Pro-choice activist Marilyn Frye writes about why she thinks some men are pro-life:
“The parasitism of males on females is, as I see it, demonstrated by the panic, rage, and hysteria generated in so many of them by the thought of being abandoned by women…
The fetus lives parasitically. It is a distinct animal surviving off the life (the blood) of another animal creature. It is incapable of surviving on its own resources, of independent nutrition; incapable even of symbiosis.
If it is true that males live parasitically upon females, it seems reasonable to suppose that many of them and those loyal to them are in some way sensitive to the parallelism between their situation and that of the fetus.
They could easily identify with the fetus. The woman who is free to see the fetus as a parasite might be free to see the man as a parasite…
They do not worry about murder and involuntary sterilization in prisons, nor murder in war, nor murder by pollution and industrial accidents.
Either these are not real to them or they cannot identify with the victims; but anyway, killing in general is not what they oppose. They worry about the rejection by women, at women’s discretion…
I discuss abortion here because it seems to me to be the most publicly emotional and most physically dramatic ground on which the theme of separation and male parasitism is presently being played out…
Male parasitism means that males must have access to women; it is the Patriarchal Imperative. But feminist no–saying is more than a substantial removal (redirection, reallocation) of goods and services because
Access is one of the faces of Power. Female denial of male access to females substantially cuts off the flow of benefits, but it is also the form and full portent of assumption of power.”
Marilyn Frye “Some Reflections on Separatism and Power” Sinister Wisdom no. 6, Summer 1975, pp. 33 – 35
Above: 16 weeks. Are men who oppose killing babies like this one parasites? And what about pro-life women?
Share on Facebook
