Freedom To and Freedom From: Do We Always Make the Right Call?

In Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale , she argued there were two kinds of freedoms. Freedom to and freedom from. Freedom to is what we have now, well, mostly. It’s the freedom to make our own decisions and the freedom to do what we will until we begin interfering with other’s freedoms. Freedom of speech is a freedom to.

Freedom from is protection from other people’s freedom tos. We have freedom from murder and violence.

Atwood argued that freedom to is far more important than freedom from. This is not to say freedom from is not important. Obviously we need to prevent murder, violence, and rape. But sometimes, the two freedoms come into comflict. I don’t mean my freedom from conflicts with a rapist’s freedom to, I mean my own freedom from conflicts with my own freedom to. Atwood’s argument was when the two conflict, we should always give the adult woman freedom to before we give her freedom from, lest we wind up like the society of the republic of Gilead.

I agree with her. Walking alone at night is a freedom to; just because denying it to me increases my freedom from rape, doesn’t mean I should be denied it. I think most of us can agree that when our freedom tos and freedom froms conflict, it’s more important that we have freedom to.

And yet I see tons of women here claiming the opposite about certain groups of women. Women in heavily gendered relationships. Religious women. Surrogates. Stay-at-home moms. Prostitutes, strippers and porn stars. "Well, they didn’t REALLY consent! They are a product of their society or their circumstances, they don’t want to do it, we should protect them from it!" Well, sure, many women are forced into a bad situation. So we should always make every possible effort to give women more opportunities. Free job training for sex workers, plenty of supportive family services, etc.

But I have known women who were strippers not just because the needed the cash, but because they liked feeling sexy and performing, and of their various options, they preferred it. Even more commonly, that’s the case for porn stars (who can at times have a bit more control over who the are touching). Now, they are obviously not the most common cases. But by saying "stripping should be outlawed!" we are saying that their freedom FROM stripping is more important than their freedom TO strip, if that’s what they want to do. The same is true of prostitution, though admittedly fewer people go into that because they like it; but yet some do.

If a woman CHOSES to do something that we might not approve of, that we might think no one would want to do, why is our first reaction to take away her agency? Why do we then immediately take away the validity of her consent, as we do for teenagers, children, and the mentally ill? Shouldn’t our first action be to provide her with as many resources as possible, help keep her healthy, but still honor her decision even if we think it was made for the wrong reasons?

Let’s consider a woman who is a prostitute because she needs to feed her children. Obviously a bad situation. We can approach it one of two ways. Option one, we outlaw prostitution and prevent her from prostituting herself. Well, she’s not a prostitute, but the kids are still starving and we basically told her, "no, you’re wrong, that’s not a good choice so we won’t let you make it."

Option two, we offer free job training to prostitutes looking for better work. We train her to be an electrician or a hair stylist or whatever she wants, and help her pay the bills while she studies. We are thus saying, "Your choice is still valid, but we understand you made it due to pressing need, so we’re going to give you other options you might prefer, and help you achieve them, so you don’t have to make that decision any more."

Which one is more empowering to the woman? Which one helps her more and better solves her problems?

Men every day work in jobs that are unsafe and dangerous because they have no other choice. Good example? Meatpacking industry . That job is so dangerous it might as well be prostitution, what it lacks in degrading-ness it makes up in in lost limbs and permanent respiratory damage (and it is still quite degrading, overseers treat their workers terribly). Workers work primarily out of desperation. Yet I don’t hear anyone saying that they should be banned from working there, or they didn’t really decide to work there. Instead they focus on giving them better options and improving their work situation. Invalidation of consent is reserved for children and women in our society, and feminists are doing it just as much as everyone else. And before people say that meatpacking is more essential to society than prostitution, how about crab fishermen in the Artic ? Really dangerous and emotionally draining, most people are doing it out of dire need, and we really, really don’t need crabs to survive, but there is a market for them, just like there is a market for prostitution, so it remains. And no one has tried to outlaw crab fishing yet.

