Stumbling Through Adulthood

1.I'm avoiding commenting on the SCOTTUS decision, I am still too enraged. Bodily autonomy is pretty fundamental. That said, I found this article telling: The Constitution Is Whatever the Right Wing Says It Is.

2. 25 years ago, _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_ was published. My god, it's been a while. I heard about it later that year and spent a lot of time trying to get an indie Seattle bookstore to get it for me. They never did manage to, LOL. I know Rowling's stance on transwomen is problematic (understatement), but I still love the books. Well, 6 of them. Wasn't too fond of the last one. Anyhow.

3. It is So. Fucking. Hot. My kids are at Pride. Despite sunscreen and water, I expect them to come home burnt and dehydrated.

I was going to go to the Bans Off Our Bodies march either Mt Vernon or Bellingham. The local one doesn't work because we need to be in Bellingham this afternoon.

But of course, because of things that Can't Move and the timing of those marches, I won't be able to make either.

Just ugh.

Things were scheduled long before the draft was leaked.

And it's not even raining for once!

To the "Bernie or Bust" people, the "the lesser of two evils is still evil" people, the "I have to vote my conscience" people, the "stop being hysterical about the Supreme Cour, Roe v Wade is settled", the "there is no difference between Clinton and Trump"...

... well, you little fuckers, thanks a lot. Women have lost the fundamental right to control our own bodies. We will be hostage to the state, forced to bear children we do not want. We will miss out on college education, lose career opportunities, be stuck in bad relationships, often consigned to poverty, and live lives much less full of joy and accomplishments, at the mercy of a mistake, a moment of folly, bad luck, or a rapist.

Aside from the selfish, privileged scum who just couldn't vote for her, four men share the blame:

Bernie Sanders and his oversize ego. He couldn't admit he lost to a woman so stayed in the race, screaming that it was rigged, and his stupid followers, as inane as Trump's morons, believed him, and believe him to this day.

James Comey. 'Nuff said. Fucker.

Mitch McConnell who stole Obama's SCOTUS pick.

While I want the above three to rot in a hell I don't believe in, the fourth person is as responsible, but on doesn't deserve quite that level of punishment.

Barack Obama. He didn't fight hard enough for Garland, just sorta let it happen. He had the bully pulpit of the presidency, but instead of protesting McConnell's thievery, he mentioned it from time to time, but did not fight tooth and nail for his pick. He also nominated a milquetoast white man, I still think that it would have been harder for McConnell to treat a Black woman, an Asian man, etc the way Garland was treated. A recess appointment would have been another possibility. I don't know, but clearly doing nothing was the wrong choice, and Obama was a weak president who didn't want to make waves, and wanted everyone to just get along. That didn't work too well.

I'm both enraged, horrified, and deeply, profoundly sad.

ETA Note that I did not include the 5 fascist members of the SCOTUS in my list of people to blame. They are perjurers who lied to get on the court, but they were known quantities, chosen because they would overturn Roe, and pretty much for nothing else... Amy Coathanger Barett couldn't even name the protections of the 1st Amendment, something even I can do, and was wildly panned as unqualified from a judicial point of view. However, as a handmaiden in her Christo-fascist church, her actual ability to law and judge was not a factor.

In a suburban Fort Worth House runoff, Republicans debate killing women over abortion.

This is both batshit crazy and profoundly dangerous.

But then [North Richland Hills Republican David Lowe] went on to praise a House bill last session that would have made ending a pregnancy a potential capital crime..

In other words, Texas could kill the woman, along with anyone who encouraged her or helped.

Lowe’s final comment was chilling.

“Do we all agree that abortion is murder?” he asked the crowd.

“Absolutely. There should be consequences for it.”

His opponent:

“Abolishing abortion is important, but we can do that without giving women the death penalty,” Klick told the luncheon.

She talked about how pregnancy clinics counsel many teenage girls. At 18, they’d be eligible for the death penalty.

“Do we want to give those young girls the death penalty?” Klick asked.

And she's the more moderate of the two. Doesn't think we really need to kill women who've had abortions.

W.T.F.

The American Taliban is alive, well, and becoming more and more powerful each election.

I keep on telling dh we need to get the fuck out of this country, while we can do so in a controlled manner, with family and finances in order, before we become part of a rash of refugees sometime in the late 2020s.

Content warning, it's pretty explicit, pro-abortion, and crude at times.

Despite their wails about the baybeeees! the pro-forced birth folks don't care about babies. If they did, they'd be working to implement programs to help women have babies in a healthy manner, be able to take some time off to heal, bond, breastfeed etc, and then find high quality childcare, as well as ensure that the baybees always have enough food, get a good education etc. They don't do any of that.

Nothing is too extreme to protect the baybees! charging women with murder if they terminate a pregnancy, allowed random people to snitch on then, forcing them to give birth, bombing places women get abortions (and other health care), killing doctors who perform said abortions. Anything for the baybeee!

As soon as the baybeeee! is born anything it needs is too extreme. Paid maternal leaves. Subsidized childcare. Decent school... heck, school lunches. There is no love for the born baybeee!, only for the fetus it once was.

