Monthly Archives: October 2014

In response to online reproductive rights module

When reading through the online module about the film Children of Men, the character of Kee, who’s personhood is ignored as everyone focuses solely on the child she is pregnant with, reminded me of a recent occurrence in Ireland. An immigrant woman found out she was pregnant (as a result of rape) upon entering the country, and wished to have an abortion for cultural reasons, which was denied to her by the state who proceeded to force feed her when she attempted suicide, keeping her in hospital against her will until her child was delivered by c-section. This was clearly, done only with thought of the fetus/child in mind, the woman in question was viewed simply as an incubator; her emotional distress ignored and her bodily autonomy violated horribly. This is in the present day too; Ireland isn’t some sort of post-apocalyptic infertile society. That I’m able to draw this comparison is a reflection of how much work we have left to do in the fight for Women’s reproductive rights.

On another tangent, though the work of Dr. Henry Morgentaler and others like him lead to the legalisation of abortion in Canada, the fight for women’s access to abortion services is still a pressing issue today. BC has only 7 practicing clinics, 4 of which are located in Vancouver, this poses a huge geographic barrier for women living in rural areas who need to access these services – factors like taking time off work to travel, spending money on gas, the procedure itself and possibly overnight accomodation in Vancouver add up, making accessing abortion difficult even in this day and age. Furthermore, in the USA there has been a recent surge in laws restricting clinics from practicing abortions and thus greatly reducing access. This is the new pro-life strategy – if they can’t make abortion illegal, at least they can make it all but inaccessible.

I thought the online module gave a good overall look into reproductive rights with some interesting discussion points, though the discussion of the book The Handmaiden’s Tale was confusing without having read it, and how the slideshows lined up with the links on connect was also a bit confusing.

Forced reclamation of ‘queer’

Any time I read about Queer theory, such as in Chapter 7 of Cultural Theory (Storey, 2012), I find myself focusing more on the use of the word ‘queer’ than on any aspects of the actual theory. ‘Queer’ is everywhere today – it’s all but replaced LGBT as an umbrella term for the entire community, people now refer to the ‘queer community’ in the news, papers and everyday life. At my university in Australia we have a ‘Queer collective’, though at UBC we have ‘Pride UBC’ the group itself constantly uses the word queer as an umbrella term in event names and general discussion. Though I understand why so many people have jumped to replace LGBT with ‘queer’ – it’s vague and inclusive of every gender and sexual minority group without being a ridiculously long acronym – I resent that our culture has latched onto that word in particular. The problem is simply that queer is a homophobic slur. Though for many of us, using queer in a negative fashion seems like a thing of the past, it is still used as a slur in many places to this day. And current usage aside, it will always carry the weight of a slur. While many people will reclaim slurs and, for example, a lesbian may self identify as a ‘dyke’ in a challenge of the word’s harmful history, most people know it’s offensive to refer to any lesbian as a dyke, or label the lesbian community the ‘dyke community’. But for some reason society has made an exception for ‘queer’. By using ‘queer’ as an umbrella term for gender and sexual minorities we force people to ‘identify’ with a word that is used with hatred to abuse and dehumanise them both historically and presently.

Storey, J. (2012). Cultural theory and popular culture: An introduction. 6th ed. Pearson Education Limited: Harlow.