Politics Versus Personal Authenticity

Reading Tammy Bruce's book, The New American Revolution, and am inspired to write to her telling about my own trip through The Feminist Movement. She revealed (p. 58-61) losing her individual identity for the good of groupthink back when she was a leader of NOW in California. I once belonged to NOW too. The Alice Paul Chapter here in NJ. I subscribed to MS magazine (the original, not the online version) and thought of myself as a feminist. I remember receiving local chapter newsletters (I was a young mother then) and began to realize dreams that I never believed available for me.

I went back to college a non-traditional student. I raised a family, held lots of community service and women's organization positions, worked parttime, was very active in Democratic politics, was a PTA President at 27 while attending college with kids who were selling drugs openly in the college cafeteria. It was a strange time, full of conflicting lifestyles, and a million choices. I lived in conflicting universes it seemed.

Marabel Morgan had written the opposition's Stepford style manual for women, The Total Woman, and I read and re-read Marilyn French's The Women's Room until it fell apart in my hands. One of my PTA buddies suggested the Total Woman for a meeting program. So we did it. (This is the book that suggested a wife should meet her husband at the door wrapped in nothing but cellophane to add excitement to her marriage--as I recall.)

There was great pressure to "have it all" and to not be satisfied with "just being a housewife." We wouldn't dare! We couldn't. But, in the midst of this, I had three little babies and a husband that I loved. They were my family. My husband and I talked incessantly about the roles we adopted in our marriage. I thought I was strong because, as I told my friends proudly, if I wasn't happy, I didn't keep it to myself. This was different than my friends who could not believe my audacity in not suffering in silence.

I cried a lot (cognitive dissonance does that to you) and I resented men in general for being the Lucky Ones to get all the rewarding roles and accolades as an accident of birth. I did not want to believe that I was for all time a second class citizen because I had been born a woman. I knew that couldn't be true. I excelled in school, graduated with highest honors; I felt like I could do anything I set out to do (God only knows where this comes from), in spite of the fact that my parents sent my younger brother out to conquer higher learning, but didn't have the money for further education for me. He would have to provide for a family, they said.

I was desperate not to believe that I was born as a lesser person than my brother or husband. I read Desiderata over and over and kept it next to my bed--handy in case of an inferiority attack. I wonder if that sounds familiar or foreign to you.

Still, I couldn't bring myself to resent the man that I married and loved. Though I did feel pressure to lump him in with all those MEN. He was such a good person, with baggage of his own. He needed me (he was a disabled Vietnam Veteran--arriving home from the war, wounded, just six months before he hobbled to the alter without his crutches on the day we were married), and I needed him too. We felt it really was the two of us against the world. Or at least adrift in it. We were young and we struggled forward just like everyone our age at the time.

But I digress. Back to Tammy's book. In a personal revelation she tells about turning away from her authenticity when she didn't take action against a dangerous doctor who was performing abortions (and killing the mothers-to-be) along with the fetuses. She came to terms with the reality of the situation many years after the fact. And not without regret and shame thrown in for good measure.

The situation illustrates what we are willing to do (and believe) in the name of our "causes"--and to avoid abandonment from our so-called group "family." The price we pay for this inclusion is astronomical. We become a pretend person, with pretend friends and associates who are willing to fill our lack of authenticity with a group version of what we all "should" believe in to be a member (yea, even "a team player") of the group. It's the ticket to membership. Without it, you're on your own. Alone.

People who are in the process of intellectualizing a new concept (ground breaking, they believe, of course) tend to seek out others with the same ideas. They tend to discuss, ad infinitum, the concept while formulating just how the concept works. They tend to do this in groups or with other like-minded persons, and they tend to agree on the precepts to include in their Mission Statement about their breakthrough concept. That's fine and, in fact, it's the way we "brainstorm" some terrific solutions to common problems.

The difficulties come a little later when, politically, the individuals in the group feel they cannot further explore their concept for fear of debunking the original idea.

In Tammy Bruce's circumstance, it was that she could not initiate action against the Killing Doctor performing abortions in a low income area because the group felt that 1) abortions were a woman's right, 2) the same women couldn't afford a "good" doctor alternative, 3) a murderous doctor performing abortions in which he killed fetus and mother occasionally was better than no abortions being performed in this geographic area 4) that any negative publicity about abortion abuses (now there's a term for you--abortion abuses, hmmm) would give political advantage to the "enemy"--the religious "right" which by groupthink definition included all others who felt that abortion equals murder.

Now, you understand, Tammy still believes she's "pro-choice" on this issue. And, I used to agree with her on this point. I still do believe that no one, not the government's laws nor a spouse, should be able to force a woman to do anything with her body that she doesn't want to. But, I part company these days with the "pro choice" concept.

I honestly have tried to believe that a fetus isn't a living being until.....whenever...but some future point--the third trimester, perhaps. After its birth for some. But, I authentically can't. I used to say that first trimester abortions were okay. The fetus can't sustain life on its own, so it's not life yet. But, like Tammy, I tried so hard to believe it, that I did--for a long while.

It's only been in the past five years that I've had to grudging admit that--at the core of my being--I know that a baby in gestation is a baby being nutured by its hosting mother for a life of its own. And I can't believe any other way than to think that a mother's regret or inconvenience or misfortune is not a compelling argument for arbitrarily sweeping that life's future away from him or her.

Once conceived, that fetus too has a right to live. The conflict for me was a mother's right to choice versus a fetus' right to life. In my gut, I know the mother had a choice in all but rape cases. After intercourse, she has to call her feelings (the desire not to be pregnant) regret. Now the other day I heard a young man, who was a product of a rape, call a talk show, crying. He said his father was a rapist and his mother tried to kill him by aborting him and that those facts have plagued his life every day. He still went forward and became a productive citizen, a husband, a father. He is glad he wasn't aborted every time he looks into his children's faces.

Tammy believes in God but doesn't call herself a Christian. I do call myself a Christian, but you may be surprised at the doubt that goes along with that moniker. I don't do Christian groupthink anymore than I do any other type of groupthink.

The tenets of my religious beliefs really aren't why I believe abortion is killing a life. I arrived at my opinion by logic, at least I believe I did. I'm not quoting the Bible about it, though with research I probably could find verses to back up my opinion. It's just not the path I took to resolve this conflict.