My Father's Name

[originally written as a rant on my tumblr]

I swear to dog the next time I hear someone talk about a woman taking her husband's name as a contrast between "her husband's name" and "her father's name" I AM GOING TO BITE YOU. VERY VERY HARD. NOT IN THE SEXY WAY. 

 

Because this name that I have right now, the one that’s been on all my paperwork for twenty fucking seven years, THAT IS MY NAME.  Mine.  MY name.

My father shares it, yes.  As does much of his extended family.  This is true.  And it is also true that I share a last name with his family, rather than with my mother’s family.

But that
does not
make it
any
less
MY NAME.

I have not been going around in the world for twenty-seven years answering to a borrowed name.

Every time I wrote it on a piece of paper for school,
every time I answered to it in roll call,
every time I responded to it at rugby practice,
every time I have entered it on DMV forms
and medical forms
and tax forms,
I have claimed it as MINE.

If (when, gods willing) Ozz and I get married someday, if I choose to change my last name*, it will be me choosing to exchange my name for his.  Not me giving up my father’s name in order to take on my husband’s name.

I guess what I’m saying is, don’t you fucking dare act like my name doesn’t really belong to me, just because it belonged to a man before me.  He doesn’t keep ownership of the name we share because I bear it, any more than he keeps ownership of my body or life because I bear his genetics.  When you act like it’s still *his* name, you’re also acting like I’m still *his* in some way.  And I may be slightly touchier than most about this because my father and I have some truly epic Issues, but you imply that I’m somehow *his* in any way beyond what allegiance I freely choose to give him as an independent adult in my own right, and I will fucking cut you.

We clear?

*Spoiler alert: I won't.  Or at least, it won't be a straight mine-gone-take-his-instead.  I don't even like his last name and it sounds terrible with my first name.   We'd been considering hyphenating, which would probably be my preferred choice.

Shitting on abuse survivors: totally the Christian thing to do.

The Violence Against Women Act, which provides funds and programs to help victims/survivors of domestic violence and all kinds of abuse, is the sort of thing you'd think would be a no-brainer for wide bipartisan support.  Who could be against helping women who've been abused?  Only actual abusers themselves, right?  Or abuse apologists?

Or, apparently, devout professional Christians.

The FRC seem to be shitting their pants over this mainly because the current update to VAWA would help those gross unnatural queer women, illegals who deserve whatever they get for being in this country in the first place, and Native women who haven't had the courtesy to die off and stop reminding us of our genocidal roots.

I mean, I'm trying to be hyperbolic here, but I kind of feel like it's not that far from the truth.  Those are the things they cite in their opposition - that they can't approve of a bill which has provisions to help queer women (because that's "giving them special rights"), undocumented immigrants, etc.  Their contempt is further measured by their claim that the Democrats added these oh-so-awful pieces to the bill purely in order to force Republicans to oppose it so the Dems can point to it as evidence that the GOP is anti-woman.

First of all, we didn't need additional evidence.  Y'all trumpet your misogyny to the skies each and every damn day.  You are to the point where people are trying to hold workshops to teach you fuckers to keep your goddamn mouths shut about women's issues because of the massive backlash every time you speak.  WE KNOW you're anti-woman.  It's never been up for debate.

But second of all, it's disgusting that the only reason they can apparently think of for specifically ensuring that underserved and more-vulnerable populations receive the help they need is for political maneuvering.  Not because there are people who need help.  Only because politics.

Projection complex, thy name is the GOP.

Oh, but it's not just that the bill specifically looks to help someone other than straight white American citizens.  It's that, and the money:

You can help by contacting your Senators and urging them to vote against VAWA and end the real abuse of taxpayer dollars.

Emphasis original. 

So let me get this straight: women being repeatedly assaulted, physically, emotionally, and/or sexually: not really abuse, why are we wasting our time on this?  The government spending money to help those women: ABUSE!  SHUT IT DOWN RIGHT NOW STOP ABUSING MY WALLET WAHHHH

I feel like a fucking broken record here, but Republicans, JFC your priorities are terrible.

Is it Christmas already? Judge rejects challenges to contraception mandate - HARD.

Go read this.  No, seriously.  Go read it.

Oh, fine.  For those not inclined to click through, Judge Carol Jackson of a federal district court in Missouri basically told anti-contraception assholes where to shove it.  She stated flat-out that the ACA's contraception mandate does not infringe on religious freedom, period the end:

… [T]he health care plan will offend plaintiffs’ religious beliefs only if an OIH employee (or covered family member) makes an independent decision to use the plan to cover counseling related to or the purchase of contraceptives. Already, OIH and Frank O’Brien pay salaries to their employees---money the employees may use to purchase contraceptives or to contribute to a religious organization. By comparison, the contribution to a health care plan has no more than a de minimus impact on the plaintiff’s religious beliefs than paying salaries and other benefits to employees.

Is it just me, or is there an implied "...so shut the fuck up already" at the end of that paragraph?

And it goes on from there, rejecting every single argument they put forth, from the "defining a religious exemption means the government is excessively entangled in deciding what's religion and what isn't therefore it's establishment of state religion" claim (??? So they're fine with the IRS dropping all tax-exempt statuses for religious organizations, right?  Because there has to be a definition somewhere for those, too.) to the "compelled subsidized speech" claim (just because someone, at some point of the process, uses words to facilitate something happening doesn't make the thing happening fall into the category of 'speech'), and basically said "Yes, you *can* claim that the regulation was "arbitrary and capricious", but you're flat the fuck wrong, so go away."

I'm sure it will be appealed, etc., but this is a fantastic start to work from.  Thank you, Judge Jackson, for shutting down their collective temper tantrum so thoroughly from the word 'go'.

Today in No Fucking Shit, Captain Obvious

As DIY Abortions Rise, So Does Guesswork and Failure

More women are heading to Mexico to buy abortion-inducing drugs, the New York Times reports, and it's opening them up to failed terminations and other dangers. ... Abortion-rights advocates are concerned that a lack of awareness about clinical options in the United States — as well as a lack of funds — could lead more women to go underground and risk their health in this way.

Gee, it's not like we've been fucking saying this FOR YEARS NOW or anything.  No, this is a totally unforeseen development!  Utterly unexpected!  Shocking!  Provocative!  Unbelievable!  ...whoops, sarcasm reserve ran out.  Been using a lot of it up on Tumblr lately, sorry.

On The Third Attempt to Pass Egg-as-Person Legislation in Colorado, Former Supporters Shy Away

[T]he political ramifications of the personhood amendment should continue to be a key part of the coverage. The amendment, which would ban all abortions and some common forms of birth control, is clearly of interest to women, in particular, and women are a key voters in Colorado elections.

You mean to tell me 51% of the population are a key voting bloc in elections?  My god, will the revelations never end?  Fetch me pearls to clutch and a fainting couch on which to delicately fall!

 My kingdom for a liberal media that's actually liberal and doesn't act like these things called "women" are mysterious creatures whose issues can only be observed from afar.  >.<

Dear Self: You know better. DON'T. READ. THE FUCKING COMMENTS.

I've been spending some spare time lately fucking around on Experience Project, a social networking site designed around connecting people not by geographical location, or demographics, but by shared experiences.  You join groups that are all titled "I have [$EXPERIENCE]" - "gotten divorced" or "gone skydiving" or something like that - and you always know that within the group you're talking about something you all know.  It's interesting.

Well, EP has a "questions" section, where people post random questions and other people answer them, vote for their favorite answers, reply to other answers, etc.  It's slightly above the level of YouTube comments.  Most of the time.  I'm developing a reputation as a feminist killjoy* because I slap down bullshit with glee and don't let people get away with shit when they're arguing with me.  This pleases me greatly.  ^_^

Today, I was browsing around, and came across the question "How do you define a 'real lady'?"

Oh, shit.  So I waded right in.

