I hope Nina Simone will forgive me for borrowing her song for Tennessee.
Alabama’s gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi GoddamCan’t you see it
Can’t you feel it
It’s all in the airI can’t stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayerAlabama’s gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
I considered WTF is wrong with these people as the title of the post, but that could cover a hundred things these days, so instead I borrowed from Nina Simone.
What is happening down there? https://t.co/54mQGMFgIp
— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) April 12, 2023
As always, we take the good we the bad!
Kudos to the enterprising person who took over the TN governor’s website after he let his domain expire.
h/t Old School for the link to the site
Here’s a PDF of the site so it can still be enjoyed if he pays enough to get his domain back.
I’m starting to think that Tennessee might need it’s own category on the site.
Open thread.
Update: CNN opinion piece by Justin Pearson. h/t Scout211
Why expelling me from the legislature backfired on Tennessee Republicans
The Republican legislator who authored the expulsion resolution against me stood to belittle me and to minimize the deeply serious concerns of my constituents and the thousands of protestors present. He told me that he and his White conservative colleagues were “enraged” that I had had the audacity to walk, unbidden, to the front of the chamber and acknowledge the grieving families. He did so while upholding the status quo of a majority that denied equal rights to people who look like me.
But legislators don’t need permission to walk to the well of the House. There is no sanction against our peaceful actions during recess. And we are required by the Tennessee State Constitution to object to policies injurious to the well-being of our constituents.
The fact is, I break decorum with my very presence in that chamber. I am the son of a pastor and a school teacher. I am the grandson of two strong Black women who stood up against all that Tennessee hurled at them throughout the 20th century and beyond.
A new Tennessee is being born in its emerging miraculous diversity. The vast majority of people who wrote in to our largest state newspaper, The Tennessean, decried the breach of democracy they witnessed as the GOP supermajority expelled us.
I celebrate my return to the House to do the work for my constituency. Before being voted into office in a January 24, 2023 special election, I fought as a community activist against corporate environmental racismdumping toxins into Black communities in Southwest Memphis and won. My constituents sent me to the Tennessee State House to continue this work in their name. We will never be silenced. We will not sit down. We will not move to the back of the bus or the back of the house. We will march forward.
We will continue to challenge the Old South and bring about a Renewed South, one that is fair and just and democratic for Black, brown, White, indigenous, transgender, poor, immigrant — for all people. And we will win. Because we are on the right side of history.
Betty Cracker
Via TPM, some good news on the reproductive rights front, or at least a move in the right direction:
Excellent.
RedDirtGirl
That website is wonderful!
UncleEbeneezer
Tennessee- Arrested Development
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I love Biden but I believe Obama intuitively “got” the dignity and privacy aspects of a loss of autonomy much more than Biden, who tends to focus on whether women are “safe” or not.
But I’m grateful someone in his administration gets it. Part of being an adult citizen is not having to put up with random religious fundamentalists rifling thru your bedroom drawers. I don’t want their help.
Princess
Missouri seems to be getting close to ending public funding for libraries. I feel badly for all the people who live there who rely on them. I’m old enough to remember when Missouri was a swing state. My husband’s family is from St Louis. Lots of white people there blaming Black people for all their problems.
pat
that pdf is amazing. heheheheh
rikyrah
I had to 😂😂 at this. My parents were “attentive” , but when I think about what I was able to do.
I was 11 years old going downtown on the CTA, by myself. When I say by myself, it was with other kids…no adults.
It was nothing for my parents to drop me off at the mall and tell me what time to be there to be picked up. All day at the mall….and, when arcades came into being…..
Peanut looks at me as if I am crazy, when I tell her what I did as a kid.
https://twitter.com/michelle_byoung/status/1645972292814471168?s=19
Steeplejack
“Highlights” of Trump’s interview with Tucker Carlson, via Tom Nichols. Nichols doesn’t do threading technology, so you have to scroll down to this tweet in his main timeline and then read up from there. It’s from about 8:15 last night, 15-16 hours ago, so that should help you find it. Miscellany of quotes and video clips.
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack: You misspelled “low lights”.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: Hahaha to that tweet!
And there was ice on the lakeshore in winter! Hello two pairs of sweatpants and going down to the beach in December!
Geminid
@Steeplejack: I like Nichols’ short, astringent comments as he presents the material.
Steeplejack
@OzarkHillbilly:
I put sarcasm quotes around “highlights,” damn it!
MattF
@Geminid: It was pointed out on the birdsite that the interview, as shown, must have been a seriously edited version. I suppose the outtakes were destroyed.
Ken
@OzarkHillbilly: The judges would also have accepted “low lifes”.
Steeplejack
@Geminid:
*Sniff* Inorite. *Sniff
grumbles
<i>I’m starting to think that Tennessee might need it’s own category on the site.</i>
Oh god. I’d either be your most verbose commenter or be committed for PTSD. Maybe both.
I lived in extremely rural Tennessee from about age 12-18. It had effects on me.
One of them is I feel like I went to high school every single one of those constipated snotweasels who fucked with Jones and Pearson despite never having met any of them. I know that violently entitled little-king attitude extremely well, having been punched by it several times. (In fairness, I learned how to punch back back eventually.)
The state itself is gorgeous, I loved being able to get lost in nature. But these feral throwbacks just never go away. Maybe we could leave a trail of chewing tobacco, truck nuts and sweet tea to Florida to tempt them to migrate…
BruceFromOhio
ROFL
UncleEbeneezer
@Princess:
This is the story of America, sadly. Native/Indigenous, Enslaved Africans, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese and of course always Jews too. Even today, roughly every other white person you see still has substantial animosity towards The Other.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Princess: I remember when MO was a swing state, too. Its so depressing. We’ve got right wing radicals off on a power hungry tear through the state legislature. You would think that would be enough to wake up the normies about how much these people should never be in office. However, all they have to do is scream crime, crime, crime and point at St. Louis. The progressive, but completely incompetent and living representation of the Dunning-Kruger effect circuit attorney is only making things worse here. So, then the normies think we shouldn’t be in office either. It is maddening.
Downpuppy
What, no love for Cameron Sexton, the TN House Speaker who led the expulsions, lies about his address, and collects fake travel expenses? A true pioneer in shedding any appearance of democracy and mot bothering to count or record committee votes.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Could be an effect of having a woman in the VP office. She damn sure gets it. ;-)
West of the Rockies
I truly am astonished. That smug, moon faced state legislator was once a kid, probably a cute, dopey, normal kid. How do (approximately) 27% of our fellow humans become so heinous, heartless, and unthinking?
UncleEbeneezer
@grumbles: When we were in the Yucatan there was a young couple on a tour with us and one of them was from Tennessee. I just said “Oh” because I honestly had noting nice I could think of and didn’t want to create tension for the next 6 hours by saying “I’m so sorry.” I’m sure it’s a beautiful state and there are plenty of good people there, but I just so associate it with shitty politics. They were nice kids and didn’t seem Trumpy, so I’m guessing they probably are well aware of how messed up their govt and fellow White Tennessee neighbors are. It’s just sad to see these circumstances in any of our fifty states. None of them deserve this bullshit.
