17 April 2015
Ideally, for this blog post I
would just like to write this quote and then fill the rest of the page with
exclamation points:
1.
“In sum, pregnancy and birth are still
considered processes that make a woman like a beast or an animal out of
control” (69).
2.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
However, for the sake of academia
I will try to put my thoughts into more eloquent words.
Kelly Oliver’s piece, “Pregnancy:
Choice and Excess,” hit me like a rock to the head. It honestly knocked all the
small and separate thoughts I have had about becoming a woman into one place
where they could finally build off each other and make sense. As a woman, my sexuality is
either my only source of personal development or the only barrier to my
personal development, depending on context (52). In college, I see it as a
barrier: if I get pregnant I won’t be able to go to class every day, school
won’t be my main priority and most of all, at least some people in my community
of support will turn away from me. As a college woman, I don’t want to get
pregnant, and because I have made that choice, I am distanced from my body and
the involuntary organs that might contradict that choice.
Yet, in another context, pregnancy
could be my only source of personal development once I move from girl à
woman. Oliver touches on this with the phrase “both/and,” which represents the
difficulty of being a woman biologically/socially and then some: there is more
to being a woman than existing as one (54). Women have gifts and skills and power
and things to share with the world, and ideally being a mother is one way for
them to exist as both a woman and as their other values separate from their body.
Ultimately, thought, women don’t get to
choose their context (most of the time). Humans can’t chose where we are born, and women, more so than man one could argue, can’t always afford to move somewhere new. In addition to that, I can’t think
of a society I could move to where men wouldn’t subconsciously correlate pregnancy
with, and this might sound weird, anarchy. There is not internal control
for pregnancy: humans cannot make themselves or their partner get pregnant and
they can’t prevent it either. It’s an irrational process in that way: reason
does not cause or prevent pregnancy, and because of that, women are associated with a “less
than” existence because they contain this source of anarchy. Right?
Stylistically, this is awesome and refreshing. I cannot express how much I love this. I also like the way you related your own experience to this piece, reacting internally. You express a singular, precise depiction of the pregnancy discussion; each woman has a story of pregnancy or a lack of one or abortion or… or… or… along with the complexity of feelings and implications the story has on the lives of that particular woman and others around her. The story of Lisabeth Salander is very singular and particular, but draws many parallels with the story of pregnancy.
ReplyDeleteLisabeth Salander has autonomy over her body and actions, like a woman has autonomy over her sexual activity, birth control, and choice to keep the baby or abort it. Yet autonomy is never the entirety of the being. Obviously there are outside complications which dispossess women and Salander alike—including rape. Even in their autonomy these individuals are pressed to conform to societal norms (and judged if they don’t.) Even in autonomy, individuals do not have control, outside of an individual reaction: in pregnancy this occurs in its sense of “anarchy” and unpredictability, in Lisbeth this occurs as others label her as mentally ill and a child.