The only times I hear of people’s consent beign invalid because they were desperate are for children, mentally retarded people (both are probably good to remain that way, as they can’t really consent at all), some minority groups, and women. White men can be desperate too! Why don’t we worry about them being forced in to jobs? Because we automatically assume their consent is valid, even if it was actually coerced by their situation. Because they have agency and a voice in our society and we place their freedom to over their freedom from.

In an ideal world, we all would be protected from bad things and have all the freedom in the world, and they would never conflict. But we must remember, when they DO conflict, we must side with the side that gives women agency and power. We must honor their contracts and decisions as valid because they are valid, the woman can make the decision. We must not treat them like children just because they are women. By giving them options, we are giving them CHOICES, not forcing them to abide by what we choose for them.

There is the argument that one woman who fulfills a stereotype damages the whole women’s movement and "sets us back." To which I ask, why, exactly, is that one woman responsible for the whole movement? There will always be Ann Coulters and Sarah Palins who set us back a lot more than a stay-at-home mother or a stripper. And a woman is much more likely to become a feminist if she sees feminism as an agent of positive, empowering change towards women than if feminism simply acts to protect her from herself. Even if it’s actaully doing both, the woman who sees only the attacks on her generous surrogacy and claims that she is being manipulated by society that devalues her will still not veiw feminism positively. Or she sees feminism as attacking her loving relationship which happens to be along more defined gender roles for practical or personal reasons. Who would support something they saw like that?

Women may be driven by cultural forces that dictate their actions, but women are still individuals with agency. Of course if a woman SAYS she was coerced or pressured into something, we should beleive her and help her. But if she says she is not coerced, we should honor that. We should believe her. We should trust she is able to make her own decisions. And you know, just because one woman in a profession says she is coerced into it, does not mean that when another woman says she was not, we should ignore her or claim she is wrong. No one likes to feel like they have no voice, and for a long time, we have refused to give large groups of women a voice because their voice will not support what we want to beleive.

We want to beleive surrogates are coerced because we don’t like the idea of women "selling" their uteruses, we don’t like the idea of a uterus as a commodity. So we deny surrogates the right to say, "Wait, I am using my body to provide a service, in a more altruistic than financial way, and I find giving birth for another to be empowering." When they say it (and they do ) we claim they are just being manipulated, we ignore them, and we say they only believe that because someone tells them to. We devalue their opinions and undermine their freedom to choose their own path to self-actualization. Nothing is more disempowering than telling someone their opinions are wrong and worthless. ESPECIALLY since it is only done to women and minorities, and children, and never to white men, no matter how degrading or dangerous the job may be, how shitty the pay is, or how desperately they need it. And indeed, women are far more likely to be told they don’t really want to make these choices and are just manipulated by the system than minority men.

This is exactly what Atwood warned about. In her book, women would never have been reduced to Handmaids had it not been for feminists supporting the ideas that women are simply being controlled by society, and their opinions are not neccessarily valid if they may have been pressed upon them. I don’t think we’re going to be Gilead, but I see the danger. Feminists cannot deny women their voices, no matter what those voices may say. We cannot deny them their freedom to, even if we think they need protection from their own decisions. In doing so we reduce them to children. And any effort to reduce women to the status of children ties in perfectly with the goals of the extreme right reactionaries who we want to be fighting.

Do not assume another woman finds the same things empowering that you do. Do not assume she is a tool of the patriarchy or manipulated by circumstance because she consents to a life you would not consent to. TALK TO HER. Listen. You may find that she has real, genuine reasons for wanting to be the way she is. You may find that she does not want the same for you, she just wants to live her life in peace and happiness. Or you may find that she does not want to be that way, but has no choice– and then you are in the perfect position to give her REAL assistance to achieve the goals SHE wants to acheive in life. But even just by listening, you empower her. Just by believing her. Just by considering her to be the chief authority on her own life and needs.