My initial reply: "Do you identify as a woman?" "Yes" "Are you okay with being called a lady?" "Yes" - there you go, that's how you define a real lady.  I'm not a lady, because I fcking HATE that term (considering its history of being used to judge and restrict "appropriate" standards of female behavior) and will vehemently correct anyone who tries to call me a lady, real or otherwise.  Tautology it may be, but a "real lady" is simply a person who identifies as a lady. 

Another reply: "A female with self-control, who is quick to hold her tongue.  She delights in everything lovely and feminine and she isn't afraid to speak her mind when needed.  Compassion and passion are two of her best qualities, along with nurturing, serving others, unselfishness and poise.  She is passionate about her beliefs and she accomplishes anything she puts her mind to.  Her peers respect her for being truly female." with my next comment nested underneath as a response: "...ew.  Thank you for reinforcing that I am NOT, and do not EVER want to be, a "lady".  Notice how it basically requires you to STFU, put yourself last, and treat yourself as if you matter less than other people?  Yeah no.  If it means hewing to ancient, restrictive, patriarchal stereotypes of "appropriate" womanhood...all aboard the Nope Train to Fuck-that-ville."  and another response saying "Well said", although since EP only nests to a single level, it's unclear whether they're commending the OP or my response to it.

There is not enough EW in the world for that OP.  I notice that "speak her mind" is qualified with "when needed", which is in the passive voice, raising the question, who decides when it's needed?  (Hint: it's never the woman doing the speaking.)  We then get three different synonyms for "Put other people's needs ahead of your own at all times, you come last," and end with gender policing.  I think I need a shower.

Another comment: "Treats others and expects to be treated with respect, compassion, has strength and dignity, humor."

See, this is not a bad definition.  I'm still never going to back it myself, because it still involves an arbitrary definition against which a person can be measured and "disqualified", but it's at least closer to just a measure of a good person than archaic gender roles.

Another comment: "Feminine, charming, romantic, sentimental, motherly, refrains from gossip, independent when the need arises, smart and willing to please her man in bed."

Oh, gross, another one.  "Feminine" - how are we defining that?  It's one of those arbitrary things that, like "when needed", is never judged by the person performing the action, but always judged by the male opinions around her.  "Motherly" - oh goody, here we go with the biological essentialism and reducing women to their uteruses (whether they have them or not, etc).  "Refrains from gossip" - so uh, men get to gossip without restriction or something?  Ooh look, "when needed" rears its head again!  And then the kicker, "willing to please her man in bed."  Heteronormative, assumes active sexuality and dating, places female sexuality subordinated in service to male sexual desires, and I notice there's nothing about eager to receive reciprocal pleasure...Guess men don't need to please their ladies in bed.  Gods, I'm glad I not a lady!  More orgasms for me!

Like I said - slightly above the level of YouTube comments sections.  Between this one and the "ZOMG OBESITYZZZ" and "TEH GAYZZ IN MILITARY" questions I've also been playing whack-a-dumbfuck with, I'm about tapped out for the day.

Feminist killjoy, out.

*I actually just ordered this necklace today.  I'm so excited for it!  I also ordered a literal flying fuck.

Microaggressive Naming

[This is dredged up from the drafts folder, so context-dependent time references are no longer correct, but I'm too lazy to fix it.  Sorry for the lack of posting, some personal life shit has been going on and it has fucked me up but good.  Even with meds, I'm only just managing to be mostly functional; blogging is often beyond me, cause it takes too much focus, concentration, interest, and energy.  Well-wishes, good vibes, prayers, etc are welcome for Ozz's and my relationship, and for me personally if you want.  Sorry again and thanks.]

It's bid day today!  I work for a general contractor, and we have not one, but TWO jobs bidding today.  Which means that, since a major part of my job includes handling the incoming faxes and making sure everything gets to the right people, I'm pretty busy today with the dozens and dozens of bids subcontractors are faxing in.  (Not too busy to write irritated posts, though!)  Because in the last batch of faxes, there was this lovely little gem of a company:

The header of an incoming fax from a company named "Shutter-Up Window Coverings", whose logo seems to be two stylistically-drawn people, one in a skirt with hands on hips, the other in pants casually leaning against the skirted figure with an arm draped around her neck.

Now the name itself was irritating enough when I saw it that I intended to post about it already, considering that it basically boils down to a creaky old "joke" about lol women talking amirite?

But the fun part was when, after I'd printed this fax off and given it to John, our lead estimator, I heard him laugh a few minutes later and poke his head into our general manager's office.

"Hey Tracy, did you see this sub bid?  I love the name!"

And Tracy looks at the copy I left on his desk and cracks up, and I overhear them reminiscing about another misogynistically entertainingly-named subcontractor from a few bids ago, "Gutter-Done" (a play on git-r-done).

Yeah, because play-on-word names that reference silencing women and fucking them are soooo hilarious, amirite?  Not like there are any women in your office - or working for those companies, for that matter - who might end up feeling excluded and demeaned by it, by the reminder that when it's convenient, y'all are quite pleased to assert your male privilege and participate in sexism, and even find it funny.  I know I totes feel like a valued and equal person to my coworkers while they're laughing over shutting women up.

(And this is not even mentioning the latest fuckery from yesterday, which I ranted about on tumblr here.)

Willow Smith's Hair: Gender, Race, and White Feminism

Over the holiday weekend, this quote from Will Smith on his daughter Willow's choice of hairstyle flew about the intertubes, making the rounds of the feminisphere on tumblr, twitter, and showing up on a few of the bigger blogs as well:

“We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it’s like how can you teach her that you’re in control of her body? If I teach her that I’m in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she’s going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She can’t cut my hair but that’s her hair. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she’s going out with a command that is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives.”

I reblogged it when I saw it, with a comment about "Parenting, ur doin it right," as did most of the other people I saw reblogging it.

But this morning, as I was reading through my daily un-newspaper (the collection of blogs from which I get my news on a daily basis), I found the above-linked post by Renee of Womanist Musings, which addressed the quote in a context that focuses on the racial dynamic at play when you're talking about a young black girl's hair like that.

And I realized, as I read her commentary on the way white feminists picked up and passed around this quote, treating it as a statement on gender equality and encouraging a young girl's sense of bodily sovereignty while ignoring the girl's race and how that intersects to give the statement a totally different meaning and context...that I had done exactly that.  I read that quote and got excited about what it meant in terms of gender only, without taking into account the additional politics of black women's hair and how that was really the bigger issue being addressed here.

So I wanted to A: apologize for my personal intersectionality fail in how I viewed/addressed the issue when I saw it this weekend (though I didn't do it *here*; I will however be cross-posting some version of this to tumblr), and B: signal-boost a great post about the racial+gender politics of it, for those who similarly heard about this but forgot to look beyond our own immediate gendered oppression.

A Pro-Choice Poem for Mother's Day

This Mother's Day, as the antis try to use it for propaganda
(as they always do)
I want to thank my mother.

I want to thank my mother, not for simply having me -
But for waiting until she was ready to have me.
For having me when she wanted to have a child.
For bringing me into a home and a situation where I was planned,
wanted,
loved.

I want to thank my mother, not for simply having me -
But for all the twenty-six
(and counting)
years that have followed.
For making Halloween costumes and prom dresses,
lunches and dinners and Christmas cookies,
and in the process, teaching me.

I want to thank my mother, not for simply having me -
But for all the times she went to bat against an unfair world,
stood up to bullies,
taught me I deserved better.
For instilling in me a love of reading that has made me into the writer I am today.
For quietly, subtly - just by being the person she is -
instilling in me a budding proto-feminist sensibility,
So that when, in college, I made my first fumbling steps into formal feminism
it was less like learning
than simply coming home.
(And that, too, has made me who and what I am today.)

And with these more usual gratitudes,
I want to thank my mother for something else.
Something the antis would see as directly antithetical to the spirit of the day.
But which, I feel,
is exactly right.

