[lbo-talk] RE: I'm not sorry day

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Wed Jan 14 02:48:46 PST 2004



>Yoshie writes:
>
>"I'm Not Sorry Day" is for women who have had an abortion and do not
>feel sorry, not a day for men who can't have an abortion, women who
>have never had an abortion, women who do not want to have an
>abortion, or women who feel sorry about having had an abortion."
>
>Yes, but what you're describing is the stuff that group therapy is
>made up of -- and I'm not speaking disparangingly of group therapy.
>It has its uses.
>
>But how is it appropriate to march around it? What is its political content?
>
>Joanna

The very first step in any political organizing is to discover others who feel the same way as you do and are willing to stand up for it publicly. Public actions, such as the Pride March and the National Coming Out Day, are occasions to discover others who feel the same way, ending isolation, organizing a constituency, and making the constituency visible to itself and others.

The dominant ideology demands that women who have an abortion feel guilt and shame and maintain silence about our personal experiences of abortion, making an abortion a kind of taboo topic like homosexuality used to be and still is in some quarters. Unless one comes out otherwise, it is even assumed that having an abortion is always a cause and consequence of tragedy, just as it is assumed (even now) that one is a heterosexual unless one comes out (through speech or performance of culturally visible codes of sexuality) otherwise.

Silence enforced by guilt and shame isolates women who have an abortion from one another. Isolation is a recipe for political powerlessness. Also, silence functions as the closet, and the closet serves to reduce a potential majority -- in this case, women who don't feel that abortion is a cause and consequence of tragedy and are willing to demand provision of abortion as a necessary part of health care -- to feeling like a powerless minority.

Therefore, political organizing to de-stigmatize the stigmatized experience -- such as feeling same-sex love, living with AIDS, and having an abortion -- requires coming out of the closet, which diminishes the power of guilt and shame as enforcement mechanisms of the closet that isolates and disempowers persons belonging to a potential political constituency. -- Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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