On a topic long dreaded...
Jul. 16th, 2008 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danalwynThere is no way I think I can say this without getting into lots of trouble. Yet I don't think I can keep my mouth shut, another one of my less admirable traits. So feel free to fire away, or hate me forever, or whatever. I think I deserve it.
There are things that you normally do not discuss in polite conversation, whether personally or through the anonymity of the internet. However,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
flamingchords posted a long rant which actually managed to touch one of the few nerves I have left, so hence you get an angry, impromptu response. Now, anyone who reads both of these pieces will rapidly come to the conclusion that I am overreacting, and I would like to apologize to flamingchords in advance, since he is the catalyst and not the cause of this reaction, I don't even think you're guilty of doing anything wrong (morally or otherwise). I would also like to apologize to all the readers I am about to send over the edge into outright hatred of me for the stress on your body and mind. But I think this is one of those cases where I need to express an irrelevant, but still perhaps important opinion.
Unfortunately, to do that, I'm first going to have to discuss abortion.
First off, if any of you, for some reason known only to yourselves, had any hope of discovering what my position on abortion is, you will find yourself sadly disappointed by the following. I do not intend to state my position on the vast patchwork quilt of issues we refer to simply as "abortion". I consider my position on the subject to be my position, and hence a private matter that concerns only me.
Unfortunately, unlike other private matters on which I do occasionally hold forth an opinion, the giant carnival of ideas referred to as "abortion" has, despite enough identifiably separate issues to fill up an entire shelf of encyclopedias, only two possible positions in American society. Your years of experience, philosophical views, and your careful weighing of social and biological evidence on the matter are distilled down to a binary declaration, pro-life or pro-choice. You only get to choose one. You are like a light-switch, you are either on or you are off. I refuse to be associated with either group because I find their definitions sufficiently vague, and their particulars sufficiently hidden, that I would be unable to say, where I associated with one or the other, precisely what my faction stood for.
But the split between the two is not only confusing, it is also symptomatic of another, very disturbing trend in American life. Which gets me, of course, to what set me off. A very small, almost offhand comment, as follows:
"A handful of pro-life people are genuinely concerned about the welfare of the unborn... but none of these people with good intentions are the ones in power. The ones in power see women as incubators, not as human beings in their own right, and in their view, the lives of these women are of far less importance than a clump of cells, which is in turn of far less importance than their backward belief that women belong barefoot and pregnant, and let's put them all in the kitchen while we're at it?"
Stop for a moment, before you say whether you agree or disagree with this statement, and let us examine what it actually is. What this is is a statement of fact, an assertion, presented as a matter of record, that those people who refer to themselves as "pro-life" who are in power, as well as a majority (where the inverted phrase to "a handful", "all but a handful", is implied to be not only the majority, but a strong majority), embrace that position for reasons that have nothing to do with the welfare of the unborn, and are highly implied to be taking this position simply because they are against women's rights.
It is unprovable. It is unsupported, almost by definition. And I cannot believe that this is correct.
And this is what sends me totally, screaming off of the edge. Maybe my distance from the argument, and the people I know from both sides, gives me a twisted view, but I cannot agree with even the implication of bad faith on behalf of most of either side. I cannot believe that the motivations for such a widespread movement, on either side, can come from such a simple motivation. I cannot believe that something that a conflict that has aroused such passion and anger could be conducted almost entirely by false pretenses on one side. And there, deep inside, like the sound an engine makes when the oil has run out and it is tottering on its last legs, I can hear the end of democracy. Because I think this is wrong, because I believe that most people on both sides, not just of this argument, but of most of today's major issues, believe in the positions they take.
Take the two abortion positions. I have heard, from the "pro-choice" side, this same argument before. That nobody could possibly believe that a clump of cells, without a brain, without even a developed nervous chain of any sort, could possibly be more alive than, say, a fairly bright cucumber. That the only possible explanation for taking this position is that they are really trying to reduce women's rights.
