In the morning thread, Kay flagged an excellent WaPo article by reporter Caroline Kitchener about the latest misogynistic madness happening in Texas. Here’s a reusable gift link, and please feel free to share it widely because this story demonstrates the lines anti-abortion fanatics are willing to cross in their never-ending quest to control and unperson women.
More than a year after Roe v. Wade was overturned, many conservatives have grown frustrated by the number of people able to circumvent antiabortion laws — with some advocates grasping for even stricter measures they hope will fully eradicate abortion nationwide.
That frustration is driving a new strategy in heavily conservative cities and counties across Texas. Designed by the architects of the state’s “heartbeat” ban that took effect months before Roe fell, ordinances like the one proposed in Llano — where some 80 percent of voters in the county backed President Donald Trump in 2020 — make it illegal to transport anyone to get an abortion on roads within the city or county limits. The laws allow any private citizen to sue a person or organization they suspect of violating the ordinance.
It sounds deranged because it IS deranged, but public roads are the new front in the war on women. The Stasi-like “private citizen” enforcement mechanism both empowers creepy busybodies to surveil women and makes it harder for abortion rights groups to sue to stop this chilling imposition of theocratic control.
Antiabortion advocates behind the measure are targeting regions along interstates and in areas with airports, with the goal of blocking off the main arteries out of Texas and keeping pregnant women hemmed within the confines of their antiabortion state. These provisions have already passed in two counties and two cities, creating legal risk for those traveling on major highways including Interstate 20 and Route 84, which head toward New Mexico, where abortion remains legal and new clinics have opened to accommodate Texas women. Several more jurisdictions are expected to vote on the measure in the coming weeks.
“This really is building a wall to stop abortion trafficking,” said Mark Lee Dickson, the antiabortion activist behind the effort.
This isn’t the first fetus-fetish rodeo for Dickson, who is a neck-bearded preacher, avid Trump supporter and self-described “36-year-old virgin.” As the article notes, he has worked with former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell for several years to deny women bodily autonomy. Before Roe fell, the two lobbied conservative areas to create “sanctuary cities” (for fetuses) and pioneered the tattle-tale enforcement mechanism for the so-called “heartbeat bill” that became state law after the Dobbs decision.
They’re hopping mad that women are evading their forced-birth dragnet, and they won’t stop until every uterus is state property. It’s an absolutely preposterous level of government overreach, especially from people who call themselves “small-government conservatives” in other contexts. It’s yet another demonstration that the Repub “small government” stance is a big fat lie.
Anyhoo, the article notes that a Missouri state lawmaker introduced a similar bill last year and that a lookalike law that applies to minors seeking an abortion is already in force in Idaho as of April. I expect it will spread to other red states because theocratic laws designed to oppress women and LGBTQ people tend to be more contagious among Repubs than Herman Cain at his final Trump rally.
Years ago, I used to pay so-called “pro-lifers” the courtesy of assuming they were sincere about their professed beliefs, even though I thought those beliefs irrelevant to lawmaking. I was wrong to do so.
The anti-abortion movement was and is and always will be about controlling women and driving them out of public life outside of rigid, gender-based, dependent roles. The same is true of these same people’s fanatical persecution of queer people. They’re misogynistic bigots, and they are liars.
J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)
“36 year old virgin”? Jesus Christ. I didn’t click on any links, but is it safe to assume his virginity is not by choice?
dr. luba
As a woman and an obstetrician, I am appalled, but not surprised.
Greg
How long until these states try to ban women from moving to a state with a comprehensive policy of reproductive health?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
The forced birthers have always been about keeping the wimmin’-folk barefoot, pregnant, and chained to the bed with just enough slack to get to the kitchen.
Marcotte back in her Pandagon days wrote the best piece on the forced birthers and what they were really about long term, I never book marked it much to my chagrin. She was one of the earliest to put it in those terms and they’ve played out step-by-step over the subsequent 15 or so years.
dr. luba
@J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian):
I saw his photos in the article this morning, and I think it is safe to assume so.
waspuppet
Sealing off exits + the “private citizen lawsuit” dodge = Busybodies erecting literal roadblocks and performing transvaginal ultrasounds in front of TSA checkpoints.
These are modern-day slave patrols, which kicked off the first wave of the Klan, and modern-day revenuers, who kicked off the second wave.
What I’m saying is conservatives miss the Klan and want it back.
Karen S.
With this and everything else the GOP is doing, it’s hard not to let the rage I feel seemingly all the time now show. For many years, I’ve hated knowing that my rights as a Black woman and a lesbian could be undermined, if not taken away, rather easily.
Almost Retired
Holy shit. We’re going to have to produce some updated version of the Green Book for Texas women, so they can determine a safe route around these rural hell holes.
bbleh
I can see how a 36-year-old male
incelvirgin by choice might become a homegrown miosgynist Wahhabi theocrat. I have a harder time understanding the women who are loyal members of the movement. About the best I can come up with is kind of a combination of squashed self-respect and an obsession with “purity,” with a simpleminded religiostic overlay. I’d almost say they were victims too, of a sort, except I’ve seen the zealotry and hatred on their faces.And this is hardly the only barbaric thing the government of Texas has done recently. I swear, if they keep this up for much longer, it’s gonna start damaging their economy materially. *I* certainly wouldn’t take a job there for love or money.
TheOtherHank
Looks like we get to experience the joys of the Fugitive Uterus Act.
Suzanne
And do not think that they would not subject anyone and everyone — including dudes — to horrifying levels of surveillance of every kind in order to find the uterus-havers they suspect to be pregnant.
Kent
The anti-abortion movement is also a proxy for racism. Never forget that.
When overt racism became “uncouth” by the 1970s conservatives latched on abortion as an issue to weaponize for political gain. They found out that it is much easier to accuse someone of bad faith and racism when they are doing things like promoting segregated schools. But abortion? “HOW DARE YOU QUESTION MY DEEPLY HELD BELIEFS”
After living a decade in Texas as a middle aged white male I can’t tell you how many of my counterparts would say things like: “Well, I have to vote GOP because I’m pro-life” when I knew damn well they’d get an abortion in a heartbeat if one of their mistresses or daughters got pregnant. It was the way to excuse all the covert racism and bad behavior in the GOP because abortion gave them a religious excuse to vote GOP that was harder to question.
Guns and the 2nd Amendment serve the same purpose. There are true gun fanatics no doubt. But a lot of people simply say that they have to vote GOP to protect their 2nd Amendment rights when it is really more about racism and other reasons but they have learned that no one questions their motives if they say it is guns and abortion
Now that they have the tiger by the tail they have to keep doubling down or some other more anti-abortion fanatic will push them out and take their place.
Citizen Alan
@J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian):
I don’t believe it. I would bet money that he calls himself a virgin because he doesn’t consider molesting kids to count.
Suzanne
Yes.
A lot of women got comfortable and lost the cultural memory of what life was like for women.
Dudes did not forget.
MisterDancer
A perfect example of the need for power. People like him cloak their need to have power over others in righteousness and piety…kind of like the asshole clerics in, say, Iran.
Worse, because people feel “empowered” thru his “blessing”, they, too, feel the need to gather power thru harming others.
smith
@bbleh: The devotion of those women to the forced-birth orthodoxy somehow temporarily disappears when they themselves find they need an abortion.
sab
My junior year abroad in UK we had a fellow American student from NYC area. He was very much the talk of the English girls because he could not keep his paws to himself at all. Embarrassing for the rest of us Americans.
He grew up to be an avid right-to-lifer devoted to protecting the unborn (i.e. controlling those uncooperative women.)
RaflW
I know this whole ‘person suing another’ thing is supposed to magically take the government out of the enforcement, but I still don’t see how a law like this can really restrict the free movement of another adult (even a related one, but certainly not an unrelated one).
And I thought the suits were filed after the fact because there was ‘a tort’ (complete, Orwellian bullshit, but here we are). What is the justification for prior restraint? What’s the basis of proof the woman isn’t just going on a trip to see aunt Suzie, or for work, or for no reason at all, since it’s no one’s G-d dammed business why she’s traveling.
geg6
@Citizen Alan:
Agreed. Watch the doc about the Duggars and you’ll see how these guys operate.
