For the past few weeks, international media is buzzing with news about “the war on women”. Mostly they refer to the GOP attacks on reproductive justice in the US but they have also started using the expression to refer to somewhat related initiatives popping up within the EU. However, this same media hardly ever qualifies what this “war on women” means because really, this “war” is nothing new. There are billions of women whose bodies have always been treated like they are a target for war:
- Forcibly sterilized Black/ Indigenous/ mestiza women (not just in the US, but all over the Americas and some of them in Europe as well)
- trans women subjected to daily, unspeakable violence
- Undocumented immigrants and their children sent to inhumane detention camps
- Asylum seekers denied their request and deported to places unknown
- Working class mothers demonized for their lifestyles
I could go on and on with this list (which is in no way meant to be comprehensive but merely illustrative of some of the women who have always been targets of a war on their livelihoods). Just because this “war on women” has now been somehow expanded to include white, middle class women, it doesn’t mean the rest has not been part of it since times inmemorial.
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