On the other hand, from the "pro-life" side, I have heard an eerily reversed argument. That there is no way that anybody cannot understand that once a sperm and an egg meet and fertilize that what you have created is a human life; that it may be blind, and dumb, and basically nothing more than a collection of bacteria, but it is still undeniably human. And that the only reason which you would use for wanting to exterminate that life is if you hate the world, hate humanity, or secretly hate yourself, and want to take that anger out on something small and incapable of resistance.
Of course both sides make allowances. There are some people in the opposition who are truly deluded, who are naive and stupid and uneducated, and really believe those words that each side throws out. But, we assure ourselves in the privacy of our own homes, that's only a few, and they really wouldn't do that type of thing if they thought about it for a few minutes. Most of them aren't doing it because they believe. Most of them have an ulterior motive. And here we enter the most dangerous territory of all, where we dream that out enemies have already broken the covenenat of good faith.
And there, buried somewhere in miles of rhetoric and angry history, lie the poison seeds of damnation, from which democracy dies. Because one of the central themes of becoming an adult, especially in a democracy, is the need to understand that not everybody is like you. People can examine the same evidence with the same presentation and come to conclusions completely opposite your own, and do so in good faith. You may believe that they are wrong, you may have evidence that shows, in such a manner as you are convinced would sway any unbiased individual, that you are correct, you may even feel yourself to be validated by events, but you have to accept that some people will not only refuse to agree with you, but will continue to believe in something completely different. And that, at the same time, these people are still forthright, honest, human beings. Without the assumption of good faith we are no longer one nation, but a split one, the saved and the damned struggling for heaven. No longer is the future a journey; now it becomes a fight.
To change the venue, let me point out that I see this attitude mostly from the fellows and cronies of Jack Chick. They seem to hold the position that anybody who looks at the Bible must immediately know that this is true, that all the words in it are true, and that their God, and their interpretation of the Bible, is the One True Way. Anybody who knows anything about the Bible and does not follow this path must, of course, only be doing it because they hate God, or they fear God, or they are directly in league with Satan.
It is the last point that is most worrying. Because if the people who hold positions opposite yours hold them not in good faith, but out of some other reason and purpose, then the only possible explanation is often evil. People who oppose abortion do so, not because they care about what they think is a human life, but because they hate women and want to remove their rights. People who support abortion do so, not because they think that this is really an issue where the mother has precedence, but because they secretly hate, and wish to kill babies. People who believe in evolution do it, not because of a large body of scientific evidence, but because they hate and fear God and wish they could wish him away. People who vote Democrat do so because they secretly hate America and all that it stands for.
There is a tendency to value beliefs that have no benefit to ourselves as somehow more fervent than those that do, but this is not a verdict history would agree with. People may oppose abortion due to social conservatism, due to fear of the new order and new ways of life, due to beliefs that the distance feminism has gone exceeds "the bounds of good taste" (whatever those are), or fear that the family structure that they grew up in and are comfortable with is under threat. That does not mean that they hold a belief in the beauty of human life any less fervently. The workers in Russia in 1917 revolted due to reasons of economics, of poor pay, safety, and salary; and politics, the mismanagement of the war, the bankruptcy of the country, and the lack of their own voice. The inclusion of these contributing factors did not prevent them from believing in notions of equality and equal voice and equal property. Likewise, do not conflate the cause with the effect. If abortion is outlawed, the status of women in America will probably decline. This is a statement I think is true (which is as much as you're getting out of me). Likewise, the Revolution of 1917 led to the Russian Civil War, and the Ukrainian famine. It would be a mistake, though, to believe that even at the highest levels, A was necessarily done to cause B. This goes far beyond assumptions of Post hoc ergo propter hoc, and into a pairing with Cum hoc ergo propter hoc.
Because once you do fall down this trap, then democracy is over. Once you begin to believe that the people who disagree with you on a major issue are not just wrong, but actively wrong, maliciously wrong, then the entire civil system we depend on is over. Once the partisan fighting gets to that point it's no longer a matter of how to run the country, but how to chase those other guys out. It becomes a civil war, a fight in which you cannot compromise because you know that the other side is totally, and irredeemably, evil.