Citizen Alan
@bbleh: Because their whole lives they went along with the patriarchy, and they are furious at the possibility that they might have been happier had they not. So to justify their own unhappiness, they want to make all other women as miserable as themselves.
different-church-lady
Gilead, plain and simple.
MisterDancer
PREACH IT.
bbleh
@smith: oh theirs are okay, because Reasons, and also they are Saved.
And then the little worm of guilt drives them to even greater efforts to police the Bad ones.
Biscuits
This is stalking, codified under law.
smith
Yes, but they would never in a million years consider making it illegal for a dude to, for instance, travel from a state where recreational marijuana is illegal to one where it is not in order to buy and smoke pot. There’s somehow something special about anti-abortion laws.
different-church-lady
@Almost Retired: Not green book: underground railroad.
RaflW
@bbleh: Can a person overcome the cultural programming installed while a child? Will she want to? Or will she become an overbearing, intrusive prude who policies other women’s natural right to enjoy sex, have or not have kids, and marry or not marry the man or woman she loves?
We’re seeing that some percent of women do not notice, or do not choose, or remain in abusive systems themselves and do all that squashing of freedom for others.
Mai Naem mobileI
I think all red state women/girls(child bearing age or not) should just carry around a couple of ketchup soaked tampons to prove that they’re currently on their menstrual cycle and therefore not pregnant. Tampons, not pads because it just adds to the ickiness factor.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@smith: Interesting and infuriating story about women who protest abortion clinics and then go get an abortion (sometimes at the same clinic) and then go back to protesting a few days or weeks later. It’s called the “ME” exception….becuase ya know, their abortion is different…
Anti-abortion protesters who go to the clinic for an abortion
“Jones and other abortion providers attributed many such instances to a sense of exceptionalism on the part of patients who decide their situation entitles them to do what they believe other women should—legally—be unable to.”
rikyrah
Fugitive slave laws, anyone?😒
cckids
@Suzanne:
At my #1 job, I just sat through a presentation on machine learning/AI. One of the examples they gave about retail data mining is that some stores can reliably guess when people are pregnant so early that the couple barely knows, or at least the guy doesn’t know yet.
I can see a scenario in TX where the state attempts to get that data. These people are unhinged.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
No lie told
bbleh
@RaflW: this is the sort of thing I was referring to as “squashed self-esteem,” which I think sometimes people don’t notice is missing because they never really had it, and I think it’s tragic. But then, as you note, comes the acting-out.
different-church-lady
@smith:
different-church-lady
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: We really need to stop viewing human beings as though they are fundamentally sane.
Alison Rose
It’s giving real “papers please” energy, à la Arizona under Arpaio. Because what the fuck does “suspect of violating the ordinance” look like in practice? Any yahoo can force a car off the road if there are at least two people inside and one appears to be a lady? And then demand that she squat down and piss on a stick on the side of the road? I know these assholes think 99% of abortions happen the day before the due date, but here on Planet Earth, the vast majority occur before most people would even be showing, especially in clothing.
And what if someone IS actually driving someone else to get an abortion, and they have a gun on them for protection, and they decide to “stand their ground” and plug anyone who tries to stop them? JFC I realize critical thinking is a skill lightyears beyond most conservatives, but holy damn. In their rabid manic quest to exert control over every uterus from sea to shining sea, they’re going to lead all of us into absolute fucking chaos.
I fucking hate Republicans.
Another Scott
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’m not sure if this is it, but it might be, and maybe it’s close if not?
Why being anti-choice is misogynist, period (via Archive.org)
Found via a 2011 piece at TheAtlantic.
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
HumboldtBlue
I just finished reading that article. These people are fucked up, and it’s worrisome, but how the fuck do they propose to police the people driving through town?
I say we rent one of those cruiser buses, fill it with folks, paint “we’re going to the aobrtionplex in New Mexico!!!” on all the windows along with a lot of gay iconography and slowly drive through town.
Mai Naem mobileI
@J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian): he kind of looks like an older version of Kyle Rittenhouse with a beard.
Sister Golden Bear
@Greg:
One of the Red states proposed prosecuting parents who moved that their trans kids out of state to get trans healthcare. (I think it ultimately didn’t pass, but with 500+ anti-trans bills this year alone, I’ve lost track.)
So yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Republicans attempt to do this. It really is the Fugitive Slave Act all over again.
As Kay eloquently talked about downstairs, this is about control over women. And among other things, these laws are about instilling fear and hopeless in women, so that they even try to resist, but give up and resign themselves to being handmaidens.
We already see this tactic in use against trans people. Florida hasn’t prosecuted any parents yet for seeking trans healthcare for their kids. But having the threat hanging over their heads is intended to have parents not even attempt doing so — or forcing them to move out of state, as a number of parents of trans parents have done.
Betsy
You speak truth.
The other thing it’s about is human trafficking: using women’s bodies for the purposes of people who are not the woman. Trafficking in infants for adoption, a rich source of grift for adoption mills and churches. Co-opting women’s labor for free in the home and elsewhere.
cain
@Kent: I bet you’ll see some 2nd amendment law changes when women start carrying and do “stand their ground” when some “citizen asshole” decides that some gal needs to be accosted because she is ‘driving while pregnant’
MisterDancer
So. One of the things I still struggle with, is how anti-sex the belly dance community was when I was starting in it, in the early 1990s. The desire to “go legit” with the dance in America was a big reason why, esp. after the crash of interest as Conservatism overtook the national mood in the 1980s. It’s arc is actually somewhat parallel to Disco’s, as a reference point. (Just with a LOT more Cultural appropriation…SIGH)
The crux is that women — women who saw themselves as liberated and sophisticated — built up a wall that forced other dancers to adhere to certain constraints. They policed in costuming and dance moves and a host of small acts that added up to an undocumented set of rules.
An the truth is, a lot of them were, on some level, acutely unconformable with — ashamed, on some level — of being belly dancers. They hated how the culture looked down upon us, and said the only way to solve it was to be as respectable as you can, while still doing this dance.
It did very, very little to actually fix the public perspective. It did a LOT, to fuck some dancers up.
Including myself.
I say all that to say this — it’s very, very easy to see pushing persecution as your only way out of oppression. That doesn’t justify said oppression, not in the least. But looking at it sideways, as I did in my youth, I get today why it happens, a little. I get that it needs to be defused, the “moral” ethos that leads people to that conclusion, shut down early.
The solution to being told you’re amoral, you’re naughty, you’re dirty, for just being an artist, a free spirit if you will? Isn’t to double down on purity. That does nothing but prove MFers right, yanno?
Omnes Omnibus
@cain: Reagan signed gun control laws in CA when the Black Panthers started carrying.
Chief Oshkosh
@HumboldtBlue:
Pretty easily. If you look like a woman who 1) is a stranger to the observer, and 2) might be of child-bearing age, then you get pulled over and at least questioned.
I am pretty sure that this is their plan.
Sister Golden Bear
Example one millionth that home schooling/private school vouchers are a scam to starve public schools to send that sweet sweet government money the
white“right” people: Florida Parents Can Spend Money From Private School Vouchers On Giant TVs, Theme Park Tickets, And Moreeclare
@HumboldtBlue:
Years ago in ATL my best friend and I somehow ended up driving along an abortion protest lining Peachtree Ave. The song “Bsby Got Back” came on the radio. We were in her bf’s very nice convertible. Top, down. Radio, crank.
Suzanne
@smith: Sure. But they will absolutely surveil men to find out if their wives or girlfriends are pregnant!
rikyrah
Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) tweeted at 8:50 PM on Thu, Aug 31, 2023:
The Fulton County investigative grand jury’s report is set for a Sept 8 release. This will include previously redacted portions & may reveal whether there were additional targets grand jurors recommended indictment for, among other details. https://t.co/M6qBGtvPOf
(https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1697426761619820752?s=02)
Cacti
Said it from the start.
Once Roe was gone, the next step would be Fugitive Slave Act laws for women trying to escape to states that still regard them as human beings with rights.
