage an option that millions of women, unready for motherhood but uneasy about abortion, have embraced. I'll never forget the time I brought the wrath of an entire college campus down upon my head (or so it felt at the time) for simply daring to suggest that abortion wasn't something to celebrate. And then there's Ginette Paris, whose monograph The Sacrament of Abortion (later reissued under the much less offensive title The Psychology of Abortion) declares that abortion is a symbolic sacrifice to the archetypal principle represented by the goddess Artemis, and goes a long way toward making the absurd claims I've seen on some paranoid Christian anti-abortion websites sound almost plausible.
I can see why those whose support for abortion is much more reluctant, who've heard enough horror stories about wire coat hangers to conclude that legal abortion is a tragic social necessity, would want to distance themselves from adoption-bashers and Ginette Paris. My knee-jerk reaction here - and yes, this is pure tu quoque with a hefty helping of overgeneralization on the side - is to tell "pro-choicers" that I will happily embrace their preferred terminology, so as to set them apart from the abortion-loving lunatic fringe, as soon as they learn to tell the mainstream anti-abortion movement apart from its lunatic fringe. The overwhelming majority of abortion opponents soundly and unreservedly condemn any acts of violence against abortionists, abortion clinics, or the women who use them, yet regularly see themselves portrayed, in the mainstream media as well as in "pro-choice" propaganda, as murderous fanatics. In my experience, there are more "pro-choicers" willing to use "celebrate" and "abortion" in the same sentence than there are "pro-lifers" who applaud the murder of a Barnett Slepian or George Tiller. When you acknowledge that Eric Rudolph doesn't speak for me, I'd like to tell the indignant "pro-choicers," I'll acknowledge that Ginette Paris doeesn't speak for you. Of course, this is an emotional response on my part, not a logical argument, and if that were all there were to it, I'd grit my teeth and leave the pro-abortion crowd to their euphemisms.
I'm not shy about my anti-abortion views - I believe abortion is a craven, irresponsible act that destroys a human life - which is why I'm sure what I have to say next would come as a shock even to those who know me well: I actually have more respect for some pro-abortion folks than I do for certain wishy-washy moderates I've known. I'm not talking about hypocrites, trolls, or Ginette Paris, who needs to be (figuratively! figuratively!) taken out and shot. I'm talking about the likes of Camille Paglia, who embraces the "pro-abortion" label and scorns the use of "pro-choice" as "cowardly." Although she supports "unconstrained access to abortion on demand," Paglia has, in her own words, "always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful" and "results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue." Her contention that the individual's "absolute right to control his or her body" justifies making legal "the extermination of the powerless by the powerful" is contemptible, but I can't deny that Paglia has genuinely grappled with the ethical ramifications of what she believes. Compare that to, say, my mother, who claims to believe that abortion is morally evil, but considers herself "pro-choice" because it's not her business to try to force anyone to agree. On the surface, that may sound exactly like Paglia's position, but Paglia, an atheist who presumably doesn't conceive of "evil" as a moral absolute in the religious sense, is weighing innocent life against individual liberty, while my Christian mother is weighing innocent life against . . . the possibility of offending somebody. Hiding behind the concept of "choice," she doesn't have to think too hard about the ramifications of her position. She can vote for candidates who proudly proclaim their belief in abortion as a right, while distancing herself from the ugly reality of what happens in an abortion clinic.
What I want to say to her, and to everyone else who claims to be "pro-choice," is this: if you think it ought to be legal, why do you distance yourself from it? Why is abortion too terrible a thing to admit outright you believe should be legal, but not terrible enough that it shouldn't be legal? Are you ashamed of the word, or are you ashamed of the concept? Are you afraid that if you were confronted head-on with the reality of that "choice" you believe in, you might not find it so easy to believe in anymore? Why are so many of you offended when anti-abortion activists distribute pictures of aborted fetuses? If you believe it should be legal, why can't you bring yourself to look it in the eye?
If you believe abortion should be legal - own it. Take pride in it. Get out from under that spineless euphemism of "choice." Maybe you and I will never find common ground on this issue, let alone come to any sort of agreement. But however much I may hate what you espouse, at the very least you'll finally have my respect.
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