Parenting and reproductive freedoms

Just came across this today:

dreama (Again I Said): of note:parenting controversies edition

dreama has collected some excellent reading (including a post from my co-blogger Lauredhel at my other blog) regarding the ideological and practical struggle against overmedicalised and overcommercialised views of both birth and parenting. Several excellent examples of looking at traditional practises through an evidence-based analysis as well.

When time allows I may well add some of these (or other writings by the same authors) to the Reproductive Freedoms FAQ.

FAQ Roundup: Introductory material

Updated 03May07

Wanting to join in a discussion with feminists on a blog or other online forum? Need more information? It's a good idea to start with one or both of these two posts, depending on how you came here:

• I asked some feminists a question, and instead of answering they sent me here. Why?
• How to Use This Blog.

Below are the FAQs thus far (this page will be regularly updated on approximately a weekly basis). Qs in small font are in progress but not yet posted. If your question is not addressed in the FAQs below, please check the Open Suggestions Thread to see whether someone else has suggested the same question and/or provided a useful link to an article addressing that question.

Each of the FAQ posts below contain links to other material, especially other blog-posts, from other authors online. The comments threads provide links to further reading supplied by the readers of this blog.

There is some necessary repetition in some of the FAQs, because not everybody is going to read every Q, so material needs to be placed in more than one post to effectively cover various issues.

NB: The FAQs attempt to be descriptive from a reasonably neutral position. There are other posts on this blog which are not FAQs which are intended as general feminist resources and op-eds: these posts are not intended to be neutral documents.

Absolute basics:

• What is feminism?
• What do feminists want?
• Does feminism matter?
• Isn't feminism just "victim" politics?
• Why do some people talk of "feminisms"?
• Can men be feminists?
• What can feminism do for me?
• What can I do for feminism?
• What do you mean by "Not my Nigel"? (feminist abbreviations/jargon)
  

Specific Issues:

• Why are there so many fights between feminists?
• Why do you feminists hate men?
• What is male privilege?
• What is the "Gender Gap"?
• What’s wrong with suggesting that women take precautions to prevent being raped?
• Isn't "the Patriarchy" just some conspiracy theory?
• What do feminists mean by "reproductive freedom"?
• Aren't you all just a bunch of "feminazis"?

Clarifying Concepts:

• What is "sexual objectification"?
• What is the "male gaze"?
• I've got nothing against equal rights for women, but we've got that, so isn't feminism nowadays just going too far ? (aka Why do we still need feminism?)
• Why "feminism" and not just "humanism"? or "equalism"? Isn't "feminism" exclusionary?
• Why are you concentrating so hard on "X" when "Y" is so much more important?
• But men and women are born different! Isn't that obvious?
• How can Feminity be "socially constructed"?
• Feminists just hate heterosexual sex
  

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FAQ: Why are there so many fights between feminists?

Updated twice on 02Apr07

Quoting from Sage's FAQ:

1. Why do feminists all disagree? Feminism isn’t a movement, it’s an argument!

We all want to raise the status of women to the level of men, to feel safe and respected, and to have a fair and equal chance for all our opinions to be heard. Since the movement is all about choice and the ability to make our own decision that affect us, then it’s necessarily going to be a group fraught with differences. We’re all making our own choices. That’s the commonality. Trying to actively be allowed these choices is the movement. Butting heads along the way from time to time is the reality.

Different feminists work within differing feminist constructs, and have different priorities regarding activism in the following three main (overlapping) arenas:

1. Work and Family
2. Sexuality and Health
   
3. Social Justice
   

Often the tactics of a feminist working primarily in one arena can seem to be in conflict with the tactics of a feminist working in primarily in another arena. The ultimate goal of an end to oppression and inequality is rarely in conflict, merely the plan for how best to focus resources and actions to achieve these goals.

In particular, there is a strong perception amongst those feminists working for social justice that privileged middle-class feminists are so concerned with their personal stake in arenas 1 and 2 that arena 3 keeps on getting put onto the back-burner.

Introductory

Happy Feminist: Feminism is not a monolith.

Clarifying Concepts

Some notable areas of conflict with respect to feminist priorities and attitudes are as follows, with the caveat that most feminists would describe themselves as aligned with multiple groups below: second-wave "essentialism" vs third-wave "post-structuralism", anti-pornography vs sex-positive feminism, feminine vs feminist aesthetics, cultural feminism vs liberal feminism vs radical feminism vs individualist/equity feminism, identity politics (groupings by gender/race/class), macropolitical vs micropolitical activism and many more. There are a few passionate posts on some of these conflicts below - please suggest more to fill the gaps!

N.B.some of the feminists linked below may be feuding with each other online either now or in the past. Don't assume when reading an old post that a feud described therein necessarily is still ongoing, and don't bring it back here, please.
nubian: gender does NOT trump race
brownfemipower posts excerpts from Lee Maracle on "The Women's Movement"
nubian:Blogging against heteronormativity roundup
ginmar (A View from A Broad): Can you cure racism with sexism? Do some guys get allowed to be sexist?
Alecto Erinyes (Sisterhood & Solidarity): on labour feminism, quoting from their FAQ

"There's lots of different kinds of feminism, lots of different ways to 'do' feminism. We believe that arguing about what's more important, class, race or gender, only hurts those on the down-side of all. We also believe that regardless of the symmetry of your chromosomes or the color of your skin, economic freedom is a precondition of political freedom. Industrial rights are fundamental to civil and human rights. So long as women labour in minimum wage, casual jobs to support themselves and their families, struggling to keep body and soul together, then feminism needs unionism, and unionism needs feminism. Sisterhood and solidarity go hand-in-hand. Federal Labor's Deputy Leader, Jenny Macklin, said it all in this speech."

[Editor: suggestions hereby solicited for posts addressing more on Race, Gender and Identity, Location vs Transnational movements, Second vs Thirdwave Feminism, and any more fighting-feminist categories.]

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