Michael Bersin
Missouri: “Hold my beer.”
The Hawley (r) family grifting and wingnut welfare business:
Money and Virginia and Abortion, oh my…
Soprano2
@Princess: They’re all butthurt about this lawsuit; banning library funding is their way of trying to get the lawsuit dropped.
Jeffro
@Princess: as these red states do insane things, I am “making lemonade out of lemons” and tweeting/posting frequently that those states’ teachers (and now, librarians) need to come to Virginia, where they’ll be welcomed with open arms. =)
(No worries about ol’ Smiling Glenn Youngkin, either…we have our ‘brick wall’ w/ VA Senate Dems, led by Sen Louise Lucas…and FSM willing this fall we’ll have the House back, too!)
West of the Rockies
@rikyrah:
It’s a different world, isn’t it? I grew up in Fullerton in Orange County, CA. A friend and I rode our bikes all over when we were just about ten or eleven. We’d end up in Anaheim, Buena Park… our parents had ZERO idea where we were.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I believe that Joe Biden gets it. He’s seen this crap his entire life. His perspective is different than yours so he may express it differently than you would, much as I, another old white man might do, even as I noticed this crap when I was in 7th grade and met black kids for the first time. (We had 4 elementary schools in town, 1 jr high and 1 high school.) And yes all the black humans lived in one part of town, and very thankfully that concept was rectified very long ago.
BruceFromOhio
@West of the Rockies: this. Exurban bordering rural, in the summer when school was out I’d disappear on my bicycle (later a dirt bike) for the day and show up for dinner. And you did *not* want to be late for dinner, or there was hell to pay. Between morning and dinner, it was a paradise no parent would ever discover.
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies:
He might not have been “normal” in any way.
Read my comment above this one. I was born and grew up in southern California. It was segregated, like everywhere else in the USA. Happily and fortunately that has changed, at least to a very large degree if not far enough.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
She does get it. Obama made a BIG argument – he always took it back to larger ideas – choice, autonomy, agency, privacy. Women as people. Imagine that.
One can be very, very “safe” and not at all free. I think women have to be careful with appeals based on keeping us safe- it’s an old fashioned way to look at women and will come back and bite. It’s too closely connected to what the Right argues- they want women so safe – such victims- that they’re in chains.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@rikyrah:
I’m Obama’s age, and was a latchkey kid from the age of 7 on. By the early teens, I literally had no boundaries, and as an urban Catholic school Louisville kid with a job at 15 and a car at 16, I got into a lot – grew up fast, and it was a lot of fun.
At one point at 17, mom had feebly grounded me over me and some group of friends being blamed for destroying a hotel room at a party (I wasn’t responsible for the water damage on three floors or the wipeout of glass and mirrors – I was, uh, occupied with some girl in another room of the suite when it happened). I decided to see the girl again after a Friday work shift (because what else would I do, duh). When I came cruising in about 3 am, mom was furious and referenced the grounding – I told her I thought she was joking.
My dad simply called me Dracula on the weekends.
Anoniminous
Missouri was a Dem state before LBJ signed the Civil Rights Acts. Went Republican in 1968 and 1972, voted for Carter in ’76, GOP in 80, 84, 88, went Dem in 92 and 96 when Perot’s Reform Party split the GOP vote, solid GOP since: 2000, 2004, 2008 (barely,) 2012, 2016, and 2020.
The state is one of the enduring success stories of the Southern Strategy
Uncle Cosmo
Beau of the Fifth Column has a vid out this morning in which he reads a quote from the TN State Constitution that says the General Assembly SHALL grant aid to public libraries. (Starts at 2:15) So if any leagle egal on our side’s in a lawsuit-filing mood, the mortar-forkers are gonna need a constitutional amendment.
BlueGuitarist
@Jeffro:
since you probably won’t see this in the dead thread downstairs, reposting response to your reply:
you’re right.
As many people as possible should know Heather McGee’s analysis.
It is painful that so many people don’t want to prosper together, but that shouldn’t stop efforts to inform others, Iike the extended interaction with a young barista Nelle described yesterday.
i admire that you are working to educate people.
I’m sorry not to have centered that, should have put the curtain rods off to the side.
Also, appreciate your response.
Kay
@Ruckus:
I wasn’t talking about racism. I agree with you he seems to get that. I think his idea of federal action for women is to protect women and I think Obama was further along in a thought process and approach than that- Obama wanted us free, not just “safe”. Men get both safety and dignity in health care. Just safety for women is a lower standard.
Michael Bersin
@BruceFromOhio:
In the eastern expanding sprawl of Tucson – summer was too damn hot. The neighbors had an above ground pool which we spent three or four hours a day splashing around in without the benefit of shade or sunscreen.
The food was good at home, so in the spring and fall they knew we’d return home in a timely manner for lunch and dinner. Otherwise, we rode our bikes everywhere, maybe with enough change in our pocket for a call home from a telephone booth. Maybe not.
Math Guy
Lived in MO for nearly 30 years. Geographically it is a beautiful state, albeit a little hot and humid in the summer. When I moved there, it was a blue state and higher education was well-funded. Then the republicans took over and gradually strangled education and social services with tax cut after tax cut. was not sorry to leave, but sorry that I felt that way.
Kay
@Ruckus:
An example. In the health care fight there was a dumb “debate” over whether women deserved coverage for birth control in the health insurance women earn and pay for, because religious fundamentalists made an insane “fungibility” argument that applies in no other area.
Anyway- SOME womens advocates immediately started saying some women needed birth control for reasons other than preventing pregnancy. But women shouldn’t have to beg to have drugs covered under health care plans. They shouldnt have to argue that they promise not to use it as birth control. Obama never did that, because he understood when we’re negotiating on WHICH medical care women may be permitted to get that’s a lower standard and we lose. It’s no ones business why they want birth control.
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack: Ach, my apologies saw the first quote mark and my brain put the second quote mark after the whole of it. Bad brain! BAD!
Ksmiami
@West of the Rockies: me, a friend and a bike on the strand at 12 hanging in Venice till sundown
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: That is excellent!
Crazy, though, that even with HIPAA they have to explicitly do that. Also crazy how many wacko conservative doctors there are who would cooperate with attacks on women.
I wonder what the stick will be if doctors violate these requirements. That’s what will make or break its usefulness. No slap on the wrist, I hope. It should be that you lose your license to practice medicine.
Ksmiami
@WaterGirl: huge fines to the doctors personally. Hit them hard where it counts.
WaterGirl
@BruceFromOhio: I can’t believe I forgot to include the link to the website itself. That has been remedied up top.
Whoever put the website together truly did excellent work.
Bill Arnold
@grumbles:
That is worthy of theft.
