Going Backward for Women in Republican Theology
Men Should Be Glad Women Just Want Equality and Not Revenge
Rolling back the clock, aka Make America Great Again, doesn’t mean returning to the 1950’s; the medieval ages would be a better descriptor. Let’s face the facts, all the social/legal advances for women, minorities, and the utterly impoverished have been accompanied by resentment from those convinced they now had a smaller piece of pie in life.
In ways big and small, this resentment has facilitated the transformation of legal restrictions into acts of not-so-subtle discrimination, invisible barriers, and societal attitudes.
The “taking” metaphor (or the articulated threat thereof) has been the primary sword wielded by authoritarians everywhere, even when there is no basis in fact. The fear of immigrants taking jobs is being replaced by a fear of losing majority status in society and politics.
While the term used by the Charlottesville right wing riots –”You will not replace us”– may not be accepted in polite conversation, but it is the glue that holds extremists together. The question of “who” is doing the replacing varies around the world, but the fear of “taking” (rights, property, status) works for any leader or group with the goal of totalitarianism.
When it comes to women, the cosplaying Christians of the MAGA movement think that rolling back the clock is a prime objective in upcoming electoral contests. A big part of this starts with the premise of children being brainwashed, groomed, molested, kidnapped, and/or trafficked as a means of instilling fear.
Fantastical tales at the edges of everyday conversations lead to claims of the fires in Maui being staged as a distraction to round up children for one or another diabolical entity. Far right outlets like KUSI spread the word with “just asking” social media posts. And it’s not like folks in this reality are unaware of the ultimate purposes of their actions, be they threats, protests, or doxxing.
How many times can these wannabe woke rangers in Southern California see regular participation by Proud Boys and other extremists before they realize the larger implications?
The same hate-filled faces regularly show up at school board protests in our region.
The overt and covert manifestations of women (and especially darker skinned women) being treated as lesser creatures can best be seen in healthcare.
The so-called pro-life people are holding fast to their abolitionist demands when it comes to right wing elected officials and candidates; it’s abundantly clear that the criminalizing of birth control isn’t far behind. While these positions may not be popular, they help frame a movement toward a more authoritarian society.
It’s amazing to look at the lack of care or concern for pregnant and birthing women. A Center for Disease Control and Prevention study released this week says that one in five women in the U.S. report being mistreated while receiving maternity care. Nearly 1 in 3 said they had experienced discrimination because of factors such as age, weight or income.
From the New York Times:
Women of color reported even higher rates. Roughly 30 percent of Black, Hispanic and multiracial women said they had been mistreated, and 40 percent of Black and multiracial women reported discrimination because of race and ethnicity, income, type of health insurance or differences of opinion with caregivers, among other reasons.
Among the most common complaints about mistreatment: health care providers ignoring their patients, refusing requests for help or failing to respond to a call for help in a timely manner. Women reported being shouted at or scolded, having their physical privacy violated and having health care providers threaten to withhold treatment or force them to accept medical interventions they did not want.
Maternal mortality rates –most of which are preventable– more than doubled for every racial and ethnic group from 1999 through 2019. Get this– the states with the highest rates of maternal mortality are the very same ones with total abortion bans.
A woman in the U.S. is now twice as likely to die from pregnancy than her mother was a generation ago. World Health Organization studies say the U.S. has one of the highest rates of maternal death in the developed world. Women in the U.S. are 10 or more times likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than mothers in Poland, Spain, or Norway.
States like Louisiana have enacted abortion laws making physicians reluctant to treat patients with miscarriages for fear of jail time or losing their license to practice. A Republican candidate for Attorney General in that state is falsely claiming that abortion medications are tainted with fentanyl.
In Idaho, enough practitioners of women’s care have left the state so it’s now considered a maternal health care desert. Despite having a pregnancy-related death rate twice that of the U.S., the state government has disbanded its panel charged with investigating maternal deaths.
Here’s the lede from a recent news story from the CBS station in Washington DC:
An Ohio woman who traveled to a D.C. clinic to receive an abortion after learning her fetus had an abnormality likely incompatible with life testified Thursday about collapsing in pain after a group of anti-abortion activists refused to let her enter the facility.
And so it goes. Of course this crap is deliberate. Not every legislator is as dumb a Rep. Louie Gohmert.
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There’s another correlation: anti-abortion lawmakers and rape, particularly child rape. Jill Filipovic makes a strong case in Abortion Bans Force Child Rape Victims into Motherhood, pointing out Republican opposition to laws concerning child marriage, spousal rape, and prohibiting parental rights to rapists.
It’s “pro-life” Republicans, of course, who want to outlaw abortion without exception for rape or incest, and who make it impossible to utilize those exceptions where they do exist.
