[Content Note: Hostility to agency.]
This weekend, after being friends online for a very long time, Jessica Luther (@scatx) and I met in person for the first time. And it was amazing. And we talked about all the things.
Naturally, we talked a lot about abortion rights, and what's happening in Texas. We woke up at 3am so I could drive her to the airport for a 5:30 flight, so she could get back to Texas for the state senate committee hearing on SB1, the anti-choice bill which Senator Wendy Davis tried to filibuster, for which state Republicans have called a special session to pass, in spite of fervent opposition from women and other people with uteri and their allies in the state.
Jess and I only got about three hours of fitful sleep last (thanks to a combination of anxiety and the air conditioning going bust, turning our house into an intolerable hotbox), but, in the moments when I did manage to fall asleep for a few minutes here and there, I dreamed of women standing at a podium, giving testimony about getting abortions, not having access to abortion, why they desperately want to protect abortion access. I dreamed of women telling their stories.
Yesterday, during an appearance on Fox News, Republican Texas Governor and total garbage nightmare Rick Perry said that Wendy Davis should be grateful her mother did not abort her because "[y]ou never know who's going to be considered to be an extraordinary individual." It was a compliment, he explained.
This, after Perry had invoked Davis' own experience as a single mother in order to scold her about how it's "just unfortunate that she hasn't learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential and that every life matters."
Rick Perry doesn't just want ownership of women's bodies; he wants ownership of our lives and stories. (He doesn't even know, or care, that people other than women need access to abortion, too.) He is comprehensively hostile to women's agency, right down to our right to tell our own stories, defined as we want.
Perry has now invoked Wendy Davis' own life, her daughter's life, and her mother's life, auditing their lived experiences and reshape them to his desired form, in service to his own anti-woman agenda.
I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT.
Rick Perry, these women's lives are not yours. Their bodies are not yours. Their stories are not yours.
Also yesterday, Perry promised to push through the abortion restrictions that are at the center of the protests in Texas. That's what the special session is for, and that's what it will accomplish, to the sounds of women raising their voices and telling their stories in opposition.
And Rick Perry won't fucking listen, because women's stories are only important to him when he can reconfigure them to serve as bars of their oppression.
While Rick Perry pranced around on Fox News, peacocking about how he will advance his anti-choice agenda, Jessica Luther and I told each other stories—about ourselves, about women we have met, about experiences we have shared with people who have the capacity to get pregnant or are pregnant and don't want to be. And we listened to each other's stories, creating a space of knowing and being known. It was a thing friends do. And it felt, by virtue of the obdurate refusal to fucking listen to women practiced by Rick Perry and his hostile cohorts across the nation, like a deeply radical act.
To love and respect and trust women ever is.
* * *
For updates, follow the #SB1 hashtag on Twitter.
Storied Lives
Discussion and Update Thread: Lac-Mégantic and San Francisco Disasters
[Content note: deaths, train and airplanr accidents, fire]
This weekend has seen two major transportation-related disasters in North America: the crash-landing of Asiana Flight 214 as well as the explosion, directly in the centre of a small Quebec town, of a train carrying crude oil. In both cases, there have been fatalities and injuries.
In Lac-Mégantic, the official death toll stands at five, a number expected to rise as Sûreté du Québec personnel continue their investigations. As many as 2,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, and there is still a risk of more damage:
Fire officials confirmed that three out of the five tankers that were burning had been extinguished with foam. Two more are still on fire and are at risk of explosion. Police said because of that ongoing situation, they haven't been able to access all areas. However, they did say investigators have been on the scene overnight speaking to witnesses....An unofficial list of missing persons has been set up online for those still looking for loved ones and friends. Dozens of people once on that list have since been located, according to confirmations submitted online. The list is still more than 200 names long.
CTV Montreal has more, including interviews, at this link. (Be aware that there are unsafe images in the videos.)
In San Francisco there are two confirmed deaths and numerous people in hospital:
Asiana Airlines identified the victims as Wang Lin Jia and Ye Meng Yuan. The two were part of a student group from Jiangshan Middle School in China's eastern Zhejiang province, according to Chinese media reports. The Xinhua News Agency reported that dozens of students and teachers from various parts of China were aboard the flight the flight that crashed Saturday. The news agency said that many of the students on teachers on board were going to summer camps in the United States....Dozens of survivors were taken to hospitals. Passengers said that despite the chaos, most aboard Flight 214, which originated in Shanghai with a stop in Seoul, seemed able to exit quickly and walk from the wreckage without help.