Now tell me you don’t think Sam Alito would approvingly cite the Fugitive Slave Act as precedent.
rikyrah
US Department of the Interior (@Interior) tweeted at 9:53 AM on Fri, Sep 01, 2023:
A free lifetime pass to our public lands is available for veterans of the U.S. Armed Services and Gold Star Families, and a free annual Military Pass is available for current U.S. military members and their dependents. https://t.co/4vNT6CIwhh
Photo by Stewart Brackett https://t.co/cxrB3jwMQo
(https://twitter.com/Interior/status/1697623658380886142?s=02)
eclare
@Sister Golden Bear:
Yep. It is about instilling fear.
MisterDancer
They won’t. They’ll haunt your socials. If you live with ’em, they’ll listen in on calls, try to peek at phones and PC while you’re away. It’s a civil lawsuit, and if it’s like SB8 they just need to suspect that road trip, not actually have solid proof. And I KNOW such lawsuits will be backed by forced abortion money, eager to scare people into birthing babies they’ll subsequently give not even a fuck about. .
Once they sue, keep in mind Google and Facebook have already been caught out giving critical data on Interest activity around seeking abortions to law enforcement. This is info that comes out in discovery, I’d reckon, unless you’ve careful. And “careful” includes things like paying for that pregnancy test with your debit card.
So yeah. This isn’t about catching people when they are actually on the road. It’s about reporting them after the fact, creating a nasty lawsuit they have to spend more money and emotional energy defending, and thus functionally shutting down even the idea of traveling for abortions if you’re poor.
mrmoshpotato
Fuck these fuckers and their fetus-fetishes.
smith
@different-church-lady:
These laws do boil down to rapist rights laws. A guy who wants a kid and has a partner who does not has a number of options: He could sabotage her birth control, he could bully her into not using it, or he could simply rape her (and who’s going to prosecute in a red state?). Problem solved.
rikyrah
😠😠😠😠😠
Jordan Fischer (@JordanOnRecord) tweeted at 11:59 AM on Fri, Sep 01, 2023:
JUST NOW: After saying he’d accepted responsibility and sobbing for mercy in front of Judge Kelly — and receiving a 10-year downward variance — a smiling Dominic Pezzola raised his fist and shouted “Trump won!” as he was led out of the courtroom.
https://t.co/Ny8jVlIdEW
(https://twitter.com/JordanOnRecord/status/1697655526245433745?s=02)
HumboldtBlue
@TheOtherHank:
Got-damn!, I’d be crying if I weren’t laughing.
@Citizen Alan:
Yup
rikyrah
Holly Bullard (@HollyBullardFL) tweeted at 11:48 AM on Fri, Sep 01, 2023:
“Gov. Ron DeSantis might have an epic war with Disney World, but admission to any Florida theme park is among the expenses that parents can get reimbursed through the state’s school voucher program.”
https://t.co/XmlfPjdfs6
(https://twitter.com/HollyBullardFL/status/1697652780821791058?s=02)
Villago Delenda Est
These fascist pigs need to be slapped down, HARD.
Maxim
@cain: No, you’ll see those women prosecuted, because only men are allowed to stand their ground.
rikyrah
😂😂😂😂
Katie Phang (@KatiePhang) tweeted at 0:46 PM on Fri, Sep 01, 2023:
JUST IN: Kenneth Chesebro filing his Motion to Sever his trial from that of Sidney Powell. He’s disavowing any connection with Powell.
https://t.co/a1FikOF7is
(https://twitter.com/KatiePhang/status/1697667302689255482?s=02)
smith
@rikyrah: Didn’t the shaman guy pull a similar stunt? You’d think the judges would wise up.
Cacti
And again, have to say, thanks for your plan to live forever Justice Ginsburg.
Really worked out well.
Villago Delenda Est
@waspuppet: They miss slavery and want it back.
rikyrah
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Sorrows sorrows prayers
CNN (@CNN) tweeted at 0:00 PM on Fri, Sep 01, 2023:
Former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election subversion case are struggling to keep up with mounting legal bills. Some are crowdfunding online. https://t.co/Gz5EX6RqpA
(https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1697655633732866052?s=02)
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti: Can’t gainsay you. I loved RBG, but she was dead (literally) wrong on this part.
rikyrah
🤔🤔🤔🙄🙄
David Corn (@DavidCornDC) tweeted at 9:18 AM on Fri, Sep 01, 2023:
There’s a new Rudy Giuliani scandal. An FBI whistleblower says Giuliani, when he was digging for dirt on Biden for Trump, was co-opted by Russian intelligence. He claims his investigation of Giuliani’s activities was blocked by higher-ups. Check this out.
https://t.co/e3t3FIg8FX
(https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/status/1697614800581193965?s=02)
schrodingers_cat
Will this be the nail in the coffin for the Republicans or will red state white women continue to overwhelmingly vote R in face of these provocations
What do the liberal white women who read this blog think? I am asking because you guys may have more insight into your demographic sisters than me as an outsider
Based on my personal experience when push comes to shove intersectionality and allyship don’t go very far.
rikyrah
😠😠😠😠
philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) tweeted at 9:37 AM on Fri, Sep 01, 2023:
North Carolina Republicans are trying to remove the only Black woman on the state’s Supreme Court after she spoke out about racial bias in her courtroom https://t.co/Oj4kXufmkc
(https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1697619717710590323?s=02)
cain
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s what I was thinking of. It’s completely conceivable that they would change “stand your ground” laws to exclude pregnant women in a car.
cain
@Chief Oshkosh: What happens if it is a transgendered person? Imagine other violent encounters – it’s not safe for them either.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: The Mulford Act. Notorious.
smith
@rikyrah: Good luck with that. I can’t imagine the judge wants to preside over 19 separate trials. I think ol’ Chesebro is going to have to face justice with the Kraken at his side. I read somewhere that Eastman is also thinking about asking for a speedy trial. Given how far gone both Powell and Eastman seem to be into their own special fantasy lands, I wouldn’t be surprised to see both of them testify. It will be comedy gold.
Ksmiami
These cretins need to be pounded into sand… they started a war- we need to finish it.
Redshift
@Greg:
Since they are trying to take us back to the nineteenth century (at least), I assume that includes the common prohibition in those days against women in most state crossing state lines without being accompanied by a husband or male relative.
cain
@Maxim: If the fetus is injured the woman is liable and probably get double the jail sentence. Fuck these people.
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift:
Might as well just impose Sharia law as practiced by the Wahhabi on this country.
Ksmiami
@schrodingers_cat: I think the Feds will need to step in to stop this madness and the Democratic government including Schumer etc need to stomp on this fast. Including and up to denying federal funds to states that don’t treat women as citizens.
HumboldtBlue
@schrodingers_cat:
I saw a stat flash by on Twitter last night that went something like “70 percent of newly registered voters are women, and it’s happening in red states.”
So maybe there is hope.
MisterDancer
Yes, it’s about FEAR. These assholes are cowards at heard, and throwing people in jail is just not done without building up to it. This is all just otherwise posturing, political theater that also makes the True Believers so fuckin’ happy because they get to feel great about harming others. They’ll put up a hotline for abortion tips, but…
I went and looked. Everyone recall Texas Bill SB8, the one with the “you can sue someone who’s had an abortion” business this current slate of fuckness is based on? There’s been exactly one lawsuit, already dismissed, based on that law.
But the law has had an absolutely chilling effect, just like the many, many anti-Transgender laws have had. And that effect, those fears, are clearly the point.
Ksmiami
@Villago Delenda Est: slapped is too kind.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: How would we know? I don’t know that any of us are conservative Evangelicals or hardcore anti-commie Republicans.
I am curious what Texan Latina women think about this. If they might vote on this issue, and which way?
Elizabelle
@HumboldtBlue: If that is true, I think it bodes well for Team Blue.
Maybe, like Kansas, some women needed to see how bad it could get before they turned out.
Alison Rose
@schrodingers_cat: A small portion of them may switch — we have seen some GOPer women push back. But not enough. Too many of them might say the right things about this kind of draconian shit, but when it comes down to it, in the ballot box they’re still gonna vote for the R because it’s who they are. Most of them are beyond childbearing age, and if they’re not, they have the means to get an abortion if they need one, or to help their daughter or whomever get one. A few might actually wake the hell up, but too many of them won’t.