I want to thank my mother,
For helping me to not be a mother.
For taking me to her doctor to get on birth control when I started having sex at 15,
for making it so that I wasn't one of the teens who had to sneak around and buy condoms under cover of shame and darkness.
For taking me at my word when I said for the first time, at about age 12,
"I don't ever want to have kids."
For never pressuring me to produce grandchildren,
and for waving off family members who might have.
(It helps that I have lots of cousins who have had lots of babies already, I suppose.)

And, six years ago this past week,
For driving two hours down at 5 in the morning to my college apartment,
so we could get breakfast before my appointment.
Sitting with me in the awkward hush of the waiting room.
Then, six years ago this very weekend,
Laying in supplies of favorite foods and movies and lots of very thick pads,
shooing my brother out of the house to go hang out with friends,
so that I could bleed out the baby I wasn't ready to have -
will never be ready to have -
in privacy, and safety, and comfort, and support.

That year, we celebrated Mother's Day by keeping me from being a mother.
And I have been grateful, every single year since.
So the next time the antis throw out that tired line,
"Aren't you glad your mother was pro-life?!?!?!"
I will laugh,
as I always do,
because they don't know my mother.
I do.
And she has shown herself, in a thousand thousand ways, a wonderful mother,
and part of that has been in her respect for my body,
my choices,
my life.
That's her pro-life stance.
She's pro-my-life.  Pro-her-daughter's-life.
Pro-the-life-of-every-person-who-could-face-this-decision.
So I think, when I laugh in the face of the next anti to assign a political stance to a woman they have never met,
based purely on the fact that she has given birth,
I will also say,
"Yes, she is.  But not in the way you think."

Happy Mother's Day, mamana.  I love you.

Dick, Pussy, Cunt, and "Die Cis Scum": Why Some Insults Are More Equal Than Others

I see this issue make the rounds occasionally, on tumblr, on twitter, on feminist blogs, and it bugs the crap out of me.  Usually because it's someone trying to discredit or deflect requests that people not use misogynist insults like "pussy" and "cunt" by saying "well if that's bad then why aren't you asking people to stop using "dick" as an insult, too?!?"  Which is manifest horseshit on several levels.

Firstly, many of the feminists/progressives I know actually *do* frown on all genitalia-related insults.  I know plenty of feminists who don't use pussy, cunt, or dick as insulting terms.  Quite often, the person at whom the "But what about dick?" (henceforth BWAD) argument is being directed falls into this category already, and the person trying to defend their use of misogynist slurs just hasn't bothered to ask before making arguments based on their assumption.  Moral of the story: ask before you base your whole argument on an assumption.

Secondly, context fucking matters.  When the use of insults based on genitalia is taking place in a culture that systematically values maleness and denigrates femaleness, using slurs based on the penis (which our culture associates exclusively with masculinity) does not have the same damaging impact that slurs based on the vulva (which our culture associates exclusively with femininity) do.  Using "dick" as an insult does not contribute to longstanding, systemic oppression of men, because such oppression simply does not exist.  For the same reason that naked dude pictures are not the same as naked lady pictures, "dick" as an insult doesn't do the same kind of cumulative cultural damage that "pussy" and "cunt" do as insults.

Thirdly, are you (where "you" = someone who has asked or is asking BWAD) seriously trying to say that "dick" as an insult is of the same level of severity and carries the same connotation as "pussy" and "cunt"?  Really?  I'm sorry, are you some kind of pandimensional being speaking to me from an alternate universe?  Because that's really the only explanation I can think of for trying to treat all three insults equally.

"Dick" as an insult ranges from mild to moderate intensity depending on the tone of the speaker, and simply means mean or rude, perhaps overly pushy or aggressive.  "Pussy" is also mild to moderate, but has a more specific connotation of cowardice and weakness, and going simply on personal observation, a man will be far more offended/upset if you call him a pussy than if you call him a dick.  Especially considering that masculinity is actually *supposed* to be aggressive and, to a point, abrasive in this culture, "dick" can be the sort of insult that signals you're doing something to be proud of, in a fucked-up sort of way.  "Dick" is still an insult, but it's the sort of insult that leaves one's all-important Masculinity Cred intact.  "Pussy", on the other hand, is deliberately calculated to cut deeper by undermining said Masculinity Cred.

And then, of course, there's "cunt".  One of the Big Bads of the insult dictionary.  Widely acknowledged as the worst thing you can call a woman - or, really, anyone.  One of the very few cuss words that is still unacceptable among most people, even people who regularly pepper their (our, cause I'm totally one of them, in case you couldn't tell) speech with "fuck".  The one you pull out when you really want to make your point that you have an epic amount of disdain and hate for someone - usually a woman.

One of these things is not like the other ones...

[TW: implied/verbal violence against trans* people]

This is actually an old draft that's been kicking around the Unfinished Thoughts black hole for awhile now, until this post on tumblr revived it the other day.  Because it basically expresses the same context-free viewpoint that makes the BWAD argument specious, and I just could not let it go without comment, especially given it dovetailed rather well with an already-mostly-written post.  Behold:

Two identical Venn diagrams stacked on top of each other, with blue and red circles and overlapping purple section.  Text used to read (it doesn't show up against this background, sorry) "If this is okay" over the first diagram, where the circles are labeled "cis" and "scum" and the overlap "cis scum", then "Then so is this" over the second, where the circles are labeled "trans" and "scum" and the overlap is "trans scum"

For those who don't know the "die cis scum" history, it's a phrase that many in the trans community on tumblr have taken to use as a rallying cry/pushback against ciscentric culture that literally kills a whole fucking lot of trans people.  I'm not going to lie, the phrase makes me mildly uncomfortable, but I absolutely understand where it's coming from and am not going to begrudge anyone their anger against a vastly more powerful group that stands a much-higher-than-is-comfortable chance of killing them, because it's not my place to police people's expressions of anger against oppression.  It was said in a moment of frustration and anger, got picked up by a lot of people, and became A Thing, with the inevitable result of a whole lot of cis people having very hurt fee-fees over it.  A backlash developed, with far too many cis people saying that Die Cis Scum makes the trans* people who use it "just as bad" as the cis people who murder and abuse trans* people.  (O rly?  Just as bad?  You have an...interesting morality scale.)  The response from many trans* people has been "It doesn't say "die cis people".  It says "die cis scum".  Are you cis, but not scum?  Then you're safe, now shut up."  Of course, backlashing cis people couldn't let it rest there.  Hence, this graphic.

Apparently, there are a whole lot of people in this world who have never heard of context before.

Following the same logic, and for the same reason, as the argument against comparing "dick" to "pussy" or "cunt" as insults, "die cis scum" and "die trans scum" are not insults that carry the same social weight.  One is an oppressed group basically shouting "fuck you" up at their oppressors, while both groups know full well they don't have the power to do much harm.  The other is the group in power, shouting "fuck you" back down the ladder as they continue to kick the people below them in the face.  They are not equivalent.  They are not equal.  Just because they use the same syntactic structure does not mean they are expressing the same kind of sentiment, because the power differential changes things.

Or, to quote an acquaintance of mine on tumblr: When we say "die cis scum", you have your feelings hurt.  When you say "die trans scum", we literally end up dead.

Not.
The.
Same.

On PantheaCon and "Respectful Dialogue"

[Continued TW for transmisogyny, misgendering, genital-essentialism, and for the love of all the gods do not read the comments anywhere without a stiff drink handy.  Possibly also some tranquilizers.]

I wrote a post about the genital-essentialist Dianic Wiccan elder Z. Budapest's "for genetic women only" ritual at PantheaCon 2012 last week, which was apparently one of the first-off-the-mark posts about the incident.  In following the other posts and commentaries that have run like wildfire through the pagan blogosphere in the week following, I have encountered again and again and again calls for "calm/peaceful/respectful dialogue", asking us all to treat this as a teachable moment, a learning experience, asking us to "work from love" and seek healing for our community.

The problem with that is that we are responding to an act of emotional violence - that it is psychic and verbal violence, rather than physical, does not change the violent nature of the act - that was in no way calm, respectful, peaceful, from love, or seeking healing.  (Calling trans women "transies" and describing them as "men who just won't respect women's boundaries" is pretty much the fucking definition of not-respectful.)