Fair Economist
@Princess:
Coming soon “Why don’t young people want to stay in Missouri?”
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@WaterGirl: I’d prefer a restriction that does not allow them to have women as patients.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Excellent points. Women’s second-class status is so familiar and engrained that it’s invisible if you don’t make an effort to see it.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Fair Economist:
There have already been some articles out about that very thing, before the library ridiculousness.
OzarkHillbilly
@Anoniminous: It was still possible for a DEM to get elected statewide up until 2018 when McCaskill lost her reelection bid but I do believe a DEM woman (who’s name escapes me now) was elected to be the state auditor. I don’t think she ran in 2022, when Fitzpatrick took that office over.
WaterGirl
@Ksmiami: Are you kidding? There are plenty of $$ men willing to reimburse for fines.
They have to lose their livelihood.
WaterGirl
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Is that better than losing their license, so they cannot have any patients?
Ruckus
@Kay:
I can’t argue with you about the difference in healthcare, but dignity in healthcare? I think that more depends upon who is giving the care. I prefer women doctors because the vast majority of them actually know what dignity is. Many of the older male docs have no clue whatsoever. I’ve told an older male doc to go fuck himself as he walked out the exam room because he had zero respect or dignity. And he wasn’t the first one I should have said this to. I know women today that might do that, but it’s likely they wouldn’t. Even at the VA I mostly deal with women docs and I like it. The old guard is mostly gone, so I don’t have to tell them what they can do to themselves any longer. My primary docs at the VA have all been women for the last 8 years. And yes it is different for women and men in this world. How each gets treated and respected – or not respected. But my experience is that it can be reasonably equal and respectful. I see this all the time at the VA. I’ve seen it with docs that are treating me and women vets. And if it can be that way in a big federal organization, it can be that way elsewhere.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@WaterGirl: There is a shortage of qualified physicians. I don’t want to create one problem to solve another.
RaflW
@Princess: Missouri is just an awful place these days. My dad was from KCMO, but the whole family moved over to Johnson County KS (yes, white flight, yes my grandparents were — very disappointingly to me even as a pre-teen kid — generic suburban racists back in the day).
All my KS cousins are Dems and struggle with the Christianists in state gov’t on that side of the border, but man, MO is weirdly worse! And yet much of the RW bullshit there doesn’t seem to break into national attention. I see it mostly bc I follow a couple KC area accounts on social media, and we have some dear (and very liberal) friends in Kirkwood, MO.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Would a qualified physician narc on you for seeking appropriate medical care?
JimV
Since this is an open thread,
“The GOP cpuldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fistful of fifties.”
Since I was born, the Republicans have won 10 presidential elections and the Democrats 9. As usual, I don’t see any wisdom in the above tagline I was greeted with today, and therefore to find humor in it I would have to be laughing at whomever stated it.
raven
@Ruckus: I had primary care dude that was a former Jarhead grunt officer. Fucker treated me like a recruit and I finally found a nice female doc who is really great.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@JimV: Both can be true. The one thing the GOP is good at doesn’t require organization, inchoate rage.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
My home growing up was on the edge of town, surrounded by second growth forest over what was mtn top farms in the long ago.
So one sunny weekend day my dad took me for a walk in the woods across the road from the house. We walked in an odd set of big circles, and dad asked me a couple of times, “Which way back to the house?” and I would turn and point, and add “but you have to avoid the ravine…” or some such opinion.
After that walk, I was free to roam the woods until dark grew so I know dinnertime was neigh. Probably 6 or 7?
Richard
I had to check: archive.org’s wayback machine has already copied the Governor’s new website.
Kay
@Ruckus:
There’s never been a national debate on whether certain prescription drugs that men take should be covered by their insurance. The loss of dignity occurs BECAUSE it is up for debate. It’s not a debate. Everyone doesn’t get to weigh in on the reasons women take what they take. We can take birth control ot prevent births or for any other reason. We can do that because we’re adults. The fact that we are subjected to this constant “oversight” and “approval process” is ITSELF a lesser status.
Matt McIrvin
@Anoniminous: Missouri was once known as a bellwether state that always voted for the winner. Obviously not any more.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: Viagra used to not be covered by Medicare.Part D by law. I’m not sure but I believe that has changed.
Stands to reason that it was debated when the change was made, but it was never a nationalized moral panic.
Kay
@Ruckus:
If I have to ask permission to leave my house and you don’t and I get permission and leave and you also leave we both left our houses. But we’re not being treated the same. That’s dignity and agency. You had it, I didn’t.
lowtechcyclist
A friend who I’d kind of lost touch with over the years recently moved to Tennessee, now living near Kingsport in the upper east end of the state. My wife saw something she’d posted on Facebook (I’m never on Facebook) and asked her what compelled her to move there. Cheaper houses and no income tax, was the answer.
I just can’t imagine. Cheaper whatever, it’s still motherfucking Tennessee.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
People seriously argued that the Catholic Church shoud be permitted to deny their female employees birth control coverage because…. they still own their employees compensation even after it has been earned?
This ridiculous “fungible” concept has never been asserted in any other context, but because it was women people were like “oh, Yeah employers should be able to tell women what to buy. That’s my opinion”.
WaterGirl
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Okay, i get that. But I don’t think we want to set the precedent that doctors can choose these kinds of patients and not those kinds of patients.
WaterGirl
@Richard: Most excellent!
J R in WV
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
But don’t you suspect many of those RWNJ bigot Drs would prefer no women patients? So sad… losing all their control over the femms…
Yes, I realize I contradict myself….. ;~)
WaterGirl
@Kay: Yes.
Jeffro
@BlueGuitarist: great points and thanks!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: People behave as though employers own employees. This is an extension of our perverse implementation of capitalism.
I tried a different sort of argument against these employer-based restrictions; that these employers, by restricting access to certain care for their employees, are incurring extra costs on the rest of us, financial and societal.
These conversations were always with folks deeply set in their ways, so no progress there.
WaterGirl
I just had to share this.
jlowe
Never listened to it before. Wonderful. Reminded me of “Compared to What” by Les McCann with Eddie Harris. Thanks for sharing this.
Burnspbesq
ICYMI, here’s an excellent dissection of the mifepristone decision by a conservative BigLaw partner (former Scalia clerk). “Indefensible” is the nicest thing he has to say about it.
Somebody should hire this guy to do an amicus brief.
https://adamunikowsky.substack.com/p/mifepristone-and-the-rule-of-law-9c4
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@WaterGirl:
I get that too. There has to be a way to make sure we are respected and get the healthcare we need without having seniors howling to RWNJ about no longer being able to see a doctor because the shortage of physicians got more acute.
WaterGirl
Holy crap!
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: All speculation of course, but it does make sense. I hope they nail this piece of shit with obstruction (which can carry a 20-year sentence).
