Why Am I An Activist?

Why am I an activist? I ask this question to myself sometimes, when the steadfast stress of being politically and socially aware at all times takes a toll on my mental health. I feel like I am angry all the time.

Being a social activist is not easy. It is definitely rewarding, but not easy. I am not aggressively active in politics and I haven’t cut ties from the luxuries of my privileges like some activists have. But even then, the constant spiral of knowing that antiquated stereotypes are continuously keeping certain groups of people from accessing opportunities has the tendency of leaving you feeling a little emotionally exhausted.

I am a woman of color, and that in itself are two categories of people who are subjected to constant discrimination. As a woman and a person of color who is conscious of being negatively stereotyped by society, I don’t have much of a choice other than to advocate against sexism and racism.

But men, white men, white women, these people all have certain privileges over me that allow them to not have to face the same challenges that I do. So when I see a man speaking out against sexist discrimination in the work place like the gender pay gal, even though he was never personally affected by it, it makes me realize how important it is for everyone to be an activist. Everyone needs to feel this same anger. It is only when we are angry that we can rage a change in the society.

I have come to realize that being an activist should never be about what affects you and only you – although that can be an acute motivation – it should be about what affects the society and all the other marginalized sections negatively incorporated in it. Just like I want someone who doesn’t have to deal with sexism or racism to use their privilege to allow me to have a louder voice, I will use my privilege to allow those who do not have a platform as large as mine.

I am an activist because I care, not only about the problems that I have to face, but about the problems that are keeping those around me from reaching their fullest potential.

I am an activist because I believe in equality so notoriously that I am willing to give up the tactile peace of not caring, as should you.

Indian Politics and the Middle Class

Indian politics is vastly different from western politics, and these differences emerge not only from its geographical position, but also from the ideals and opinions inbred in the Indian Parties since Independence.

Since independence in 1945 from The British Crown, India has experienced a diverse leadership in parties like the Congress and BJP, as well as many dominant alliances between several parties.

But while this agglomeration of parties may provide a facade of idealistic diversity, it can be noted from the political history of India that Indian politics has widely been directed in the same, agrarian issues.

Due to the vast composition of farmers and rural peasant in the Indian population, the leadership has always stressed on rural development and development of the agricultural sector.

While this is a good step forward to bridging income inequalities, it does little to satisfy the growing needs of the urban middle class. And in practice, these policies that allegedly benefit the rural section, have only caused a slight increase in their standards of living. A large section of the Indian population continues to slug in poverty. All the while the middle class continue to slug in the lack of liberal political development.

Issues like rape culture, reproductive rights, abortion, gay marriage, trans rights, etc. – issues that have been emerging and developing in western countries, have failed to grip the Indian political scenario.

Indian politics continues to walk the meek path of pushing rural development, solidifying religious identities, and pushing for the Indian cultural values to be dominant.

While I agree that rural development is an important and substantial issues, focusing on only these antiquated policies has resulted the interest in Indian politics by the middle class to die down.

The younger generation, the generation of students and youths that is soon coming forward, need a government that focuses on liberalization in its society and social rights. The Indian political scenario needs to accept the changing social situation and encompass ideals like feminism, abortion rights, lgbt+ rights, etc. into its constitutional development.

Adoptions vs Abortions

Recently I was asked a question by an acquaintance while we were moldy discussing healthcare reforms: What are other options for women looking for an abortion.

He wanted to know that if a woman who was seeking an abortion could be provided with an alternative choice. He was looking to facilitate the “adoption vs abortion argument.”

But really, I don’t even think of that as an argument. Mainly because there isn’t a choice between abortion and adoption. The two are different decisions to be made by the pregnant person at different times during their pregnancy/post pregnancy.

Other than abortion, the only choice is to carry the pregnancy to full term.

Let me just clear a misconception: adoption is not an alternative to abortion.

The only alternative to abortion is carrying the pregnancy to full term. The alternative to adoption is to keep the child with yourself or with a family memeber.

So, if the pregnant person does not wish to seek an abortion, then the pregnancy is carried to full term. Once the baby is born, it is either given up for adoption or raised by the parent/s.

And there really is nothing that one can “do” about a person’s decision to not have an abortion. That is why pro choice is called what it is called. It is all about respecting the choice and the rights of the individual.

We will respect your decision even if that isn’t something we (or I) would have done personally in that same situation.

Is the Pro Life Label Apt for the Movement

To me, the pro life label seems a little hypocritical. If you care so much about life, then you would recognize the need to make abortion legal, safe, and accessible to everyone.

