On choosing not to be an asshole

IWD

I used to be quite conservative politically in all the worst ways.  I was a misogynist.  I believed being gay was gross and that abused women should just leave already.  I told racist jokes and used racial slurs.  I’m terribly ashamed of all of that, and I’ve since become much less of an asshole.  But one thing I’ve never  been unsure about is reproductive rights.  I’ve been pro-choice at least since 7^th grade, which is when I remember having my first political argument.  My cousin Cindy said abortion was evil and wrong, and I said I didn’t think it was.  My reasoning was something about a mother resenting a child she didn’t want.  My cousin didn’t buy this and made fun.  “Oh, yeah, right, like the mom’s going to go Oh, I resent you, and slap them or whatever.”  I stood my ground though, because I knew what I was talking about.  I’ve been the resented child.

                I don’t know how my mom felt about children in general in her 20s, but I do know how she felt about girl children, and she didn’t want any.  She had a boy first.  Whew.  Then came me, and my grandmother’s warning must have loomed loud in her head, words I heard over and over through the years too:  “I can’t wait until you have a daughter just like you.”    My grandmother predicted I would be girl, and probably mom resented that implication, that she was about to get hers.  Who wouldn’t resent a barbed comment like that?  So out I came, female, and already I was a disappointment.  I know my mother loved and loves me, and that absolutely does not change the fact that she resented my femaleness. 

                So, predictably or not, my mom and I never really got along that well.  And I never forgot that she never wanted a girl.  I couldn’t, because she brought it up more than a few times during my childhood and adolescence.  By the time I began having sex, I had known for years that I didn’t want any kids.  Why take the chance that I’d have a kid like me, I figured. 

                Yes, I actually told myself and believed that I was a bad person, a bad child.  Somehow this translated to me having a fervent desire to not procreate, and I think this shaped my pro-choice views way before I ever started in with sex.  Back then, the right to abortion was about wanting pregnancy or not wanting it.  I didn’t want it, powerful bad.  And today reproductive rights is still about wanting pregnancy.  Every one of my children were wanted, even though not planned.  But before that, two abortions were what I wanted.  I didn’t know it back then, but what I wanted was to want pregnancy.  And when that happened, it surprised the crap out of me.  What my cousin could not and did not know back in seventh grade was that I knew about resentment, and I knew those ill feelings towards a child didn’t need to take the form of physical abuse.

                But just wanting my children doesn’t make me a great mother, and I’m fully aware of that.  What I want most for my children is confidence.  I want my daughters and my son to not only know they are wanted and loved, to never question that for a moment, but to instill that confidence in other young people, to be the kind of people who can buoy others in need because they have that strong sense of self.  I know some of this is up to chance and circumstance, but making sure girls and boys don’t grow up to be the kind of assholes who would restrict someone’s right to bodily autonomy seems as easy as not being that kind of an asshole yourself.