Reading through the latest Erase Racism carnival, I enjoyed this post by Rodney Knott about the mentality of black conservatives who support racist thought and institutions. Knott describes the self-justifying mentality well.

What bothers me the most about these guys is their tremendous egos. Let me explain, even if they truly believe that it was due to their superior intelligence and hard work that they were able to outsmart over 300 years of racism and white privilege to attain their current positions, what about your brothers? They appear to be saying I have mine and screw everyone else. I am so bad that I was able to overcome these obstacles, why can't you?

I understand the mindset of these men I witnessed it in college, it is an attitude of defeat. The person believes that fighting is futile; so they take the attitude if you can't beat them, then join them.

The mentality he describes could, with a few tweaks, describe a number of people who support the right wing while technically being in a group marked for oppression. The people who jump immediately to mind are, of course, anti-choice women, one of the most bewildering and confused groups of people in the nation. Even if you contest the idea that the Junior Anti-Sex League might have motivations other than unvarnished misogyny, you have to admit that the net definition of "bad women" — women who have sex for reasons, or even thoughts of actions other than dedicating their wombs to the production of more virility objects-cum-right-wing-warriors — is cast so widely as to incorporate most anti-choice women. Do they hate themselves?

It's tempting to think so, but reading Knott's post, I'm inclined to have a different view. It's more that they think through organizing against women, at least bad women, they have earned at "Get Out Of Female Jail" card, otherwise known as "the slut is always someone else" syndrome. Hanging around women's health clinics screaming at the naughty ladies walking by means that your sexual desires, your female body, your moments of pleasure (and sin) don't count.

With anti-choice women, you often see the same "pull up the rope" mentality that Knott describes with black conservatives. A lot of black conservatives have achieved their college degrees and lofty positions due to the strivings of the civil rights movement and policies like affirmative action that kept them from being victimized by the racism that came before. They then turn around and argue against other people of their race having the same opportunities because they feel as if they deserved it more for some reason.

Not much different, if you think about it, are the anti-choice women who lay claim to post-abortion syndrome. As I've described earlier, post-abortion syndrome happens when a woman chooses an abortion and later chooses to be in an anti-choice group; in order to fit in and get the benefits of blaming other women and implying that they're lowly sluts, the woman must pony up a set of symptoms to demonstrate that she's really, really sorry she had an abortion. That way she can both have her cake and eat it, too, or in this case, have her sense of superiority over the dirty, abortion-having sluts while not having to carry an inconvenient pregnancy to term herself.

There are other strategies for maintaining this misogynist worldview while being the thing you hate, the sexual woman. Sneaking birth control and even abortions behind the backs of your fellow anti-choicers is a popular option; many, possibly most abortion clinics have witnessed the anti-choicers who sneak off the protest line to get abortions only to return to the protest line the next day. Making excuses about how your abortion is different than the ones the sluts in the waiting room are getting is not required, but a popular option. Others might be a little more honest about their reasons, at least to the doctor, if not to their anti-choice friends.

One of these people might be a woman she recognized as one of the protesters who regularly appeared, shouting, outside a clinic where she worked. Only now the woman was in the waiting room, desperate to end an unwanted pregnancy. Dr. Wicklund performed the procedure.

One of the neat things about the secret abortion is that you don't need to explain your unplanned pregnancy to your anti-sex comrades; in fact, they don't need to know you've had sex at all if you manage to sneak in and out of the clinic unseen.

But if you're a bad liar, or you're made overly uneasy the cognitive dissonance of sitting in a family planning waiting room telling yourself that everyone else is a slut, then there's always the option of becoming the repentant slut. Make a big fuss over the amount of sex you used to have before you had a big conversion, which gives you an opportunity both to titillate your audience and go on a superiority trip over the naughty sexual women out there. The entire concept of "secondary virginity" being pushed by the abstinence-only education squad fits into the repentant slut category. The best part is that everyone expects a former slut to do a little backsliding now and again, so you can be a little sloppy about the no sex rule, especially if you make sure to share all the details of your backsliding and act really, really sorry about it. If you play your cards right with this strategy, you may even get a book deal out of it. It worked for Dawn Eden, after all.

The nice part of these and other strategies like it is that mostly the anti-choice movement you choose to associate with will look the other way when it comes to your sex life. As long as you're willing to offer your female face to the anti-woman cause, and help make the movement look as if it's not as misogynist as it is, you can count on facing open arms from the anti-choice movement.