Quote:
Originally Posted by evolveme
My experience of motherhood is sacred to me.
This does not erase the reality of innumerable women and girls all over the world who are daily forced into the condition of motherhood against their ability or right to choose such a condition for themselves. To denounce the use of the term "breeder" even in an effort to construct a framework in understanding how it is used against women by the very paradigm that has created these conditions, seems to me, another method of limiting our choices in how we work to combat what has happened/is happening to us.
No one here - not one person - has argued that this word is not harmful. The original intent, to my reading, was to discuss exactly how harmful the basis for the use of this word is. And, yes, it's pretty fucking horrific. But not to be able to utilize it as a means of discussing the origins of its nefarious uses -- whether mine, yours or the patriarchy's -- is only another way to make secret what should be emblazoned across the consciousness of every woman everywhere.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by evolveme
Also, and I meant to state this in the post preceding, piggybacking off firie's words:
To insist that all of motherhood is necessarily and by virtue a sacred thing, is really only a hair different than the very real and damaging religious dogmatism that insists that women are not worthy unless they achieve motherhood, that this is their function, and that this is the purpose of the union of marriage - a concept which is used to prohibit the LBGTQI community from access to that right.
Even if we don't have "religious beliefs," our "spiritual" ones can and do matter, particularly at the level that they begin to bleed over into points of public policy. In the U.S., anyway, an unfortunate percentage of laws are formed at the behest of religious and spiritual bias.
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Exactly. And I would admit to typically trying to avoid the word "sacred" when describing motherhood unless a mother tells me that is her word to describe her experience, because I tend to quite shy away from words that do have a certain "religious" quality to them (it's my stubborn atheism perhaps) . But if that is the experience of the mother, then that, to me, is a beautiful, marvelous thing.