Having established that...

It's about controlling women, of course. When a woman can control her reproduction, she essentially loses control of her life trajectory, when a rape can derail everything, an unplanned pregnancy keep her from fulfilling her dreams and living to her full potential. Women are forced to live a life of no mistakes.

Note that I don't see the same thing for men. When a man gets someone pregnant and has to pay child support, the themes are often that 1. he's a good man, to pay child support 2. it was her fault, she should have used birth control/better birth control 3. there is often a sense that one mistake, one tiny episode of penis ejaculating in a vagina, should not result in this poor man having to send SO MUCH MONEY to support the baby. After all, the mother was at least as responsible. IOW, generally, women get condemnation, men get sympathy. (I am no doubt seeing a dynamic that may be reserved to/for white men, btw. I expect black men get some level of condemnation, though not as much as women, and black women get the most condemnation of all, of course.) Anyhow, for a man, it was just one mistake, poor guy, vs well, she should have--

So yeah. Controlling women and ensuring that any mistake or misstep or episode of abuse can have profound life altering consequences.

The argument is that once an embryo is present, it's no longer just her body, the woman's body belongs to the embryo, no matter the age of said embryo, or the desires of the woman carrying it.

With the pushing back of the "ok to have an abortion" timeline, we're getting to the point where as soon as the penis has ejaculated, abortion is no longer allowed.

Part of the message is the fetishization of virginity. The idea is that only a woman who has not had a penis inside of her is worthy of self-determination, to a small degree. Once the almighty penis has penetrated her, it's all over for the woman, she loses any worth she might have had, and her value plummets to less than that of a 256-cell blastocyst.

There has long been a fetishization of virginity, it's clearly nothing new. This is just another facet of it, I think.

1. At some point, someone will explain to me why US calendars start with Sunday. Drives me bugfuck. It's the weekend and Saturday and Sunday should be next to each other, so you can see how they overlap. It's ridiculous to separate them. Usually, I print out calendar pages from time and date, cut them to size and glue them into my Washington Trails Association calendar. This year, I spent an hour on amazon with the search term "Monday start" calendar to try to find one. I did (I hope!) and it'll be here on Tuesday.

2. There have been swans on the lake for the past few days. I love seeing them. And they're so freaking BIG.

3. Backsliding democracies tend to see a period of backtracking on women's rights and a rise in antisemitism. Check and check.

Joe Fucking Manchin has killed family leave, the media is crowing "Dems in disarray! House and Senate with go R in 2022" in their self-fulfilling prophecy kind of way, and the Bernie bro was renting their clothes and wailing that they'll never vote for anther spineless Dem again, it was better when Mitch McTurtle was in power.

Never mind that 96% of Senate Dems were onboard with family leave and 100% of Republicans against it.

Anyhow here, Jill Filipovic pretty much sums up many of the dynamics of why Machin and the Repugs oppose family leave: Free Female Labor Is The Plan. Nothing profoundly new, but a well written coherent exposé of the consequences of this decision, the obvious ones and the less talked about ones alike.

I stayed at home, something I deeply regret, and I had a wonderful spouse who treated what I did as my job in a good way, which meant that when he was home he shared the kid and house stuff. Yes, I did all the annoying stuff like doctor's appointments and all that, but when he was home, it was all shared. I was incredibly lucky. Still I wish daycare hadn't fallen through, waaaay back when, and that I hadn't been in a horrid job with a crazy boss when I was pregnant with Anne-Chloe. Those two things just made it easier to slide into stay-at-hone.

I think part of what gets me -and only a part- is how this was done.

That taking away my bodily autonomy, women's bodily autonomy, leaving us in a category of citizens who cannot make our own decisions about our own physical habitats, wasn't even worth a courtroom and a full presentation of legal arguments.

That women were stripped of a fundamental right in the middle of the night, but the Shadow Docket, as if it had no importance whatsoever.

I'm still reeling.

An incredible speech.

Lake Highlands High Valedictorian Pulls Switcheroo on Commencement Speech.

In Texas. Scrapped her approved commencement speech to talk about the cruel, stupid, and typically Republican 6 week abortion ban that Texass approved.

Recently the heartbeat bill was passed in Texas. Starting in September, there will be a ban on abortions that take place after 6 weeks of pregnancy, regardless of whether the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. 6 weeks. Most women don’t even realize they’re pregnant by then. And so, before they have the time to decide if they are emotionally, physically, and financially stable enough to carry out a full-term pregnancy, before they have the chance to decide if they can take on the responsibility of bringing another human into the world, the decision has been made for them by a stranger. A decision that will affect the rest of their lives.

I have dreams, hopes, and ambitions. Every girl here does. We have spent our whole lives working towards our futures, and without our consent or input, our control over our futures has been stripped away from us. I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail me, that if I’m raped, then my hopes and efforts and dreams for myself will no longer be relevant. I hope you can feel how gut-wrenching it is, how dehumanizing it is, to have the autonomy over your own body taken from you.

You go, girl! I wish you the best in your future and I'll keep your name in mind, I hope to hear from you again.

Also, credit to the high school: they did not mute the mic.