Keepers At Home
because women should be seen and not human
I heard on NPR recently that it’s been eighteen months since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. It seemed to be one of those stock transitional statements for a story about the rise of women crossing state lines to get abortions.
Related: one of my text threads this week focused solely on the Joe Jonas / Sophie Turner divorce announcement that was conveniently leaked to the press the Friday before a major U.S. holiday.
Also related: Sunday I watched “The Fly”, the cult classic film starring a very young Jeff Goldblum (the Adam Driver of his time). I vacillated between shock and awe; shock at the brutally realistic way Goldblum’s Seth Brundle transforms into a fly, awe at the magnificence of the acting, set design, and prosthetics. I don’t know if you can spoil a movie released in 1986, but spoiler alert, a key part of the plot has to do with abortion access.
I grew up attending rallies for the Tennessee Right to Life. We participated in and raised funds for the annual Walk for Life – the slogan “walk for me so that I can one day walk with you” is permanently burned into my brain. We occasionally manned a booth at local festivals, handing out fliers about what abortion really is with tiny silver baby feet pins. We often drove by churches with hundreds of white crosses filling their front lawns, each cross symbolizing an aborted baby.
The “facts” of abortion were as familiar to me as the Lord’s Prayer. We prayed earnestly that God would change the hearts of our political leaders and overturn Roe. We strove and labored believing that this was a futile endeavor, but that God would reward our faith. Then the impossible happened on June 24, 2022. Many rejoiced.
As the fallout of restricted abortion access has made its way across the country, one thing has become abundantly clear – this is a country that still doesn’t see women as people*. This shouldn’t be a shock considering that this country’s founding documents say “all men are created equal.” And please don’t come into my inbox telling me that “men” is meant to be gender neutral. It’s just not true.
Which brings me to “The Fly.” Released in 1986, this cult classic horror film by Charles Edward Pogue and David Cronenberg imagines a future where teleportation is a reality. But when Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) drunkenly tests the machine on himself as a way to get back at/impress his new flame Veronica (Geena Davis) for going to see an ex-boyfriend, Seth mistakenly merges himself with a fly that got trapped in the machine with him. When Veronica returns to Seth, they have make-up sex and all seems well.
Fast forward to a few days later where two things become all too apparent. One, Seth is turning into a fly, and, two, Veronica may be pregnant with a mutant fly child. What seems to be a movie about a man turning into a fly suddenly turns into a movie about a woman who needs an abortion and can’t get one. She turns to her ex-boyfriend/boss for help who takes her to a doctor after hours for the procedure. After some convincing (!!!!), the doctor agrees to do the abortion. Just as she’s about to go back for the procedure, the Seth Brundle/Fly breaks into the doctor’s office and kidnaps Veronica. He takes her back to his apartment and ties her up, begging her to keep the pregnancy as it is his last hope of retaining his humanity.
Which brings me to Sophie Turner.
The Jonas Brothers in the early 2000s were the epitome of squeaky-clean pop culture. Not only were they clean cut, they sported purity rings! They were brothers! They were wholesome! Fast forward to the 2020s and they’re all married to models or model/actresses who are happily raising their offspring. That is until a few weeks ago when it was announced that Joe Jonas was divorcing his wife Sophie Turner.
Let the record show that I do not give one iota about any of the Jonases, but even I was shocked by how quickly the PR machine went into overdrive trying to paint Joe as a good dad (he took his daughters out to breakfast!) and Sophie as a bad mom (she drinks and wants to live in the UK near her family, the horror). As Lyz Lenz so appropriately put it in her newsletter on this subject, “There are few things society loves to laud more than a woman who is a mother. And there are few things society loves to hate more than a single mother. This is because we hate a woman who falls outside of the heteronormative boundaries we set for them.” It’s not just that this couple decided their marriage didn’t work, to maintain Joe’s good guy persona, he had to make his wife out to be a shrew. There truly is nothing new under the sun.
Are you exhausted yet? Me too.
I’m tired of all of it. I’m tired of hearing about how feminism isn’t important. About how equality doesn’t matter because everyone already equal rights so why don’t people just shut up about it already. People won’t shut up because inequality still exists, obviously.
Abortion was never about “the babies.” Abortion was only ever about controlling women. I’m not the first or only person to say this, but it bears repeating. What bothers me is that there is a whole new generation of women who don’t seem to realize this is what’s going on. Anne Helen Peterson wrote about Trad Wives for Elle recently where she analyzes a new generation of women who want to be stay-at-home-girlfriends. These aren’t far-right pundits or ultra-religious wackos. These are women we would consider “normal” who are promoting these ideas.
Look, I get it. Being a female-presenting person in this country is exhausting. As America Ferrera says in the Barbie movie: “It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong.” In my lowest moments, I tell my partner that maybe I should just throw in the towel and be the ‘keeper at home’ my church wanted me to be.
But why is it exhausting? It’s not exhausting because I’m flouting my God-ordained role. It’s exhausting to be a woman because the powers that be want to keep it that way.
The thing that struck me about the intersection of women going across state lines for abortions, trad wives, “The Fly”, and Sophie Turner is that all the progress women have made in recent decades belies the fact the patriarchy is still alive and well and – like a mutant fly/man – is still trying to keep all the power for itself. And while I can only speak to my own experiences, the onslaught of legislation discriminating against LGBTQ+ people is part and parcel of the same rot.
I wish I had a tidy way to wrap this up. Something like, “this is why we should vote” or “intersectionality matters.” These statements, while true, feel too pat to actually have meaning. Perhaps we just keep talking and thinking about it until, hopefully, movies like “The Fly” feel less like a present reality and more like ancient history.