And so, given the audience for this, I would like to take a moment to address the "pro-choice" side, which I believe a majority of the readers here would associate themselves with. Do not be afraid to stand up for yourself and your position, do not be afraid to take to the streets and the presses in support of your stance. Celebrate your victories and rally yourself after your defeats, and keep on pushing against all odds, and don't ever be afraid to refuse to compromise on an issue that you believe cannot be compromised on, because that kind of activism is what keeps America going. But always remember at the end of the day that your opponents may be decent people too; there are very few bad people, just good people who do bad things for what they think is the right reason. Pretending they don't mean what they say will get you nowhere.
If you believe that they only stand for false causes, you will find yourself surprised by the resistance they offer, and the offesce they exhibit once you have made that clear. So don't. Beat them openly, beat them soundly, and beat them fairly, but remember, at the end, the rebels are your countrymen once again.
All right, thus endeth the incoherent sermon, or whatever. Let the flamings, hate mail, and mass de-friendings commence.
There are things that you normally do not discuss in polite conversation, whether personally or through the anonymity of the internet. However,
flamingchords posted a long rant which actually managed to touch one of the few nerves I have left, so hence you get an angry, impromptu response. Now, anyone who reads both of these pieces will rapidly come to the conclusion that I am overreacting, and I would like to apologize to flamingchords in advance, since he is the catalyst and not the cause of this reaction, I don't even think you're guilty of doing anything wrong (morally or otherwise). I would also like to apologize to all the readers I am about to send over the edge into outright hatred of me for the stress on your body and mind. But I think this is one of those cases where I need to express an irrelevant, but still perhaps important opinion.Unfortunately, to do that, I'm first going to have to discuss abortion.
First off, if any of you, for some reason known only to yourselves, had any hope of discovering what my position on abortion is, you will find yourself sadly disappointed by the following. I do not intend to state my position on the vast patchwork quilt of issues we refer to simply as "abortion". I consider my position on the subject to be my position, and hence a private matter that concerns only me.
Unfortunately, unlike other private matters on which I do occasionally hold forth an opinion, the giant carnival of ideas referred to as "abortion" has, despite enough identifiably separate issues to fill up an entire shelf of encyclopedias, only two possible positions in American society. Your years of experience, philosophical views, and your careful weighing of social and biological evidence on the matter are distilled down to a binary declaration, pro-life or pro-choice. You only get to choose one. You are like a light-switch, you are either on or you are off. I refuse to be associated with either group because I find their definitions sufficiently vague, and their particulars sufficiently hidden, that I would be unable to say, where I associated with one or the other, precisely what my faction stood for.
But the split between the two is not only confusing, it is also symptomatic of another, very disturbing trend in American life. Which gets me, of course, to what set me off. A very small, almost offhand comment, as follows:
"A handful of pro-life people are genuinely concerned about the welfare of the unborn... but none of these people with good intentions are the ones in power. The ones in power see women as incubators, not as human beings in their own right, and in their view, the lives of these women are of far less importance than a clump of cells, which is in turn of far less importance than their backward belief that women belong barefoot and pregnant, and let's put them all in the kitchen while we're at it?"
Stop for a moment, before you say whether you agree or disagree with this statement, and let us examine what it actually is. What this is is a statement of fact, an assertion, presented as a matter of record, that those people who refer to themselves as "pro-life" who are in power, as well as a majority (where the inverted phrase to "a handful", "all but a handful", is implied to be not only the majority, but a strong majority), embrace that position for reasons that have nothing to do with the welfare of the unborn, and are highly implied to be taking this position simply because they are against women's rights.
It is unprovable. It is unsupported, almost by definition. And I cannot believe that this is correct.