So why is it incumbent upon trans women and their allies to "work from love" and "engage in respectful dialogue" to "bring healing to our community"?  Why is it unacceptable to be visibly, openly angry at this bigotry on display from one of our community elders?  To quote from one of my favorite writers: "When someone engages in divisive behavior, any resulting division is that person's responsibility."  Z. Budapest engaged - repeatedly! - in the divisive behavior of excluding and misgendering trans women, an act which causes explicit mental, emotional, and spiritual harm*.  Any resulting division in the community, then, is her responsibility (and to a lesser degree, her supporters').

So why is there so much tone-policing going on in the form of these calls for "respectful dialogue"?

I am not a Wiccan, and so I do not adhere strictly to their notions of dualistic balance in things.  But I do feel that this is a situation that is terribly imbalanced.  Anger is a valid response, too, just as valid as any calm, reasoned, respectful choice to engage in dialogue, and yet it is being rejected as "making things worse", in favor of framing respectful dialogue as the One And Only True Way to make any progress on this issue.  To add one's voice to the repressive drumbeat of CALM RESPECTFUL DIALOGUE ONLY is to visit a second harm on those who have already been harmed - to add insult to injury, as it were - by saying, in essence, "You are not allowed to be angry at this violation of your right to feel safe in this community.  You are not allowed to be angry at the bigotry and hateful rhetoric this person and her supporters have used to exclude you.  If you want to participate in the conversation, you must choke down your anger, swallow the hurt, and gently, quietly, politely reply, educate, and dialogue with someone who has no interest in being educated or entering in mutually-respectful dialogue with you."

Because here's the thing: quietness and respect are not synonymous.  Z. Budapest may not have raised her voice when she read her statement to those who sat in silent witness on behalf of those excluded at this year's ritual, but that does not make her words respectful.  She may not have screamed in the face of a trans woman "YOU'RE A MAN AND I HATE YOU", when she posted her little transphobic screed in response to the uproar last year, but there was no respect in what she said.  So why, why on Earth are we expected to respond with respectful dialogue and education to someone who has shown no interest in reciprocating?

In particular, in going back through links to the various pieces I've read in preparation for hitting publish on this post, The Wild Hunt's continuing declaration of being "a place where all voices can be heard" struck me.    I respect that, as a large pan-pagan news blog, there's a natural desire to both be and appear neutral on contentious issues like this one.  But the problem with being "a place where all voices can be heard" is that, to be quite blunt, not all voices deserve to be heard.  When some voices are spreading misinformation and causing harm, they don't need to be heard.  To use a worn-out old example, if someone stomps on your foot, and you want to say "Ow that fucking hurt," does a counterpoint "No, it didn't!" really need to be heard, honored, and respected?

Productive dialogue is not always possible in every situation.  And indeed, it is a manifestation of privilege to insist that it should be.  As Sonneillion said on last week's post, we have HAD dialogue.  Tons of it.  Oodles of it.  An entire anthology, "Gender and Transgender in Modern Paganism".  A conference.  And this still happened again.  We are still having the same damn conversation, the same "dialogue" all over again.  It hasn't worked.  What's that saying, about doing the same thing over again and expecting different results?

Respectful dialogue is not possible, will not be possible, until those who have caused this divisiveness in our community, and those who have supported and defended them in doing so, are willing to back down and listen, which they have shown no signs of.

Respect is earned.  Dialogue is not an obligation on the part of the oppressed.  If the pagan community wants respectful dialogue, hold the oppressors accountable to that standard first.


*I have spent the past week and a half watching an acquaintance of mine (you know, that awkward grey space where you're mutual followers on Twitter and Tumblr and have spoken briefly about inconsequential things but never really interacted more directly, even though you actually like the person and think you might be able to be friends), a pagan trans woman, hurting over this.  I have watched her speak on her blog about how psychically hurt and emotionally weary she is, and how much harm this exclusionary bullshit has done to her, while my heart has ached in sympathy for her pain.  So anyone who wants to argue that this kind of public misgendering and hateful statements isn't *really* harmful, or isn't *really* violence, can GTFO.

South Dakota Requires Doctors Be Psychic, Divine Patient's Future Before Providing Abortion Services

Not quite - not yet, anyway - but that's pretty much where they're going.  (And I wanted to have fun with an Onion-style headline, so nyah.)

Remember that terrible South Dakota law, which was injunctioned (can that be a verb?) almost as soon as it passed, that required people seeking abortions to receive biased "counseling" from unlicensed pseudo-clinics renowned for their lies, misinformation, and manipulative tactics?

Well, they're amending it this session, and there's slightly-less-worse news, and ridiculous news.

The slightly-less-worse is that they're implementing a requirement that the counselors people will be forced to see at crisis pregnancy centers be licensed.  So at the very least, it won't just be a random volunteer spending an hour telling the pregnant person they're going to Hell and they need to go live with a good Christian family and give their baby up for adoption.  It'll be a licensed counselor condescending to and shaming them for choosing not to continue their pregnancy!  Isn't that much better?

The flat-out ridiculous is the whole new section on pre-abortion physician counseling.  The pregnant person must have a consultation appointment with the doctor who will be doing the abortion, and the doctor must, according to the new amendment to the law, probe into their religious beliefs and personal views, their mental health conditions, and precisely how difficult they found the decision to abort, in order to create a profile of "risk factors for adverse psychological reaction" (one of which is simply "being under the age of 22", for bonus age discrimination points).  Maybe it's just me, but I really don't expect to have to explain my theosophy on the universe when I go to the doctor to access a medical procedure, you know?  The whole thing sets up a nearly-impossible standard of attitude and history for people seeking abortions to meet.  Now, not only do you need to be pregnant and not want to be, and also receive counseling, you need to disclose your religious beliefs, and convince your doctor that it was totally an easy decision, in order to "qualify".

Oh, and all this information?  Goes on a form that is to be entered into the person's permanent medical record.  Cause I know I totally want details on my religion and decision-making process to be part of my medical records.  That's absolutely where it all belongs.  Right?

It's like South Dakota is taking the usual paternalism of anti-choice ideology and turning it up to 11.  Now your doctor is supposed to discourage you from getting an abortion, if you so much as found the decision hard to make.  Have these people ever lived?  Because life is full of difficult decisions, and a decision being a hard one to make doesn't necessarily make it wrong.  Why is it so impossible to treat pregnant people as though they are capable of making their own decisions without the intervention of multiple people pointing out every possible downfall and flaw of what they've chosen to do?  You cannot swaddle and coddle people from every possible consequence of their choices, and for a party that regularly decries "nanny-state"-ism, this is the absolute epitome of that kind of intrusive "caretaking" from the government.

Or in other words, it is the ultimate in concern-trolling.  "Here, let's make absolutely certain you're not in any way ever going to regret this, by putting eight billion onerous burdens on you and making you jump through a dozen hoops at every turn, just to make sure you've really thought about it and are really, really, really, really, really, really, really sure that this is what you want."

Hence why I said, in the title, that it won't be long before the GOP is trying to demand that doctors peer into the future and know for sure that an abortion won't in any way negatively impact the pregnant person's life, before providing services to them.  Because gods forbid people be free to make their own mistakes or hard choices, if those mistakes or hard choices include exercising control over their reproductive lives.  That just wouldn't be Freedom.

How Are We Any Different? On The Continuing Trans*Fail at PantheaCon

This post deals with the ongoing trans exclusion by Z. Budapest in official con-sponsored rituals at PantheaCon.  Material on last year's issues can be found here.  This is to address this year's ritual and various responses surrounding it.  [TW: transmisogyny, misgendering trans women, genital-essentialism]

The broader pagan community likes to think we are so much better than other religions when it comes to openness and acceptance and tolerance.  It comes naturally out of being a loose conglomerate of vastly varying traditions and faiths, I think, lumped all together under a big umbrella for convenience (and because we do share some underlying traits).  We have to be tolerant and accepting and open, because how else could you have Asatruar and Dianic Wiccans and Gardnerian Wiccans and Chaos magicians and Satanist witches and literally dozens and dozens of other named traditions, not to mention those of us with no trad affiliation at all, all together under the same banner and generic name?  We talk a good game and feel smugly superior to those closed-minded others - usually Christians, whether we say so specifically or not - who aren't quite so enlightened as we fancy ourselves to be.