MisterDancer
If you have a way to get 60 Senators, a majority in the GOP-led House, and 6 very Right of Center Justices to agree to this, I’m all ears.
rikyrah
Doug Jones (@DougJones) tweeted at 7:45 AM on Fri, Sep 01, 2023:
Well, well. Looks like the welfare corruption in MS might just be a Reeves family affair. Please folks: #SaveMississippi
Gov. Tate Reeves’ brother used backchannel to state auditor to help clean up Brett Favre welfare mess – Mississippi Today https://t.co/pR8nInz6SF
(https://twitter.com/DougJones/status/1697591432494678136?s=02)
smith
@schrodingers_cat: I think it’s more likely that business interests in these states will wake up to the economic damage these laws will do. How on earth can you expect to recruit an educated young woman to move from a free state to work there? Even if she’s a true believer, would she want to live somewhere that has no obstetric services? If she has kids, does she wants to live in a place where the school inspects their genitals? I do think there’s some way to go in raising consciousness about this, and it probably will need to be done through social media, but I can’t see how it will remain unknown what you’d let yourself in for if you move to a Uteral Slave State.
Ksmiami
@Alison Rose: They are nothing more than a domestic terrorist organization.
Llelldorin
@Chief Oshkosh: See, I doubt that they’re actually planning highway stops. I think they’re planning to make life a living hell for everyone involved when the inevitable “Texas tried to kill me by forcing me to carry a high-risk pregnancy” stories start to come out. It’ll be much harder to come forward with that when yahoos immediately begin firing huge lawsuits at husbands, doctors, volunteers, or anyone else in the even vague vicinity of the women involved.
I think this is first and foremost silencing.
rikyrah
Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) tweeted at 7:39 AM on Fri, Sep 01, 2023:
Trump judge doubles down on his order commanding Southwest lawyers to get “religious-liberty training” from an organization that’s deemed a hate group by the SPLC https://t.co/6hOjjBMhen
(https://twitter.com/RobertMaguire_/status/1697589935958540386?s=02)
Ksmiami
@MisterDancer: just win. But start the media marketing efforts now. Republicans threaten stuff all the time even if they can’t immediately enact it. Might as well start the movement…
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I do not have much insight in to the beliefs of white women, but I think a lot of white women will be voting in Virginia’s legislative elections this November. That should provide some information on this issue’s effect in a purple state.
Virginia is very important in this fight because states south and west have oppressive abortion laws, and Virginia is now the closest place their residents can get a safe and legal abortion.
Ksmiami
@Alison Rose: if someone tried to stop me or my kids on the road like that, I’d end them. Without hesitation.
Elizabelle
@smith: That is what I think.
The business community, and universities, will notice how hard recruiting has become. And they’ll start screaming.
The Biden administration could help it along, by downsizing some bases in Texas and other red states. Why put young women soldiers, sailors and airmen through an assignment there?
You could not pay me to move to a red state. I don’t think we are alone in that, on this blog.
This might end up being North Carolina’s bathroom bill, writ large.
Which reminds me, it may take professional sports to step up in a leading role. For whatever reason, that gets people’s attention.
rikyrah
Uh huh
Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) tweeted at 6:32 AM on Fri, Sep 01, 2023:
Gotta get married at least three times to get GOP donors comfortable.
“Tim Scott isn’t married — and that makes GOP donors wary” https://t.co/Mv66kd1toq
(https://twitter.com/SarahLongwell25/status/1697573242624704678?s=02)
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Kevin Starr’s nephew demands what?
I wish we could impeach these fuckers. Southwest should ignore them.
lowtechcyclist
@RaflW:
Plenty of young exvangelicals these days.
rikyrah
The Associated Press (@AP) tweeted at 0:01 PM on Fri, Sep 01, 2023:
Pennsylvania was the first state to distribute federal and state tax dollars to anti-abortion counseling centers. Nearly 30 years later, a new governor plans to end the program. https://t.co/Ld49ymQJLs
(https://twitter.com/AP/status/1697655901665042472?s=02)
Sister Golden Bear
Today in #TransGenocide, a federal judge ended a 2019 consent judgement that allowed trans Kansans to change their birth certificate to reflect their gender identity. Kansas AG Kris Kobach sought the change following passage of new law defining “sex” as “biological sex … at birth.”
This will allow Kansas to go back and retroactively reverse birth certificates and drivers licenses for trans people in the state. I believe Kansas will also be able to reverse birth certificates even for those no longer living there.
Aside from the inherent cruelty of denying trans people to be themselves, it’s intended to forcibly out trans people so that they be the target of anti-trans discrimination, including other discrimination that Kansas legalized.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: No but you might have relatives/friends who are. I am not a BJP supporter but I have a pretty good insight into those who are and why they flock to Modi.
laura
Man, extreme pussy fever and the desire to reestablish jim crow are running neck and neck right now, as Project Apartheid America ramps up with the support and encouragement of the Supreme Court’s majority. They need to be forced out of America’s vagina and they can make their own damn sammich.
No fucking retreat. No going back. Not now. Not ever.
rikyrah
Shipwreckedcrew (@shipwreckedcrew) tweeted at 2:33 PM on Thu, Aug 31, 2023:
The J6 Legal Defense Fund just received the largest single donation ever — anonymous.
Unreal.
Thank you.
(https://twitter.com/shipwreckedcrew/status/1697331792121049254?s=02)
Alison Rose
@Ksmiami: Yepppp. Accurate.
Bill Arnold
@HumboldtBlue:
Several states see surge in women registering to vote following Supreme Court abortion ruling (RACHEL SCULLY – 08/24/22)
Chris
@rikyrah:
IIRC, there’s been a theory forever that the big Mafia-busting trials of the eighties that Giuliani got famous with were less a matter of cracking down on organized crime and more just a matter of sweeping the old decrepit Italian Mafia off the board so the new up-and-coming Russian Mafiya could take over.
Cameron
We are all 36-year-old virgins now.
lowtechcyclist
@Ksmiami:
@MisterDancer:
Take a page from their book and shut down the government over this. You don’t need any 60 votes to block a spending bill from being passed.
sab
@Elizabelle: One of my nephews and my only niece moved to California and I think it was a great idea. They are happy there culturally despite the astronomical cost of living. The other nephew is a gun nut married to a gun nut, so Ohio is more their kind of place.
z
smith
And Tuberville is doing his best to help that idea along.
HumboldtBlue
@Elizabelle:
I didn’t linger on the post, but that was my understanding, women are rightfully pissed off.
Alison Rose
(Very OT so apologies, but one of you absolute darlings just donated the last bit to get my GFM to the goal, and I am a little weepy right now in thanks to all of you. This is going to be such a massive help to me and I cannot put my appreciation into praiseful enough words. Thank you all so much 💜💜💜)
Baud
@rikyrah:
We know it wasn’t Trump.
eclare
@Sister Golden Bear:
Damn that is awful. I can’t imagine losing an identity.
Geminid
@Alison Rose: A larger factor than woman who switch their votes will likely be the women who in the past have not voted at all or voted intermittently being motivated by this issue.
Sister Golden Bear
@Sister Golden Bear: Also too….
And after Republicans failed to pass a bill to ban trans athletes, Alaska’s Board of Education voted ban to trans girls from school sports.
tobie
@rikyrah: Didn’t this story bubble to the surface a few weeks ago? Maybe Dems on the Oversight Committee can conduct their own fact finding mission.
Maxim
@Sister Golden Bear: Sickening and infuriating.
Mike E
Looks like our internet tough guy troll is back, heh
smith
@rikyrah: Conventional wisdom in the media is that GQP billionaires are worried Tim Scott might be gay. Others have pointed out that they are actually worried he might be Black.
HumboldtBlue
@Bill Arnold:
Thank you.
Also, I am not familiar with Gillian Frank, but she’s writing a book about this issue.
@Alison Rose:
woohoo!
Jeffro
There are large parts of the country/many states where the younger folks will not take jobs. And they don’t need to: there’s plenty of work in the
bluesane states.Ksmiami
@lowtechcyclist: exactly- bring the fight goddamit- it’s worth it.
Maxim
@Alison Rose: Beautiful. So happy.
eclare
@Alison Rose:
Yay! Thanks for the good news!
