This video is the work of one of the most brilliant grassroots organizations I know. These are women and men in DR Congo, turning the narratives about sexual violence upside down. They are changing the culture of silence -- silence that comes from the norms that say a rape changes a person's value in the world.
In this video, those who have experienced sexual violence stand up and call out the cultural beliefs that push them to the edge of society -- that would keep them silent, oppressed, and resigned to victimhood. These are men and women who teach their communities about how conception works -- and about a woman's right to say no.
Choice, in DR Congo, is not about abortion. Abortion is illegal there. It is about having the right to say no. It is about women having the latitude to make reproductive decisions for themselves and the future of their families.
As it turns out, the people in DR Congo are not all that different from us.
In America, choice really isn't about abortion, either.
Choice is about exercising our human right to say no. In America, ironically, the word is used as a bludgeon to oppose that human right. It is a straw man that rigidly means "Pro-Abortion." Abortion then becomes a trump card for all reproductive choice -- and it is taking a woman's right to say no to sex along with it.
Hyperbolic? Hardly -- considering our congressional obsession with "legitimate rape" and the level of duress that qualifies a respectable "no". Legislators pontificate at length about what they feel define valid conditions for rape. For them, the only time a woman has the right to say no is while a man beats her black and blue.
Sorry ladies.
Like many political arguments, this baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. The logical problem is not so important here. The fact that some people choose a rigid belief system around the bioethics of abortion is not a problem, either. The trouble begins when we privilege those beliefs, generalize them, and then impose them on real people.
This is a tough nut to crack. Privilege is hard to detect from the vantage point of privilege. The belief structure of privilege matches the expectation of society -- a society that has a vested interest in maintaining its belief structure. What is good for the privileged must be good for everyone.
Imagine that a man lives in a house made only for people like him, and identifiable others function as guests in his house. He makes the rules, so his rightness is given. He makes decisions for his guests accordingly, and finds them rude and ungrateful if they don't like his choices.
And his choices increasingly limit women's ability to control their reproductive lives, even when abortion is not on the table. In America, the privileged folks increasingly get to choose -- even for the rest of the world. And as it turns out, choices to limit reproductive rights are doing plenty of damage.
Countries with high gender inequality also experience more unequal distribution of human development.
Nobody is empowered when they can't make decisions about the most basic parts of their lives. The right to say no is a basic human right -- it is not a privilege to be granted by the dominant culture.
Want to affect poverty? Promote gender equality. Overpopulation? Promote gender equality. Impact disease control and health? Gender equality. Raise the standard of living? Let women participate equally in the formal economy. (This isn't just in the developing world. Gender inequality costs the global economy $ trillions per year worldwide.)
It's all about choice.
We can learn from our sisters and brothers in DR Congo. Gender equality starts when women have control over their reproductive lives -- and it has nothing to do with abortion. Abortion is illegal in all contexts in DR Congo, yet, choice means everything.
In America, abortion is a tiny part of women's reproductive healthcare. Yet, a growing cadre of government officials will have it trump every reproductive choice we can make. And today, our own culture of silence is shockingly close to letting these officials trump our basic human right to say no.
SpiritSisters
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Beautiful graphic used with permission of artist Michelle Robinson.
SpiritSisters: Writing In Women's Voices is a group of women from all walks of life who have come together to tell our stories and discuss women's issues and rights. We come from every ethnic group, from multiple sexual orientations and gender identities, from a broad spectrum of ability status, from a wide array of socioeconomic classes, and from a diversity of traditions and cultures – spiritual, religious, and secular.
Dominant culture narratives do not represent our lives; they elide, alter, and erase. We are sisters in spirit, and we are taking back our narratives. We are joining together in a circle of mutual trust and support to share our stories, our histories, our identities, our very selves, as individual women and as members of all of the diverse communities and intersections where we live — and doing so in our own voices.
We discuss the harms women experience when the dominant culture does not accurately consider, believe or hear women's voices.
We will also celebrate and share the strengths of our sisters in struggle, and the stories of women who are making a difference.
SpiritSisters will be posting Thursday 4:30 pm (Pacific)/7:30 pm (Eastern) each week, and additional postings when members have time available. We are sending email notices (BCC to ensure privacy of email addresses) when diaries are posted. If you would like to join our email list, please kosmail rb137.
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SpiritSisters:
Andrea Spande, Denise Oliver Velez, Diogenes2008, JoanMar, kishik, mixedbag, moviemeister76, nomandates, Onomastic, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, peregrine kate, poco, ramara, rb137, shanikka, TexMex, TrueBlueMajority, Vita Brevis, and Yasuragi.