I Could Not Find an Appropriate Visual Aid for This Post.

I know. The very title of this piece is enough to make you want to vomit and skip over it, regardless of what sort of women’s rights activist you might be. I posted it for comments from the Cathofeminism Facebook community because I feel it is important to acknowledge that this line of thinking is real. It is not satire. It is not a myth perpetuated by crazy prolife groups. There are really men that use women.  Destiny from NWF hits the nail square on the head:

“…(G)oing from an ‘incubator’ to a ‘semen receptacle’ is no progress at all.”

Let’s take a moment to look beyond the crazy here. Look at what it must be like to be a woman on the receiving end of this treatment. Can you blame her? This type of “bro-choice” male uses women for his own sexual gratification and the surge of power. He is selfish. He uses abortion as a tool to get what he wants. That kind of manipulation does damage to women: especially the woman in the relationship.

Abortion is morally reprehensible. It is taking the life of a human being. Allowing men to manipulate, dominate, and control women is also morally reprehensible. It is not a “private” matter. That kind of abuse affects us all. That kind of abuse and use of women as sexual objects is what allows things like this weekend’s VMA debacle to continue to occur. 

Why are we surprised? Look at the aftermath. Look at who is taking the heat. The twenty year old girl. Yes, she is an adult and will take responsibility for her part, but what about the man in the performance? What about those that produced it? There were many people involved in the decision to put that on stage, yet Miley is the one being torn to shreds. (Here is a blogger that first posted about Miley, but followed up with a decent post to remind others that she was not the only one on that stage.)

If we find men that manipulate women into abortion and abortion itself to be morally reprehensible, then we must stop placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of the female involved. We must find ways to remind her that the man using her is not her support. We must find ways to help her say “yes” to her child’s life, no matter the circumstance of the birth. If we are going to tell her that her child deserves life even if she was coerced or raped or showed bad decision making, then we must be there to show her she is not an object to be used. We must be a society that does not treat women as sexual objects, and we cannot simply write it of as “she wants to be used as a sexual object.” When you offer no reasonable alternative, it is not a choice.