And this is what sends me totally, screaming off of the edge. Maybe my distance from the argument, and the people I know from both sides, gives me a twisted view, but I cannot agree with even the implication of bad faith on behalf of most of either side. I cannot believe that the motivations for such a widespread movement, on either side, can come from such a simple motivation. I cannot believe that something that a conflict that has aroused such passion and anger could be conducted almost entirely by false pretenses on one side. And there, deep inside, like the sound an engine makes when the oil has run out and it is tottering on its last legs, I can hear the end of democracy. Because I think this is wrong, because I believe that most people on both sides, not just of this argument, but of most of today's major issues, believe in the positions they take.
Take the two abortion positions. I have heard, from the "pro-choice" side, this same argument before. That nobody could possibly believe that a clump of cells, without a brain, without even a developed nervous chain of any sort, could possibly be more alive than, say, a fairly bright cucumber. That the only possible explanation for taking this position is that they are really trying to reduce women's rights.
On the other hand, from the "pro-life" side, I have heard an eerily reversed argument. That there is no way that anybody cannot understand that once a sperm and an egg meet and fertilize that what you have created is a human life; that it may be blind, and dumb, and basically nothing more than a collection of bacteria, but it is still undeniably human. And that the only reason which you would use for wanting to exterminate that life is if you hate the world, hate humanity, or secretly hate yourself, and want to take that anger out on something small and incapable of resistance.
Of course both sides make allowances. There are some people in the opposition who are truly deluded, who are naive and stupid and uneducated, and really believe those words that each side throws out. But, we assure ourselves in the privacy of our own homes, that's only a few, and they really wouldn't do that type of thing if they thought about it for a few minutes. Most of them aren't doing it because they believe. Most of them have an ulterior motive. And here we enter the most dangerous territory of all, where we dream that out enemies have already broken the covenenat of good faith.
And there, buried somewhere in miles of rhetoric and angry history, lie the poison seeds of damnation, from which democracy dies. Because one of the central themes of becoming an adult, especially in a democracy, is the need to understand that not everybody is like you. People can examine the same evidence with the same presentation and come to conclusions completely opposite your own, and do so in good faith. You may believe that they are wrong, you may have evidence that shows, in such a manner as you are convinced would sway any unbiased individual, that you are correct, you may even feel yourself to be validated by events, but you have to accept that some people will not only refuse to agree with you, but will continue to believe in something completely different. And that, at the same time, these people are still forthright, honest, human beings. Without the assumption of good faith we are no longer one nation, but a split one, the saved and the damned struggling for heaven. No longer is the future a journey; now it becomes a fight.
To change the venue, let me point out that I see this attitude mostly from the fellows and cronies of Jack Chick. They seem to hold the position that anybody who looks at the Bible must immediately know that this is true, that all the words in it are true, and that their God, and their interpretation of the Bible, is the One True Way. Anybody who knows anything about the Bible and does not follow this path must, of course, only be doing it because they hate God, or they fear God, or they are directly in league with Satan.
It is the last point that is most worrying. Because if the people who hold positions opposite yours hold them not in good faith, but out of some other reason and purpose, then the only possible explanation is often evil. People who oppose abortion do so, not because they care about what they think is a human life, but because they hate women and want to remove their rights. People who support abortion do so, not because they think that this is really an issue where the mother has precedence, but because they secretly hate, and wish to kill babies. People who believe in evolution do it, not because of a large body of scientific evidence, but because they hate and fear God and wish they could wish him away. People who vote Democrat do so because they secretly hate America and all that it stands for.
There is a tendency to value beliefs that have no benefit to ourselves as somehow more fervent than those that do, but this is not a verdict history would agree with. People may oppose abortion due to social conservatism, due to fear of the new order and new ways of life, due to beliefs that the distance feminism has gone exceeds "the bounds of good taste" (whatever those are), or fear that the family structure that they grew up in and are comfortable with is under threat. That does not mean that they hold a belief in the beauty of human life any less fervently. The workers in Russia in 1917 revolted due to reasons of economics, of poor pay, safety, and salary; and politics, the mismanagement of the war, the bankruptcy of the country, and the lack of their own voice. The inclusion of these contributing factors did not prevent them from believing in notions of equality and equal voice and equal property. Likewise, do not conflate the cause with the effect. If abortion is outlawed, the status of women in America will probably decline. This is a statement I think is true (which is as much as you're getting out of me). Likewise, the Revolution of 1917 led to the Russian Civil War, and the Ukrainian famine. It would be a mistake, though, to believe that even at the highest levels, A was necessarily done to cause B. This goes far beyond assumptions of Post hoc ergo propter hoc, and into a pairing with Cum hoc ergo propter hoc.
