Again and again, Sunsara Taylor exposes the lies of the reactionaries, fascists, and other insects masquerading as champions of freedom. Fuck them. Listen to her.
Three Howling Anti-Woman LIES Wrapped in an “Inclusive” Whiney Package
by Sunsara Taylor
February 28, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On February 27, Lauren Enriquez, of the anti-abortion Human Coalition, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times attempting to put a compassionate spin on the hateful enslavement of women. Titled, “How the New Feminist Resistance Leaves Out American Women,” she defended the Sexual-Predator-In-Chief and whined that the Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration had excluded science-denying, women-enslaving fanatics like herself.
Now, let me make clear. I am not a feminist and I do not speak for the Women’s March. I am a supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party led by Bob Avakian, which sees the fight for the complete liberation of women as not only an essential component, but as a driving force, in the revolution we are fighting for to emancipate all of humanity from every form of exploitation and oppression. But, as such, I not only attended but deeply appreciated the incredible outpouring that was the Women’s March.
With that, let’s take apart some bullshit.
HOWLING LIE #1: Enriquez complains that the marchers expressed all-around disgust at Donald Trump. She claims that the image of Trump as a “misogynist hellbent on sending women back to 1950s America” is a “caricature.”
TRUTH: Give me a break! If anything, the 1950s are mild and downright liberated compared to the world of horror Trump and Pence are fighting to impose on women. Trump is a vile, boastful sexual predator. He revels in demeaning, humiliating, and hurling gutter-level slurs at women and girls. But this is not all. Trump is actively tapping into, whipping up to new levels, and consciously unleashing a growing feeling of resentment and revenge among broad sections of men at women for ever having broken out of the suffocating oppression of women of the 1950s. “[W]hen I come home and dinner’s not ready, I go through the roof,” he’s boasted, expressing the feeling of male entitlement to women’s servitude and validating violent resentment if the woman is not subservient enough.
On top of this, Trump has teamed up with Mike Pence and a whole cabal of outright Christian fascists. Together, they promise the most draconian and cruel criminalization of not only abortion, but—if they are not stopped—even birth control. With today’s surveillance state, pervasive violence against abortion providers, and Trump’s threat that women who get abortions should be “punished”—they could send women back not only to the bloody back-alleys, but to the prisons and to drown in the oceans of shame and scorn this regime is fostering and unleashing and which is still just in its early stages.
HOWLING LIE #2: Enriquez writes, “To us, ‘resistance’ has to include opposition to the lie that freedom can be bought with the blood of our preborn children.”
TRUTH: After dousing cheap perfume on the misogynist snorting PIG that is Trump, Enriquez has zero right to speak for—or advise—the “resistance.” And stop with the “blood of our preborn children” bullshit. Fetuses are not babies. Abortion is not murder. Women are not incubators.
Enriquez cynically appeals to the massive levels of anti-science in U.S. society to peddle the anti-scientific notion that fetuses are children. They are not. Fetuses (just like zygotes and embryos at earlier stages of pregnancy) have the potential to become people, but they are not yet people. They are part of a woman’s body. They are a subordinate part of her body. Meaning, the fetus only grows and continues to develop as long as the woman eats, breathes, and lives. If she terminates (aborts) the pregnancy, she is destroying a form of life—but not a human life. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Enriquez is also cynically appealing to the thousands of years of tradition’s chains that insist that women’s most essential role and duty is to sacrifice themselves to serve husbands and his children. In Enriquez’s twisted view, the mandate is for women to be breeders and any deviation from that is “craven” and “selfish.” This is wrong. Women have no obligation to carry a pregnancy to term. In fact, simply being pregnant is a terrible reason to have a child. The only good reason to have a child is if the woman wants a child and feels ready and able to care for it the way she chooses. If not, she should have an abortion. This is not “selfish”—it’s responsible and healthy.
HOWLING LIE #3: Enriquez insists that because “most American women” feel that abortion “should be completely illegal, or legal but with significant restrictions,” one cannot really be for women unless they accommodate the "anti-abortion women" who feel this way.
TRUTH: This is really two lies in one. First, there’s the dishonest statistical sleight of hand. Because public sentiment on abortion is deeply divided, if you flipped the way the question was asked, you’d get the opposite answer: Most American women feel that abortion should be available on demand or restricted in some circumstances, still legal and safe.
But even more fundamentally, the method is flawed. You don’t determine what is liberating to women—or to anyone else—by taking a poll. You do it by examining the objective effect of the viewpoint or policy being put forward. Even if there wasn’t a single woman on the entire planet who thought so, it would be true (i.e., it would correspond to reality) that forcing women to have children against their will is a form of enslavement. A society that denies women the right to decide for themselves when and whether to have a child is a society that does not view or treat women as human beings, but instead as property of men and breeders of children. Enriquez can obscure this because she is playing on thousands of years of tradition’s chains. But that doesn’t change the truth: denying women control over their own reproduction is a keystone to the society-wide oppression and degradation of women and it has been for thousands of years.
But even more fundamentally, the method is flawed. You don’t determine what is liberating to women—or to anyone else—by taking a poll. You do it by examining the objective effect of the viewpoint or policy being put forward. Even if there wasn’t a single woman on the entire planet who thought so, it would be true (i.e., it would correspond to reality) that forcing women to have children against their will is a form of enslavement. A society that denies women the right to decide for themselves when and whether to have a child is a society that does not view or treat women as human beings, but instead as property of men and breeders of children. Enriquez can obscure this because she is playing on thousands of years of tradition’s chains. But that doesn’t change the truth: denying women control over their own reproduction is a keystone to the society-wide oppression and degradation of women and it has been for thousands of years.
But even with that, it is a fact that millions and millions of women—as well as many millions of men—do NOT buy that enslaving crap. This is very important. And it’s very important that all these people get even more clear on the incredible dangers facing women—and humanity as a whole—at the hands of the Trump/Pence Regime. There can be no compromise with these haters of women—no matter what package it’s wrapped in. We must sound the alarm, wage uncompromising struggle against every attack on women and drawing forward wave upon wave of others alongside us, and we must link this with—and this must fuel—the fight to drive the fascist Trump/Pence Regime from power before it’s too late.
