Wednesday, July 28, 2010

A Man's World

Was jetting home one day last week, eager to get to the grocery store for some dinner fixins, and ignoring people on the sidewalks. Being asked to contribute money for something is not unusual in my town, and the ubiquity of shameless fundraisers rivals that of pigeons. I'm whizzing past folks in green polos, yellow vests, all variety of uniform, when I actually stopped for a nice young man in a light blue T-shirt.

"Excuse me miss, would you like to help support women's rights today?"


BTW, the T-shirt bore this logo:


It was a revelation. And when I thanked him for his manly commitment to a woman's cause, he pointed out his associates across the street, two more young hip dudes representing PP. Not a female in sight!

I was terribly excited, but he didn't see why. Why wouldn't a bunch of bros raise money for pro-choice organizations? Abortion, he reasoned, is every woman's right and every human's issue. True story! So we chatted for a few minutes, me forgetting the urgency of my dinner date and he comforted by having attracted non-negative attention (just as I approached him, a burly bearded man in a T-shirt with a bald eagle and American flag responded to his above question with a huffy "Oh, I do support women."). I made a donation and shook his hand before moving on, very pleased with what had just happened.

As a budding feminist, I am still feeling out my attitudes towards men and the abortion issue. I like to wield our go-to catch phrases like "77% of anti-abortion leaders are men; 100% will never need an abortion" and the like, but I do appreciate that men are a vital resource to protecting our rights. Even though they suck sometimes (some might argue they suck most of the time), I want to send an enthusiastic shout-out to all the men out there avoiding fatherhood as long as possible.

Thx!


4 comments:

  1. That IS pretty amazing. I like it when I see young men taking an interest in reproductive rights.

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  2. That is awesome! I always find myself a little dumbstruck by men that are strongly pro-choice. I guess I am just used to men telling me that a fetus is more important than me. Also, awesome catch phrase that I'll borrow, even if it applies to the US and not Canada.

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  3. Nice! Speaking of that catchphrase -- which incidentally is on a poster whose image we use as our twitter icon, so you know I like it -- but I've always wondered where on earth that figure (77% of anti-abortion leaders are men) came from. It doesn't seem like something you could ACTUALLY calculate accurately, and it's not like to poster has a footnote and citation. I'd at least be curious to know who first came up with it and what the methodology was -- like, did they count up the people who have ever been on TV to talk about their anti-choice views? The directors of 501c(3)s specifically founded to fight abortion rights? I'm just so curious. It's the data-head in me...

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  4. For what it's worth, I'm a male adoptee who strongly supports every woman's right to choose what's best for her.
    Who am I to say what is right for anyone but myself?

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This is not a debate forum -- there are hundreds of other sites for that. This is a safe space for abortion care providers and one that respects the full spectrum of reproductive choices; comments that are not in that spirit will either wind up in the spam filter or languish in the moderation queue.