The Concrete Uterus

Given that it’s election season, there’s a lot of talk about justice and doing what’s right for ourselves and each other. One key issue this election season is women’s healthcare. There is constant discussion over the new healthcare plan, birth control, abortion, etc Watching these videos, I was reminded of our discussion of Benhabib.

http://jezebel.com/5898191/obama-says-he-fully-supports-planned-parenthood-wins-ladies-hearts

http://jezebel.com/5896299/gloria-steinem-urges-us-to-get-off-our-asses-and-vote-for-obama

Benhabib notes that we need the concrete other to create the generalized other. She writes, “Without assuming the standpoint of the concrete other, no coherent, universalizable test can be carried out” (488). She also discusses at length the division between public and private spheres as gendered places and our difficulties navigating between them in our discourses, specifically those on justice. She writes, “…The concrete other is a critical concept that designates the ideological limits of universalistic discourse. It signifies the unthought, the unseen, and the unheard in such theories” (489). Ultimately, Benhabib argues that the generalized other must be informed by the conception of the concrete other and that separating the two is flawed from both sides.

The issue of women’s reproductive health is particularly interesting given Benhabib’s argument. It’s a weird mixture of the public and the private spheres. A short way into his video about Planned Parenthood, President Obama says:

Let's be clear here: Women are not an interest group. They're mothers and daughters and sisters and wives — they're half of this country. And they're perfectly capable of making their own choices about their health.

It’s clear just from these clips that women’s reproductive healthcare requires a different sort of conversation. The generalized other is greatly complicated in this situation because the other, from the start, has an identity. It’s a woman. It’s an issue of the private sphere, the realm of the concrete other and women, thrown into the public sphere, where the generalized other, as Benhabib notes, “…reflects aspects of male experiences; the ‘relevant other’ in this theory is never the sister but always the brother” (481). When we were discussing the general other, we noted that it’s supposed to be a figure that can be the everyperson (although as Benhabib notes, that’s an impossibility). The conversation surrounding laws about women’s bodies demands from the start a recognition of difference and personal experience that challenges blind justice. That’s why the all-male panel on contraception seemed so ridiculous.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/16/contraception-hearing-house-democrats-walk-out_n_1281730.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/jon-stewart-on-congresss-all-male-contraception-panel-20120221

Issues of abortion, hormonal birth control access, pap smears, mammograms are issues that are very particular to women. “My body, my choice.” Recently women have been spamming certain politicians’ Facebook walls with updates about their uteruses, questions about personal reproductive problems, and concerns about family planning. These are all male politicians who have voted in favor of any number of policies that would deny women control over their body in some form or fashion. It’s a direct challenge to a male politician’s qualification to make a choice about a woman’s body, to the notion that we can privilege the generalized other when the generalized other clearly fails to meet the needs of the concrete. The mixing of the public and private spheres has produced and continues to produce some very interesting results and challenges to the way that we make and apply the law.

I guess my question is, how do we deal with an issue like women’s reproductive healthcare in light of our discussion about the generalized and the concrete? What happens when we make gender-specific laws? How do we negotiate the need for concrete testimony with the benefits of the generalized other?