women's business

I know I shouldn't do this. I know it. But I can't help it. I read the Monthly. And this month's grim liturgy on the plummeting state of humanity deals with, wait for it, gendercide, brought to us by well respected author Anne Manne.

Gendercide refers to the selective sex abortion and infanticide that has resulted in "100 000 million missing women" according to Amartya Sen. In countries such as India and China (but not exclusively) boy babies are preferred for largely socio-economic reasons, an attitude entrenched in cultural norms and values. At the pointy end of poor village life, girl babies are at best undesirable, at worst, expendable, spelling catastrophic loss of status or future economic wellbeing.

Throughout her research, Monthly author Anne Manne is vexed by western silence over the issue,

"I was continually confronted by a mystery; how to explain the silence of the mainstream Western press in the face of the moral enormity of the story. In its own way, this was as shocking to me as the facts themselves"

Western media, ploise exploine.

Well. I'll give it a red hot go. The western media reflects western society: that is, a society squeamish about pointing the finger at countries who allow abortion. Although we in the west don't routinely gender test prior to abortions, we still perform hundreds of thousands of abortions each year. Last year 820,151 in the US alone. So we're equal opportunities aborters. You know, like the bumper sticker; "I fish, abort and vote"

But hey, at least we're not performing abortions for social reasons, like loss of status or future economic wellbeing.

Furthermore, feminists in the west have fought hard for access to safe, legal abortions. It seems trite for a feminist author such as Manne to to invoke anti-abortion sentiment in relation to poor Indian women, but advocate its acceptability for wealthy western women. It's no surprise to me the western media isn't touching that one with a pole.

I've got thoughts about the second issue in her article, infanticide, but it's late and I've already used up my daily quota of ABC style fuckspeak. Almost. I'm now going to explore what it means to be a curry in a post colonial pedagogy. A clue: it's more didactic with yoghurt.




Post Script.
This blog post reflects an inconsistency in the reporting of an issue; abortion. It does not reflect my personal opinions on abortion, which I keep to myself.