Long and meandering post a-comin’. Try and separate the wheat from the chaff!
My two posts on Amy Richards are still collecting lots of thoughtful responses. I’m getting lots of visitors this morning from a new (to me) blog, After Abortion. Go give ‘em a look.
The best critique of what I’ve written is over at Trish Wilson’s place. Thoughtfully and politely, and with courageous self-disclosure, Trish takes on several of my points. I don’t agree with her on many things, but I am glad our exchange on such a profoundly emotional issue is so civil. Let’s keep that tone!
In the comments section after her terrific post, a reader named AmarettiXL writes:
I’m the (single parent) daughter of a married woman who always advised me to never rely on a man. Many women advise their daughters in this way; so what? I’m not so dense as to see why some men get their shorts in a bunch upon hearing this phrase, but to them all I can say is…it’s not about you! It’s about making sure one’s daughter grows up with the ability to support herself if and when needed. Look through the financial-advice columns (Suze Orman, Michelle Singletary, etc); there’s still plenty of women out there in the so-called post-feminist world who don’t know a damn thing about their own family finances! I don’t want my daughter growing up to be one of them, so she’ll be getting the same advice from me. The message isn’t “men are deadbeats” the message is “take care of yourself”. Clear?
And a reader of mine, blackcoffeeblues, asks a similar question:
Just a quick question, Hugo…so do you mean to say that the teaching of women to not “rely on a man” is negative thing? I’m not challenging you, I’m must asking for a little more Hugo-thought on the statement.
I have mentioned on more than one occasion that the phrase “Don’t rely on a man” troubles me. But it upsets me primarily because I know that it is the unreliability of men that has made that phrase such an essential part of so many young women’s upbringing. Here is where I part company with most of the feminist movement: I continue to believe that feminism, at its core, is a logical response to a legacy of irresponsible, reckless, and disappointing male behavior. No, I don’t mean that if all men were just more reliable, faithful, dependable and moral than all women would be happy to be barefoot and pregnant! As a Christian, however, I believe that all human beings are made for relationship with one another. We are meant to lead lives that are neither dependent nor radically autonomous, but interdependent.
What do I mean by these terms? Dependency is a relationship rooted in inequality. A small child is dependent upon its parents. My chinchilla is dependent upon me and my girlfriend. It is certainly possible to be emotionally and spiritually dependent upon one’s spouse; that generally isn’t healthy. (Not that I am holding myself up as some expert on marriage). Autonomy is the attempt to lead a life of near-total self-reliance and self-determination. Autonomy has a lot of allure in our culture. Problem is, it doesn’t work for most people. To lead a radically independent life requires financial resources only available to a relative handful of educated, mostly white, Westerners. And even the richest and most independent person will begin life by having their diapers changed — and they are fairly likely to spend the final days of their life in that same condition. Real autonomy is a chimera, but a seductive one. And it is only appealing in the long run to adolescents and to those whose emotional wounds have left them perpetual teenagers.
Interdependence is living in complementary relationship. Mutual sacrifice, mutual reliance. Pregnancy is not easy. The extreme vulnerability of women during the later stages of pregnancy bears witness to the obvious need to depend on another human being for protection. (Yes, I’m “arguing from design”, a rhetorical tactic that most secular feminists absolutely despise. But so help me, it’s at the very core of my faith.) Interdependent folks know how to care for themselves, but they also know how to let another person care for them. They are capable of trusting another person, of being radically vulnerable to someone else (presumably, their spouse). On a practical level, that means being willing to merge your finances with another human being, all the while knowing how to take care of your money should disaster strike and you find yourself without your partner.
If God blesses me with a daughter someday, I will raise her to (to borrow a phrase out of context from Ronald Reagan) “trust, but verify.” To lead a successful and happy life, I believe we must be open to the likelihood that the highest form of joy is to be found in community, and for most folks, particularly within family; in love, marriage, and children. That does not mean that other, more solitary pursuits do not have value — merely that for both men and women, the longings of our own bodies and our own hearts suggest that the vast majority of us desire enduring connection with others above all else.
Okay, I’m getting carried away.
We live in a culture that is remarkably tolerant of bad male behavior. I am not asking women to start trusting men first; I am asking my brothers to start changing their behavior! One of the first things we guys need to do is to listen to women, particularly our sisters in the feminist movement. Men have to be willing to hear the stories of the betrayal, abuse, harassment, objectification, de-valuing and dismissal that so many women have experienced at the hands of men. When women don’t return my casual smiles on the street, when they avoid eye contact with my male friends, I don’t complain. I know that defensiveness is a logical learned response to a predatory male culture. I also think that most liberal feminism, the sort that worships “choice”, is also a logical learned response to bad male behavior. What woman wouldn’t want to maximize her own freedom, given that so many men in her life have behaved so badly towards her? We men have to hear that! And we have to be strong enough to prove that we are different. And we have to be strong enough to do our own inner work that leads us to be willing to be different!
One other aspect of the argument to touch on. In her last paragraph, Trish writes:
In his second post, Hugo brought up two things that I believe are irrelevant to Richards’ abortion – the man’s choice and Richards’ description of growing up without a father. He suspects, without any real proof, that Richards’ mother likely told her to never rely on a man because he says that’s what the young women of single mothers that he has met have told him. Again, I didn’t take Richards’ description of her home life the way he did. I didn’t take her “I never missed not having him” as an emphatic “never” the way he did. I saw it as a simple statement of fact, not a hidden code that she regretted being “fatherless.” I know that family values ideologues would have jumped all over her statements as “proof” that she is damaged goods because she “grew up fatherless” when there is absolutely no proof of any such thing. It came across to me as if Hugo was trying to find something lacking in her family background that would explain, to his satisfaction, why she would choose to have such an abortion and to discuss it the way she did. Those comments from him seemed to be more about him and less about Richards. I took her opening paragraph to say that she already recognized the hardships that went with raising children alone, since she saw families from all walks of life, including her friends who were raising their nieces and nephews because their sisters became pregnant out of wedlock. Richards saw the difficulties of single parenting and she did not have any romantic notions about it.
Trish is certainly right about my desire to “psychologize” Amy Richards. And I think we’ve arrived at one of those moments where secular and religious folks may find themselves at an impasse. I don’t believe that any fatherless child can go through life without experiencing dramatic repercussions. I don’t think that is possible spiritually or psychologically (and I do have most psychologists on my side). And thus I do think that any woman who claims that her relationship (or lack thereof) with her father has no bearing whatsoever on her relationships with other men is in denial. Period. And I remain convinced, even without knowing the details of the story, that it is highly likely that her father’s absence is deeply connected to the fact that as an unmarried woman of 34, she chose to abort two of the three children that she and her partner had conceived.
The number one thing I as a man can do to end abortion is to teach responsibility to my younger brothers. I must role model for them the sort of behavior that will lead them to become the sort of men who will earn the radical trust of the women in their lives. That will damn sure cut the abortion rate in this country.
Rant over. By the way, Lance Armstrong was magnificent this morning!
UPDATE: Amanda at Mouse Words is not quite as kind to me as Trish; she takes vigorous issue with my posts on Amy Richards. I liked these bits:
This guy made me angry. I should avoid anti-choice people, particularly men, since the very fact that they think they have a right to use the force of the law to make women comply to their wishes means that they believe on one level or another that women’s bodies are naturally subject to men’s authority… really, sometimes I’m even pissier with guys who think of themselves as liberal and progressive and feminist even but then start shooting sparks when women actually exert some of the autonomy that’s been so long in coming… Trish is really nice to this guy–I want to kick him.
Fortunately, Amanda lives in Austin.
