Lacewing wrote: ↑Sat Jun 29, 2019 7:30 pm
Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:05 am
Lacewing, their attitude is challenging not because they have reason but because they have (too much) power.
Yes. There seems to be a sense of entitlement that (whether due to gender, religious, or political reasons) what THEY think/believe/want is supreme over others, especially women. Extraordinary arrogance and ignorance. Mankind's quest for absolute power and domination has tipped things completely out-of-balance with small-minded, ego-bound thinking. And like a plague, they beat it down on the heads of others and all of nature...while insisting that no one intrude on THEM.
If any of these particular men had to experience unwanted pregnancy in their own body, they might be more enlightened. Nature happens, despite our best efforts -- and there are countless ways that nature is redirected constantly by humans. It's necessary! Demanding that women's bodies be breeding tubes whether they like it or not because nature sprouted there is senseless.
Humans can accomplish the most when they stop trying to blame and control each other, and instead work on their own self-awareness and understanding of balance and a larger natural system. This world is not black and white -- and it's extraordinarily small-minded to think it must be judged and controlled as if it is!
Dear Forum Members,
What we have here (i.e; in the quoted post above) is a perfect example of the breath-taking arrogance and profoundly illogical thinking that is implicit in the latest wave of pro- choice (i.e. pro-abortion) rhetoric. This rhetoric is currently being broadcast by a newer strain of feminist thought that has been dubbed "superiority feminism." The later was created by third wave feminists in the Western academy who preferred to believed that the postmodernist social (pseudo) - sciences had proved the existence of a separate, morally superior, female mind with its own distinctive set of values. "We are women, the feminist "intellectuals" in the academy intoned, and our moral values and thought processes are different from and better than those of men !"Once upon a time university women had argued that scientific reason had no gender, and the aesthetic imagination was androgynous. But no longer. It wasn't in their interest. Instead, they had every incentive, material and otherwise to join the feminist guild and jump on this new bandwagon of feminist thinking. But with the advent of "superiority, feminism took an unfortunate turn, because a sense of superiority (as you can see from the post I have quoted) is a rather difficult thing to control (!)
Having provided this brief background, let me now move on to the question of feminism and abortion in some more detail.
The original "pro-choice" argument is rooted in the classical liberal affirmation of every man's right to his own body. Critical of liberalism for its failure to extend this right equally to women, "pro-choicers" define abortion as the essence of every woman's right to own and control her own body. The obvious objection to this argument is that a foetus (which is latin for "small child") is not just a part of the woman's body. For a while "pro-choicers" tried to dealt with this objection by referring to the embryo/foetus in clinical, dehumanising terms. For example, in an article in the Washington Post, 74 year-old Dr Jane Hodgeson, an abortion physician, explained that one way to reassure a patient after a first trimester abortion was to show her the pan of aborted "uterine contents" and how it merely contained "a few embryonic cells". But Dr Hodgeson was just re-echoing the the tones of of an earlier "Wade vs Roe" era. In the ensuing 46 years there have been monumental advances in obstetric and genetic science and comparable improvements in the sophistication medical technology. Now people know that a new, individual, human/person with his/her own distinct DNA exists from the moment of conception, and they are able to see for themselves astonishing 3-D images of the intricate complexity and activity of the foetus at ever earlier developmental stages in the womb.
Our friend Lacewing realises that the old dehumanisation of the foetus strategy has had it day. So she now opts for the more up-to-date pro-abortion arguments that are rooted in academic "superiority feminism's elevation of the "private" morality of women (the notion that in women moral reasoning stems from private-oriented ideas of responsibility and caring for others) over the inferior "public" morality of men ( the notion that the moral reasoning of men proceeds from the public-oriented ideas of individual rights and justice/fair play). In this spirit she is passionate in defining abortion as an intensely personal experience that no man could ever judge. To put in in other words it is "biologically inappropriate" for myself or any other male to voice our personal objections to abortion. Thus Lacewing (after consulting her New Age crystals for confirmation) confidently rants...
"Yes. There seems to be a sense of entitlement...that what THEY (i.e; men) think/believe/want is supreme over others especially women. Extraordinary arrogance and ignorance...if any of these men had to experience unwanted pregnancy in their own bodies, they might be more enlightened."
But declaring the subject of abortion off limits to men only serves to reveal the bogus logic that Lacewing and her crack-pot ilk employ. I mean, since when exactly has biology ever determined the arenas in which human beings can make moral decisions. Please explain, Lacewing, (lest we think thee a great nit-wit) ??!!
Since the 17th century the organic metaphor of social institutions (like the family) as organisms made up of consanguinous parts has been challenged by liberalism which has viewed social institutions as contractual arrangements between consenting individuals. The feminists' complaint against liberalism is that it has never despite its contractual ethos, stopped conceiving of the family as an organic institution. This is why the chief goal of many modern feminists in the academy has been to restructure the family as a totally contractual arrangement from which anyone, but especially any woman may withdraw.
But is this goal morally defensible ? There are very good reasons why liberalism has never stopped seeing the family as an organic institution. Starting with John Locke, liberalism has understood that not all human ties are contractual - most notably the tie between a parent and child.
Locke distinguished between legitimate political power, which may extend to life and death, and parental power, which may extend only to preserving the life of a child, because it does not, and cannot, derive from the consent of the child.
This crucial distinction collapses every time pro-choice arguments flip-flop between the language of individual rights and that of nurturant feminity. "Pro-choicers" begin by asserting equal rights for women - a line of reasoning that directly challenges the organic basis of family relationships. But equal rights are not enough when it comes to abortion, a decision that must balance the woman's rights against those of others such as the foetus and family members. So "pro-choicers" define women's rights as MORE THAN EQUAL, on the grounds that female decision-making partakes of special, superior moral wisdom. But what is the source of that wisdom? It is not women's character or achievement as individuals, but their membership in a class whose nature it is to care for others. A definition of womanhood that is nothing , if not organic ??!!
Regards
Dachshund
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