Politics of Sex

                The topic of abortion and whether one is pro-life or pro-choice has become a very important matter in politics. Common sense would lead one to believe that a woman should be able to decide what they want with their bodies, yet the conversation surrounding this topic says otherwise, which causes one to wonder… why can’t women be in charge of their own bodies? The answer: Patriarchy. As Bell Hooks states in The Will to Change, “Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence” Their dominance in politics and society allows them to be control of what ought to be women’s rights. Roxanne Gay puts all of women’s sentiment into words in The Alienable Rights of Women, “Often, when I read the news, I have to make sure I am not, in fact, reading The Onion. We continue to have national and state debates about abortion, birth control, and reproductive freedom, and men, mostly, are directing that debate” Again, it is the system of patriarchy that allows men to dictate what women can do with their bodies and it is that system of patriarchy that allows the view of women to not fully equate to men as a human being. Why are women considered lesser beings? Why must women not be entitled to fundamental rights? The answer stems from how society imagines women and how the media emphasizes that imagination and further exaggerates it.

Cover of magazine headlining what's important. Essentially teaching you how to best cater to men.

                “Women’s magazines for over a century have been one of the most powerful agents for changing women’s roles, and throughout that time—today more than ever—they have consistently glamorized whatever the economy, their advertisers, and, during wartime, the government, needed at that moment from women,” Naomi Wolf says in The Beauty Myth. With all that, what has been consistently true is the way women are portrayed in not only magazines but in all sorts of media. Media promotes the image that women should be dainty, fragile, and elegant; and that men should be the one calling the shots since they’re the ones that know best. We’re wired to believe that women are supposed to cater towards men, which further puts them in a position of power.

https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/roe-v-wade

                Patriarchy, in turn, produce men like Mike Pence who is pro-life and wants to pass a bill, essentially taking away a woman’s freedom of choice to do what she wants with her body.  "He promised to work with Congress to pass the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection act, a bill that would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks with exceptions only for cases of rape, incest, and threats to the woman’s life." according to Life News.Many have been outraged and have made donations to Planned Parenthood in his name to express the discontent. 

                “Ultimately, the meaning of woman is sexual difference, the absence of the penis as visually ascertainable, the material evidence on which is based the castration complex essential for the organization of entrance to the symbolic order and the law of the father. Thus the woman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, the active controllers of the look, always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified.” Laura Mulvey writes in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. At the end of the day, what makes a woman different from a man and hold less power than  a man is a lack of a body part. A small body part like that holds so much power for those that possess it. Society and its views need to change. The wielders of that body part should not be the ones to have power over those that lack it.