Blog Post #4 [Policing of Women's Bodies & Reproductive Rights]

During this tumultuous time in our political history, women’s healthcare and reproductive rights are more at risk than ever. With the election of a sexual predator into office and the nomination of an accused rapist to the Supreme Court, decades of progress securing access to birth control and safe abortion are in peril, and the rulings of Roe v. Wade and other important actions could soon be overturned. The only positives to come out of these appointments is that they incensed anger and fear among the electorate to get involved in social issues and vote. A particularly stunning image that represents the current administration, is a photo of the GOP Healthcare caucus, in which the removal of maternity coverage was proposed. The existence of such a meeting proves how little women’s opinions are valued in our current society, that a group of all white men could be deciding on pivotal women’s health issues. In her essay ‘The Alienable Rights of Women’, Roxane Gay shines a light on the fact that many of these women’s health debates on the political stage are merely a tool to divert attention away from the actual issues: “Rather than solve the real problems in the United States is facing, some politicians, mostly conservative, have decided to try and solve the ‘female problem’, by creating a smokescreen and reintroducing abortion and more inexplicably, birth control into a national debate”. And so birth control and abortion have been reintroduced as a campaign issue and debated amongst white male politicians. This says very little as to how women are valued in our society, that we can’t even participate in a discussion about our rights and bodies-that it’s a matter of male political discourse and not private personal choice.

GOP caucus of white conservative males decide the fate of Women's Health

            In our patriarchal society, the mass media is constantly bombarding us with images of overly sexualized women being used as objects for men. We are oversexualized time and time again in media images, and yet we are denied access to insured birth control and legal abortions? A truly heinous patriarchal paradox. How can conservatives discuss restricting insured birth control access while at the same time proposing the removal of maternity coverage—how are we supposed to take care of these children that you’re not allowing us to prevent while also supporting ourselves and the child with a job? Tanya Steele explores this in ‘Hobby Lobby, and a Woman’s Right to Sexual Exploration’:

“The desire to restrict birth control is, at its heart, the desire to stop women from ‘sleeping around.’…we negotiate with men and boys who also feel that birth control (using a condom) is a nuisance…these men see a woman’s need for protection, for control over her body, for a desire to experience her sexuality without the risk of pregnancy or disease, as not of interest to them…For men and boys, in the private spaces of negotiation, their orgasm is the goal. Neither takes into account the needs, financial pressures, health concerns, or any other interests of women. The culture reinforces this message with a film industry that places male sexuality at its center. Birth Control levels the playing field.”

The need for birth control in women is portrayed as a necessity brought by promiscuity, while a young male should be entitled to sexual freedom and the choice to start a family whenever he chooses. The below image is a magazine advertisement for a form of IUD birth control. This is a perfect portrayal in the media of the fact that the burden of contraception falls entirely on the female—the male in this ad is only concerned with his own sexual pleasure and doesn’t need to concern himself with such things.

Contraception is a woman's problem- men needn't concern themselves with it...

In Body Messages and Body Meanings’, Wykes Gunther explores the meaning of such representations:

“It is important to think what such representations say about our society and its attitudes towards women and how the media might be actively engaged in reproducing and legitimating ideas about femininity that neither comply with the reality of their experience and potential nor combat the ongoing inequities, abuses and self-violations which are the familiar everyday business of women’s lives.” (220)

The fact that men don’t need to concern themselves with birth control is the perfect example of their hierarchical power in society: that it’s not even a question whether or not they should be subject to such a sacrifice—the burden falls solely on women, who are as usual treated like second class citizens in the matter. Men don’t have to think about being responsible for birth control because they control the legislation that places it firmly on the woman’s back. Roxane Gay plainly states this in ‘The Alienable Rights of Women’:

What often goes unspoken in this conversation is how debates about birth control and reproductive freedom continually force the female body into being a legislative matter because men refuse to assume their fair share of responsibility for birth control. Men refuse to allow their bodies to become a legislative matter because they have that (inalienable) right. The drug industry has no real motivation to develop a reversible method of male birth control because forcing this burden on women is so damn profitable. Americans spent $5 billion on birth control in 2011…Men don’t want the responsibility of birth control. Why would they? They see what the responsibility continues to cost women publicly and privately.”

A long-running joke among women concerning reproductive rights and contraception, is that if the roles were reversed and men could get pregnant, you could get abortions and birth control from a vending machine. I believe this is 100% true. They don’t have to deal with the burden because they hold the legislative and social power, even though it would make just as much sense medically, if not more, for men to take some form of male birth control.

In her piece, ‘Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement’, Jennifer Nelson references the Redstockings’ astute analysis of our patriarchal society, which stated that the root of women’s oppression is found in the lack of control of their bodies. The entire women’s movement was able to progress because of access to birth control and abortion—women were no longer tied to the home and childrearing, they could enter into the workforce as productive and independent members of society. Access to these basic reproductive rights was fought so hard, unless you belonged to a minority population. White women are historically misrepresented as the face of the reproductive rights movement, when in fact African American and Puerto Rican women were the trail blazers. Jennifer Nelson focuses on this in her writing, addressing the horrors of population control through sterilization and the use of botched abortions as a means of genocide against an entire generation of Puerto Rican Women.

There are so many different lenses through which women’s bodies are policed; politically, superficially, legally, commercially. All of them reflect the imbalance of our patriarchal power structure and the inhumane treatment of women as objectified second-class citizens. We must shift this horrifying reality by voting more women into office and continuing the fight for our basic human rights and interests in this country—a fight that is clearly far from over.