Then they can nail him for Jan 6.
oatler
Villains in 70s TV shows were often “abortionists” (never said aloud, just a doctor who owes a favor and so must forge a death certificate…
Burnspbesq
@WaterGirl:
so much for any supposed difficulty in proving willfulness. 2071 is back in play—which is cool because conviction carries a lifetime ban on holding Federal office.
BruceFromOhio
@WaterGirl: Thanks!
Handiwork is courtesy of https://twitter.com/tobymorton
I tipped some coin into his hat via Venmo.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@WaterGirl: We’re going to be confronted again with the Trumpian crime tautology.
Trump didn’t commit these crimes because he took these actions right out in the open and, if he was so open about it, it couldn’t have been a crim
May it fail this time.
Old School
@JimV:
Thank you for knowing Biden won.
Suzanne
@Kay:
I remember seeing a great tweet about this. The writer wrote something like, “Some people use birth control for regulating their periods, or ovarian cysts, or acne, or PCOS, or whatever. I use it because I want to have sex — a human activity — and not get pregnant”. Fuck yes.
I, for one, will not read any more stories of sexual assault of children or terrible fetal anomalies. And I certainly will no longer share any of my personal experiences for greater consumption in an effort to change minds. I no longer think it’s helpful to humiliate oneself and swim around in our vulnerabilities in order to beg for the scraps of my liberty or my dignity. I encouraged my friends to do the same. (At the height of #metoo, my friends and I had story after story, and it was devastating.)
I don’t need men to relate personally to what women go through. It’s very simple: my body is mine. That is the beginning and the end of the discussion I am willing to entertain at this point.
Betty Cracker
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Our perverse form of capitalism absolutely does do that, and I am not disagreeing or trying to nitpick you when I say this — I’m shouting into the void, really — but I want to amplify what Kay has been saying because it’s very fucking important: it’s about assigning women second-class citizenship.
This is why it drives me nuts when people attribute all of our social ills to white supremacy or economic inequality. Yes, those frameworks exist. Yes, intersectionality is a thing, and all of these social pathologies must be addressed jointly and severally, etc.
But let’s not erase what the fuck this specific thing is, which is misogyny, and let’s not change the goddamn subject every time it comes up.
Scout211
Apologies if this has already been posted, but Justin Pearson has an opinion piece up on CNN.com Why expelling me from the legislature backfired on Tennessee Republicans
BruceFromOhio
Holy smokes, Toby on a tear, https://www.congressmanogles.com/
Kelly
@rikyrah: When I was in grade school in the 1960’s we moved to a house across the road from Silver Falls State Park. 9,000 acres of forest crisscrossed by gated dirt fire roads. Spent my summer afternoons exploring miles from home. Never saw anyone else.
WaterGirl
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: It’s complicated.
WaterGirl
@Burnspbesq: Remind me what 2071 is?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Betty Cracker: No disagreements from me there. I didn’t mean to diminish the way this uniquely hurts women. I was just looking at an intersectional component. And as with most things intersectional; if it’s hurting everyone, it’s hurting women and people of color a hundred times more, minimum.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:
Yes to all of this.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker:
THANK YOU.
And somewhat unlike racism and classism, misogyny is often working in the most intimate relationships, in every family. Within the home, and the bedroom, and the kitchen.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: Goosebumps.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: I am adding that to the post up top. Thank you!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Adding that the role of the employer is a crucial component of that restriction coming into play.
Kay
@Suzanne:
It kind of breaks my heart when women do it. They don’t have to be bleeding to death. I think they should get health care anyway.
It’s especially gross when huge and profitable media companies like the NYTimes exploit the stories. Pay a fucking female reporter to cover abortion. No woman shoukd be opening a vein in that paper unless they’re making Brett Stephens money.
Kay
@Suzanne:
It kind of breaks my heart when women do it. They don’t have to be bleeding to death. I think they should get health care anyway.
It’s especially gross when huge and profitable media companies like the NYTimes exploit the stories. Pay a fucking female reporter to cover abortion. No woman shoukd be opening a vein in that paper unless they’re making Brett Stephens-level money. Stop working for free
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: That was well said.
And you are not shouting into the void, either, even if it must seem that way at times. The problem may be that patriarchy is so deeply embedded in our culture and society that many people take it for granted.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Betty Cracker:
This.
Dan B
@Kay: Franklin, TN a suburb if Nashville had a hearing before the city council on whether to allow a Pride festival. This was a vote on whether or not LGBTQ people could have a festival, not on having a recruitment drive or an armed march. The testimony was horrific. A man claimed he’d be forced to watch men twerking. It seems logical that he’d be required to go. And the permit was granted as long as it was “decent” no drag (sex). It’s discouraging that our existence is such a threat.
Old School
@BruceFromOhio:
That’s very good too.
I see these aren’t takeovers of expired domains. These are unclaimed web addresses.
geg6
@JimV:
I was obviously born after you and according to my calculations, the Dem has won 8 and the GOP has won 8. And I really think any red-blooded GOPer today would recoil at the thought that Eisenhower was a GOPer. The ones I know consider him a RINO.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Right, except women having to ask permission to get the health insurance they earned (it’s compensation, their PAY, which the goddamned Catholic Church knows better than anyone) is the only example of where this was a NATIONAL (if moronic) debate.
EVERYONE weighs in on womens lives and decisions. We’re always subject to second guessing and oversight, by everyone. There is no comparable experience for men.
Burnspbesq
@WaterGirl:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2071
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: Clapping, hard.
Kay
@Scout211:
He’s really talented. They’re such dopes on the Right. No one would have ever heard of him – and he’s GREAT- if the dumbo Republicans hadn’t made him famous.
When he was re-admitted (or whatever it is) he said “I want to welcome the people back to the peoples house”. Just perfect. Not himself. The people he represents.
Kay
@Scout211:
It was news in Denmark. They know all about the two AA lawmakers who were expelled by the lunkheads.
Wyatt Salamanca
@WaterGirl:
Here’s another great song you can repurpose from MS to TN:
Here’s to the State of Mississippi – Phil Ochs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7fgB0m_y2I
Barbara
@Suzanne: I think one reason people go down this route is to get the lunkheads to realize that they or their female relatives might also be harmed when whole categories of health care services are off limits. But, basically, you are dealing with people who see women as not much more than a uterus with a few other moving parts and you end up ceding way too much ground by resorting to this form of argument.
H.E.Wolf
I’m in meetings today, but I’m dropping in to say what a brilliant title and allusion for this post!
Roger Moore
@West of the Rockies:
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay:
Also this!
Suzanne
@Barbara: Oh, I agree. Personal appeals can be persuasive. I get why people try to make them, to put a human face on an issue that isn’t really talked about in public that much.
But I’m done. If people can’t understand the incredibly basic thought experiment of “what would I be if I couldn’t control my own body?” (Answer: livestock), then they’re dumber than a fucken stump and certainly not worth the pain required to convince.
