Doug Henwood wrote:
> George Gilder, incidentally, understood this very well. I don't have
> the quotes at hand, but he's very explicit on how the right to
> abortion puts women in control of the reproductive process, which
> undermines the authority of men.
This is true but it does not got far enough. In reality it transaltes into saying that women have power inasfar as they refrain from having children. Because once you have children you must contend with other issues like feeding them, educating them, getting medical care, and raising them. None of these things are resolved by controlling the reproductive process alone. (Of course, having the power to have one kid rather than ten helps.) In other words, if in having children one gives hostages to fortune, in a society in which men have power, the act of having children will always make one weaker and more apt to serve whoever the masters happen to be. After I had kids I worked much harder at my job because of my kids. So, in this society, we wind up with the paradox that I, as a woman, have the most perfect freedom from men by not having any children. That is I am most free as a woman by ceasing to function as a woman. An impotent feminism!
This is why, for me, the whole discussion about whether reproductive freedom is a woman's issue or a man's issue simply exposes the fallacy of gender-based politics. Whatever affects women affects men and vice versa. (Master/Slave in another guise.) The greatest advance in "sexual liberation" will come when we all recognize that military subscription is both a man's and woman's issue and that the right to abortion is not just a woman's issue....etc. Until we learn to speak in this new way, we will forever be splitting the working class into more and more ineffectual splinters.
Joanna