From: LeoCasey-AT-aol.com
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 21:09:06 EST
Subject: M-TH: Rubicon Issues


Mark Jones:
<< I meant we have to support the Right to Choose 'because women since 
 Wollstonecraft have fought for it'. I didn't give any other reason. 
 I'm saying that we support a demand raised by women. If they didn't 
 raise it, we men, being honourable, conscientious, simple souls, 
 might do so anyway, as some kind of didactic exercise, but no form 
 of oppression has historical meaning until the oppressed oppose it 
 (except as a form of ruling class triumphalism). >>

Do I read this correctly? Are you saying that one supports a demand because it
comes from the oppressed, not because it is the right thing to do. If so, I
dissent in the strongest possible terms. The reason to support a woman's right
to choose is because it is the right, moral thing to do: it promotes the
autonomy and freedom of women, and it ensures that decisions concerning
reproduction are made in the most thoughtful, ethical way. The notion that one
simply lines up behind the "oppressed" (ignoring, of course, the fact that the
oppressed never speaks with one voice) is the kind of pseudo-reasoning that
had the left blindly supporting the Panthers through not considerable amounts
of outright gangsterish and thuggish behavior. It is the crudest of "left"
analysis, based more on middle class politics of guilt than on any serious
analysis of the issues involved.

Leo


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