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
Wow! That Atlantic piece you linked to includes the following citation:
I had no idea one of our own had been quoted in The Atlantic. Impressed is what I am, and a dozen years after the fact, congratulations to Anne Laurie!
mrmoshpotato
@Alison Rose:
Nominated!
Chris
@sab:
Life in a lot of blue states is expensive, but when you factor in the money you have to spend in red states to make up for all the things the local do-nothing governments refuse to do, it’s the better choice.
That’s before you even start thinking about things like civil rights and political liberties.
Timill
@rikyrah: Coming next: racial sensitivity training from the KKK…
tobie
@Elizabelle: I have a student who turned down a visiting appointment at UT Austin, this at a time when jobs are scarce in the field. But who would want to go there as a woman?
Nelle
@Chris: I’ve been wondering about this. I’d like to read more about the tentacles of Putin and Russian mafia in the US and when it really took hold.
misterpuff
@smith: No, there the popo wait until the Potheads drive back to the No Pot state and ring em up for Possession.
Alce_e _ ardillo
Just waiting for the first anti abortion fanatic to run a car off a road, or cause an accident. The lawsuit will be phenomenal.
RevRick
This reminds me of the post-Civil War lie that the South seceded over ‘states rights.’ Before the war the South was vehemently opposed to the rights of New England states to grant the vote to black men, or of New York to create a personal liberty law, which granted emancipation to any enslaved person who entered the state, or of Northern states to demand habeas corpus and due process for black persons accused of fleeing slavery.
In fact, the South had demanded the most draconian and intrusive federal law ever with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Conservatives don’t care about freedom or states rights at all. They want to reestablish the ancient regime of hierarchy, where they are in charge and others must submit.
different-church-lady
@Sister Golden Bear: Strapping young bucks buying t-bone steaks indeed.
Nelle
@HumboldtBlue: I have a neighbor who is fairly conservative, church-wise, who is so furious at patriarchy that she was muttering about Lorena Bobbit the other day. I am waiting for her to expand her fury at patriarchy to the church. But, yes, women I meet who are in their sixties and seventies are pissed.
Alison Rose
@Geminid: That is true!
narya
@Chris: Lincoln’s Bible did a whole podcast series (“The World Beneath”) that delved into this in a few of the episodes. It was a fascinating series–where I first learned about Elizabeth Friedman and how she helped convict the Mafia. Highly recommend.
Chief Oshkosh
@cain: Exactly. That’s why I my response started with “If you look like a woman who…”
I think that to the degree that any of these worthless meat sacks think about anything at all, they are thinking “well, we’ll just stop everyone who MIGHT be doing this.” The fact that there’s a high probability that this will cause a vast and varied set of problems simply never enters their tiny little brains.
Gretchen
This was especially absurd when it was proposed in Missouri. The Planned Parenthood that serves Kansas City is on the Kansas side of the metro area, and the one that serves St. Louis is on the Illinois side of their metro area. Thousands of Missourians cross the state line every day for work. My daughter and her husband live on the Missouri side and work on the Kansas side. Are women supposed to get a pregnancy test at the state line every day?
Tony G
@J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian): Actually, he’s a 38-year-old virgin now. (Born in 1985.). I don’t doubt that. There are a lot of men out there who just don’t like women — and women, unsurprisingly, are not exactly attracted to such men. Another misogynist freak. A Baptist “pastor” (whatever the hell that means), and a Trump supporter of course.
narya
@Nelle: See my response to Chris . . . “The World Beneath” podcast was super informative.
Chief Oshkosh
@smith: It goes further than that. I know of several instances where recruitments have failed not because the candidate was a female of child-bearing age, but because the candidate’s family included daughters and the candidates were concerned about getting modern healthcare for them. I even know of an instance where a newlywed husband was being recruited and ended the process after the state changed its laws to be even more draconian. His stance was that he and his wife were starting a family and he didn’t want her to have to worry about getting subpar care and he didn’t want the as-yet-not-even-conceived possible-daughter to worry about it, either. Further and finally, I know of a young attorney who uprooted her family and move to a “free” state for the same concerns.
So, the brain-drain is happening already.
Tony G
@J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian): Again, though, I don’t see how the logistics of this can work. Any state in the lower 48 has MANY roads that connect it to other states. Even if the interstate highways were to be blockaded with checkpoints (which would have the effect of shutting off the economy of that state) there are typically many small streets and roads that connect states to each other. It would impractical to do so, but I could drive from my home in New Jersey to my son’s home in California using only local roads. This is performative bullshit to impressive the other “anti-women” assholes — although it would also have the intended side-effect of increasing the stress on pregnant women and their supporters.
Chief Oshkosh
@Llelldorin: You make a great point, and it may be true for the architects of this shitty movement, but do you really think that all those people who piled into that town meeting described in the OP are able to think that far? I sure don’t.
Tony G
@Chief Oshkosh: No woman — and no man who cares about women — will choose to relocate to Texas or to any of the other women-hating states. And many women who are already in these asshole-states will move to another state as soon as they can.
Chris
@Nelle:
As I understand it, the Russian Mafia in America started in the seventies and eighties, well before any of the current stuff. And ostensibly most of the people involved were anti-Soviet rather than pro-Soviet, since the expats by definition weren’t going to look too fondly on the regime they left behind.
But even then the Soviet state was never entirely absent. Between the fact that the KGB had legitimate, sanctioned operations trying to penetrate or use Western economic institutions (much easier than penetrating governments); the fact that KGB agents were as corruptible as the rest of the system and plenty were happy to run their own little side hustles in the societies they were spying on; and the fact that Soviet elites were already plenty interested in the West’s economy, be it in terms of accessing its products through special imports or black markets, or in terms of parking their own money over there to grow their nest eggs…
… basically, by the time the wall came down, there were already plenty of shady dealings going on in the West where it was already not always easy to tell where organized crime ended and Soviet state organs began.
All of this was before Putin, of course. But Putin’s the one who ultimately ended up in charge of the system (and consolidating it all around himself, after it had its wild west phase in the nineties).
rikyrah
The Fall, starring Gillian Anderson, is now on Amazon Prime.
Absolutely fabulous👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Ruckus
@Citizen Alan:
I hate to lose.
So I’m not taking that bet.
rikyrah
@Alison Rose:
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
artem1s
@RaflW:
Hen pecking. It’s a real phenomenon. Animals under stress will turn on the weaker members of the group even to the point of murder. Women who are in abusive relationships often deflect abuse from themselves and onto others in order to protect themselves from unwanted ‘attention’. Getting the gang to beat up on some other member also strengthens your position in the pecking order. It also explains the obsession with finding a marginalized group to heap their abuse on and why women who think they have established a safe space get so upset when the community decides it’s not OK to bully that group anymore. This is why we are seeing so many White women come unraveled during the last 7 years or so. Every foe who wins back their safe place in society means they are at risk of becoming the center of unwanted ‘attention’ again.
smith
@Tony G: The one thing it allows them to do is to stop the cars of pregnant women whose family members or self-righteous neighbors have narced on them. It amplifies the outrages perpetrated by the laws that give any random person more standing to control a woman’s body than she does herself.
rikyrah
@Sister Golden Bear:
This is horrendous😠😠😠
sab
@Chris: Actually I lived in California for ten years and its state government never did anything at all for me, except tax me a lot. All local government did was trash/recycling. The schools were good but I had no kids. The libraries in Marin and Contra Costa County were appalling.
I was horrified when we moved to Nevada to find their public services were better. Not what I expected at all.
Ohio we have city income tax that funds city stuff, and mostly property taxes for libraries, public health (mental health and developmentally disabled, also too drug rehab) , schools, roads, animal control, etc, etc.
California everything depends on whatever the phuck happens in the murky place they call the state legislature.
Ohio sucks statewide, but at the county level we know that if you want a service you must vote to fund it, and in most counties we do.
Llelldorin
@Chief Oshkosh: No. I think they’re all going to go home smug and happy when this passes, having Done a Thing for Jesus. That’ll leave a really dangerous tool on the books for scarier people like Dickson.
Chief Oshkosh
@Llelldorin: You make another good point.
