A woman's place in her own body

Kelly Oliver sheds light on the insufficient representation of female reproductive choice in the media.  Still heralded as "choice" Hollywood film and television continues to corner women into choosing life over abortion.  Oliver recognizes that in no way does the media or popular culture ever glorify choosing an abortion.  Movies that condone abortion rarely, if ever,  allow the audience to visibly see the woman's pregnant body.  I found this to be a fascinating connection and one that I had never noticed myself.  By showing the woman's pregnant body before she has an abortion, certain sympathies could arise in the audience that generate sentiments of protection for the child.  Similarly, those women who go through abortions in a film end up more frequently becoming psychologically terrorized or die from either medical complications or other freak accidents.  Association of abortion and death go beyond the fetus and extend directly to the mother, despite a third common association that frequents less of the big screen and more of the States' legal arena: the physical separation of mother and fetus.  Some states have recently tried to pass legislation on allowing the fetus a separate defense from the mother, oftentimes resulting with the mother becoming locked away.  Oliver's best success in this article is to point out the contradictions regarding female reproductive abilities in both the media and legal realms.  It seems as though women and the idea of "choice" are viewed specific to the situation.  If a woman wants an abortion, it would not be the "right" choice because that child is part of her and at the same time, that child remains a separate being that has it's own individual rights.
Oliver makes note of the way a woman's choice remains not her own.  Despite discussion and changing support for pro-choice legislation, choice is still a questionable reality.  A woman's womb is a dangerous place because the moment a girl hits puberty and her reproductive cycles begin, this part of her body becomes the property of other entities.  Oliver asks her readers to consider how we can restore a part of someone's body back into personal possession.

Pregnancy, Excess, Abortion in Films

I really liked this article about pregnancy and specifically how it is portrayed in contemporary film. The article details all of the ways that pregnancy, womanhood, and abortion are portrayed mostly inaccurately in Hollywood films. Pregnancy is portrayed as an excess, and abortion is almost never a viable plot option. Films often co-opt the rhetoric of pro-choice movements about a woman's right to choose in order to give the female character the right to choose to keep the baby. This made me think, I wonder what a successful Hollywood film that portrays and woman choosing to have an abortion would look like? I wonder if it is even possible, now or in the near future.

I really like the way she commented on race and how the racial make-up of the women who are portrayed in these films is directly related to social anxieties about race. Hollywood  and Hollywood executives specifically are made up of primarily white males, so of course using pregnancy as a the main plot of a film is a crucial move towards gender-inclusivity, it is still blatantly obvious how whiteness permeates these sort of stories about accidental pregnancies. She states that, "In this context, Hollywood's preference for middle-class white women choosing to have babies rather than abortions, could be interpreted as a racist anxiety over the 'browning of America'." These portrayals are inaccurate because white women are actually choosing not to have children more frequently, and also abortion is more accessible to those who can afford it. I definitely agree that choosing not to portray an accurate image of the racial make-up of American pregnancies points to a sort of fear by some of the continued mixing and changing of the racial make-up of America as a whole. To portray stories about women of color experiencing unplanned pregnancies would indeed carry a lot of political and cultural context that I doubt older white men, who normally direct and produce these films, would be able to portray accurately and compellingly.

On Choice

Kelly Oliver problematizes what we think of as a woman's "choice" as it relates to pregnancy, abortion, birth, and family planning in general in Chapter 3 of Philosophical Feminism and Popular Culture entitled "Pregnancy: Choice and Excess." Oliver is quick to note that for the vast majority of women in the world, the choice to start a family in the first place is not even really a choice due to financial conditions (Oliver 52). Hollywood, Oliver argues, romanticizes a woman's choice to have a baby after accidentally becoming pregnant. What is more troubling to me, though, is the cultural taboo surrounding abortion and the implication that having an abortion will be some sort of emotionally traumatic event for the pregnant person. If that is how popular media approaches the subject of abortion, how can a woman really have a right to choose if every cultural message tells her abortions are either immoral, last resort, emotionally taxing, or simply too expensive to go through with?

The rhetoric surrounding pregnancy is very problematic to me in regards to the choice of the woman. We say phrases like "She got pregnant," as if the act of getting pregnant is a one-person task. Assuming the pregnancy in the first place is the responsibility of solely the person with the uterus not only removes the existence of the second person involved, but also obfuscates the true complications of deciding to keep a baby after an accidental pregnancy. Oliver also discusses the rhetoric of "accidental" versus "unplanned" (Oliver 54). Debates like this put motherhood at odds with feminism, which I think is the biggest takeaway from Oliver's piece. The feminist rejection of forced motherhood does not necessarily constitute a rejection of motherhood in general. On the other hand, feminist pro-choice rhetoric is also not a rejection of maternity or maternal instincts. Cultural conversation surrounding pregnancy, motherhood, and abortion needs to change to realistically accommodate the very real choice that women face between having a fulfilling career and raising a family (which even in today's society is still the primary responsibility of the woman). The work-life balance many speak of is virtually impossible in a climate that treats abortion so contemptuously.

Philosophical Feminism and Pop Culture 3

This week’s chapter is on the confluence of reproductive politics and feminism. The authors touch base on the two present dichotomies of motherhood; one termed baby hunger and the other termed fertile myrtles. The idea is that women who are privileged enough to have and execute career goals and other social opportunities may feel pressured by society, particularly in their older years, to have a raise a child (baby hunger). Conversely, lower class women (particularly minorities) may be robbed of this opportunity as it’s believed that their reproductive abilities are far too uninhibited and in fact need to be tamed using medical or governmental intervention. This leads to the victimization of certain groups of women who are sterilized without their knowledge and typically against their will.