Betty Cracker
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I know you weren’t trying to diminish it — didn’t mean to tee off on your comment specifically. It’s a pattern I’ve noticed, is all, and not just here.
geg6
@Kay:
THIS.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker:
The other critical thing about this…. even rich, white, educated, cisgender, heterosexual, conventionally attractive, thin, privileged women are targeted by misogyny.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
AND THIS.
**This is what happens when I read a thread from bottom to top.
geg6
@Suzanne:
And now THIS.
No woman escapes it.
The Moar You Know
@West of the Rockies: he was probably a raging asshole as a kid too. Met plenty of them as a kid. Still meet them as an adult.
WaterGirl
@Wyatt Salamanca: Wow.
Soprano2
@rikyrah: I rode my bike everywhere in my town in the summer. Of course, it was an extremely small town – less than 1,000 people – so I’m sure that’s one reason we had so much freedom. I think it’s sad for kids today to be so restrained in what they can do and where they can go. Then adults wonder why “kids these days can’t take care of themselves or make decisions”. It’s because you didn’t require them to do it when they were young, numbskull!!
Barbara
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I think it was Edith Wharton who wrote that when the rich get a cold the poor get pneumonia — Yes, agreed, anything that hurts a relatively high status member of a group hurts a lower status member even worse, but these policies are aimed at women as women — all women — and I am so tired of having to apologize for or quibble about complaining about straight up misogyny
@Betty Cracker: In my bleaker moments I want to give up because, basically, women by themselves never seem to count.
Baud
OT FYI NPR dropping Twitter.
https://i.redd.it/w27t5l3k0ita1.jpg
CaseyL
The Shelby County Commission hearing on reinstating Justin Pearson is now happening; here is a link
Suzanne
@Barbara: As I said on a previous thread, this is about reversal of the social order entirely so that women — all women! — are shut out of public life and are returned to physical, economic, and sexual domination by men, to provide men with freely available sex, heirs, and a clean home. That is absolutely the end goal.
Roger Moore
@lowtechcyclist:
No income tax should not be a big attraction to anyone but the ultra-rich. Yes, you notice the income tax more because you see how much you’re paying on April 15th, but the state still has to fund itself somehow. That usually comes in the form of higher property and sales taxes, which mean people of ordinary means wind up paying more in taxes than they would in a high income tax state. Meanwhile, Californians get a lot more from their state government than Tennesseans.
Kay
@Barbara:
Bolding is mine. As an advocacy aproach it doesn’t make any sense to me.
Maxim
Searched for “Cohen” and didn’t get any hits, so just in case, TFG has just sued Michael Cohen for $500 million. I sure hope he gets laughed out of court.
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: I just put up a post for that.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay: Again, THIS!
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
I’d like to have a brief segue into a word which have been mangled out of all contest by right wing goobers.
That word is groomer. In child protection circles that I always was part of, this term had actual meaning. It was about the systematic manipulation of a child by frequent and multiple incidents of touch, gifts, talk, secret sharing and activities designed to stimulate an intimate, erotic set of desires by the child in the furtherance of the adult later taking advantage.
These pathetic, drawling morons don’t know what they’re talking about, so the rest of us look at them askance, not understanding what their babble of the moment is. They know that they simply heard the word before, and it works to reinforce and spread their pathetic fears.
trollhattan
@lowtechcyclist: They could go to Washington state (et al) and not have income tax, and if they don’t land in Puget Sound (the sound itself or the region) they can have “cheap” housing, whatever that is, and will as a bonus avoid grinding poverty, tornados, and the Klan (for the most part).
Kay
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Hasn’t it been amazing to watch them take this very specific term that had real meaning in a child abuse context and just…destroy it? No one can ever use it again. It now means “all the people we don’t like”
sab
@Dan B: Jeez. Akron has been having LGBT festivals for decades and they are ridiculously wholesome. Basically craft fairs with food, some music and rainbow flags.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Kay:
I’ve been disgusted at how it has been misused. I’ve seen specific, tangible grooming behavior on many horrifying occasions.
Drag shows and story hour ain’t it.
Of course, I have similar feelings about “narcissist” being bandied about as if it is a clinical term. Every person in a verbally abusive relationship throws that one around, and I don’t have the heart to tell them that there isn’t necessarily a clinical diagnosis, but that instead, they just hooked up with an asshole.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Musk is such a goddamned idiot. He just can’t stop clubbing the geese that lay the golden eggs on the platform he owns.
Barbara
@Kay: It took me a while to realize what she meant, but yes, I don’t understand why people don’t seem to recognize that saying things like, “well, white women won’t really be hurt” doesn’t exactly heighten the prospects for lessening the hurt to women who are not white. It’s also not true, of course.
Kay
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
I remember THE DAY I (really) understood “grooming” in court- testimony from a social worker. I HAD recognized it- I just didn’t have a word for it. Up till then I had been sort of “this is this thing they say”
Over the years I have gotten a little cynical. It can be faddish. Remember when every single juvenile was “flashing gang signs”? Always “flashing”.
Yeah sure they’re all in gangs. I think police got “gang funding” that decade.
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Well this offer definitely does NOT apply to Transgender Men, who are not only being effected by this very same bullshit (because some need birth control too), but they are also currently having their medical options/access to crucial hormone treatments debated by everyone else and even criminalized anywhere the GOP can pull it off.
The Moar You Know
@Ruckus: I too prefer women doctors – finally found one that was a complete asshole. Flat out the worst doc I’ve ever seen regardless of race, gender or any other criteria. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
Had to migrate back between health care systems, but got hooked back up with my former internal medicine doc (also a woman) and it was a good move.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: It’s inexplicable. Unless he is blinded by his own arrogance?
Kay
@Barbara:
I think we don’t often see it turned around like she did, but if you’re actually advocating for women who would be hurt more than white women it really doesn’t make sense to diminish the harm to white women. It’s why I have started to question the whole approach. It doesn’t make sense as advocacy and I have definitely seen it used in bad faith, although not today on this thread.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Betty Cracker: Fair, I appreciate it. It’s hard to gauge intent sometimes in text format.
Burnspbesq
@Suzanne:
Except that those people get to vote, and their votes are worth exactly the same as yours.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Burnspbesq: Arguably more
siddhartha
It seems as though folks don’t really understand intersectionality:
Talking about white supremacy IS also talking about misogyny. It is not changing the subject. People can’t separate out different parts of themselves: the woman part, the race part, the sexuality part.
It is white privilege to say that you only want to talk about women. When that statement is made, the white is implicit because white is the unmarked norm. But you never stop being white so your experience of being a woman is intrinsically raced.
“And somewhat unlike racism and classism, misogyny is often working in the most intimate relationships, in every family. Within the home, and the bedroom, and the kitchen.”
Misogyny cannot be isolated from other isms. That’s what intersectionality means (and what you say is not limited to misogyny.)
If one really wants to understand misogyny, one wouldn’t separate it out. Otherwise, for women of color, it’s clear that the conversation is about misogyny towards white women.
