Amidst our interesting and provocative conversation today in class revolving around the duties of a woman and how the subjectivity of a woman can become marginalized, I began to wonder about the female body, and the reliance which an unborn child is inextricably linked to with its mother.
Women's bodies become the domain which enables a fetus' life. There is a dependency between unborn child and mother. A women's temple is not their temple: in media and advertising, women can lose their grasp over their breasts, but in relation to child labor, an entire women's body can become jeopardized at the hands of an unborn child.
I really appreciate Women's Studies, because it has helped enlighten me to the (non-existent) self-ownership of a woman's body. Issues like these were never brought to my attention, but I feel they have helped illuminate a stark problem which clearly plagues many women. And, beyond that, I have begun to develop my own responses to many of these crises.
The one that I wish to elaborate on today is the relationship of women's bodies in relation to their fetuses. In
"Are Mothers Persons?" Susan Bordo says that "some groups have clearly been accorded subject-status and its protections, while others have regularly been denied those protections" (73). I took this to mean that while some people are privileged in having a wide breadth of choices and volition in controlling their lives, others, like women, are constantly stifled by a set of distinct responsibilities which comes to define them. Their bodies become, singularly, bodies.
This is especially pertinent for pregnant and soon-to-be mothers who have the burden (or joy) of sustaining a baby while she's pregnant and then, while it is a new-born, taking care of it. Many say that women are isolated and become unfairly responsible for the baby whereas men have greater opportunity to explore other, non-child-rearing possibilities. And this is probably true. But why has it come to that?
As I said in class, I am, as a male, not as fit to raise a child as a woman might be. Much of this I feel stems from biological reasons. I cannot care for a child during pregnancy, nor can I breast feed a baby. I think much of these caring qualities and rearing abilities stem from these biological explanations. They derive from the capabilities of women which men simply are unable to perform.
It is something intrinsic in humanity which places women at the forefront of raising a child. But with that, with bringing up a baby, comes the denial - the "res extensa" as Bordo refers to it as - which comes over a woman. When we examine these instances, it is not a woman's choice to have a baby, or breast feed, it is something, plainly, which they are biologically capable of and men are not.
Therefore there also exists a dependency between baby and mother. A baby cannot live without the mother carrying the baby in her stomach, nor can it survive (at least healthily) without her breast milk. Because of this, women now become subjects for their kids, living for them, but it is not a societal placement as much as it is a biological one.
Even so it's unfair that women come under this "denial of subjectivity" and are forced to undertake much of the responsibility for raising their children. Although much of this stems from biological reaffirmations, it is still unfair that women became mired in this isolation which ultimately can depict their lifestyle. In the end, there are pros and cons, as there are for men, but the denial of protections and the seclusion of certain responsibilities, and especially one that can be stifling and unfair like the dependence of raising a child, is not fun.
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