Kathleen
@geg6: That was chilling.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
fundamentally sane
I’ve known a few humans in my lifetime and I’m trying to remember how many of them were/are fundamentally sane. I’d guess maybe 5%. Some grew into sanity, some were pushed, some pulled, and many couldn’t open the door to the sanity clinic let alone enter and pass the test.
moonbat
Reading this thread I find myself wishing that the commentariat would put their big brains to thinking up possible ways to challenge/circumvent these draconian laws instead of thinking up ways they can be fully implemented. Worse case scenarios only encourage the atmosphere of beaten down despair that Kay rightly pointed out is the purpose of these un-personing laws aimed at women. Let’s not do the bastards’ job for them.
Anger is appropriate, but it should lead to action and help for the poor women who are still trapped in that ridiculous state with no immediate way out. How can we help them? I’m looking for a positive direction for my rage.
LAO
@rikyrah: I loved the Fall but I seriously thought it didn’t need a 3d season.
Tony G
@Chief Oshkosh: Actually the residents of most of these “red states” (I prefer the term “dumb-ass-Christian-fascist states”) are already being subsidized by the taxpayers of states like California or New York, or my own state of New Jersey. So maybe the “leaders” in those dumb-ass states don’t care about tanking their own economies.
Geo Wilcox
Iran here we come. Looking at the photos of Iranian women before we fucked up their country makes me very sad. The switch can happen literally over night. One day you are going to college in a cute skirt and blouse, the next you are at home in a burqa.
Roger Moore
@cckids:
The example I saw of that, though, was because the woman changed her buying habits in ways that were indicative of trying to protect the health of the fetus. She’s a lot less likely to do that if she’s planning on having an abortion. If she moves quickly to get one, any change in buying habits might not register anyway.
catclub
@cckids:
I am thinking about searches that will indicate I am pregnant – falsely.
smith
In thinking of all the ways in which the fugitive uterus laws are unworkable, here’s another one: How do you prove that the woman who has been apprehended leaving the state is pregnant at all? Are traffic cops going to be given the authority to require pregnancy tests from any woman they suspect is pregnant? Wouldn’t you need a search warrant for that? On what reasonable suspicion would that warrant be based? On the word of the woman’s hostile MIL, or her abusive boyfriend? Or, if the vigilant traffic cop waits until she comes back into the state, after her abortion, how does he prove she was ever pregnant at all? How have they managed to pass these local laws at all without some town or county lawyer asking these questions? Are they all nuts ? (don’t answer that)
sab
In my misspent young adulthood I was a baby lawyer doing divorce work. Just after Roe v Wade. Michigan had this law where if you were wanting a divorce and childless with not much property you got out in two months. Add a kid to the picture and it was six months, with custody and child support and ties forever.
I could not believe how many hubands forced themselves on their wives to get that extra hook in.
Ksmiami
@moonbat: a movement to fight these Neanderthals using the equal protection statutes. The feds also have control of interstate trade. Enforce it.
Tony G
@moonbat: Unless these dumb-ass states actually build Berlin-Wall-style structures that physically prevent people from leaving, there’s really no way to prove in court that a pregnant woman who is driven from her home in Texas to another person’s home in New Mexico is traveling in order to get an abortion. The Texas police would not have jurisdiction in New Mexico to perform surveillance on the woman in New Mexico. But this is just an intimidation tactic — not an actual legal procedure — and, given the levels of insanity and gun ownership, I would predict that some of the “concerned citizens” in Texas would have not just lawsuits but more violent tactics on their minds.
Chris
@sab:
What are the health care services like? Or the state of basic infrastructure? Genuinely asking: I’ve never lived in CA and this stuff varies from state to state, but overall you’re still better off blue than red.
(I’m also curious to see how well Ohio will be doing in a decade or two, since it was a purple state until fairly recently. Florida didn’t use to be nearly as bad as it is now, either).
artem1s
@Sister Golden Bear:
So John Roberts still has time to be the most evil SC CJ in the history of the US by passing the equivalent of Dred Scott decision declaring women chattel property? oh goodie!
Chief Oshkosh
@moonbat:
You first.
;)
MisterDancer
Start Here.
catclub
@sab:
Life was cheaper in the state I moved away from.
As long as California remains the most populous state and its economy continues growing, I am not buying the “nobody lives in California anymore” stuff from GOP states.
Subsole
@bbleh:
I think (*WARNING WARNING WARNING a man is trying to understand women: apply salt and adjust your dimbass filters to compensate*) that a lot of conservative women have convinced themselves they know how to game Patriarchy.
It isn’t as deranged as it sounds.
The thing about Patriarchists is that when you dig down, a lot of them are gynophobes. Like, hardcore gynophobes. They seek to abuse and dominate and control women because they are terrified of them.
If you know a man’s fears, and how he expresses and reacts to those fears, you can usually steer him pretty reliably.
So no, they aren’t deranged, or deluded, or naive. They are very calculatinly voting to screw everyone else in order to prop up a cruel system because they know how to navigate that system and manalive can you imagine how furious you’d be if you spent your entire life in one neverending bout of shit-eating Stockholm syndrome, and then some asshole just…opened your cell door?
These women are not crazy. Or stupid. Or innocent or misguided. They elect to serve cruelty because they think they know how to navigate it to their advantage. Calling it derangement absolves them of far, far too much.
Just my hypothesis.
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: KS voted 58-42 to preserve abortion rights just after Dobbs. It was predicted to be very close, could go either way. It was a blowout.
Chris
@moonbat:
I think there are sharp limits to how much you can discuss that on an open website (any website, really), given that so much of what can concretely be done is going to involve at the very least skirting the laws of the states involved, and more likely breaking them outright. There are plenty of wingnuts scouring the Internet night and day in search of things they can report, both in terms of the identities of culprits and in terms of some of the strategies or resources they’re using. Not to mention, as someone said elsewhere, Facebook or Google helpfully ratting out their users.
Anger should absolutely lead to action, but I don’t think any online space is the best place to find out how we can help except in the most broad and general terms.
smith
Didn’t Dobbs pretty much establish that women don’t have equal protection?
Karen S.
@Alison Rose:
Yes!!!
schrodingers_cat
@Gretchen: The referendums are one thing but will the majority of white women in the Red states vote for D candidates? or at least abstain from voting R.
Or more broadly,
Will we see a swing of women voters who used to vote for R to D?
Jay
@Chris:
with the RuZZian Mob’s help. Tutti Fruiti Rudy couldn’t find a Neon lit Italian Mob RICO case in a well lit bar or Borat rented hotel room with out the RuZZian Mob cultivating him and giving him all the intel they had on their competition. It’s well documented that some of Tutti Fruiti Rudy’s favorite hangouts were RuZZian Mob clubhouses.
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat:
You’re an American of Indian extraction. Among the Indian-American community, by how many percentage points do the women vote more Democratic than the men?
schrodingers_cat
@lowtechcyclist:
Over 70% of Indian Americans voted D in the last 3 presidential elections. So I really don’t understand the thrust of your question.
Less than 20% Indian Americans voted for Trump.
I haven’t seen a demographic breakup by gender in the AAPI vote analyses that I have seen.
Unlike white women who are the biggest demographic in the nation, Indian Americans are a microscopic-minority, less than 1% of the citizenry IIRC. So we don’t have enough numbers to sway elections except in a few Congressional districts.
Subsole
@Ksmiami:
True. And, for what it is worth, Americans tend to be really damn good at dismantling fascists, once we see the threat.
Alas, therein lies the rub.
smith
@schrodingers_cat: One chronic problem we have is that voters somehow fail to connect candidates or parties to the policies they espouse. For many years now, Dem policies have been much, much more popular among the American electorate than GQP policies are, but the political balance of power doesn’t reflect that. Voting for a particular party for many people, especially Republicans in small communities, is more a matter of tribal identity than a preference for what that party might do. Thus you see pro-abortion referendums winning by huge margins in some states where the same voters will then overwhelmingly vote for anti-abortion candidates. Call it ignorance, stupidity or conformity, it is a phenomenon we haven’t yet figured out how to deal with.
MisterDancer
That’s not quite what happened in Iran. There had already been a long history of on/off enforcement:
Not to mention the counter-protests when the nation-wide enforcement did happen — after the conservative forces overtook the overall Revolution. Women fought it then, and many never truly accepted it, pushing the boundaries wherever they could. That matters, as well.
