Taking the Plunge

[neadods]

I hear that when you're a kid, you regret what you've done and when you're an adult, you regret what you haven't done. I also hear, direct from the DC Shakes, that there hasn't been a peep regarding the Mock Trial waitlist, but there are "a bunch" of dinner tickets left.

Been thinking about this too long, too often. I'm going to get my ticket tomorrow.

Will tell all the weekend after, when I have a chance to write it up.


PS - I know some deep shit is going down in American politics right now. I'm focusing on the topic that *won't* give me an aneurism. Because if I get on the topic of "unborn babies are so precious that women can't even abort dead ones" (Georgia) or "men need money more, so women shouldn't have equal pay" (Wisconsin) I will rage and rage for hours with a shitload of profanity. I kind of wish I was back at my old office, though, just for one day to have one more political argument with my co-worker. The one who seriously thought that once we had rights, we got to keep them, and that they would never, ever be repealed.

Although... to be honest, I'm starting to think that the "repeal the 20th and 21st centuries" movement is a Republican plot. They don't know how to fix the economy either and the tea party darlings are such an ungovernable embarrassment that it's better to step back, let the crazed loons go so crazy that the Democrats are swept back in... and then watch them fail to quick-fix the economy and blame 'em for it in another 2-4 years.

Comments

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

When I read elsewhere of the Wisconsin repeal of the Equal Pay act, I had to check the calendar-- no, this isn't April 1, so what the.... This can't be REAL, can it....?

My only hope-- my ONLY hope-- is that these reactionary morons are getting very close to the point where a majority of voters realizes what the hell they've been doing and reacts at last by dumping them. Of course that's getting harder all the time with the GOP shutting down voting as hard as they can.

Anytime you hear or read someone saying of parties or politicians, "They're all alike," ARGUE. They're bloody not.

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." -- Sinclair Lewis

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Of course that's getting harder all the time with the GOP shutting down voting as hard as they can.

Yes. They are.

But... what I don't think they realize is that they're going so fucking far, outright taking away birth control and bodily autonomy over *corpses* and equal pay that I don't think they realize just how many relatively well-off fairly privileged people are going to take the privilege of marching down and voting their asses out. I know Republican women who are basically saying "WTF? NO."

Because this has gone way beyond the "unborn babies" and "welfare queens" and all the other ways that middle-class white women could say "well, this will never happen to me." It's outright telling these women - women who are already on the voting rolls, who felt their rights were unshakeable, that they have neither privilege nor rights.

I do argue about them being "all alike." In some ways, yes. The ones in power want to stay there, and they'll lie about their rivals. But when push comes to shove, there's only one party that has consistently ruled in the manner I think fit for this country's people and one party that consistently doesn't.

[canaana.livejournal.com]

That's actually a going theory. The more disturbing one is that they know the only way they can get ppl to continue to vote against their own econmic interests at this point is to start hammering away on social issues considered immoral my much of their voter base.

Let's hope it backfires. I wish my confidence were higher.

[tikiera.livejournal.com]

I don't think they are doing because they don't know what to do with the economy. I suspect the GOP knows exactly what their financial philosophy does to the economy.

So they go after the "social issues" and hammer about "voting fraud" so they can disenfrancise people.

it's to distract us from the fact that the rich get richer, and everyone else gets poorer.

[tikiera.livejournal.com]

Mind you, they have picked targets they are willing to subjugate and that huge swaths of their base aren't going to mind oppressing.

My mother thought women should not have the right to vote for many, many, many years. And I am not as old as you would think from that statement, I graduated high school in the 90s.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I gotta ask - did she vote anyway?

[tikiera.livejournal.com]

Nope.

Eventually, after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan affected our extended family, and she knew people who lost homes due to lack of health insurance and finally she decided Bush was evil and voted for the first time ever.

I don't think she voted in the last election. I don't think she will be voting in the upcoming election. I don't think she feels that voting Bush out helped all that much. I will have to ask her if she is.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

At least she had the strength of her convictions. I forget which *elected official* woman said that she thought women shouldn't vote and should be submissive to their husbands.

[suze2000.livejournal.com]

HO

[suze2000.livejournal.com]

haha, accidentally posted HO.

It was supposed to be:

HOW ARE PEOPLE STILL VOTING FOR THESE LOONS?

[fyrdrakken]

There were a couple of pieces I read last week that made some connections that hadn't occurred to me before -- of course the next step after taking abortion out of reach is to erode the right to contraception, and of course the most conservative elements want women out of the workforce and back to being forced to marry ASAP and stay at home with their hordes of (preferably white and Christian) children.

But this article looked at the history of adoption over the twentieth century, and the decades when single mothers were expected and even coerced into putting their children up for adoption -- but the rate of children being put up for adoption plummeted drastically after Roe v. Wade. Turns out, there are a significant number of fundies who really want thousands of (healthy, white) children being put up for adoption every year and handed off to Christian couples who'd really love to be part of the Quiverfull movement if they'd been able to have children of their own. And there are a lot of organizations out there streamlining the adoption process and armtwisting single women into having and relinquishing their children. (Crisis Pregnancy Centers, it turns out, pretty much specialize in this.)