And yet we are also a community which, at one of the biggest annual gatherings, hosts a ritual/permits a ritual to be hosted and publicized - and then defends having done so - which purports to be about "healing for all women", while specifically being for cis women only.

Anyone else seeing a huge fucking disconnect there?

The relevant ritual this year was "The Sacred Body of Woman (Self-Blessing)" (link goes to PDF of the official PantheaCon 2012 program; event listing is on page 40), led by Z. Budapest, founder of the Dianic Wicca tradition.  Dianic Wicca is Goddess-focused, in contrast to classical Wicca's duotheistic God-and-Goddess approach, and is practiced almost exclusively by women (certain offshoot traditions and some covens accept men as well).  So this ritual, naturally, specified that it was women-only - but not just women-only.  "Genetic" women only.  Which is basically just the newest iteration of the term "women-born-women", a relic of 2nd-wave feminism still in use by certain groups of trans-exclusionary "radical" feminists (TERFs).

Of course, Words Mean Things, so some snarky part of me wonders if they were requiring chromosome test results before allowing people in.  That's really the only way you can tell a "genetic" woman for sure, and if you're going to use weird terminology, you should be expected to follow through on it, in my opinion.  (Why they refuse to use "cisgender" like the rest of the civilized gender-discussing world is beyond me.  Surely linguistic contortions shouldn't be necessary when there's a perfectly good, established term that means "woman assigned-female-at-birth", which is what all the "genetic women" and "women-born-women" bullshit is really intended to convey?)

At any rate, it certainly says a lot about what you believe regarding the gender of trans people - that is to say, that it's clear you don't believe them to be their actual gender, but view them as pretenders who are "really" still their assigned-at-birth sex, which is really fucking shitty of you - when you have a ritual titled "The Sacred Body of Woman", and which has as its described purpose "[honoring] the body of each and every woman present, the beauty and grace of the feminine form in all of her infinite variety" ...but you specifically exclude trans women from the rite.

It says very clearly that you don't feel their bodies are or deserve to be sacred in the same way as your precious cis bodies.  It says you don't think their bodies deserve to be honored alongside your own.  It says, most of all, that "the feminine form in all her infinite variety" is only ever cisgender, that you just plain don't count the bodies of trans women as being part of the infinite variety of the feminine form.

All of this is awful, cissexist, transphobic, misgendering, and truly shitty.

But you know what?  If you were holding a private ritual somewhere, I wouldn't actually bother you about it, believe it or not.  I probably wouldn't be friends with you, and I certainly wouldn't attend your ritual because I don't agree with your determinations of who counts as woman and who doesn't, but it wouldn't really be any of my business unless you asked for my opinion.

It is, however, an entirely different thing when you are holding a ritual at a large public conference that people have paid to attend.  You are holding your ritual in a space rented with money paid by attendees, on con time, listed as an official event in the con program.  To do that, and frame your ritual as a "celebration of women" with a footnote that says (*some restrictions apply) instead of saying outright that your ritual is a "celebration of cis women/cis womanhood", is very very very much not okay.

Z. Budapest argued last year, and likely will continue to argue this year, that it's a matter of "freedom of religion" and "freedom to practice our Dianic tradition/beliefs" to be allowed to exclude trans women from their women-only rituals.  (And I've already seen a good few responses today that take the "freedom of religion" line to defend this year's exclusion, so it's not just confined to her.)

In which case, I would like to know something: what exactly makes TERF-Dianics like Z. Budapest any better than fundies who use "Jesus said so" as a basis to exclude LGBT people from all kinds of spaces and social structures?  I opened this post by pointing out how we pagans like to think we're above that sort of shit, especially when it comes to modern social issues.  But when you have a well-known community elder misgendering trans women and barring them from rituals at a major pan-pagan conference, and then defending those actions based on "because our religion said so" - how is that any different, exactly?

It's not.  It is exactly the same fucking thing as owners/operators of various publicly-available services, for example, such as wedding venues or florists, refusing to do business with a wedding because the couple are the same gender and that violates their religious beliefs.  It's exactly the fucking same as pharmacists who deny certain medications to customers because it goes against their (religiously-informed) conscience.  Not in degree or severity, no - but the principle is exactly the same, that of excluding people based on religious reasons.

Nobody is saying TERF-Dianics suddenly have to be welcoming of trans women in every ritual they do, or that they have to rework their whole theology around "blood mysteries" and menstruation/birth as the defining signifier of womanhood.  Nobody is infringing on their religious freedom (much like nobody is actually infringing upon the Catholic Church's religious freedom in the recent contraception wars, despite aggrieved claims to the contrary).  They can have all the cissexist theology and exclusionary policies they want in their religion.  Knock yourselves out, kids.  

What we are saying is that such exclusionary policies have no place in a major, paid-entry community gathering like PantheaCon.

The other rationalization offered as a shield against community criticism has been the usual "penises are triggering (therefore trans women in the space would be triggering)" claim.  Which has several weak points.

Okay, first of all, some people do have triggers relating to certain genitalia.  Like this woman, for example, who wrote a letter-to-the-editor for a pagan news bureau detailing her history of abuse and how, if she had gone, and any women with penises had also been there, she would have had to leave.  Except that first of all, her phrasing regarding that struck me as being kind of fucked-up: "When we disrobed, if I had seen a penis I would not have been able to stay. Even today I can’t contemplate being naked with a male."  The fact that she's conflating a skyclad ritual with non- or pre-op trans women with "being naked with a male" makes it clear that she does not truly respect the gender of the women she repeatedly refers to as "my trans sisters".  Second of all, look, I sympathize with her hurting, I truly do.  I can't even imagine the trauma she must be dealing with.  But that trauma does not give you the right to pass trauma on to others, in the form of misgendering trans women just because you haven't managed to sort out that gender != genitalia.

My second issue with this defense is that there seems to be the assumption that "safe space" means "penis-free" space.  And I wonder, why is it that "safe [penis-free] space" for cis survivors of sexual violence is presumed to be more important than "safe [transphobia-free] space" for trans women, who may also be survivors of sexual violence and abuse and need the self-blessing and healing work that this ritual purported to offer?

Lastly, let's consider the phrase "genetic women".  It's obviously designed to exclude all trans women, not just pre- or non-op trans women.  Because, um...not all trans women have penises.  Some have had bottom surgery - some are years and years past surgery, and in a ritual-nudity setting you wouldn't have any idea what a given woman's history was.  But "genetic women" and the unspoken-but-clearly-heard, "women-born-women", doesn't take that into account at all.  Which pretty much puts the lie to the idea that this was ever about creating penis-free safe space for survivors, rather than just a rationalization for expressing Z. Budapest's documented trans-hate in a ritual setting.

This is something we should not tolerate in our community, and I am deeply disappointed that PantheaCon organizers gave the green light to another explicitly trans-exclusionary ritual this year, in light of last year's issues.  The theme for the con this year was "Unity in Diversity", as a nod to healing the wounds caused by events last year, making it doubly - or perhaps triply, or more - inappropriate to perpetuate the problem this way.  If you are inclined to send a comment to PantheaCon's organizers on this issue, they can be reached at feedback@pantheacon.com.  Please, if you do choose to contact them, be polite, simply explain that you don't feel anti-trans bigotry should be given official sanction in our community with official rituals at a paid event.

If we want to continue to claim the moral high ground, this is something we need to address.  Otherwise we are no different from the bigots who hide their bigotry behind a veil of "because God said so!" - we've just changed the name of the god.

