Female politician proposes law to fine men $100 for masturbating

[Associate Justice PiT]

The problem with this kind of argument is that pro lifers don't see the abortion argument in these terms. Nobody on the right is going "Yes crush women's rights woohoo", they see it as almost murder.

Vehement opposition to abortion is strongly correlated with wanting to control women on other levels. While the right tries to frame the abortion issue as the right to life of the fetus, given their lack of respect for other women's rights/human rights issues, it is likely that the right tries to hide their anti-woman desires, to claim to be pro-fetus rather than anti-woman.

     In other words, assume the worst about your political opponents. I'm sure there are some pro-lifers who just really hate women and want to punish them, but my experience with them indicates to me that this notion of "pro-life being anti-woman" is broadly speaking a left-wing fiction.

[Associate Justice PiT]

The problem with this kind of argument is that pro lifers don't see the abortion argument in these terms. Nobody on the right is going "Yes crush women's rights woohoo", they see it as almost murder.

Vehement opposition to abortion is strongly correlated with wanting to control women on other levels. While the right tries to frame the abortion issue as the right to life of the fetus, given their lack of respect for other women's rights/human rights issues, it is likely that the right tries to hide their anti-woman desires, to claim to be pro-fetus rather than anti-woman.

     In other words, assume the worst about your political opponents. I'm sure there are some pro-lifers who just really hate women and want to punish them, but my experience with them indicates to me that this notion of "pro-life being anti-woman" is broadly speaking a left-wing fiction.

Yes. Especially as polling suggests that women aren't particularly more likely to be pro-choice than men. And I don't think internalised misogyny can explain it away.

     Internalized misogyny bothers me as an explanation for much of anything. It certainly does exist, but most times I see it being brought up is to dismiss women who do not believe that they are being oppressed.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Well no one's going to say "I oppose women's rights" because that's not (yet) popular enough, although we are headed in that direction. I'm not a big fan of the "argumentum ad hominem" on this issue, but the idea that restricting women's rights isn't anti-female just because the people advocating it don't sell themselves that way is rather silly. People who opposed women's suffrage had nominally pro-woman arguments, as well.

     The thing is, pro-life activists would resist conceiving it as a women's rights issue at all. By your logic, a hypothetical proponent of allowing women to commit murder would be pro-woman, and anyone who wanted to punish woman murderers would be anti-woman. This hypothetical sounds preposterous, but this is what it sounds like to people who are pro-life.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Well no one's going to say "I oppose women's rights" because that's not (yet) popular enough, although we are headed in that direction. I'm not a big fan of the "argumentum ad hominem" on this issue, but the idea that restricting women's rights isn't anti-female just because the people advocating it don't sell themselves that way is rather silly. People who opposed women's suffrage had nominally pro-woman arguments, as well.

     The thing is, pro-life activists would resist conceiving it as a women's rights issue at all. By your logic, a hypothetical proponent of allowing women to commit murder would be pro-woman, and anyone who wanted to punish woman murderers would be anti-woman. This hypothetical sounds preposterous, but this is what it sounds like to people who are pro-life.

Of course, acknowledging it as a women's rights issue doesn't mean that pro-lifers have to become pro-choice. As your example shows, there are valid limitations to "rights". Nonetheless, pro-lifers do want to restrict women's rights, so if you don't see abortion as murder, that becomes the deciding factor.

     I mean, the law does limit our ability to act in certain ways, but banning women from committing murder is a frankly bizarre thing to call "anti-female". The negative connotations of describing a position as "anti-female" compounds this problem.

     I am pro-choice and do not believe that fetuses should be granted rights that interfere with the actions of rational adults, but considering that I see little evidence to suppose that pro-life people are motivated by an opposition to women's rights, I don't find it informative to formulate the issue as such. It is a political expedient, but one I do not care for.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Well no one's going to say "I oppose women's rights" because that's not (yet) popular enough, although we are headed in that direction. I'm not a big fan of the "argumentum ad hominem" on this issue, but the idea that restricting women's rights isn't anti-female just because the people advocating it don't sell themselves that way is rather silly. People who opposed women's suffrage had nominally pro-woman arguments, as well.