The San Francisco Chronicle has more here. (Be aware that witnesses' accounts are graphic in places.)
Please use this thread as a safe space for discussion and to post updates. All the usual safe-space requirements apply. Please do not post violent images or images of victims.
Open Thread
This week's open threads have been brought to you by googly-eyed objects.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Since tomorrow is a holiday in the US, and many of the contributors and mods either have or are taking Friday off, we're going to cut the week short. We will, as always, have moderated Open Threads Thursday-Sunday.
If you are celebrating Independence Day, have a safe and fun celebration! See you Monday!
Of Course He Did
[Content Note: Hostility to agency.]
Thirsty jerk and bigot Senator Marco Rubio (R-Eprehensible) is planning to "introduce a bill in the Senate that would ban abortion after 20 weeks, the Weekly Standard reported on Wednesday. The bill is meant to mirror anti-abortion legislation passed last month by the House of Representatives."
And the war on agency rages on.
See also: Digby.
I'll Be Silent When I'm Dead
This morning, during the anti-choice fuckery in North Carolina, I was tweeting about the enforced silence in the General Assembly:
Also this morning, in Texas:
Texas activists, who have been working to defeat a package of abortion restrictions for the past several weeks, are back at it now that their lawmakers are taking up the measures yet again in a second special session. On Monday, an estimated 5,000 activists rallied at the state capitol. And on Tuesday, thousands of protesters registered to testify against the anti-abortion legislation.They don't want to hear the truth. They don't want to acknowledge the voices, or the humanity, of the people over whose bodies they are trying to legislate governance. They want to protect the little bubble of bullshit fantasies about abortion and who gets abortion and who performs abortions in which they exist. And when we refuse to be silent, they try to forcibly silence us. Because they don't want to hear the truth about what this legislation actually means for real people.
But early on Wednesday morning, a Texas House committee ultimately cut off the ongoing public testimony and voted to advance the contentious abortion restrictions, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks and shut down the vast majority of the abortion clinics in the state. According to the Associated Press, Republicans in the House also imposed "strict security precautions" to prevent women's health advocates from disrupting the vote.
More than 3,500 people flooded the capitol on Tuesday to register their opposition to the abortion restrictions. The AP estimates that about 1,100 of those people also signed up to testify before the House committee, although Dallas News reports that figure was actually closer to 2,300. The protesters filled up about seven overflow rooms in the capitol.
"In terms of witnesses, the system has never seen overload like this," Rep. Helen Giddings (D), the vice chairwoman of the House State Affairs Committee, noted.
Nonetheless, fewer than 100 people were actually given a chance to express their views before the committee.
Fuck them. And fuck their desperate desire for silence. I will be silent when I'm dead. Until then, I will make all the noise I can.
Which is Worse?
[Content Note: Discussion of racism]
Inspired by Deeky's post on CNN's excellent "N Word Vs Cracker" segment, I decided the world definitely needed another Tumblr.
I give you Which is Worse?
The general idea is that I take something that one or more white people have done to black people (for instance, hundreds of years of slavery) and something that one or more black people has done (Jamie Foxx once hosted Saturday Night Live). Then I pretend that the white person thing exists in a vacuum, conflate the behavior of one or more black people with the behavior of all black people at all times, and then invite readers to debate which is worse, as if a giant racist wankoff premised on a false equivalence is definitely a productive and not-at-all racist use of everyone's time.
Here's a sample:
The Supreme Court all but ended the 1965 Voting Rights Act.Six of one, A PONY.
Ice-T still has a highly successful acting career.
WHICH IS WORSE?
[Please leave your suggestions here. Comments in this space should be used for serious discussion of racist false equivalencies.]
This F@#king Guy
[Content Note: Racism; violence.]
Here is George Zimmerman, the killer of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, yukking it up in court today during testimony about what constitutes a legal use of deadly force:
U.S. Army Capt. Alexis Francisco Carter Jr. told a Florida court that Zimmerman had been "one of the better students" in a Criminal Litigation course he taught that included the state's "stand your ground" self-defense law.Rage. Seethe. Boil.
Defense attorney Don West asked Carter to explain how the self defense claim worked in Florida.
..."It's imminent injury," Carter explained. "Or imminent fear. So the fact alone that there isn't an injury doesn't necessarily mean that the person did not have a real apprehension of fear. The fact that there were injuries have a tendency to show or support that that person had a reasonable apprehension of fear."
"You don't have to wait until you're almost dead until you can defend yourself?" West asked.
"No, I would advise you probably don't do that," Carter replied.
