Stacy Nunnally
Stacy Nunnally is a feminist and social justice activist. Her career has been dedicated to the non-profit sector working primarily to improve the lives of women and girls in Tennessee. This career includes work with Girl Scouts, Rape and Sexual Abuse Center and the Vanderbilt Women’s Center. In the community she serves as the chair of the board at Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee and on the steering committee with the TN Economic Council for Women. Stacy believes that gender impacts every aspect of our lives and intersects with all other oppressed and under-served groups. Stacy asserts that equity is not an ideal, but rather a goal for which she has positioned her whole career and whole self to achieve.
What is Feminism?
It is the theory and movement which strives to achieve social, political and economic equity for everyone. It is a movement which works to “out” patriarchal systems, attitudes and institutions. Patriarchy maintains a system of “power over” oppressed groups of people. Feminism does not and cannot reach its goals without much attention to race, ethnicity, sexual-orientation, gender identity and expression, religion, socio-economic background and more. Basically, feminism works with the intersection of all identities that are adversely affected by patriarchal society. Audre Lorde said, “There’s always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself — whether it’s Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. — because that’s the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.” For me, feminism is what brings all of my “identities” together and empowers me to fight for equity.
What is Choice?
Choice is often used in the discussion around reproductive rights. Pro-Choice groups value the autonomy of a woman’s body and support her choice about when to be pregnant and reproduce. Pro-Choice groups honor the privacy of this decision making process that occurs between a woman and her doctor. As proponents of choice, we support the choices of motherhood, adoption and abortion when a woman is faced with an unplanned pregnancy. Opposition groups often want to label pro-choice as pro-abortion. This is simply not factual. Choice is a word used to express just that—a support of options and the autonomy of a woman’s body. Groups associated with reproductive rights also typically support comprehensive sex education, access to low cost birth control and quality, affordable health care.
Within the broader discussion of feminism (not only in the context of reproductive rights or freedoms), choice becomes a much more complex term. Feminism often talks about supporting the choices of women (and men) in the realm of family, work, education, and more. An example of choice feminism is in its support of the choices of women to be stay-at-home moms, to work and have a family, or to not have a family at all. However, the discussion of choice becomes complex when you begin to ask what is “real” choice and does it exist? If you are a singe mom supporting children, do you really have a choice to be anything other than a working mom? This is just one example. I am straying from the main topic, but thought I would throw this in since the question asks simply what is choice and does not specify its relation to reproductive rights.
E-mail Stacy: stacy@feministsforchoice.com