Re: protectionism. I HATE when men say that they support women’s rights because they have daughters. That’s paternalistic, as though rights are a matter of appropriate fatherhood alone. But, let’s also not forget that historically, protectionism has only been a privilege afforded to white women.
Ida B. Wells had to leave Memphis for fear of being lynched when she stated that white women were claiming to have been raped when they were in consensual relationships with black men since rape of white women was the excuse used for lynching. And no one thought to protect black women from white men (since that’s how slavery perpetuated itself).
The US introduced an aberration in a child’s status for slavery: status came from the mother’s line not the father’s. No protection there.
ALL of this history is being manifested today in complex, nuanced, and unnoticeable ways. Dismissing intersectionality as a “thing” (wow. after what it took and what it still in fact takes for black women to be regarded as creators of knowledge or to produce knowledge) and insisting we talk about misogyny is not talking about misogyny.
suzanne
@Burnspbesq: I mean, men could try convincing other men of women’s basic humanity. It doesn’t have to be women discussing their assaults or their personal medical business or the loss of their wanted children.
How did this become a baseline expectation?!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@UncleEbeneezer: Of course. I know I meant cis-gendered men and am confident Kay did as well.
Kay
@suzanne:
I read a lot of anti choicers and the other reason it bothers me is because women suffering is a big part of the anti choice position/beliefs. Women suffering is celebrated, reveled in, proof of womens worth.
They have this whole thing where they “honor” women who died in childbirth, because that of course is our highest calling. I think the graphic personal accounts play into this – that the ONLY way we can be listened to or respected is to describe bleeding, agony, loss. What if I just want birth control or a private visit with a physician and “best practices” to treat a miscarriage? Not GORY enough for the NYTimes? Not enough blood from women?
Ruckus
@Kay:
I have been examining my comments on this post and find that yes, I am biased because of my viewpoint. I’m pretty sure I understand your comments and Betty Crocker’s but my viewpoint will always have a male perspective because that’s what I am. I think it is an understanding and respectful point of view, I hope beyond all hope that it is, but it will always have at least some issue, not of not understanding but of perspective. I can never KNOW a woman’s perspective first hand, it’s just not possible. It is extremely possible to recognize the differences, why they are different, and RESPECT that they are legitimate and different. And I do that. So I will, in the future, try my damnest to remember that I can understand why they are different, I can not feel the difference because we are different, and have different perspectives. If I offended anyone I apologize, it has never been my intent to offend but to understand as well as I can.
Baud
@Kay:
Do they hold a procession like with cops, or put up a gold star like the CIA?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@siddhartha:
I don’t think that is really true. We separate out parts of ourselves all the time because those parts are expressed more or less in different contexts. I mean if, for example, I am discriminated against in the workplace (denied a promotion), I can’t tell if it is because I am a woman or am a lesbian. In that sense, it isn’t separable without more information. But most of the time, it is.
Kay
@Ruckus:
Thanks. I don’t think of Biden’s view as so much “male” as I do as “of a certain time and upbringing”. Biden is the violence against women act which is certainly great but also sees women as victims – he thinks in terms of “protecting” women which is not always great for women. I think he does not “get” the autonomy and agency argument.
Obama was a different generation, as is Harris, and I think they “get” the dignity cost of these laws partly because they are black so they see the harms in a broader sense. Even if you’re a privileged woman your government telling you you have to leave the state where you live to get an abortion is a harm. It’s a harm to your equal citizenship.
Suzanne
@Kay: I remember going out to meet a new client, some years ago, for a project. The building was a fairly high-tech factory with some attached offices and laboratories. They needed some architectural work done to build a mezzanine level inside the factory for additional offices, and we were going to have to renovate and expand the bathrooms because of the increased occupant load. So very typical for an expansion.
We met with one of the managers (a dude) and one of the senior engineers (a woman), and then we took a tour of the existing facility. When we got to the bathrooms, the engineer had left and only the manager remained. He kept saying things like, “I guess they need more space for whatever the hell it is they do in there, hahahaha!”, and making jokes about women’s bodies being “gross”. I was like, uhhhhhh….what do you think they do in there? The same things you do in your own bathroom, dude.
Some men regard women with disgust, and then are conflicted by the fact that they desire women for sex. The Second Sex discusses this in detail.
UncleEbeneezer
@siddhartha: Thank you for this. Well said.
Baud
@Kay:
Women’s suffering is real.
Women’s dignity is frou frou.
/NYT and others.
Kay
@Baud:
They tell the stories to the crowd at the March For Life in DC and everyone applauds.
It’s what made me so sad about the young women on Tic Tok who started the meme where they were alone in the frame saying they needed to live in case of a miscarriage and then the frame expands and you see that they have other children. I think young womens lives are valuable outside of whether they have children. They don’t have to produce OTHER PEOPLE to show me their worth and why they should get medical care. They should be saved just for them.
Baud
@Kay:
Yeah, I agree. But I also see the value of a multifaceted marketing campaign. It’s not as if the Dem solution will differentiate between worthy and unworthy women.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Speaking just for me, I had a youngish assistant once tell me that once she noticed that I talk to everybody the same coarse way regardless of age, sex or wealth, she realized that 1) I have no manners (OK, she was right about that) and 2) she appreciated the fact that an older white guy really exerted nothing in the way of power differentials vis a vis age, gender or class, nor did I expect anything from anyone. Something about “you’re so straightforward that you’re hard for a lot of people to read because you mean nothing by the way you choose to talk”.
Kay
@Baud:
I thought it was good, politically! It must have been reaching young women because they were either making more or passing the good ones on. I love me some clever Tic Tokers. But at the same time sad because women can’t just say “I want to live”. They have to say “I am living for someone else, so therefore not “selfish”.
Oh, look, Baud! Abortion is no longer murder and life no longer begins at conception because they lost a Wisconsin judicial race! :
The fucking dopes are going to end up right back at Casey.
Kay
I don’t understand the new “15 weeks” plan either, politically. Which states are going to adopt this 15 week ban? The wingnut states that have already banned abortion? No. The liberal states where Democrats are winning on choice? Michiagn will adopt a 15 week ban just to piss off the voters who just put them in office? No. There are no “15 week ban” states. There was Florida but of course they went to a total ban.
I swear conservatives don’t know how to do politics anymore. They’re a mess. Careening about wildly.
Kay
Maybe they mean federal? A federal 15 week ban? Ok, so along with “abortion is murder” and “life begins at conception” they are also wholly abandoning “back to the states” which their shitty corrupt court just told us was the plan?
Roger Moore
@Kay:
It’s right there in Genesis 3:
See, God said women were supposed to suffer during pregnancy and childbirth, so any attempt to mitigate that is going against His will. I only wish this were sarcastic. Back when anesthesia during childbirth was first being tested, there were people who said it was wrong because it went against the Bible. Their spiritual descendants are the ones who don’t want women to get medical help for their miscarriages. They’re just fucking evil.
