KATH GELBER discusses the issues raised in a controversial new book, Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the battle over Women's Freedom, by Janice G. Raymond. The book is published by Spinifex Press, at a recommended retail price of $24.95.
I generally read books with a pen in hand — so that I can mark the bits I find important, or particularly controversial. By the time I got through just the introduction of this book, it was covered.
This in itself isn't an indication of opposition to or support for what I was reading, but it does indicate that Raymond is clear in stating her beliefs, perspectives and conclusions. She is also polemical in her critique of all who dare to disagree with her.
There is much useful information in Women as Wombs, ranging from issues of language to the private control of reproductive technologies and contracts for profit. Raymond clearly exposes the loading of the language of reproductive technologies, such that "cures" have been created for the "disease" of infertility. She provides factual evidence that these "cures" often have an extremely low success rate which is deliberately covered up by their proponents in order that they may continue to sell their expensive and at times dangerous technologies to women.
She relates how access to these "cures" is couched in terms of feminist demands for "choice" and, further, that any "choice" to have children is heavily influenced by social expectations and pressures on women, in a historically sexist society.
She clearly outlines how, in surrogate cases, women who have carried a pregnancy for nine months and then gone through a birth are regarded as virtual suitcases for the progeny of an "ejaculatory father". She points out that the sexism inherent in our legal system grants rights to ejaculatory fathers which override women's rights to have control over their own bodies and which attempt to ignore or downplay the undeniable physical contribution women make to the reproductive process.
Other sections of the book deal with important links between reproductive technologies such as IVF, GIFT (Gamete intrafallopian transfer, an offshoot of IVF), surrogacy arrangements and the international traffic in organs.
Some of the facts are startling, even horrific. However, they are not particularly new, except in so far as the technologies themselves make for some new medical practices and some new legal decisions.
Feminist critique of the medical establishment and legal profession has long recognised the gender-oriented approach of these institutions. These institutions exist in a society in which women are discriminated against. Although much work has been done by feminists to try to democratise and open up institutions such as these to be more receptive to the needs and rights of women, and some gains have been made, much more still remains to be achieved.
However, the primary focus of this book is not to present facts. It is to present and argue for a radical feminist political position on reproductive technologies and contracts. The political theory is not derived from the facts; rather the facts are interpreted to fit the theory.
Raymond argues emphatically for the abolition of reproductive technologies and contracts and genetic engineering, full stop. In this goal, she shares the outlook and political perspective of activists involved in the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (FINRRAGE).
She quotes from Gena Corea, Renate Klein, Robyn Rowland, Susan Sontag, Catharine MacKinnon and other well-known FINRRAGE activists and radical feminists.
Raymond says her book "gives voice to [radical feminist] censored protests", which are prevented from finding voice in establishment media or in the mainstream feminist press.
The language she uses to describe her analysis of the methods and techniques of reproductive technologies and contracts is distorted to fit her radical feminist position. She calls reproductive technologies "a form of medical violence against women" and "publicly sanctioned violence against women". She argues that "we cannot continue to separate reproductive abuse from the sexual abuse of women".
Raymond draws analogies, for example, between a needle penetrating a follicle in the process of harvesting eggs for IVF, and sexual penetration and heterosexual intercourse! From her radical feminist standpoint, these are merely different forms of the sexual abuse of women.
Similarly, educational videos about reproductive technologies are "pornography of pregnancy" or "educational pornography". Of photos of children of potential surrogate mothers shown to clients by surrogate agencies, she says, "There is a link between these pictures and the pornography used by men to produce sperm".
Surrogate mothers who go to court to fight for the custody of their children are described as being rendered "exposed" by the legal system, "like a woman in pornography, graphically depicting her as a reproductive whore ... her pain is turned into others' pleasure."
While Raymond is quick to draw out the political consequences of proponents of reproductive technologies coopting the language of feminism for their own uses, she has clearly used the language of radical feminism to draw her own perspective on situations which would otherwise not be considered so extreme.
Women as commodities
Throughout Women as Wombs, Raymond recognises the commodification of women's bodies and physical capacities in this society. "Women are movable property, objects of exchange, brokered by go-betweens mainly serving the buyer." Women's reproductive capacity is used as an "instrument of exchange".
This understanding is certainly not confined to a radical feminist perspective. Socialists have long expounded a critique of the use of women's unpaid labour in the home and the control of women's reproductive capacities as central to understanding the nature of capitalism. Understanding this provides the key to understanding the means by which a system that exists for profit makes use of the systematic oppression of women in order the better to maintain their exploitation.
However, Raymond reserves some of her most searing criticism for socialist feminists and Marxists, who disagree with the conclusions she draws based on her radical feminist perspective.
In the end, Raymond has drawn herself into the classic trap of radical feminism. Her overriding criticism of reproductive technologies, the aspect which she presents as providing an explanation for the negative consequences on women of these technologies, is not that they are run for profit.
The key, she believes, is that they are "male-controlled". Therefore, it is useless for feminists to try to regulate these kind of technologies or to change practices. She argues specifically against the regulation of reproductive technologies and contracts. Her conclusion is abolition, not regulation.
Any argument for the control and regulation of reproductive technologies and contracts, for public accountability, is dismissed by Raymond as useless and/or liberal.
That is why one of the most interesting chapters in Women as Wombs is the one entitled, "A Critique of Reproductive Liberalism". In this chapter, Raymond quite successfully debunks some of the liberal myths which surround the justifications for this technology in its current form. This is an industry which severely curtails public control of and accountability for its practices and which makes huge profits from the marketing of infertility as a "disease".
Socialist feminists
Importantly, this chapter discusses the cooption of the language of choice by the reproductive technologies industry. The right to choose has become the right to consume, in a consumerist society.
Raymond also exposes the inadequacies of a gender-neutral liberalism that does not recognise women's historical oppression. Because it is premised on the myth of an already established parity between men and women, it allows discrimination against women to continue unrecognised.
But this chapter also takes other feminists to task — Marxists and socialist feminists in particular. Raymond begins by obscuring the positions of feminists who call themselves socialists by saying they have aligned themselves with liberals to oppose feminist anti-pornography campaigns, and affirm sadomasochistic sexuality, man-boy "love" and prostitution.
Political positions on the above issues vary within the left, as they do elsewhere. But it is a deliberate caricature to overlook the fact that socialists who opposed the feminist anti-pornography campaigns she refers to argued against their pro-censorship demands. Socialists argued against the granting of even further powers to a small, unelected, unaccountable group of (mostly male!) bureaucrats to determine what we may see, read or hear.
It is also untrue to say that socialists support man-boy "love", since the overwhelming majority of socialists oppose paedophilia on the grounds that it violates the rights of children.
Raymond is also incorrect to argue that "socialist feminism has historically avoided the radical feminist emphasis on addressing how men — not only social or economic systems — oppress women". This has not been avoided, but disagreed with.
This chapter provides the political framework for understanding Raymond's analysis and, therefore, her call for the abolition of all reproductive technologies and contracts. In the end, she sees them as benefiting both individual men and men "as a class", and therefore totally unable to benefit women.
Raymond concludes the introduction to her book by saying that reproductive technologies and contracts "are more peril than progress". However, her analysis denies humanity the right to explore technologies which may be able to help people, even if they are made publicly accountable and controlled. She doesn't think this is possible.
Feminism in general sees more peril than progress in technological developments that occur behind closed doors, with a lack of public accountability and in the context of a virtual total lack of control of profit-making industries. Radical feminism denies us the right even to try to change this.