Speaking of Lilly Ledbetter...

On Friday, I wrote about how I'm kind of tired of having the Obama administration/campaign constantly shoving the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in my face as the singular demonstration of their Super Awesome Totally Not Just Pandering Commitment To Teh Wimmenz, and how it is increasingly clear that it's really the only token women-centric thing they can (or for whatever reason, choose to) point to having done in the past few years.

Yesterday morning, I received a campaign email from Women for Obama, featuring Lilly herself retelling her story as a "call to action".

*headdesk*

To be clear, I have nothing against Ms. Ledbetter using her story and her voice to support whomever she chooses.  If she truly believes in the Obama campaign and wants to lend her name and story in support, that's her choice and I have no issue with it.  This is not about her, nor is it about her choice to support Obama in this matter.

I just find it lolsobtastic that, not even 48 hours after observing the Obama administration's over-reliance on her story, I had it shoved at me yet again, as if this time it might finally convince me that the Obama administration really has my womanly interests at heart.

Mr. President, I hate to say this, but...it's not like your administration's support of the LLFPA is really a secret at this point.  I have no idea how any woman who's ever had even the barest contact with your campaign might have avoided hearing about it at least two or three times as The Reason To Support You.  Why in the name of all that is holy is it really necessary to put the same story out there AGAIN?!

Please.  I'm begging you.  Find a new goddamn angle already.

Dear President Obama: You can only trot out the same show pony so many times before we start to wonder if you have ANYTHING else in your stable.

Look, I get that women in this country - at least, ones who like their rights - are pretty much up shit creek when it comes to voting options in major elections.  We either vote for the party that actively hates us, or the one that treats us like a reliable but disposable guaranteed vote, patronized in election years and used as a bargaining chip in between times.  So I understand that you're not going to try very hard to make us feel super welcome, because you just don't have to, and I'm sure you're right when you say it's much more important to focus on the coveted "independent" vote.  (Lol, no, I'm not.)

But if you're going to keep tossing out crumbs from time to time to make it look like you're paying attention, could please at least change out the bread in the crumbs bag every now and again?

Because yes, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was good and important and all that (although I've heard it was already basically in the bag before you took office, for all that you are perpetually taking credit for it).  But for fuck's sake, you have made it the centerpiece of EVERY. SINGLE. "WOMEN-FOCUSED". CAMPAIGN EFFORT. FOR. THE. PAST. THREE. YEARS.

And here it is again:

A screencap of President Obama's Facebook page, showing a status update that links to a video titled "President Obama on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act"; text accompanying it reads ""Policies that help women are policies that help our families - and our economy - grow stronger." President Obama reiterates a message from his State of the Union address: Equal work deserves equal pay."

When you push the same stale "victory" at us over and over again for three years, it sort of lends itself to the impression that you really don't have anything else to offer.  (As indeed you don't.)  You could have mentioned this past year's War on Women and how shameful the unrelenting onslaught of attacks on a Constitutionally-protected right are.  You could have talked about how your administration has been aggressively using the FACE Act to prosecute anti-abortion protesters who interfere in people's access to clinics.  You could have commented on your administration standing firm on the requirement that employers who provide health insurance include contraceptive coverage, even in the face of pressure from religious figures like the USCCB.  And yet you chose, yet a-fucking-gain, to parade the LLFPA as your token commitment to women.

Why???

It's not just that I'm sick of hearing about it, although I am.  I am genuinely wondering why you seem to think that fair pay is the ONLY women's issue worth mentioning, ever?

I am also more than a little annoyed at the defensive framing of the commentary on it - the emphasis on "it helps our families and especially the economy!" - as if simply doing the right thing to treat women fairly under the law isn't its own justification, isn't enough, but must be For The Families and For The Economy.  I also take issue with referring to it as "helping".  "Helping" implies optional, implies choosing to be nice to someone out of the goodness of your heart.  Fair pay laws are not "help", they're fucking justice.  They are an attempt to enforce a minimum standard of fairness and basic equality.  I realize that doesn't make as good a sound bite, but the paternalistic attitude of "We're helping women, because it helps their families, and because The Economy" is really starting to grate on my nerves.

I talked, not too long ago, about how token crumbs actually work to highlight the inadequacy of said crumbs, rather than being a true motivator of loyalty and positive regard.  At this point, trotting out the LLFPA show pony functions the same way.  It simply shows how little you are interested in either taking strong action to support this constituency, or even pointing out the other small ways in which you have actually done so, and by doing so, demonstrates just how little regard your administration/the Democratic establishment has for women.

We may have nowhere else to go, practically speaking.  But the more you distance yourselves from us on the assumption that having nowhere else to go means we'll stay with you, the more you risk losing us anyway.  We may not vote for your opponents - but many of us won't be particularly motivated to get off our collective ass and vote for you, either.

Patronize us at your own risk, Obama Administration.  You may find one of your most stalwart beams crumbling under you just when you need it most, if you keep this up.

To The "Pro-Life Feminist" On Tumblr Today

(Prompted by a small back-and-forth between an anti-abortion "feminist" and myself on Tumblr yesterday and today, consisting of these three posts.)

I snarked at you earlier.  I was a mocking asshole, because that's sort of my style in discussions like this.  I make no apology for it, either.  But I want you to understand the seriousness underlying my snark and rudeness:

You use these certain arguments against abortion; you say that "it's a serious decision" and talk about abortion as "killing one's child" and how abortions not in the case of rape or dangerous health risks are "just a choice, like buying a new purse at the mall" and so on - but when called out, you try to escape responsibility by disclaiming it as "just your opinion" because you, unlike those other anti-choicers, are realistic enough to understand what criminalizing abortion would do, and therefore you don't support making abortion illegal (so therefore I, and other pro-choicers and real feminists, should shut up and leave you alone because you're not trying to have it banned so it's okay, as if criminalization were the only real problem with the anti-choice movement).

The problem with that is that your arguments are exactly the kinds of arguments, exactly the kind of language that gets used by those who do support and actively work toward making abortion illegal.  "It's a serious decision" justifies burdensome waiting periods which necessitate multiple appointments, thus raising the costs of abortion (including travel and accommodation, because nearly 90% of counties in the US don't have an abortion provider so most people have to travel to obtain one) well out of reach for many low-income people, and invasive, propaganda-based "[hyper-, mis-]informed consent" laws designed to scare, guilt, shame, or otherwise emotionally manipulate pregnant people into continuing their pregnancy.  Sensationalizing abortion as "the right to kill my baby" is, well, basically the whole justification for the anti-choice movement, which is not only seeking to completely ban abortion, but would like to take on hormonal birth control as well; specifically, though, that kind of phrasing gets used to push extremist "fetal personhood" measures, which are well-documented to be epic fuckery.  Minimizing and dismissing voluntarily-chosen abortions by comparing it to the frivolous purchase of accessories reinforces right-wing talking points to nurture the stereotype of people who seek abortions as airheaded sluts who fuck a dozen people and then pop in to the clinic for a quickie abortion between brunch and a manicure - and lest you claim that stereotypes are no big deal, they help to push public opinion toward favoring criminalization, creating a more hospitable social climate for those anti-choicers who do want to see abortion made illegal.

Shorter version of that paragraph: Even if you don't support criminalizing abortion, when you say things like this, you are aiding and abetting those who do.

I speak to you as a person who has used her constitutional right to reproductive self-determination before, and would again if the situation came up again.  I speak as someone who is so horrified and sickened by the thought of being forced - and being pressured is nearly the same thing, it's just enforced by social sanction instead of legal penalties - to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term that I would literally rather die than have my body commandeered and used against me that way.  And when you say these things to me, I don't care that they're only your personal belief and you would never have them brought into law to rule over me, because I live in a country where every day I see and hear people who WOULD have those beliefs legislated onto my body against my will speaking the EXACT SAME ARGUMENTS that you are using.  When you argue their talking points, using their language, you present yourself to me as one of Them: an enemy, not an ally.