Baud
@Kay: I could possibly see a 15-week federal ban as a “compromise” that might let Republicans off the hook with enough voters, but not Lindsey’s 15-week national ban but states can go downward from there. No one is going to be fooled by that except pundits.
Suzanne
@Roger Moore: Don’t forget my favorite!
Why A Wife Should Endure Painful Sex with Her Husband
From “BiblicalGenderRoles.com”.
The best part is when it tells you to STOP READING if “you are unable to learn new things”.
Baud
@Baud: By “compromise,” I don’t mean the Dems would go for it (except Manchin, maybe). Just that the GOP and their allies would pitch it as a compromise.
Barbara
@siddhartha:
First, no one has done that. But it rankles to be told that you — or anyone else — gets to define how all women of all colors and ethnic backgrounds get to talk about their experience as women without tripping the privilege wire. It’s not your call.
Misogyny is different from tribalism, though of course in multi-ethnic or diverse societies the isms intersect. But you can go to an ethnically homogenous society and still find misogyny and the curtailment of women’s rights. Curtailing access to abortion and contraception assuredly hurts women of lower socio-economic status much harder than it does people who have higher socio-economic status, but the curtailment is aimed at all women, as women, based on a biological function that is limited to females. Not all females can get pregnant — I am not defining women as people who can get pregnant, but restrictions aimed at abortion are assuredly intended to circumscribe the role and influence of women in society. All women need reproductive autonomy to live free lives. Yes, some need more than that but that doesn’t mean they don’t also need to be free from restrictions that are aimed at female roles and functions.
J R in WV
I have always loved Nina Simone, but her work on “Mississippi Goddam” is so full of emotion choked back just enough for her to get the song out… an amazing work of stunning effect ~!!~
I have told before of having my USN ship move to an Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula MS in 1972, how it was like time travel to before times. They knew about the Civil Rights acts, but disregarded them altogether.
There was segregation in WV, but it was a tradition, not Jim Crow laws, and black people were elected to and served on Boards of Education in counties with a black population. To see it in place in its natural homeland, with Sailors from all over the nation trying to make it through… it was horrible in every sense of that work.
We left MS within days of my discharge straight north to KY where we turned east towards WV. In a 1962 Plymouth Fury and a U-Haul truck. Have driven thru MS a couple of times, spent as little time and money as possible.
Miss Bianca
@Barbara: Right on.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
I think the big problem for Republicans is that their base won’t accept anything but a complete ban. It’s the whole “dog who catches the car” problem again. Abortion was a great issue for them as long as the courts kept blocking everything. They could pass laws they knew the courts would reject as a sop to the base, safe in the knowledge the rest of the voters would never experience any real inconvenience.
Now that they’ve actually achieved their goal of overturning Roe, though, they have to deal with just how polarizing abortion is as an issue. They can either satisfy their base and piss off everyone else or piss off the base to avoid trouble with everyone else. Neither one is politically tantalizing.
livewyre
@siddhartha: Thank you for this. I feel this needs highlighting and reinforcing – these things really are inseparable, because racism and misogyny are both asymmetric relations of dominance. In each model, one must rule the other. That’s what I tried (and maybe failed) to highlight in previous discussions.
The “classic” model of race is that mankind [sic] is divided into inborn, intrinsic, and essential categories, never to mix, one of which is “white”. In that frame, equality means white folk holding hands with each other color in harmony across borders, as long as they don’t do anything complicated like share genes.
But that all assumes that race is an inseparable element of humanity that we must accept and live with, rather than something that was invented, imposed, and offered conditional exemption from in order to justify enslavement and/or extermination. Whiteness is that exemption. All it asks is loyalty, and all it gives is nothing.
Since we’re talking intersectionally, here’s the intersection. The role of misogyny in racism is protection. Not freedom – the ideal role of white women in white supremacist patriarchy is as property, but finer, purer, more delicate property than any “shady” type, woman or not. More expensive assets for white men to rally around.
This model does just what it’s meant to and nothing more. Defending white womanhood can never defend women as a whole. It’s an empty claim on an exclusionary status; a thin curtain rod, just enough for a sparrow.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Agree over the long term, they have to be in support of a complete ban. To win the next election, however, the GOP and the anti-abortion crew are duplicitous enough to rally behind a lie of a 15 week “compromise,” a promise they wouldn’t keep if they won. However, for it to work, they would have to say they would preempt harsher state bans, and that appears to be a bridge too far.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I agree with this 1000000%
Woman’s healthcare is different than men’s healthcare, because our bodies are different. But the concept that women have to justify their choices and men do not is completely wrong no matter how someone may try to justify it. I should have control over my body and so should every other mature individual, regardless of sexual orientation.
WaterGirl
@Baud: You either control your own body, and have the right to self-determination, or you don’t. Women currently don’t.
There is no compromise.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Roger Moore:
Now that they’ve well and truly fucked over women, they can avoid good governance by going after you know whats in a more energetic way.
Ruckus
Kay
I am not disagreeing with anything you say here. Hell I can’t think of anything that you’ve written on BJ that I do disagree with. I’d bet there might be a thing or two, we are different people. But in my mind gender, skin color, age, makes ZERO difference between our rights and privileges. I believe that humans are equal, unless you want me to die for something, something. I’m not OK with that, for anyone. I do not think my being a man, or being white makes me any better or gives me more rights than any other human. I may not express myself well enough to make that clear, so I’m putting it in plain language. That I may express myself from a male perspective is normal. That my perspective is or might be, out of wack with what it should be, I am willing to learn and change.
Suzanne
@livewyre:
The flaw in this analysis is that that “protection” has always been performative, a status show men give to other men. “Defending the honor and safety of our women” is undermined by what we are talking about right here, that without free access to abortion, women and girls die.
We aren’t being protected. We’re being endangered.
Kayla Rudbek
@Baud: think of it this way: as a woman, my corpse has more rights than my living body.
Betty Cracker
@siddhartha: FWIW, calling intersectionality “a thing” wasn’t intended as a dismissal but rather an acknowledgement that it’s real. But on this blog and in left of center politics in the U.S. more generally, there’s sometimes a tendency to cram every social pathology into one of two overarching frameworks: race or class.
People of good will who use that shorthand will acknowledge that the forces that underpin these frameworks, including misogyny, are complex and intersectional and that this is worthy of discussion. (In other words, that it’s “a thing.”)
But sometimes it seems like the overarching frameworks of race and/or class are the only acceptable context in which the sustained and outrageous assault on all women’s agency can ever be discussed — as if misogyny isn’t a unique pathology that infects literally every human society in its own right.
