You know, I think it’s pretty darn telling that when I made a post that said, “abortion isn’t solely a men vs. women fight – there are men who have uteruses, and women in power who have actively fought to end reproductive rights”, a whole lot of people came out of the woodwork to claim that I was wrong, because trans men and intersex men couldn’t possibly be targets of abortion restrictions, and that they were only accidentally affected due to being misclassified as women. But, the second part of what I said? The bit where I pointed out that, in addition to the fact that some men are victims, some women are active oppressors? Fucking crickets. No one bothered to address it at all – they responded to the first part of the post like the second part wasn’t there.
There is a large movement of far-right women who want to limit the bodily autonomy of all people, both women and men – via banning abortion and contraception, via banning trans-related healthcare, and in many cases, via explicit eugenics through the support of policies of blatant medical racism. You can’t just brush that under the rug, and you can’t just claim that the many female politicians and judges who are anti-choice are just gender traitors and therefore magically not really women.
In the United States, 59% of women are pro-choice, compared to only 45% of men. That’s certainly illustrative of there being a gender difference, probably due to misogyny. But put another way, there are MORE THAN SIXTY-NINE MILLION WOMEN who want to strip all people with uteruses, be they women or men, of their reproductive rights. That’s an awful lot of women to just conveniently forget about. That’s an awful fucking lot of women you need to strip of their agency in order to pretend that all women are your inherent allies in the abortion fight.
If you’re not willing to stop calling this a purely men vs. women fight for the sake of trans and intersex men existing? You know what – fine, pretend we don’t exist, I don’t even care anymore. But pretending that literal millions of cis women don’t exist is absurd, even for complete transphobes. The far right will never be your allies in the fight for bodily autonomy – yes, even if they have a uterus, yes even if they are affected by an abortion ban as well. Granting them the status of automatic victims, even when they are actively working to destroy the rights of others, purely on the basis of what they have between their legs isn’t feminism. It isn’t female allyship. They’re not helpless – they’re actively working against you. And you can say that that’s sad, or that they’re mislead, or that they’re ‘not voting in their best interest’, or whatever else you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re women, and that they’re nonetheless on the wrong side of this.
Stop treating abortion as a men vs. women fight. It’s a fight between a far right agenda and people who value bodily autonomy of any kind.