     The thing is, pro-life activists would resist conceiving it as a women's rights issue at all. By your logic, a hypothetical proponent of allowing women to commit murder would be pro-woman, and anyone who wanted to punish woman murderers would be anti-woman. This hypothetical sounds preposterous, but this is what it sounds like to people who are pro-life.

Of course, acknowledging it as a women's rights issue doesn't mean that pro-lifers have to become pro-choice. As your example shows, there are valid limitations to "rights". Nonetheless, pro-lifers do want to restrict women's rights, so if you don't see abortion as murder, that becomes the deciding factor.

     I mean, the law does limit our ability to act in certain ways, but banning women from committing murder is a frankly bizarre thing to call "anti-female". The negative connotations of describing a position as "anti-female" compounds this problem.

Pro-choice people don't consider abortion "murder", so we consider restrictions on abortion as anti-female. Since the legislator in question is pro-choice, it makes sense she would use this language.

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As I said, I don't think it's a good idea to go into trying to guess people's motivations, since this is argumentum ad hominem, speculative by nature, and motivations are diverse. If we want to open up that can of worms, I do think that many pro-lifers are anti-woman, but I think it would be just a giant red herring.

     I do agree that the motivations of pro-lifers are diverse and in principle unknowable (almost nobody will admit to being anti-woman), and this is a discussion that will only keep going around in circles. I don't consider abortion to be murder, and based on what I understand about the motivations of pro-lifers I refrain from calling them "anti-woman" because I do not believe that that adequately explains their motivations.

     In the end though, calling them that is just a piece of political branding not unlike describing yourself as "pro-choice" or "pro-life". The only problem I foresee is when people take it as something more, like when feminists argue that a feminist cannot be pro-life because that is an anti-woman position. Obviously that isn't the motivating factor for the feminist who believes that aborting fetuses is murder.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I do agree that the motivations of pro-lifers are diverse and in principle unknowable (almost nobody will admit to being anti-woman), and this is a discussion that will only keep going around in circles. I don't consider abortion to be murder, and based on what I understand about the motivations of pro-lifers I refrain from calling them "anti-woman" because I do not believe that that adequately explains their motivations.

I guess we disagree on your last sentence, but otherwise agree on the rest, so put that aside.

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Making conclusions based on the "motivating factor" is pointless for all the reasons discussed above, as you agreed. But even if these people were pure in motivations, it wouldn't matter, because women can't eat other people's motivations. What matters to them are their rights. Feminists will of course consider pro-lifers anti-feminist since they're for denying women's rights, and the only counterargument relies on an assumption ("aborting fetuses is murder") that, from the pro-choice feminist's perspective, isn't true.

     It is true that you still can't really know, but you can make reasonable inferences about the motivating factor at times. It should not be controversial that a pro-life feminist is not motivated by hating women. Besides that, I can understand that pro-choice feminists don't care for the views of pro-life feminists on the issue, but there are other women's issues and when only 18% of the population identifies with your movement you may not want to drive people off. Of course, they are welcome to do whatever they like.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     It is true that you still can't really know, but you can make reasonable inferences about the motivating factor at times. It should not be controversial that a pro-life feminist is not motivated by hating women. Besides that, I can understand that pro-choice feminists don't care for the views of pro-life feminists on the issue, but there are other women's issues and when only 18% of the population identifies with your movement you may not want to drive people off. Of course, they are welcome to do whatever they like.

Considering 52% of the population is pro-choice, I hardly think that's the issue holding feminists back. If anything, there's too much of a tendency within feminism these days to give up principles for the sake of appealing to people, so you have celebrities singing lyrics like "I don't need to shake my ass for you, because I have a brain" while shaking their ass on video. In the long run this leads to people calling themselves feminists for virtue signaling, but doesn't accomplish anything.

     It may not be holding them back specifically, but determining purity tests is generally not conducive to growing a movement. Just look at the libertarians.

     I suspect part of the problem you describe is actually that the feminist movement is deeply confused about principles; shaking your ass on video can and has at times been defended as a feminist act. This leads to a significant amount of doublethink, as it is possible to defend opposite positions as feminist under some circumstances. I have been thinking recently that this could be related to the concept of consistency as employed in Hilbert's Program, though any relation of a mathematical method to social movements would be at best approximate.