The woke movement claimed to question everything in order to redefine it and compel others to accept the desires of «progressive» men. They redefined reality and pushed legislation to keep their sexual desires intact — and then some. «Inverse woke» is a pivot movement that also redefines women’s reality, but this time to please «conservative» men. The structure and logic behind its principles is similar, but oriented toward two theoretically «opposing» types of men. Both also appropriate feminist theory to serve their own ends.
In this context, last weekend someone sent me a post inviting readers to reconsider abortion — while making clear that perhaps abortion isn’t quite right — and concluding with an anti-abortion proposal. I commented directly on the post, arguing that it lacked class analysis, that I found it elitist, and that being trans cannot be compared to the reality of having to abort, since abortion affects only women, whereas being trans does not. In response, another post was written addressing both comments as «fallacies.» I am responding here.
The responding post makes some observations that are necessary and accurate:
- Class and motherhood: it correctly notes that «being able to have children without financial ruin» depends on employment, housing, parental leave, childcare, care networks, and a robust welfare state.
- Critique of neoliberal «choice feminism»: when it denounces the «individualization» of reproductive decision-making, it touches on a genuine feminist debate — formal freedom is meaningless when material conditions are coercive.
- Negative vs. positive freedom: the argument that the state can guarantee «not having children» without guaranteeing «being able to have them with dignity» is a politically powerful point.
But then…
- It displaces male agency. The text discusses sex, culture, technology, and the state, but tends to dissolve a central point: male responsibility — coercion, abandonment, sexual asymmetry, violence, and the absence of shared responsibility. Abortion exists within an order where sexuality is structured by power asymmetries and where reproduction is managed as women’s «private problem.» Abortion is a defensive tool within that order, not its origin. The injustice is not corrected by restricting access to abortion, but by increasing women’s material and sexual power: independence, effective sanctions against violence, and genuine shared responsibility.
- It builds a straw man by presenting as dominant the equation «pro-abortion = class consciousness / the right side,» and implies that abortion functions as a substitute for a social agenda. Criticizing performative moralism is valid; attributing it to feminism as a whole is a self-serving generalization.
- It confuses «doesn’t solve everything» with «is a deception.» The fact that legal abortion doesn’t fix precarity doesn’t make it irrelevant, because it shapes women’s lives in concrete ways:
- accessible abortion reduces health and economic harm,
- it decreases dependency and exposure to violence,
- it affects educational and professional trajectories.
It is not a «total solution,» but it is non-coercive infrastructure.
- It displaces causality: the «elitization» of motherhood is not created by abortion. The text correctly diagnoses that motherhood is stratified, but implies that abortion functions as a «corrective mechanism» that maintains that order. The primary drivers are, however:
- a precarious labor market,
- expensive housing,
- the privatization of care,
- unequal distribution of domestic work,
- lack of male shared responsibility and state support.
Abortion typically operates as a survival valve within that regime, not as its architecture.
- It reintroduces the moralization of sexuality — which historically falls on women. The idea of the «trivialization of sex» and that sex must carry a «cost» reintroduces a classic disciplinary logic: sexuality regulated by guilt, punishment, and reputation, historically applied to women. An emancipatory feminism focuses on desire, freedom, shared responsibility, and access to contraception and education — not on restoring symbolic «costs.»
- The section on rape: descriptive accuracy, questionable political use. It is true that most abortions do not result from rape. But the text uses this to undermine a framing that is often rhetorical — extreme cases used to expose cruelty — rather than the primary basis for the right. A feminist framework also reminds us that sexual violence is vastly underreported, reproductive coercion exists, and the right does not depend on the case being «extreme.»
- The conclusion («suppression of a third party») is a normative leap. The text shifts from sociology to moralism: «innocent,» «suppressed third party.» At that point it is no longer discussing inequality — it is attempting to establish a hierarchy in which the state can mandate gestation. This is precisely what the conservative «pro-life» movement has always proposed — the same old model:
- gestation and the use of a woman’s body as a baby-making machine, identical to what surrogacy proposes,
- there may be moral complexity involved, but the coercive state solution falls on women — and especially on the poorest women.
- The post ultimately falls into:
- False dilemma: it frames abortion versus social justice as opposites.
- Inverted causality: it attributes to abortion effects that belong to precarity, lack of care infrastructure, and inequality.
- Essentialism of motherhood: it treats motherhood as the «true» political destiny of the class question, when feminism insists on a plurality of life paths.
- Covert moralization: it uses sociological language to arrive at a punitive moral conclusion about sex and reproduction.
Conclusion: the text is right to point out that without a welfare state, «choice» is fictitious and motherhood becomes a privilege. But from a feminist perspective, it fails when it converts that diagnosis into an argument against abortion — because it ends up reinforcing control over women’s bodies instead of redistributing care, resources, and power.
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