[Text/Observer.com columnist Zhong Xueping]
There is no need to go into details about what happened on June 24, 2022. It is not difficult to imagine what kind of life challenges, changes and experiences will be brought to millions of women living in more than half of the states in the United States now and in the near future.
How to identify the reverse fate of Roe v. Wade (Roe v. Wade) from 1973 to 2022?
There have been many interpretations of this ruling of The US Supreme Court . However, no matter how we interpret it, what we are told is that the formulation and interpretation of its laws are essentially political. On important "rights" items such as gun ownership, abortion, elections (including who can provide election funds anonymously), separation of church and state, etc., the long-standing so-called "empowerment" and seizure of power are entirely based on legislative, judicial power and Who holds the administrative power? Even within the bourgeois legal , political competition can become fierce.
I recall that when I first came to the United States to study, I learned from movies, media, classes, and academic discussions how American women had to go through various channels in the era when abortion was illegal (from the early 19th century to the 1970s). Those who had money went abroad, while those who had no money risked their lives, sought out underground abortions or even found their own methods, and many people lost their lives as a result.
On the one hand, we understand that the cultural and social forces within it are so powerful that some state governments have legislated to ban abortion since 1812, until the Supreme Court's decision in 1973. I also learned that those powerful opposition forces not only never disappeared or changed their opinions, but also had strong organizational and mobilization capabilities.
On the other hand, in daily interactions with classmates, professors, and future colleagues, what I feel is that after 1973, American women no longer have to worry and can completely "make decisions about my body." During the five years when
was a graduate student in the Department of Comparative Literature, as a teaching assistant in the English Department, I taught English and American literature classes to sophomore students. One of the specially designated textbooks was "The Handmaids' Tale" and its adaptation. movie of.
The 1990 "The Handmaid" movie poster
"The Handmaid" is a novel published in 1985 by Canadian female writer Margaret Atwood (Margaret Atwood). The story takes place in the near future in New England, USA. A white supremacist totalitarian religious organization overthrew the American Republic and established a country called the Republic of Gilead. The content of the story is mainly about how women are reorganized in this "dystopia". Young and fertile people became "handmaids" who specialized in conceiving and giving birth to children for male officials. Women who were infertile or beyond their childbearing years were mostly sent to work as coolies or servants.
Undoubtedly, the "future dystopia" of "The Handmaid" is a warning, which can be said to be an epistemic mobilization carried out by the liberal mainstream through university education. But probably until Trump came to power, most liberal elites did not feel that what "The Handmaid" warned was getting closer to reality.
Therefore, if we borrow the phrase "let the bullet fly for a while" that is familiar to Chinese people today, then this time, I am afraid the first thing to understand is that this "bullet" did not come out of the barrel someday in June 2022. It has been flying for a long time and will continue to fly. It's just that this time it "flew" into the open, forcing those who have been unwilling to face it for a long time and don't know how to face it, to have to face it.
The feminist perspective based on the binary opposition between men and women cannot comprehensively understand the long-term struggle between abortion rights and anti-abortion in the United States. In 1973, the all-male Supreme Court (eight whites and one black) ruled that women’s constitutional right to abortion was part of the “right to privacy.” Nearly fifty years later, in 2022, five justices, including one black man and one woman (Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts did not agree to overturn the case), ruled that this understanding of the Constitution was completely wrong, because the Constitution did not Meaning, that is, a woman’s right to abortion is not inherent in the Constitution [written by a group of white men] at the end of the 18th century.
The male justices in 1973 ruled Roe v. Wade 7 to 2, Image source: U.S. Supreme Court
Today’s “more diverse” justices, Image source: U.S. Supreme Court
In addition, although there are various Led by men in conservative groups, the anti-abortion crowd has always had a large female presence and is the backbone of the movement. There are also a lot of minorities involved. You can see them everywhere in the annual "pro-life" parade. This time the Supreme Court "seized power" and they were the ones who shed tears with excitement. Aren’t these seemingly “rainbow” colorful combinations quite in line with the “correctness” of American liberal political discourse?
Relatively speaking, in recent decades, in addition to "Planned Parenthood" (a family planning organization initiated by women in the early 20th century, there are hundreds of medical institutions in the United States that provide female reproductive services for more than a hundred years to the present), Because some of the medical institutions they belong to have been harassed for a long time, except for occasionally speaking out in mainstream media, organizations that once fought for abortion rights and women's rights rarely make their presence felt. Where have they all gone?
Furthermore, in the past fifty years, Western feminist discourse has been in the ascendant and spread all over the world. It has even become one of the reasons for American female liberal hawks to declare war on foreign countries. Why is it that the political correctness of power politics cannot even protect a basic right that it considers to belong to women?
Perhaps the key to the problem is that the rights that one thinks he has gained have no solid foundation. The theory that seems to be comprehensive is far out of touch with reality.