I can’t help but notice this view seems especially prevalent among generally well-meaning men, though not exclusively so. In my opinion, whether deliberate or not, that sort of language policing is used as an erasing and silencing technique fairly often, and it doesn’t serve anyone well.
livewyre
@Suzanne: Agreed. It feels like I was a bit vague and could have used some more elaboration on just what that “protection” constitutes. Like a protection racket. Loyalty in exchange for maybe not getting hurt just yet.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I am only just over 6 yrs younger than Joe Biden. So I possibly have a similar starting position. I hope that he, and I are eons ahead of the shit for brains right wing assholes, even if we don’t use all the correct language. I often wonder if some of our inherent biases are because of our age and speech patterns from a long ago time. We try to change them but that takes a lot of effort and Joe is somewhat busier than say I am.
Suzanne
@livewyre: The better description of what the ideal role for white women is under patriarchy is not property but livestock — an investment that will, hopefully, produce abundantly for you if you care for it well (it has no other benefit to you), and you have to keep other people from stealing it, but it will ultimately be slaughtered once it’s reached the end of its usefulness.
Don’t ever be fooled into thinking that white men actually want to protect white women. They want to be seen protecting us. That’s not the same thing.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
Exactly what I mean. Perfect example. “Let’s have a public debate over whether women should get pain killers during childbirth”
We require constant monitoring and oversight. My daughter talked to me about this during the “clerics council” in Congress that the GOP held during the health care debate. Remember that? They had the panel of clerics to discuss womens health care on tv. She was not that political at the time so she was having trouble describing why she found it so offensive. Just sputtering mad “why do they keep TALKING about US?” I get it completely. So funny though because of her age she never seen a US House other than Pelosi in charge until we lost a midterm. She was “what is going ON?” I told her “this is Republicans! You;ve never seen it before”.
livewyre
@Suzanne: I hope it didn’t come across that I regard “more expensive property than those types” as an aspirational condition!
What I mean by “protection” is not protection of rights, but of property value. It’s offered as an alternative to what “those types” are to be subject to. At the hands of the idealized white patriarch, naturally.
That’s also what I was getting at with “asks loyalty, offers nothing”, in an allusion to a certain property developer who aspired to be a mob boss. “Nothing” is getting off lightly. One doesn’t hope to be paid, but to survive and maybe have some of the gold leaf rub off. Of course it doesn’t work, but that doesn’t stop some from trying.
Kay
@Ruckus:
Oh, he’s great overall. I just really connected with Obama’s approach to the whole issue. Because part of “dignity” is not forcing women to explain the details of why they want birth control. We’re always explaining. It just shouldn’t be necessary to say “I need birth control for X but not Y” or “although birth control is inexpensive, I would like my insurance plan to cover it, like how yours covers all your shit”. It’s not a topic of general public interest.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Suzanne: @livewyre:
Suzanne is absolutely correct. Protection is an excuse. The role is and has always been control. Men want to own and control women for their own gratification, and some women have been brainwashed since birth to believe that being a sex slave is their duty.
The other flaw in this analysis is that misogyny isn’t just a white thing. This completely denies how omnipresent misogyny is in communities of color and for the same reasons.
Kay
Theyre so funny because the thing is that lower income white people do not actually drink, mostly. You can tell none of them spend any time with the ballyhooed “lunch bucket” Americans – those folks rarely drink. This will be an easy boycott for them.
The group they’re talking about are Trump’s real estate agents and salespeople. They drink.
Baud
@Kay:
I’m a little sad I never drink Bud.
livewyre
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Right – the premise of intersectionality is that one form of power relation isn’t confined by another, but rather crosses it. Misogyny and racism take place both outside and within each other. One could think of it like a Punnett square, where a gene falls into overlapping combinations of dominant and recessive.
In this (very loose!) analogy, for instance, white manhood would fall into the double-dominant square, and so on down the line. Between each pair of quadrants there’s a relation of dominance. As long as there’s an advantage to exercise in protecting oneself (or one’s group) from harm, one will unconsciously attempt to take it. It’s what makes systemic prejudice systemic.
So the goal of the model is to highlight and neutralize these relations so that there’s no advantage that comes at the expense of another group, because this “protection” in the end does nothing of the sort – more like treading water by drowning others, instead of getting to shore. Or the sparrow thing.
Kay
@Baud:
four BILLION dollars. Their boycott.
Another innumerate. Walsh joins Matt Taibbi.
11 seventy BILLION with a B
Baud
@Kay:
Interesting. Bud stock had a big increase at the end of March and has taken a dip in April. Still way up over the longer term.
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/bud
Roger Moore
@Baud:
What’s not clear to me is if the anti-abortion extremists would be willing to accept a 15 week ban in any case. They are finally in position to get what they’ve wanted for so long, and I expect them to treat any kind of compromise, even one that is presented to them as a short-term thing to win the next election, as unacceptable. A key part of this is that it’s become harder to sell different stories to different audiences; that stuff leaks too easily.
It doesn’t help them that the anti-abortion extremists tend to blame Republican squishiness for it having taken this long to be in a position for a national ban. They’re going to be skeptical of any attempt by the Republicans to play both sides.
Gvg
@Barbara: one reason we have to keep telling the stories of how this hurts women is the stupid women who are pro life who are a big reason the GOP? Has had the votes to get in this position. We need to peel off some of the fools before they are dead. They clearly don’t understand the loaded gun that is pointing at them.
I understand the anger and pride and fury at having to beg for our equal rights. In principle I agree. In practice we need more votes, not just for 51% but to wipe the asshole out of political life effectively for at least a generation. Put some serious laws on the books. Pass the ERA. Send more rapist to jail. Make it hurt to hurt women. Then I think we can get some improved social customs. Right now, I need legal results.
RaflW
@Scout211: If I contrast this statement with the absolutely pedestrian, rote and toxic rhetoric from countless Republicans who’ve somehow won office. Wow.
I do think there is a change a-comin’, and the TH GOP inadvertently accelerated the arrival.
Barbara
@livewyre: How do you explain misogyny in ethnically homogenous places? It’s not that I disagree with your analysis but I am so tired of being told that I can’t talk about anything unless I talk about everything all at once. In important ways you are denying people the right to understand and communicate their own experience – which can and should be challenged when it overlooks the experience of others, but that doesn’t make it totally invalid or irrelevant.
Or what Betty said. Basically, women simply don’t count unless they represent something important to or about men, which, when you think about is the same as it ever was.
Kay
@livewyre:
I don’t even recognize “intersectionality”, the legal and academic theory put forth by Kimberlé Crenshaw, in this analysis.
Intersectionality is brilliant because it ISN’T hard to understand. The idea is simple and the examples of it are court cases, where black women wanted to bring a claim for bias against (among others) GM as black women. The “intersection” was black and women, because the claim was GM wasn’t laying off black men or white women- just black women. The court wouldn’t allow this category – they had to base the claim on either race or sex- a ridiculous result and one that flies in the face of common sense. If it were a race claim it would have to include black men and it were a bias claim as women it would have to include white women. But at no point does Crenshaw say that all of these categories are meaningless or can be combined into One Great Harm. Her work is much sharper and clearer than that.