You speak in concert with those who would take my rights away, who would render me only a passenger in my own flesh, subordinated to the needs of an invader I didn't want and didn't ask for, forced to risk my life and health to give it birth.  The distinction of whether or not you would support them in their criminalization efforts is functionally irrelevant to me, because when you parrot their arguments and pass it along, you are another voice for their side - especially if you don't explicitly lay out your beliefs on legislative solutions in contrast to theirs when you speak or write about it.  Simply put, you are strengthening their position.  You are giving them social sanction, making it easier for them to do the work of criminalization, whether you agree with them in that or not.

And I will never be willing to acknowledge the label of feminist when it is worn by someone who, even indirectly, supports the anti-choice movement.  You are, at best, a badly misguided fauxminist; at worst, a colluder actively perpetuating our oppression.  You are not, in any sense of the word, a feminist.

B for Brouhaha

Dear Obama Campaign: Why do you keep sending me emails requesting my support, while making it exceedingly clear that you are not interested in or willing to support me in turn?  Remember my outrage at your "women for Obama" message a few weeks ago, and how frustrated I was at being appealed to "as a woman" even as women's health issues had taken a backseat/been actively thrown under the bus by this administration multiple high-profile times in the past three years?

Consider that frustration cranked up to 11, after the HHS overrode the FDA's decision to allow Plan B to be purchased without restriction, out on store shelves, and you explicitly supported the move, even to the point of using your daughters as justification for a blatantly political election-year ploy.  Remember when you promised that the decisions of your administration would be based on sound science, evidence, and fact - with the implied comparison to ideologically-driven right-wingers?  I certainly do.  So do these Senators.  And I'm genuinely curious what bullshit y'all are going to pull out of your ass to justify your decision to go against what the experts decided based on actual science and research.

Much has been said about The Eleven-Year-Old, and the use of this fear-and-emotion-based appeal has been thoroughly deconstructed already, so I won't say much - only that if you would rather see a child forced to bear a child than allow her a modicum of control over her circumstances, your priorities are seriously fucked up.  Actual abortion or bearing a child at that age are both far more physically difficult/dangerous than a medication which studies have shown to be quite safe, anyway.

The thing is, this overruling doesn't just affect The Eleven-Year-Old.  It also affects teens as old as fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen.  Are you seriously telling me that a sixteen-year-old is mature enough to drive a car - hundreds of pounds of metal moving at high speed, quite capable of killing and maiming if misused or mistakes are made! - but not mature enough to take a medication properly, whether it's because of a broken condom or to protect themself after being raped?  What the fuck kind of logic is that?

And then there's the much-less-mentioned half of the overruling.  The part that would have moved Plan B out from behind the pharmacy counter and onto the shelves.

Allow me to rephrase that: it would have moved Plan B out from behind the gatekeeping of pharmacists, many of whom are anti-choice, and, in some places, legally protected in their choice to deny people access to certain medications because it upsets their delicate fee-fees.  A grown-ass person can be in need of emergency contraception and still be told "No" simply because the pharmacist doesn't like it - and depending on where they are, there may not be a damn thing to be done about it.  Allowing Plan B to be stocked on regular shelves with other medications would have removed this (gigantic, horrible) barrier between grown people and the medication they need, much less teens or children.  That's the other thing y'all chose to block.  You not only told young people "We don't think you should be allowed to control your reproduction without the okay of the adults around you", you also told pregnancy-capable people everywhere "We don't think your need to access emergency contraception is important enough to make it available to you without going through a gatekeeper." 

Well, Obama administration, don't say you weren't warned when your core base gets tired of you pulling shenanigans like this and refuses to come out and vote for you next year.  When your percentages are dropping among blocs like women and pro-choicers, core Dem constituencies...you have only yourselves to blame.

USCCB says "Help, help, we're bein' repressed!"

The USCCB = US Conference of Catholic Bishops, meaning a collective of old celibate (unless they're abusing children, that is) men who think Jesus has given them a special license to boss everyone else around, no matter what everyone else believes about Jesus or anything else.

And right now, the USCCB want us to know they are Very Seriously Concerned for religious liberty in this country, because their will is not being implemented on the rest of us speedily enough, which is a violation of their religious liberty to be the boss of everyone.  If your beliefs include that you should be in charge, I guess not putting you in charge is a violation of your religious liberty, right?  The USCCB thinks so, anyway!  Check out the horror show of quotes from them this past week or so...

“We see in our culture a drive to neuter religion,” Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the bishops conference, said in a news conference Monday at the bishops’ annual meeting in Baltimore. He added that “well-financed, well-oiled sectors” were trying “to push religion back into the sacristy.” (via)

Oh noes!  How dare we try to maintain our separation of church and state by making sure religion remains in the church where it belongs?!  Don't we know that's Bad and Wrong and religion belongs in both the sacristy AND the Oval Office?!?!  Dirty little heathens be we, I suppose.

"There is no religious liberty if we are not free to express our faith in the public square and if we are not free to act on that faith through works of education, health care and charity," [Bishop William E.] Lori said in his first address to the bishops as chairman of the newly formed Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. (via)

"If we cannot get government subsidies and contracts to carry out our religious works while still being protected from having to follow the law within our organizations, we are being OPPRESSED I TELL YOU!  And we know about oppression.  We've been practicing on everyone else for centuries, so that we would recognize this moment when it came."

"For some time now we have viewed with growing alarm the ongoing erosion of religious liberty in our country.  Among the challenges we see is a pattern in culture and law to treat religion merely as a private matter between an individual and his or her God,"

...This is beyond even my considerable reservoir of snark.  I, um...yeah, I'm sorry, I got nothing.  When they're talking about "treating religion as a private matter between an individual and their god" like that's horribly, desperately inappropriate and oppressive, what is there to say?  Is it Opposite Day again or something?

But what caused this bout of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching, you ask?  Well, like all big corporations, the Catholic church is campaigning for a more favorable regulatory environment - that is to say, fewer or no regulations at all.  Specifically, they're upset because of the new HHS rule that, as part of the health insurance reform package, would require nearly all employers who offer healthcare plans to employees to cover hormonal contraception without a copay as "preventative care".  There is a religious exemption in the rule already - an organization which A: has religious values as its primary purpose, B: primarily employs people who share the religious tenets of the organization, and C: primarily serves people who share the religious tenets of the organization, would be exempt from the rule.  Meaning that churches themselves are safe from the horror of being forced to make it easier for their employees to access contraception under the employer-subsidized health-care plan.

The problem, of course, is that Catholic hospitals do NOT primarily serve people who share their religious tenets.  In many places, Catholic hospitals are the ONLY hospitals within a reasonable distance, and thus serve the entire general populace of the area, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.  Under the new rule, that would disqualify them from a religious exemption, and the health-care plans offered to employees of the hospitals would have to include the option of contraception.  That's the option, by the by, not a requirement; no person would be required or even encouraged to use it.  It would simply be made available to those who want or need it, free of copay.  (I'll remind everyone that even if Catholic hospitals did employ primarily Catholics, Catholic women use hormonal contraception at about the same rate as non-Catholic women, that is to say, almost universally (98%).  So it's not like making contraception cheaper to access is really controversial for anyone except the actual church hierarchy.)

The idea that they might have to make it easier for women in their employ to get ahold of hormonal contraceptives, instead of making it harder, is giving them all conniption fits, and they're doing their damndest to lobby President Obama to throw us under the bus again by widening the exemption to suit the USCCB.

Righteous fury at the fact that the President seems to be taking the USCCB's lobbying seriously aside for the moment, I just want to return to one of their ludicrous displays of pretzel-logic about "religious liberty" for a moment, as it's extremely telling of what's really going on here:

There is no religious liberty if we are not free to express our faith in the public square and if we are not free to act on that faith through works of education, health care and charity,

Because they are framing the issue so that it sounds like the government is going to force Catholic health care and education organizations to shut down, thus denying them the ability to act on their faith in that manner, when actually the government is in no way impeding their ability to act on their faith "through works of education, health care and charity".  It's simply saying that if they want to employ people to do those works, they need to provide those employees with access certain baseline services.  Which is a totally different thing.