Also, too — do not conflate hijab with burqa, PLEASE. As oppressive as the Iranian regime is, it’s also true that they require your hair to be covered — not the overall shapeless covering like burqa. People do wear the latter, but its not the same as, say, requirements around Women’s public dress in Renaissance-era Ottoman lands, or what I understand the Taliban are re-implementing, in this one specific area.
I know it seems nit-picky, but small things around Islam had a bad way of spiraling into toxic thinking. Let’s step away from that poorly-shaped ledge, please.
Sister Golden Bear
@smith: Fugitive Uterus Acts aren’t meant to be workable they’re meant to create enough fear that they have a chilling effect without having to be used much like the abortion bounty hunter laws
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat:
The point is that you have expectations for the women of other demographics to vote much more heavily D than the men of those demographics. Yet you have no idea whether the women of your OWN demographic satisfy your expectation.
So kindly fuck off.
Tony G
@Sister Golden Bear: That sounds about right. And many of the “concerned citizens” (Christian-fascists) will use more violent methods than lawsuits. When God is on your side, there’s no reason to limit yourself to half-measures.
schrodingers_cat
@lowtechcyclist: You fuck off.
White women in the south, where these laws are being passed by Republicans can change the dynamic by voting D. You may not like it but that is a fact
I think we are going to see some surprising results in 2024. I am pretty hopeful.
Tony G
@Subsole: Historically, it depends on who the victims of the fascism are. The states of the old Confederacy had a de-facto system of fascism for about 100 years after the end of the Civil War, and the vast majority of the white residents of those states were just fine with the arrangement. It took the power of the federal government — largely motivated by the ideology of the Cold War (“this looks bad to other countries”) to dismantle that.
HumboldtBlue
deleted
Frank Wilhoit
Interstate border checkpoints are secession, to any practical purpose.
VFX Lurker
Bummer. I live in Los Angeles County. I’ve saved thousands of dollars over the years by using the Los Angeles Public Library’s richly-funded digital services (Overdrive, Hoopla, LinkedIn Learning, etc). Sorry to hear other California libraries fall short of LAPL.
RaflW
@MisterDancer: Inno.
Insisting that gay men (and sometimes lesbians, though often they were so marginalized that they escaped mention) abstain from sex — or even sexless pairing — to be ‘respectable’, to be tolerated in some denominations, workplaces, or even under state law was of course an abject failure.
And even facilitated passing “straight” men to abuse gay men and boys, under the cloak of marriage to an unhappy woman.
I am absolutely resolute that I am never going back in the closet to remain in the US. Right now I feel like MN and CO, where I spend a lot of time, will likely not backslide. I also have family in WI, I will watch closely what happens with state Supreme Court, and how Tammy Baldwin and other WI Dems fare in ’24.
Things are still rising towards a crisis. I hope the conservatives doing things so wildly inhumane as these TX counties and cities are will wake up enough voters to tip the balance.
And then, if so, we have to fight off a couple cycles of crazed election deniers to solidify the shift.
rikyrah
The seasons have it out😂😂😂
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZT8YnFSfy/
sab
@Chris: California doesn’t need to pave its roads. Ohio does almost yearly.
My husband in California needed mental health care in California and got none. I drove home for five years every night expecting he would have killed himself. Every other interest group was more needy.
Moved to Nevada and he got help immediately.
In California we had a Mexican seamstress. Very talented. She was furious her kid was in bilingual education. “She can learn English if she gets exposed to it, but all her classes are in Spanish. So she isn’t learning English. And if she doesn’t learn English neither do I. The only people benefitting are bilingual teachers.”
Chief Oshkosh
@VFX Lurker:
There are entire books written about the LAPL. Well, I’ve read at least one, anyway. :)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@rikyrah: I’d want to separate myself from Powell too but I think it’s too late for Chesbro.
Dangerman
Nein! Nein! Nein! Nyet!
bbleh
Nordean got 18. Good.
bbleh
@HumboldtBlue: @Chief Oshkosh: see Sister Golden Bear at 39. The real goal is deterrence (and performance). Actually prosecuting people might generate some sympathy and a backlash.
wjca
Trying to figure out if you’ve never lived here (at least not in the past half century). Or are just appalled by libraries which don’t conform to your personal bigotries.
AM in NC
@sab: That is legit horrifying.
Ksmiami
@smith: fight it in the media – build the backlash to this renegade Court. This is a battle the Dems can win.
Suzanne
@Tony G:
There are also planes! They fly across the country every day! Multiple times!
This shit is so dumb.
sab
@wjca: Where is here? Marin and Contra Costa had hardly any books. That was twenty-five years ago. What is the point of libraries with no books? Scenery out the windows and quiet desks?
Ohio cities our libraries have always had lots of books. Nowadays you can check them out on line. It is one of the things we expect from local government. Ask Drew Carey. He is as RWNJ as they come, but he expects government to do libraries.
California didn’t bother. My first shock at how bad California government is in doing the basics.
Alison Rose
@Subsole:
If you’re talking about drawing and quartering them, I’m usually against violence but I’d be on board.
sab
@wjca: I expect a lot of books in my library. Contra Costs had almost none and Marin had fewer. Marin had a library designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. A flashy silly building that was supposed to distract us from the fact that they had almost no actual books
ETA Tell me California is finally putting books in their libraries and I missed it. My brother still lives there and I missed nothing about that.
Alison Rose
@sab: Well, I live here now and have for 43 years and I’ll say that my experiences are vastly different than yours (including the libraries in Marin County, where I grew up). And some of the issues you’re talking about are not state level issues but rather county level, so that’s not something you can lay blame for at the doorstep of the governor’s mansion. Plus, Ohio has under 12 million people, whereas California has nearly 40 million. It’s not entirely fair to compare the two on every metric.
Alison Rose
@sab: Okay, I really don’t understand what you mean about the civic center library having “almost no” books. I went there multiple times to work on research projects and there were quite a few more than “almost none”. Are you expecting the library from Beauty and the Beast?
Sister Golden Bear
@Suzanne: That’s why they’re trying to pass Fugitive Uterus Acts in cities/counties that have airports, starting with the major airports. But give them time, and they’ll start including all cities/counties with airports — will undoubtedly try to pass them in every county in Texas — so they can intimidate women, and other people who can get pregnant, from going anywhere.
Suzanne
@Sister Golden Bear: But, like, how do they intend to enforce any of that on a plane? You can’t pull the plane over, there’s no pregnancy tests at security checkpoints (yet, I suppose). There’s a zillion connecting flights. This entire idea is completely unworkable. If asked, you can just say you’re on vacation. For fuck’s sake.
sab
@Alison Rose: You haven’t been to any Ohio county library. I was shocked in Marin, and my standard was Ohio at that point.
I do grant years since I have been there. Ohio still very good.
I trust you that Ca is better, but with all their moaning I hadn’t realized they could have improved.
My brother is in Marin and he is a solid RWNJ and I have biracial grandchildren so I try to keep us out of his orbit.
frosty
@Alison Rose:
I’m so happy to hear the GFM went over the top. Sigh (or cry) in relief and hang in there.
And if I might, please look into the suggestions in the comments. I thought there were a lot of helpful ideas that could possibly change your life.
Betsy
@Llelldorin: Gasp. You are exactly right.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: But isn’t the point to have a “novel” legal flim-flam that the SCOTUS will bless? As they did before?
The “state” isn’t enforcing it, RWNJ busy-bodies who won’t stay in their lane, won’t mind their own business, and who want to make everyone else do what they say they want (but won’t do themselves because reasons).
It’s 21st century red-baiting and blacklisting via NextDoor-like tactics. They want to make it impossible for people not in their tribe to have any freedom to live their lives as Americans.
Grr…,
Scott.
Sister Golden Bear
@Suzanne: Again, it’s not about actually being enforceable, it’s about instilling fear, uncertainty and doubt to cause people not to even attempt it.
sab
@Alison Rose: Did you want popular reading, or a lot of local history? That might be our difference. In Ohio we have both. County libraries are local depositories of local history. Sitting on every shelf in Ohio. Marin might have the same information but not on every shelf. 100 years later, so locals still care about what we know about local families
Marin and Contra Costa might have had it squirreled away for specialists and historians. Younger libraries.
laura
@sab: Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson and George Dukemajian did as much damage as possible dismantling the Golden State- and Arnold was marginally better. While you may not believe it, the democratic supermajority legislature and Governors Brown and Newsom have been doing the scut work necessary to restore services. And since prop 13, commercial real estate has not paid their fair share of the tax base by using this one weird trick wherein property doesn’t change hands.