That response prompted several seconds of laughter from the usually-emotionless Zimmerman before he was able to look downward to regain his composure.
Or maybe, in some cases, "the fact that there were injuries have a tendency to show or support" that a person being stalked and harassed by some vigilante racist asshole was himself reasonably fearful and decided to stand his ground and defend himself.
If the presence of injuries supposedly speaks to reasonable fearfulness, what does being fucking dead speak to?
It is a profound injustice that the jury at this trial is even allowed to entertain the idea that Zimmerman could have perceived himself to be in imminent danger, when at any point, he could have driven away in his vehicle, as was the recommendation of police, leaving the proximity of the unarmed teenager who he provoked and later killed.
WHAT ABOUT TRAYVON MARTIN'S RIGHT TO SAFETY?
Again, I will note that people have a right to be safe, but lots of people who actually are safe nonetheless do not feel safe. Lots of people imagine that they are going to be hurt by someone not like them, some terrorist, some gang member, some random teenage boy walking down the sidewalk with iced tea and Skittles in his hands.
Feeling safe—or not feeling safe—is at the very center of this case: George Zimmerman did not feel safe, even though he was, entirely so.
On the other hand, Trayvon Martin certainly did not feel safe—and he wasn't.
We continually privilege the feelings of safety of people whose privilege tends to insulate them from legitimate fear.
The most pointed problem with "Stand Your Ground" and other self-defense laws is that people who feel unsafe, irrespective of whether they have a legitimate reason to feel unsafe, implicitly have their fears justified. The laws intrinsically convey people are trying to hurt you and there's something scary out there and you should feel afraid, always afraid. So, ironically, these laws do not in any way encourage feelings of safety and security in fearful people. They entrench fear.
And that makes the world a very dangerous place for the people they're afraid of. People like Trayvon Martin.
Which is a goddamned punchline to George Zimmerman.
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by the color blue.
Recommended Reading:
Resistance: In What World [Content Note: The post at this link contains frank discussion of white privilege and racist violence.]
Kumar: McCain Slams Efforts to Curb Rampant Campus Sexual Harassment as Violating Free Speech
Fannie: Duggar Takes Position at Family Research Council [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of misogyny and homophobia.]
Jamilah: Mayor Chokwe Lumumba Wants to Build a 'Solidarity Economy' in Jackson, Miss.
Cristan: Name the Problem [Content Note: The post at this link contains frank discussion of cis privilege, transphobia, sexual exploitation, and child abuse. On the same topic, see also: Grace.]
Mike: The Congressional Retirement Plan: Some Data Points
Melissa and Kerensa: Melissa McCarthy is Outperforming Comedy Dudes
Isabella: Gina Torres as Wonder Woman Fan Art
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Daily Dose of Cute
Dudley Q. McEwan: Nap Contortionist.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In The News
[Content note: Homophobia, racism]
Today's News Brought To You By Gingerballs:
A military coup is underway in Egypt, according to President Mohamed Morsi's national security adviser. The adviser stated that he expects army and police violence to remove pro-Mursi demonstrators from the streets of Cairo.
The Obama administration will delay a crucial provision of its signature health-care law, giving businesses an extra year to comply with a requirement that they provide their workers with insurance.
A Breaking Bad spin-off about shady lawyer Saul Goodman is moving full speed ahead. Woo hoo!
You're interested in the distribution of red hair in Europe, aren't you? Of course you are.
Find out if your Congressional representative is sponsoring an anti-gay Constitutional amendment.
Hey, Dr. Who fans!: John Barrowman and his partner Scott Gill took advantage of California's new marriage laws and tied the knot yesterday. Congrats!
Also: Helen Mirren said a gay, black female Dr. Who would be best of all. No Doy!
More Paula Deen
[Content Note: Racism.]
Paula Deen evidently paid a HUGE retainer to the PR firm of Yikes & Whoops, so they continue to come up with excellent ideas for her:
On Tuesday, Deen filed a notice with the federal court hearing a race discrimination lawsuit against her, suggesting that the court should dismiss this lawsuit in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in the Prop 8 case. Last week, the Court explained that "for a federal court to have authority under the Constitution to settle a dispute, the party before it must seek a remedy for a personal and tangible harm."Setting the suit itself aside, I want to note that the idea oppression only "personally injures" the oppressed is bullshit. And I don't mean that in some garbage "reverse racism" false equivalence sense. I mean it in the sense that the personal cost of privilege is an indoctrinated lack of empathy that robs privileged people of a piece of their/our humanity. (Among other things.)