It’s “pro-life” Republicans who pen and pass laws that would allow rapists, their friends, and their family members to sue anyone who helped their victims get an abortion. We’ve already seen a version of this play out in Texas, where a prominent anti-abortion leader helped an abusive husband use anti-abortion laws to continue abusing and harassing his ex.
In the “pro-life” state of Alabama, Republicans have created a legal system in which rape victims are forced by law to continue their pregnancies, and rapists are granted parental rights.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the American “pro-life” party looks an awful lot like a pro-rape party.
Kaiser Family Foundation national polling shows abortion will be a potent political issue in 2024: three in ten voters say they will only vote for candidates who share their views on abortion. There is widespread awareness about the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, and a lot of unhappiness among women.
Nearly one year since the Dobbs decision, most women say they don’t trust the Supreme Court to make the right decision when it comes to cases related to reproductive and sexual health. About seven in ten women (69%) say they trust the Court either “not too much” or “not at all” to make the right decision on this issue, while three in ten say they trust the Court either “somewhat” or “a lot.” This includes at least half of Hispanic women (55%), and two-thirds of Black (64%) and White (64%) women who say they do not trust the Court on these issues.
Nearly three-fourths (72%) of women ages 18-49, the group most directly impacted by the Dobbs decision, say they do not trust the Court to make the right decision on cases related to reproductive and sexual health. This includes a majority of women in this age group (ages 18 to 49) across party lines, including 56% of Republican women ages 18 to 49, and at least three-fourths of independent (75%) and Democratic (81%) women of reproductive age.
I’m not going to say that every Republican running for office this year and next must be hounded on how his fellow travelers treat women. I am going to say that Democrats are missing an opportunity if they don’t.
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Wednesday News to Wonder About
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Ticketed for being homeless? Supreme Court asked to weigh if punishment is 'cruel and unusual' Via USA Today
A city in Oregon asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to decide whether local governments may ticket homeless people sleeping on public property or whether that is a cruel and unusual punishment that violates the Constitution.
Grants Pass, a city of 38,000 in southern Oregon, told the Supreme Court in an appeal that the prohibition on handing out tickets has created a dire situation within and near encampments of homeless people, hamstringing officials' ability to deal with crime, fires and "the reemergence of medieval diseases."
The question of whether people without homes can be punished under laws designed to regulate public camping and sleeping outside has been percolating in federal courts for years as several states and cities grapple with burgeoning homelessness. The Supreme Court declined to consider a similar case in 2019 after a federals appeals court in California ruled that homeless Americans could not face criminal prosecution.
New Trump poll proves Obama and Clinton were right: The GOP base are deplorable, bitter clingers Via Amanda Marcotte at Salon
The rally-round-Trump effect is fundamentally an eff-you-liberals response. This is demonstrated by the way this sentiment surges around every embarrassing reminder that the man is a criminal, and an idiotic one at that. There's a pattern emerging to the MAGA reaction to Trump indictments. The first swell of emotions is a tantrum, full of "how dare you" screaming, as they metaphorically (or literally in some cases) follow their leader's ketchup-throwing ways.
Once that crybaby reaction fades, however, you can see concerns about betting it all on a profligate criminal start to seep in. As a Washington Post analysis of the polls before the Georgia indictments show, the overall trend shows Republicans more willing than ever to admit Trump is a bad person and a criminal. But that willingness dries up temporarily in the face of new indictments, as their ascendent emotion is defensiveness. Plus, when pollsters word questions more carefully to avoid provoking Republican spite, Trump's indictment bump disappears.
Supervised AI isn't Via Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic
It wasn't just Ottawa: Microsoft Travel published a whole *bushel* of absurd articles, including the notorious Ottawa guide recommending that tourists dine at the Ottawa Food Bank ("go on an empty stomach").
After Paris Marx pointed out the Ottawa article, *Business Insider*'s Nathan McAlone found several more howlers.
There was the article recommending that visitors to Montreal try "a hamburger" and went on to explain that a hamburger was a "sandwich comprised of a ground beef patty, a sliced bun of some kind, and toppings such as lettuce, tomato, cheese, etc" and that some of the best hamburgers in Montreal could be had at McDonald's.
For Anchorage, Microsoft recommended trying the local delicacy known as "seafood," which it defined as "basically any form of sea life regarded as food by humans, prominently including fish and shellfish," going on to say, "seafood is a versatile ingredient, so it makes sense that we eat it worldwide."
In Tokyo, visitors seeking "photo-worthy spots" were advised to "eat Wagyu beef."
There were more.
Microsoft insisted that this wasn't an issue of "unsupervised AI," but rather "human error." On its face, this presents a head-scratcher: is Microsoft saying that a human being erroneously decided to recommend the dining at Ottawa's food bank?