Because once you do fall down this trap, then democracy is over. Once you begin to believe that the people who disagree with you on a major issue are not just wrong, but actively wrong, maliciously wrong, then the entire civil system we depend on is over. Once the partisan fighting gets to that point it's no longer a matter of how to run the country, but how to chase those other guys out. It becomes a civil war, a fight in which you cannot compromise because you know that the other side is totally, and irredeemably, evil.
And so, given the audience for this, I would like to take a moment to address the "pro-choice" side, which I believe a majority of the readers here would associate themselves with. Do not be afraid to stand up for yourself and your position, do not be afraid to take to the streets and the presses in support of your stance. Celebrate your victories and rally yourself after your defeats, and keep on pushing against all odds, and don't ever be afraid to refuse to compromise on an issue that you believe cannot be compromised on, because that kind of activism is what keeps America going. But always remember at the end of the day that your opponents may be decent people too; there are very few bad people, just good people who do bad things for what they think is the right reason. Pretending they don't mean what they say will get you nowhere.
If you believe that they only stand for false causes, you will find yourself surprised by the resistance they offer, and the offesce they exhibit once you have made that clear. So don't. Beat them openly, beat them soundly, and beat them fairly, but remember, at the end, the rebels are your countrymen once again.
All right, thus endeth the incoherent sermon, or whatever. Let the flamings, hate mail, and mass de-friendings commence.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-17 01:08 am (UTC)Once I leave the US though, this argument doesn't work as well - because the issues at hand change. There are plenty of places where I think that people may think that they're doing the right thing - and that suppressing women's rights is the right thing. Witness FGM in Africa. I don't think men encourage it because they think they're doing evil, I genuinely think that they believe they're doing the right thing in putting women under their power. In these cases, the answer is pretty clear cut. In the US though, I think even the majority of anti-abortion people think that women should have some form of equal rights, they just can't figure out what equal means.
In the US though, I think a lot of your opponents believe that they are putting the interests of the fetus first, regardless of how much damage they end up doing later on. I think though that trying to confuse the two groups has gotten more then one group into trouble.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-17 03:43 am (UTC)But that pharmacist who wouldn't fill antibiotic prescriptions for women who had presumably had abortions? That's not about doing what's best for the fetus; the fetuses were already dead, assuming they existed in the first place. Antibiotics are part of the aftercare for surgery; denying them was placing these women at general risk to their health and specific risk to their future fertility. Given human nature, it's possible the pharmacist just meant to be a petty asshole, but their choice of assholery strongly suggests punishing "bad" women as a driving motive.
And in my experience, often when pro-choice folks argue that anti-choice-in-abortion-and-increasingly-contraception groups are motivated by controlling women, they're talking about these sorts of examples. It may not be a conscious motive, and I don't think the claim that it's a motivation requires that it be one. I really do think it's there and that it's a major force behind the movement. (FWIW, I think genuinely wanting to save some concept of innocent helpless baby is another one. How much this concept and actual fetuses and embryos overlap...)
In the US though, I think even the majority of anti-abortion people think that women should have some form of equal rights, they just can't figure out what equal means.
Oh, gods. Sometimes I think they can't decide if fetuses should get rights no born person has (bodily sovereignty issues), or if they should get fewer (reluctance to call for jail time for the mother despite claims that abortion is murder), or if pregnancies that go tragically wrong shouldn't be allowed to be any less shitty (the intact D&X ban)...