Deen is employing the precedent to claim that the white plaintiff who is suing her, Lisa Jackson, cannot bring a race discrimination suit alleging animus against African Americans because she is not personally injured by racism directed at people of another race. Deen's former restaurant employee has bi-racial nieces, however.
As a matter of law, Deen's filing is far from surprising, but it is somewhat ironic that Deen is employing a ruing that effectively struck down a discriminatory proposition and allowed [same-sex couples] to marry in California, to dismiss allegations of discrimination.
I am a person who has some axes of privilege, and some axes of marginalization, and I see as both a person who is privileged and as a person who is marginalized how privilege makes people, made/makes me, less decent, less kind, less compassionate. I have experienced the ways in which examining and being aware of one's privilege makes one more decent, more kind, more compassionate. More fully human.
The harm of institutional prejudice done to those oppressed by that prejudice is greater by several orders of magnitude than the harm done to those privileged by that prejudice. There is no parity on the opposing sides of oppression. But there is harm on both sides, irrespective of whether we are willing to see (or care about) that harm.
We all have a personal interest in dismantling bias. Is what I'm saying.
Which would be evident if we didn't mask the reality that it is not being a marginalized person, but being a privileged person, that has the capacity to make us less than. Less than what we could be.
(All of which is to say nothing of the "personal interest," that isn't meant to count, of just giving a shit about meaningful equality because it is ethical.)
Quote of the Day
"I do think that what's going on here in Texas shows that [Governor Rick Perry] has courage and is a principled leader, and ultimately this is a good fight for him."—Republican strategist Rob Johnson, on whether Perry will run for president again in 2016.
HA HA FUCK YOU.
That, right there, says everything you need to know about the Republican Party. They are willing to wage legislative assault on half the population, because it's "good for" their political fortunes.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina...
[Content Note: Hostility to agency.]
Republican legislators in the North Carolina state senate have tacked on "a suite of new restrictions and regulations pertaining to abortion clinics" to "House Bill 695, which prohibits the recognition of foreign law, such as Islamic Sharia law, in family courts." This last-minute addition was "was unveiled unexpectedly during an unusual late-day committee meeting," because, according to Republican State Senator Buck Newton, who chairs the Judiciary 1 Committee, "It just took a while for there to be a consensus of support for it within our caucus. Sometimes these things come together at the last minute."
Except, after a recess called in an all-day session at 5:20, which had no abortion bills scheduled for consideration, the committee reconvened at 5:30 and immediately "took up an amendment to revise HB 695 to include the regulations on abortion." Further:
"They're doing it quietly on Fourth of July weekend because they've seen what's going on in Texas and know that women will turn out," Melissa Reed, vice president of Public Policy for Planned Parenthood Health Systems said, referring to the protests surrounding a similar bill in Texas. She said Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights advocates had no idea the measure would be taken up Tuesday.So pro-choice advocates were not notified, and anti-choice advocates were. Because when Republicans can't win outright, they break the rules.
Lobbyists with nonprofits that have religious or moral purposes, including the Family Policy Council, Christian Action League and N.C. Values Coalition, were in the room for the committee debate and the subsequent Senate floor debate. Senators noted that those lobbyists were given notice of the bill and its contents ahead of time.
The amended bill "tentatively passed" the Senate yesterday, and there will be further debate again today before the bill is returned to the House for a vote.
On the Senate floor, Democrats objected to the measure being pushed through so unexpectedly.No. No, it is not appropriate. This behavior is anything but appropriate.
"This bill and this process is not worthy of this chamber," said Sen. Josh Stein, D-Wake. He said the process circumvented the public's ability to learn about legislation before it was discussed and voted on.
...As for amending the bill and bringing it to the floor right away, [Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger] said, "It is not something that is unheard of. It is not something that is inappropriate, in my opinion."
NARAL North Carolina has information about how to take action here. If you're in Raleigh, and can get to the General Assembly, head on over there for a protest to let them know that pro-choice North Carolina is watching and has a voice.
You can watch a live feed of the debate here.
If you have other suggestions for how best to support choice in North Carolina and let Republican legislators there know the nation is watching them, please leave them in comments.
[H/T to Shaker purplefinch.]
UPDATE: The NC Senate has approved the bill. It now goes to the House for a concurrence vote. Republican Governor Pat McCrory has not indicated whether he will sign the bill, but said in a statement: "When the Democrats were in power, this is the way they did business. It was not right then and it is not right now. Regardless of what party is in charge or what important issue is being discussed, the process must be appropriate and thorough." All right then. So show that you're the allegedly more principled party and veto it.
