10th
Week 12 “Against Abortion? Don’t have one” (car sticker)
This week we read “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness,” by Eli Clare. Clare writes about the body. Clare states, “The pernicious stereotypes, lies, and false images can haunt a body, stealing it away as surely as bullets do,” (414) In other words our bodies are stolen because of the stereotypes of society. Clare writes about disabeled bodies and how the moral model has transformed disability into a sign of moral weakness. This reminds me of the discussion we had in-class. We have labeled these bodies as broken/disabeled and that alone has categorized people and as a result you have people being treated differently. The question that was brought up in-class what whether we thought the British Top Model show was a good thing and whether it would change our views about disabeled bodies. I personally think that it is a good idea, ofcourse, looking at it from the media point of view. I think it is something people will watch and it might make other viewers hopefull. However, I think that our society has ingrained these “stereotypical views” and there is no way that it will change. It is unfortunate that this social construction can be done and constructed by us (society) but once placed it cannot be undone. Another article we read this week is “Women and Medicalization,” by Catherine Kohler Riessman. Riessman argues that “both physicians and women have contributed to the redefinding of women’s experience into medical categories.” (47) It is interesting to think about why certain human conditions are now being labeled as illnesses but were not ever viewed that way before (and vice versa). An example in the article is homosexuality which at one time was categorized as “bad” and then as “sick.” This reminds me of when we use to categorize those who had schizophrenia as “devilish,” as well as the mentally retarded. We now look at these conditions as conditions that need to be treated and taken care of. Article also mentions abortion and how that has also been redefined. I feel that now we are in a society in where we have to decide or label ourselves as one or the other. Are we pro-choice or pro-life? In-class classmates would say well I’m pro-choice but it also depends how many abortions one gets or I’m pro-life but if a woman gets rapped then it’s a different situtation. I feel that these two labels are like two extremes (should be more like a scale) and doesn’t fit us all. “Morality and Personhood,” by Rosalind Pollack Petchesky mentions how the labels we created are social constructs, also the guilt. “One antihumanist, “prolife” writer insists that the woman’s feelings have nothing to do with whether or not she is guilty, which is determine by her objective relation to the “moral law,” In class one student mentioned how the feeling of guiltyness is something we as a society have created because we have labeled abortion as morally wrong. It is interesting to me to find that we have created this label and now whether we are pro-choice or not we cannot help but feel like we might be morally wrong or selfish. www.friesian.com/abortion.htm
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