In fact, compared with the constitutions of 168 countries in the world, the U.S. Constitution still does not have the clause equality between men and women . Perhaps this clause is just a decoration in many countries. Indeed, as the “longest revolution”, the real process of women’s liberation is full of contradictions, progressing and regressing. However, in a country where the "law is supreme", even the most basic constitutional provision of equality between men and women does not exist, then this time the deprivation of women's "right to abortion" cannot be more "normal".
In 1920, American women won the right to vote. Striking while the iron is hot, some organizations proposed the "Equal Rights Constitution Amendment." It specifically refers to the prohibition of discrimination based on “sex” and should become part of the U.S. Constitution. However, as a formal amendment proposal, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was not passed by Congress until 1972. However, because the U.S. Constitution amendment requires two steps, this amendment has not been passed so far.
Specifically, there are two steps to passing a constitutional amendment. First, it requires approval by two-thirds of both houses of Congress. Second, the parliaments (House and Senate) of three-quarters of the states (in the 1970s, 38 out of 50 states) jointly passed it and ratified it.
After this amendment was passed by the House and Senate of the federal government in 1972, from 1972 to 1978, the House and Senate of 35 states voted to approve it, including some southern and western mountain states, but it was still less than 38 states regulated. Influenced by the civil rights movement and the women's movement in the 1960s and 1970s, it was more likely that the " Cold War" would face cultural challenges from the socialist camp . At that time, the conservative forces in the United States were relatively open. However, those southern state legislatures reneged a few years later and formally voted to rescind their previous approvals, although it is unclear whether their revocation itself was unconstitutional.
Until 2022, another fifty years have passed, the amendment continues to be suspended, and there is no sign that it may be passed. As a result, women's right to abortion continues to be limited to the Supreme Court's interpretation and ruling on the Constitution without the Equal Rights Amendment. Of course, some people believe that abortion rights transcend women themselves. Even if the amendment is established, it will continue to be troublesome because of religious traditions.
Interestingly, at the same time, not many feminists have done enough to pass a constitutional amendment over the past few decades. What has emerged instead is the so-called "cultural turn" on gender issues.
At the public level, although the former leaders of the women's movement would appear as leaders of NOW (National Organization of Women) in the media in the 1980s, their figures and voices have unknowingly remained in the media in the 1980s. He disappeared from the mainstream media and was suspected of integrating into the Rainbow Alliance with the Democratic Party as the "big tent" in the 1990s, becoming an elite figure in the political mainstream.
At the cultural level, especially the discourse level, the main battlefield has turned to "identity politics" and the emergence of various "feminist theories" as theoretical support, which have gradually become a "prominent subject" in universities. It must be pointed out that one of the signs at the beginning of this process (the 1970s and 1980s) was that some theorists attacked Marxism, believing that the latter had no "gender consciousness" and proposed to "divorce" it.
Feminist theory after the "divorce" tilted towards various "post" theories in the theoretical practice of male theorists actively introducing various "poststructural theories" from the European continent (hereinafter collectively referred to as "postmodern theory"). "Women's Issues" and "Women's Studies" were gradually replaced by "gender" theory and became an important part of the "critical theory" that blossomed in the United States. And "domestic sales to exports", especially to non-Western countries.
remembers that at least twenty years ago, American universities renamed "women's studies" to "gender studies". My school eventually followed suit and discussed changing the name. A colleague with a firm Marxist stance disagreed because mainstream "feminist theory" could not convince her that changing the name would definitely enhance people's understanding of "gender" issues, let alone the understanding of the real problems faced by women. . Of course, the minority obeyed the majority, and the committee voted to rename it “Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies”. At least those who opposed it had their reasons, so the word "women" did not disappear.
In 2012, UCLA’s “Women’s Studies” celebrated its renaming to “Gender Studies”. Image source: Daily Bruin
So, we come to the reverse fate of the Roe v. Wade case mentioned at the beginning of the article—gain and loss. time.
The "feminist theory" that has developed vigorously over the past fifty years, on the one hand, has seen a vital women's right being gained and lost, but it cannot resist it. On the other hand, in the face of the loss of power that a large number of women in the United States have and are about to face, and the consequences that are not difficult to imagine, in practice, those feminists educated in university classrooms, in this reality, can " What kind of guidance can we draw from "Feminist Theory", and how can we face the further inequality among women due to different class status?
Or should we open the window and re-understand and develop Marxist socialist feminist thought? Go beyond identity politics centered on atomic individuals, enter into society, and understand issues at the level of social relations and social structure. Think beyond the descriptive function of so-called intersectionality to think about the political economy of inequality. For example, those "lower class" women who have no medical insurance, no financial security and ability, and no institutional level of help are facing various practical problems. Can they only accept bad luck because they do not belong to the areas that currently still have the right to abortion? ; For women who belong to the latter area, what are the dangers of rejoicing that they are "lucky"; what new challenges will they face, etc.
At the moment, I can only repeat what an American friend said: I hope it won’t be “lost and recovered” fifty years later.
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