Hundreds of women die because they cannot access abortion facilities and are this forced to use back alley abortions or self induced abortions which can be very detrimental to the health, if not lethal.

Even women who don’t want an abortion but need it due to medical reasons, like the pregnancy being harmful to their health or that they might be giving birth to a still born child or a child with a terminal disease, are sometimes denied abortions because of the doctors being “pro life.” This happens in many countries and even in the United States. How can you call yourself pro “life” when you can’t even attend to someone who is already sentient?

Also, many pro life proponents are also against comprehensive sex education and birth control, mostly because of their religious or ethical beliefs. Contraception and compressive sexual education plays a heavy role in decreasing unwanted pregananies and abortion rates. So if you really wanted to lower the rate of this medical procedure, you should be supporting the aforementioned causes.

I have increasingly come to realize the pro life is just a propaganda to uphold the beliefs of a particular section of the society and integrate it into politics.

I think the most apt choice to decribe pro life proponents is anti choice, because that is what they are. They are against giving people a right to choose what they want to do with their bodies.

What The Handmaid’s Tale Really Teaches Us

Recently, I had an online conversation with a particularly conservative young woman who was enthusiastically boasting about how her favorite Netflix series, “The Handmaid’s Tale” was inherently pro-life.

I am not exactly unaccustomed to hearing the pro-life proponents dictate their agenda through completely irrational and illogical reasons like, “the Bible says so,” or “but it’s a woman’s duty to give birth,” and even “the baby has feelings.” But this particular woman had absolutely misunderstood an entire series and was using it to advocate for taking away women’s right to chose.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a lot of things, but it is definitely not pro-life.And you don’t need to take my word for it, even the author of the book, Margaret Atwood who is very pro choice, has declared that this story was written as a warning sign for a word in which pro-life and anti-women policies were actually implemented. If you are using this series to propagate your pro life beliefs, your argument is already too flawed to even be an argument. Because then you are saying that the future you believe in is one in which the women are stripped away from any rights at all and are completely and unwillingly controlled by a dominating religious institution. And even the most conservative of people wouldn’t dare advocate publicly for a future as drear and inhuman as that.

In fact, this popular series is actually pro choice and goes to show that taking away women’s reproductive rights goes hand in hand with taking away their fundamental rights. You cannot tell someone what they can and cannot do with their bodies without indirectly treating them as lesser than human. The pro life sentiment promotes nothing else except slavery, because that is what the movement is – women being forced into carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term, their bodies being treated like it is not their own.

Interpretive Courts

As someone who ardently identifies as a liberal, I always thought that having a Supreme Court with mostly (if not all) liberal judges would be the most ideal situation in a democracy.

It is for this reason that I found myself a little anxious about the retirement of the Supreme Court Judge, Anothony Kennedy, and the subsequent need for Trump to elect another judge to the court. Quite obviously, Trump will choose a judge who identifies as a conservative and naturally I was worried that most liberal laws that have been enacted would be in danger of being overturned.

The most obvious law that could be jeopardized is the one that came about through the Roe vs Wade case. Access to reproductive health care as well as abortion have been at the forefront of the liberal- conservative debate for decades and it wouldn’t be entirely wrong to think that this issue will be brought up to the court again. Even the Casey vs Planned Parenthood case, which framed equal and easier access to abortion nationwide, has a great probability to be jeopardized especially since Kennedy had been the key fifth vote in this case.

But I have since realized that the court is not a place to advocate for ideals. It is a place to advocate for the constitution. The Supreme Court judges are exceptionally brilliant students of the law who know that their work is not to make laws according to their beliefs, but according to what the constitution states.

As Chief Justice Roberts said, “judges do not seek to impose their own views into laws, but only seek to make laws under the indifferent guidance of the constitution.”

While there are many grey areas in the constitution that can leave judges to interpret the text on their own which could be tainted with their personal beliefs, largely the constitution makes it very difficult for the judges to make laws that aren’t adherent to the ideals already imposed within the text. Leaving social progress in the hands of the court would become extremely dangerous and could hinder the federal system in the democracy.

Courts aren’t a platform for advocating revolutionary changes, they are a platform for merely implementing them into law.

The Core of the Abortion Debate

During a friendly discussion about politics, I encountered a question, “what are your views on abortion and how do you think about it from the point of view of the baby.” While the question in itself was kind of ignorant, I knew that this person was genuinely curious and wanted to learn more about the topic.

I am pro choice.