So, um, the arguments that contraception and sex ed actually prevent abortions by preventing unwanted pregnancies, and that abstinence-only education is really bad in terms of preventing teen pregnancies? Yeah, that's going to the assumption that all pro-lifers actually want to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

ETA: Glad you sprung for the trial -- hope you enjoy it! And yeah, I'm thinking the sane Republicans are just keeping their heads down hoping they don't get swept out when the voters purge the Tea Party elements, and biding their time for 2014 and 2016.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I can't read the whole article without signing up for The Nation, but I'm not remotely surprised. A lot of the protestor signs outside the clinics push adoption hard - "adoption is the loving option", "I want to thank the mothers of my 4 adoptive children," etc.

And back at the March for Women's Lives, there was a woman who was howling at me that her son "had to go to China to get a baby" because "they're all killed here." I asked her if she thought I, a white woman, was supposed to be her son's brood cow. She didn't have an answer... but then, she'd already given me the answer: yes.

She couldn't answer why her son couldn't adopt a non-pale baby either. Plenty of black & hispanic babies in the adoption system, along with handicapped babies and older children. But it was pretty damned obvious what this woman and her son wanted - a healthy white baby they could claim to have 'saved.'

How this mindset goes in with the Sanger was a racist/"black genocide" meme, I'm not sure, though. That's another very loud area of protest... although Eeyore stopped shouting it for a while when I laughed in her face and told her I thought it was hilarious when people white as me called me a racist.

[fyrdrakken]

First time I clicked the link to check it before copying it from last week's entry and posting the comment, it sent me right to the article. Second time I clicked it after you told me it wouldn't let you read it, I got a sign-up page. Third and fourth time I tried, it gave me the article again.

And, yeah. When I learned about how many kids age out of the foster care system because they're "too old" or "too damaged" or the wrong color, I lost all sympathy for would-be parents who claim they can't find a kid to adopt. (Barring gay parents living in a state that won't let them take in foster kids or adopt -- though I can't quite recall if there are any states that actually have those laws in place, as opposed to just thinking they should have laws like that.)

That "black genocide" meme is an interesting one, yeah. I'm thinking it's an attempt to undercut support for abortion across the board by targeting their message to another subset of the audience -- but then again, I'm also quite sure the pro-life movement is full of people who are in it for various reasons (some of which conflict with the motives of others sharing the movement and would frankly shock some of their fellow pro-lifers). I can't rule out people with the best of intentions who are genuinely concerned that so many non-white women are getting abortions and don't really understand the factors that make an abortion a rational decision (and that would make marrying the father a mistake, even assuming he'd be willing to do so).

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I can't rule out people with the best of intentions who are genuinely concerned that so many non-white women are getting abortions

Oh, I can. Real damn easy. The protesters (and the escort staff) tend to be lily white - as in I think I've seen one escort of color and NO protesters. Not a one, including the masses outside of Planned Parenthood downtown DC on Roe v Wade day.

Yet plenty of those white, white, white people were praying Very Pointedly And Loudly to God to open our hearts and understand that Sanger was a racist promoting genocide.

Or, in shorter terms, "... and every person over there in an orange vest is a genocidal racist."


Although speaking of racism, there have even been attempts to adding race to the various bars to abortion. Because it's not dehumanizing and patronizing a women enough to say that she can't decide to have an abortion, people have to add that extra-special twist of "well, since we think 'your kind' have too many abortions, we're going to put extra burdens on YOUR choices."

Nothin' says "equal rights" and "I care about you as a person" like using skin color to determine who has even the slightest chance at bodily autonomy or not.

[fyrdrakken]

Oh, I'm quite willing to believe that the clinic protesters are the worst of the worst of the pro-life lot -- it's just that I'm sure there are also people like my cousin (Catholic, pregnant with her her third daughter, pro-midwife and member of the La Leche League) who are very strongly pro-baby with the best of intentions (and possibly somewhat oblivious to their own social privilege and what factors constrain the lives of so many of the women who seek abortions).

I had not heard about adding race to the excuses being used to deny abortions -- I'm guessing the "genocide" claims are the excuse, but how are they wanting to go about legislating it?

[neadods.livejournal.com]

how are they wanting to go about legislating it

The law boiled down to saying "abortions cannot be performed due to baby's race." It didn't get anywhere, but it was a credible concern-troll law attempting to create a more protected class than generic "unborn baby." IIRC, it was tied to a law that banned abortion for gender selection, another concern-troll law that plays so very well to the cheap seats. "They SAY they're for women, but we want to protect women even in the womb!"

It's a really subtly nasty form of concern-troll racism. Under the guise of "saving" the "endangered" babies, it strips the advantages of family planning (less poverty, more education, healthier adults, stronger families, bodily autonomy) from a specific group of women solely based on skin color.