Catholic organizations walk a strange line in this country.  They (ostensibly) employ and (ostensibly) serve the general public, not only Catholics, but they expect to be able to impose their religious doctrines on those members of the public who rely on their employment or services - and again, remember that in many areas there are no other options for some of the services Catholic organizations provide - and they expect to receive special dispensation from the government to restrict both employees and clientele in ways ordinary businesses aren't allowed to, because, in essence, "Jesus told us so".  Especially since they're claiming that their religious doctrine requires them to do certain works, they really are using the kind of argument I facetiously posited in the first paragraphs of the post: If my religion says I have to be in charge of things, not putting me in charge of things is violating my religion!

It follows logically, in the strictest interpretation of the statement, and yet it's clearly and obviously ridiculous to expect such treatment.  Why?  Because the government's sole purpose is not to protect religious liberty.  That is an important part of its duty, but it is still only *part*.  The government is of much wider scope, tasked with ensuring the welfare and well-being of all its people, and when push comes to shove and a single organization's doctrinal need to impose their views on other people - like, say, employees and clients - is harming members of the general public, religious liberty must give way to protecting the people.  It's called "compelling government interest", and it's why we wouldn't allow a person to go about murdering other people even if it was a legitimate requirement of their religion, because the safety and well-being of others has to come first when the two principles are in conflict.

Yet the USCCB isn't satisfied, and won't be satisfied, until their right to impose their doctrine on everyone within reach is enshrined in law as being of more importance than the needs and safety of the "everyone within reach" they're trying to impose their will on.

Women for Obama? Not This Woman.

Apparently the campaign season has reached the point where it's time to start specific outreach, for I had an email land in my inbox last week that frankly took my breath away with its audacity:

As I have traveled across the country, I have had the privilege of meeting incredible women from all walks of life. From young women paying their own way through college, to moms working the extra shift to keep food on the table, to women struggling to make ends meet during retirement.

We talk about their bills, their children -- how they're constantly striving to strike that balance between work and family. And no matter what kind of challenges they're facing, they don't complain. They just work harder.

This is what we do as women. We persevere. Because no matter our ages, backgrounds, or stations in life, we are determined to leave a better world for our children and give them opportunities we never even dreamed of.

Women have always been the heart of the Obama organization. We make up nearly half of the American workforce and are the majority of students in America's colleges and universities. We're the primary caregivers for our children and seniors. We're the heads of households and workplaces across the country.

And right now, it's time for us all to dig deep, step up, and keep building this campaign together: person by person, discussion by discussion.

Today, we are officially launching Women for Obama -- and I am incredibly honored to be serving as its chair. This is a special group dedicated to growing this campaign from the ground up. Because we know better than anyone that movements for real and lasting change have got to start at the grassroots -- and they're sustained by the relationships we develop with one another. Together, that's what we're going to do -- build relationships with supporters, new and old, and grow this campaign -- one woman at a time.

I wanted to ask you myself if you'll sign on to join us.

The stories of the incredible women I meet serve as a constant reminder of why we're all here: because American families all around the country are facing very real problems. They're balancing mortgage payments and utilities bills with full-time jobs and raising children. They're struggling to make ends meet while still trying to put money aside to send their kids to college one day.

Barack understands these issues because he's lived them. He was raised by a single mother who struggled to put herself through school and pay the bills. When she needed help, Barack's grandmother stepped in, waking up every morning before dawn to take a bus to her job at a bank. And even though she worked hard and was good at what she did, she ultimately hit a glass ceiling and was passed over for promotions time and again because she was a woman.

So Barack knows what it means when a family struggles. He knows what it means when someone doesn't have a chance to fulfill their potential. And today, as a father, he knows what it means to want your daughters to grow up with no limits on their dreams.

That's why, since taking office, he's worked tirelessly to make sure every child and every family gets a fair shake.

The historic health reform he passed is making sure every American family gets the quality and affordable care they need to stay healthy. The crucial investments he's made in our students and workers -- raising the standards in our public schools and building out job-training programs at community colleges -- are investments in our country's economic future. And the very first bill he signed into law -- the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act -- will help make it easier for women to get equal pay for equal work, because he knows that women's success in this economy is the key to families' success in this economy.

But we have so much more to do. And, as women and supporters of this campaign, we need to keep showing up -- and we need to keep fighting the good fight.

So I'm asking you to join me, and women all across the country who support this movement. I'm asking you to say you're ready to work.

Join Women for Obama, and help us grow this organization:

http://my.barackobama.com/Women-for-Obama

Thank you for being a part of this,

Michelle

How. DARE. You.  An administration that has used my rights as a bargaining chip, willingly trading away protections for the most vulnerable among us in order to pander to Blue Dog Democrats, and stood silently by, watching, without so much as a quiet cough of discomfort or awkwardness as a tidal wave of anti-choice legislation swept this country, now wants to approach me as a woman and ask me to sign on to campaign for them?

With all due respect, y'all can go fuck yourselves with something spiky.

This whole letter rubs me the wrong way, from the sisterhood-y tone to the "that's what women do, persevere (but without complaining because to be a woman is to work and be silent and consigned to the shadows while your labor keeps everyone going apparently)" to centering the message about "FOR THE CHILDREN BECAUSE ALL WOMEN ARE MOTHERS OR AT THE VERY LEAST MATERNALLY-INCLINED TO PROTECT TEH PRESHUS CHILDRENZ".

Pointing to the Lily Ledbetter Act wins you no points, given that it's been said by those involved that it was pretty much a done deal already before Obama took office, and it doesn't even do what the administration is always claiming it does, and yet it's always proudly trotted out as the main show pony in these appeals to women as a voting bloc.  Help for students is good, definitely, and there will be women among those students benefiting, but the tone of it has that FOR THE CHILDRENZ feel that's really turning me off about all this.  And touting the health care insurance reform, in which the administration started in the middle and compromised to the right, including ceding ground on the issue of federal funding for abortions for people on Medicaid by issuing an executive order reinforcing the Hyde Amendment to appease DINOs in exchange for their votes on the legislation, in a letter appealing to women to throw their support to the administration's campaigns, is a whole new level of audacity. 

We're talking about a President who has repeatedly deliberately used right-wing framing in talking about reproductive choice, whose Equality Day Proclamation had not even the tiniest mention of reproductive freedom, who traded away poor women's reproductive freedom in order to get his precious health care insurance reform, who staffed his administration with known misogynist fuckwits, whose PR rep couldn't even manage a simple statement on the Republican war on women at the state level without epic mansplaining and dancing around the topic, who even when his administration does actually work to protect freedom of choice remains absolutely silent about it as if wanting to keep things hushed up, and who is even now openly considering caving to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and allowing them to discriminate against women in their employ at Catholic hospitals and schools the nation over because they've got their shorts in a wad about "insufficient" conscience protections that will require that the insurance they offer to employees cover contraception care among other preventative services.*

And after all of this, you have the unmitigated temerity to appeal to me not simply as a voter, but specifically as a woman?  

I do not even remotely begin to have enough middle fingers with which to salute in response.

When y'all are ready to actually stand with us beyond LILLYLEDBETTERLILLYLEDBETTERLILLYLEDBETTER, let me know and we'll talk.  Until then, keep your patronizing schtick to yourselves.

*I realize the bulk of my links in this paragraph all go to various posts on the same blog; I also realize that some people will take that to mean I didn't have any other sources and can be disregarded on these claims.  I use these links for three reasons: one, because I know the blog and its tags well enough that I could find the information I was after fairly quickly; two, because all the posts are well-written and well-sourced with further links you can read for more information; and three, because I love Shakesville and am always happy to send people over there.  Please don't mistake this choice for a lack of supporting data elsewhere, I simply pull from the places I know well and have access to.