That being said, even if you are pro life or you don’t really have a stand on this topic, you must know that there is no “point of view of the baby” because technically, it is an underdeveloped fetus. It has no sentience, thoughts, or feelings. A beating heart does not equate feelings. Breathing does not equate sentience. And that’s just a fact, it is not an opinion.

So really, there is only the point of view of the mother/pregnant person. And it is because of this fact that I choose to be pro choice. There is only the point of view of the pregnant person and that is why the decision to have an abortion should be left to the pregnant person.

The very idea that the government needs to be involved in such a personal decision, that the decision of the person carrying the pregnancy should be overlooked by those just because of differing ethical beliefs, is absolutely nonsensical to me.

The core of the abortion debate falls back into the infamous question, whether the fetus is alive or not or whether the rights of the fetus can be terminated by the pregnant person.

Personally, I feel like that question has a very obvious answer that some people just don’t want to look at – their vision being tainted by religious or antiquated beliefs and all.

Even though the fetus is “alive” it is not living. It’s brain is so underdeveloped that it cannot even form a shadow of thought, it cannot feel anything, it cannot survive outside the womb – or in other words, it is simply not a human being.

So how can we talk about abortion in terms of the fetus? We cannot. And that is an incredibly simple idea to understand, but just like most simple ideas go (ending racism, sexism, homophobia) the human race takes an inordinately long time to understand them.

The decision to not carry the pregnancy to full term lies solely with the pregnant person and I look forward to the time when this simple fact is more easily understood by more people.

Ugly

Menstruation isn’t pretty. But that doesn’t mean that it’s something bad or something evil. We, as a society, are increasingly coming together to realize that menstruation is just another bodily function and it shouldn’t be overshadowed by taboos.

Quite recently, I was having a conversation with an acquaintance and he mentioned that abortion is ugly. He said that he had seen some pictures of abortion being performed and they looked ugly and that was the reason he was pro life.

He’s not alone though, many pro life advocates stand insensitivity in front of abortion clinics and throw photos of surgical abortions at women, shouting at them not to “murder” their child.

The fact is, any sort of surgery looks ugly when it’s being performed. Menstruation looks ugly. Even giving birth looks ugly. In photos, they are all bloodied and just something we wouldn’t willingly incorporate into our daily sights. But that doesn’t mean that any of these things are bad and that they should be eradicated or hidden.

I am all for learning the reason behind why certain people choose to be pro life and I appreciate hearing opinions that differ from mine, but more often than not the pro life stance is based on such antiquated and superficial ideals that it really makes me wonder if it’s even worth calling it a movement.

(Photo from Ladybird)

Incantation?

first published at Luna Luna, Incantation, Paakhi Bhatnagar

In medieval societies, women with mental disorders or women exceptionally talented in fields traditionally dominated by men (which at that time were pretty much all work areas) were called witches and donned with robes and crooked noses in the imaginations of the orthodox Christian.

This was particularly common when women and midwives performed abortions on pregnant women against the will of the clergy or the state. These midwives were called witches and burnt at the stake by the state for honoring the choice and bodily autonomy of the pregnant woman.

In this modern age, we are reclaiming the name witches in order to lament the anguish suffered by our sisters for wanting to be treated nothing less than human. We write spells, embodied through poetry, that not only remember our sisters but also remember and put forward their works and beliefs for the younger generation. We are bringing back an infamous culture and shaping it through the eyes of the victim.

This spell that I had written for the beautiful Luna Luna is a memorial of the works of past witches and a call for solidarity and open mindedness in order to face the challenges that await our sisters today.

Repeal the 8th

The 8th constitutional amendment of the Irish constitution restricts the fundamental rights of the pregnancy person, saying that the “unborn child” (fetus) has the right to life that is equal to the life of the mother. Besides the fact that this amendment fails to recognize non-binary pregnant people and trans men, it also breaches the pregnant person’s right to full bodily autonomy.

Repeal the 8th is a movement initiated to repeal this amendment through the referendum held by the current government of Ireland. This moment seeks to give back the rights to pregnant people that were snatched away by a largely conservative, male, and Catholic legislating body.

To all those who want to #repealthe8th, and to all those who trust woman and doctors and face the realities – you need to play your part. Oireachtas can pass legislation for a referendum but it’s up to us to talk to family and friends and explain why we need to repeal. Even though if you are not Irish, spreading comprehensive awareness about the need for safe and accessible abortion facilities is a key aspect through which you can play your part.

Abortions will continue to exist in the society. Whether they are legal or not, women will continue to seek abortions during situations of unwanted pregnancy. It is up to us to ensure that these women are not dying in back alley abortions due to conservative and antiquated laws that regulate the female reproductive system.