Whether by choosing to have a child or to abort it - women are definitely the ones more affected by the decision. And that fact is quite unambiguous.
Well...some might suggest that
the children are the ones most affected by the decision. And we're all somebody's children.
I'm not trying to be glib; in this conversation, there's very little that's unambiguous. This is one of the central ideas of the film.
I'm not saying men shouldn't have an opinion or be free to express it, but when I see 4 men as principal credits on a documentary about abortion - yes, it is a red flag for me.
It seems to me that your beef is with IMDb and the way they decide to credit a project's participants. Tony Kaye -- yes, a man -- is the primary creative force behind this movie. The three "stars" listed at the top of the page are simply three interviewees, not the three leads (like Scheider, Dreyfuss and Shaw in Jaws). The "cast" listed below this is sorted alphabetically. The film includes many points of view from both sexes, and does not allow the proverbial patriarchy (conservative or otherwise) to monopolize the conversation.
If you get around to seeing it, let us know what you think.
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Passta
12 years ago
Ok, fair enough :)
just this:
"Well...some might suggest that the children are the ones most affected by the decision..."
Whatever some might suggest, a fetus is not a child by any definition of the word. The pro-life argument, as I understand it, states that (human) life begins at conception, and therefore fetuses have (human) rights.
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thecountessofcastlecsejt
12 years ago
However you rationalize it, there are almost three times as many men in the documentary. Further, your response to the OP is patronizing and dismissive. Of course her status as a woman should be privileged when discussing abortion over that of a man just like the voices of black South Africans should be privileged when discussing apartheid. Or are you one of those people who thinks that you have to be unbiased to discuss a topic rationally, so straight white males (the ones with ACTUAL privilege) are better positioned to discuss any topic of social relevance? I'm another woman who noticed the lack of female voices and was scared away from watching the documentary. The problem isn't in our heads. The problem men can't see their own privilege and power, so they continue to yammer on and on about contraception and abortion and their ignorance has a very tangible affect on my uterus.
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balthazar_bee
12 years ago
"Almost three times as many men in the documentary"? I didn't count screen minutes devoted to men vs. women, which is the only way to accurately make the point you're trying to make (dubious though it is). If you're simply counting the names on the IMDb cast list, you're drawing the same sort of uninformed conclusion that the OP did.
She owned up that she hadn't seen the movie -- which is what we're discussing here. What's the beef? That I'm asserting that both women and men can have valid points of view with respect to the issue?
I think the point I was trying to make is that drawing strict black and white lines on a sexual basis between "informed" vs. "uninformed" before seeing the piece in question and complaining that female perspectives aren't given a fair shake sight unseen is ignorant.
Best wishes to your uterus.
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hoboboxerjoe
12 years ago
You throw up a strawman about race and equate it to sex and sexes?
A woman has a womb, that she carries the child in. Her health is affected by this, the child's health is completly dependent on her. It is less of a symbiotic relationship and closer to a parasitic relationship. Baby doesn't feed mom, baby just uses mom as a vessel.
For you to say that men get an equal say in that, for you to even imply it, or to even merely argue with someone who says that woman should get more of a say (Which is an implication within itself) is ridiculous.
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balthazar_bee
12 years ago
How is it a straw man? People who lived in South Africa during apartheid were obviously more affected than those who lived in America and criticized those policies. Did that make the latter points of view invalid? Could they bring nothing to the conversation?
Men are less directly affected by a pregnancy than a woman, therefore they can't have anything to say about the issue? For many, this is a moral issue -- your reference to a child as a parasite suggests it isn't for you, fine -- and society, all of society, should be involved in the conversation.
Again, as I've said more than once in this thread, it boils down to people using (of all things) the IMDb cast page to judge the worth of a documentary that they haven't seen.
(a) The documentary does include many women, (b) several of the men interviewed are noted academics, legal scholars, movement leaders, and (c) the film actually seems to undermine many of the their perspectives. (Rightly, as some are nuts.)
I'm frankly a little surprised that people are jumping all over this. My reply was about the film, and this is a remarkable film that deserves to be seen and talked about. To try to strip it of its credibility via superficial, sight-unseen, back door bean counting ("This film's interviewees are 53% men!") is as cheap as it is ludicrous.
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