Personally, the dismantling of the State’s mental health services has ruined so many lives (my family included) because the promise of community based replacements never really happened. Under and untreated mental illness, drug abuse and lack of affordable housing is the problem I can see wherever I go. It’s a complex problem and so far, blame casting has been the go to ‘solution.’
I love my State, warts and all, and it remains a place for reinvention, acceptance and now we even have Citizen Alan. I keep hoping you come back for a visit- you’re meet up worthy!
Betsy
@Geo Wilcox: yes, it’s true. And on the boys’ side, I think of my Iranian friend who would pull photos from his junior high (equivalent) years and point out all the classmates and friends who died in the Iran-Iraq war.
sab
@sab: Alison Rose. I very much want to lose this argument. Don’t have time to fight it. I will bring it up later maybe
ETA Or graciously cede if I am wrong.
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne: Indeed. She’s a treasure, and being recognized more and more.
Here’s AL’s piece (from 2011).
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat: And as I have mentioned, you have no evidence that Indian-American women vote more Democratic than I-A men to the degree you’re expecting Southern white women to vote more D than Southern white men.
You’re demanding that they have a degree of independence of mind that you’re not expecting from anyone else, let alone have proof that any other demographic of women has from men of the same demographic.
I don’t know why you feel entitled to judge other groups by unrealistic standards that you don’t know if women of your demographic can measure up to, but the weather must be nice up there on your privileged perch.
sab
@Alison Rose: 30 year difference. As I said I don’t want you to lose. Given the time frame ( thinges change) I might be wrong now, or might have been wrong them. That was thirty/ forty maybe even fifty years ago.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
The rethuglican party has gone batshit insane. No other way to say it. They have over my lifetime, lost a fair bit of power because their concept is always the concept of NO. And it’s not that they are trying to keep people from getting hurt, they are trying to insure that they have the power to hurt people that disagree with them. They want a world that hasn’t actually existed, in at least a century, likely closer to 2 centuries. And they can’t see that the world and time have moved on, well on and left them farther and farther behind. They are racist fucks who think that anyone who isn’t them or thinks like them or looks like them, should at the very least hide in a basement or better yet die. A major problem is that the world does not work like that any longer and that people as dumb and racially fucked up as they are couldn’t operate this or any other country, because they don’t actually do anything but complain about time moving forward and them not understanding that basic concept of time and the direction it moves.
Bill Arnold
@Tony G:
One way is funded, publicized efforts to use these laws to target Republicans. Tactically akin to the the Black Panther legal open carry tactic in CA in the 1960s.
Not arguing that this is a good idea (not sure), but it is possible.
RevRick
@smith: It’s the white supremacy that the GOP sells.
Paul Begala's Pink Tie
@Kent: came to say similar. For me, this is terrifying news because I have teenagers who are or will soon be sexually active. I used to worry about consent, but we’ve raised them well enough that my concern on that front is much less. Now I’m thinking — if we have an unintended pregnancy on our hands, where do we go? My ob/gyn explicitly does not terminate pregnancies, not because he doesn’t support reproductive rights, but because his huge Houston practice decided long ago that they would prefer to avoid controversy instead of serving their patients’ needs. Which I guess does amount to not supporting reproductive rights in effect. None of this makes any sense at all.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: I think you’re missing S_C’s point.
The point is simple math.
White women in Mississippi can change the course of the politics in the state by changing their votes. It’s a simple consequence of their proportion of the population – they’re roughly 30% of the population.
Indian-American women changing their votes from their husbands would not have that effect anywhere, except for very, very close elections.
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
wjca
“Here” would be (central) Contra Costa County. The local library has lots of books. It had lots of them 25 years ago. It had lots of them 50 years ago. It had quite a few of them even 70 years ago for that matter (although limited by physical space; it was a town of only a couple thousand people back then). The county library system in total has more, of course. All available on request in a couple of days.
Not to mention that, if the particular book I want isn’t in my local county library system, I can borrow it from any public library system in the state. And have. (Not only recently, but back to the mid-50s. Personally.) Delivery necessarily takes a few more days. But it’s not particularly difficult.
Those are just the physical books. There are a ton more available electronically. Including downloadable audio books. That, admittedly, is (relatively) recent — say the last couple of decades.
It sum, it makes it very hard to figure out what you might be talking about.
wjca
@Alison Rose: I appreciate the support. Good to know I’m not the only one baffled by sab’s description of our libraries.
Paul Begala's Pink Tie
@MisterDancer: thank you for noting that. A long time ago, I got into Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novels and was able to understand a lot more about how life changed so drastically after the Shah fell. The terror, especially targeted toward girls seeking education. Also worked with a Persian man who was a chemical engineer and wound up working as a busboy after emigrating.
kalakal
One group of white republican women I can believe when they say they’ve turned on the local Republicans are rich white divorcees in Florida. A couple of months ago DeStupid and his merry toads signed a bill trashing permanent alimony. Money, their money, a topic very dear to their blackened, withered hearts is threatened. They never gave a shit about anything else the Repugs were doing to other people but this, this affects them personally now.
https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/politics/2023/07/03/permanent-alimony-new-florida-law-change/70378477007/
Llelldorin
@Betsy: I knew it’d happen eventually!
(Damn it, couldn’t I be wrong this time and right about something nice?)
RaflW
@tobie: The problem at these state schools (TX, FL, etc) is that even if the University administrations see that profs and sought after students go elsewhere, their legislatures and governors won’t care.
They don’t actually value college educations, except in as much as they produce biz School grads and a few other technical disciplines.
Now, will businesses in Texas complain? Maybe. And maybe Abbott (or his equally shitty replacement) will retaliate. That was the point of him going after American Airlines and their tax breaks when they had a private mask mandate.
I don’t see how company leaders across the board don’t see the various ways Republicans have begun doing not just that and the Disney crap, but plenty of other threats and rug-pulls.
You cannot appease your way out of this, MBA wizards and C-suite loafers. Fascism will drain you of your autonomy, even if (for select favorites) it briefly fills your coffers.
Tony G
@J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian): I took a look at the guy. He’s not good looking, but, empirically, most men are not Brad-Pitt-lookalikes. Most like his obvious hatred of women repels women the way DEET repels mosquitoes.
Tony G
@Bill Arnold: That’s a clever idea!
Tony G
@Suzanne: Certainly very dumb — and that’s why it will appeal to the forced-birther crowd, who are also very dumb. This “idea” might be analogous to Trump’s “build the wall” nonsense. A wall (which, of course, was never actually built) would be climbed over or tunneled under by desperate people. In the same way, women who need to get to a state that allows abortions will find a way to do that. The only way to prevent it would be the deployment of state border guards with orders to shoot to kill all women who try to leave the state. But the idea of it will gin up support from the very stupid, women-hating forced-birther morons. A win-win for that movement.
Tony G
@smith: A very high percentage of Americans just don’t pay attention to politics. They might be great people, but they just don’t bother to inform themselves about politics. I can sort of understand it — after all, I don’t pay much attention to ice hockey or to the musical stylings of Taylor Swift. But having a lot of people who don’t bother to vote, or who vote without bothering to inform themselves about candidates and issues, leads to the type of bad government that we see every day.
wjca
That is the lesson of Dobbs. If you do something dumb enough, and harmful enough, a bunch of those inattentive Americans will start paying attention. And, because of the way you got their attention, they won’t be supporting you, or anybody who resembles you or agrees with you. About anything. See that referendum in Kansas.
Tony G
@wjca: Yes, that is true. And, hopefully, that is what will save us. I remember as a high school kid in the early seventies, most of my classmates knew nothing of history and politics and could not have located Vietnam on a map — but the fact that they could have been drafted and sent there in a few years got their attention. When the U.S. troops were pulled out in March of 1973, they re-directed their attention to the more important things in life: teenage girls, pot and Led Zeppelin!