I personally find it fascinating that the very same act (childbirth) can be construed and interpreted so differently depending on who is birthing the child. Lower class women on government assistance may be demonized for having children, whether or not the general populace is aware of their actual ability to take care of the child or not. In addition to that, white women of lower socioeconomic classes are typically not ridiculed as much as their non-white counterparts (despite being from the same social class). There is also the issue of single parent child-rearing (often the mother) that is looked down upon in poor black homes but a wealthy white women who chooses to have children outside of marriage may be lauded for her ability to balance both motherhood and a demanding career. 

Excesses of Pregnancy

This essay highlights the concept of the fetal paradox. The fetal paradox are representations of the fetus as separate from the maternal body, and the maternal body at odds with it. Oliver makes the interesting point that the paradox is a product  of the emergence of ultrasounds that allows us to see the fetus thereby establishing the fetus as the other within the maternal body. The establishment of the other within is the cause of  Hollywood's  depictions of pregnancy as either the fetus or the mother.  There is a need for the subject to be autonomous so it is impossible to view both the fetus and the mother as one which is why debates on reproduction poses the rights of the fetus as separate from the rights of the mother. This creates a narrative that either pro-life i protecting the rights of the fetus, or pro-choice protecting the rights of the mother leaving no middle ground.

Oliver describes a the plethora of stigmas regarding abortion, including terms such as, bloody, dangerous, monstrous,  and unethical.  They are exacerbated by within the Hollywood film industry. Oliver references the  Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days that exposes the consequences of the illegality of abortion. In films like these the overall message is if a woman decides not to have an abortion, she will be happy with some sort of fairy tale ending. However, if a woman contemplates whether or not to have an abortion she will die, suffer, or have a miscarriage. 

Choice & Excess

This weeks reading is centered on “pregnancy as a choice and excess”. I found it interested how the reading explored whether women do indeed choose to become pregnant or not. Even if a woman wants to get pregnant and has sex to become pregnant there is no guarantee that she will become pregnant, which therefore suggests there is always an unpredictable element to pregnancy. Furthermore, the reading also delves into how societal pressures can influence a woman’s “choice” to become pregnant whether she realizes it or not. Moreover, tabloids that remind women, especially older, career-driven women, that their biological clock is running out could lead to “baby hunger”. Baby hunger is described as an excessive craving to have a child. This is contrasted against the depiction of fertile myrtles who conceive with ease. 

Furthermore, this reading also touches on the intersections between women’s issues and issues of race and class. It is not everyone that can put off having babies; moreover, it is not everyone that is portrayed by the media as delaying pregnancy. On television, it is typically white middle class women that want to have babies at a later age. Whereas, women of color are seen as fertile-myrtles, that probably live in poverty and receive welfare. On television, women of color are portrayed as not having the option to choose when they get pregnant. In addition to this, films about women of color that accidentally become pregnant usually start off on negative note and continue on a negative note. Whereas, stories of white women accidentally becoming pregnant may start of negatively, but they usually end on a positive note. This ties in with Hewlett’s disgusting comment that “white women have a duty to produce babies because they will produce better babies than uneducated nonwhite women”. This implies that who is giving birth influences the eugenics view of whether that birth will improve the human population or not. When women of color give birth, or even before they give birth, they are criminalized as these demonic figures set out to destroy the economy through signing up for welfare. Furthermore, reading this has made me reflect on the fact that in California, between 2006 - 2010 around 150 women were forced to be sterilized in Californian prisons. Reports have indicated that there was a racial component to whether women were selected to be sterilized or not (in California women with Spanish last names were sterilized at a higher rate than women of any other race). In this case, these women had the choice of whether they wanted to become a mother or not taken away from them. 

Also, I was made to think of Dispossesion when I learnt about the “fetal paradox”. “Two in one” is viewed by some as “excessive”, which leads to either the mother, or the baby being dispossessed. Typically, if the fetus is shown then the maternal pregnant body is not shown - the mother is displaced from an image that she is essential to. 

Humor and Power

The first chapter of Philosophical Feminism and Pop Culture entitled "The Seriously Erotic Politics of Laughter" made me consider heavily the overlaps between sex, power, and laughter. The authors Willett indicate that "various forms of humor or irony might be a more appropriate means of philosophical suasion than fact or argument," which I interpret to mean that humor's effect on "oppressive networks of power" can be more effective than more conventional means of awareness-raising (Willett 16). I also wonder what the relationship is between provocation and eroticism, as the authors imply that they go hand in hand with one another. In a very Foucaultian sense, this essay makes the argument that the right joke can dismantle oppressive norms in ways that are subtler than we even know.

For example, the authors imply we ought to interrogate our own "will to power" through humor and that the "ironic voice should not be viewed as a distraction from the analytic mindset of social critique" (Willett 26). For me, the most compelling version of this argument is that humor is a means by which to address oppressive power structures and even ridicule them in a way that is not paternalistic. The Willetts' critique lies in the implicit idea that some feminism becomes self-righteous; whereas humor diffuses one's own privilege because all people are fair targets.

Finally, this essay made me ponder the relationship between jokes (not just any jokes, of course, but ones that explicitly deal with social problems and inequalities, i.e. rape jokes) and standpoint feminism. I've recently been thinking about what types of jokes certain people are allowed to make, and whether identifying as an oppressed group makes it permissible to make jokes about that oppression. There is obviously no clear answer to this question. However, there is an argument to be made that such jokes from a specific standpoint rather than another may be more constructive in helping us understand that "self-determined norms and social bonds [are] both limits and sources of identity and power" (Willett 28). That is, there is value in testing a joke for social benefit; if it is effective when told from the oppressed perspective -- if it is "successful" (which is itself a contestable term) -- then perhaps it has contributed to social change.