The Antisocial Socialist

 I'm sure the "I choose my choice" anti-masker types whining about bodily autonomy will be the first in the streets to protest the overturning of Roe v. Wade. They're probably out there right now.

Right?

Right??

My American friends, I am so truly sorry.

I have been trying really hard to not post about Trump, because I worry that his stubby choad gets to half-mast every time his name is mentioned, and also because enough people have been posting about the semi-sentient clump of hair and I'm quite sick of hearing about it.

But I was intrigued by the latest stupid-ass thing he said, because I don't actually think it was that stupid relative to most of the things he says—and he was forced to retract it.

It's the abortion thing, of course. I had to look it up because I keep seeing references to it on FB and I wasn't sure what the big deal was. He said that abortion should be illegal and women who have abortions should be punished. And enough collective shit was lost that he actually had to back down for once.

I find this startling.

Oh, not because I agree. I don't. It's a disgusting position. But because it is more ethically consistent than anyone else in the Republican/anti-abortion camp, and they're largely the ones bothered by the statement.

There are a number of things I don't understand about people who claim to be pro-life, but probably the biggest one is why they aren't all out there murdering abortion doctors, vigilante-style. I mean, I'm glad they're not. And logically, I know why they're not, even if they haven't examined it all too deeply. It's because they know that their position on abortion is fundamentally dishonest.

Trump's initial stance on punishing women is abhorrent, but it's honest. (I mean, it's not really, because he doesn't actually believe anything and he has the ideological coherency of a fairly dim third grader desperate for absolutely any sort of attention at all. No Republican is actually anti-abortion; they're all of the "it's moral and necessary if my mistress does it" school. But let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that he believes it.)

Those who oppose abortion claim to do so because they believe that the fetus is a person, deserving of full human rights. Except not really. Try asking an anti-choicer why they never protest outside of fertility clinics and if you ever get an answer, you come and tell me right away what it is, because I've never had one capable of justifying that. In their heart-of-hearts, they know that an embryo isn't really the same as a child. But all of their rhetoric suggests that killing an embryo is exactly the same as killing a baby.

So if abortion is actually murdering a baby, Trump's initial position made total sense. It's comparable to a contract killing—yes, you would charge a hit man with murder, but you would also prosecute the person who ordered the hit. The second you suggest that abortion should be legal but only the doctors should be charged, you open yourself up to the legal possibility where it's perfectly fine to arrange someone's death as long as you're not the one firing the gun.

If you ever want to get an anti-choicer to shut up really quickly (which, for me, is all of the time), the best thing to ask besides the question of fertility clinics is how they plan to sentence women who get abortions. Manslaughter? No, you don't just get an abortion on a whim. It'd have to be first-degree murder. I'm not a lawyer and don't even play one on the internet, but that's a lot of years. And given that one in three cis women will have an abortion in her lifetime, that's good news for the prison-industrial complex and deeply uncomfortable for everyone else.

I'm fascinated by this latest kerfuffle because it really exposes how no one who claims to be pro-life actually believes, deep down, that abortion is murder. The root desire in the anti-abortion soul is to punish women; the rest is just window-dressing. Trump had to backpeddle because he once again said out loud what they were all thinking. Whoops!

Via fengi"

I’m beginning to get some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they’ve gone through the surgery, and they’ve compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill. And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.

-Kevin Swanson, host of "the world’s largest homeschooling and Biblical worldview radio program". Source

In case you need a visual, here is a needlessly morbid self-portrait drawn after six years or so of being on the birth control pill:

Check out this clusterfuck of racism and ableism: Family faces deportation over son's autism. You can be a good and productive citizen all you want, but if your kid has a disability, apparently you're just not welcome in Canada. The good news is this: Protest sometimes actually works. Because public protest made Jason Kenney back down. Awesome.

Here's another issue near and dear to my heart: school surveillance. That article is from the Guardian, citing examples from the U.S., where students must walk through metal detectors and cops are omnipresent, handcuffing and tasering small children, but don't think that Canada is all that far behind. Schools are where the next generation is being trained to accept routine violations of their bodies and their privacy.

Expect to be hearing about my union's campaign to keep the Tories out in the Ontario election. As might be expected, the SUN article contains some inaccuracies and lacks quotes from the vast majority of teachers who would rather not be pink-slipped by a Hudak government.

Here's another fun one from Cracked: The 5 Most Pointlessly Women-Specific Products. I'm a bad feminist because my immediate reaction was "OMG THEY MADE A PRINCESS DI GUN?" Not that I'd ever buy one; I'm Canadian and a small-r republican. Put a Hello Kitty on one and I'm admittedly a bit tempted.

In other news, this guy is a massive douche.

And on a completely unrelated note, the antibiotics appear to be working. I'm still tired as all hell but I can actually speak and breathe properly again, so yay!

I wasted about half my morning posting suggestions to America Speaking Out. Because they'll probably get deleted, here are my suggestions for improving America:

( cut for silliness )

Via audrawilliams: Ottawa has cut funding to a group that supports women's rights in the developing world.

Meanwhile, Conservative senator and gender traitor Nancy Ruth told aid agencies to "shut the fuck up," regarding the issue of whether women are, indeed, human beings or merely ambulatory fetus-incubators. Stay classy!

Can we start a "send your precious pre-borns to Parliament Hill" campaign or something?

First, CIDA's funding priorities get changed to focus on women and children. (Never mind that CIDA's funding priorities have always been global hegemony.)

Then, Harper's increasingly batshit government was going to cut funding for contraception in its foreign aid.

[Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon] told a House of Commons committee that the government's initiative to bolster maternal health in developing countries would not include funding for contraception, because “the purpose of this is to be able to save lives.”

(Not the lives of women and girls, of course. Women are meatbags in which precious fetuses may be temporarily stored.)

Now they're saying that contraception is in, but abortion is out. Maybe. And if you say otherwise, you're anti-American.

Every year, unsafe abortion kills at least 700,000 women. Maternal death is a global crisis. And yet these sanctimonious sons-of-bitches at Parliament Hill who can't even be arsed to run their own country think that they should get to decide whether women in other countries get to control their own bodies?

Fuck them all. I'm provisionally impressed that the Liberals have decided to take a stand on this, but I'm betting they'll cave in the end.

- U.S. health care: So no public option? The health care debacle in the U.S. has gotten so twisted and entangled that I'm not sure what's going on. All I know is that they'll cover prayer but not gynecological check-ups or basically anything that's part of that "special interest group" composing over half of the American population.

+ Nice op-ed by Zizek on anti-communism in the former Eastern Bloc. You can pair it with this article if you'd like.

+ I finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini and it made me cry. Yes, I know you all read it two years ago.

- I am quite sick of seeing all of those re-usable shopping bags that are either black and say "this bag is green" (har har) or say "this bag is not plastic." You've had to pay for plastic bags in Toronto for quite some time now, so even people who litter and voted Conservative because of their position on the Alberta tar sands and club baby seals in their spare time carry them now. So carrying one that toots your environmentalist horn just makes you look like a smug yuppie. So there.

+ Good 9-11 conspiracy article, through which I found a link to all of the people who would have had to have been involved for the Truther conspiracy to make sense.

+ I am a crusty old lady (see above) but I wore Docs to school today and the kids were like, "nice kicks, Miss!" And then I had to ask if they meant my boots.

P.S. +++ The season finale of Mad Men. I love this show so much. Perhaps there shall be a separate post about how much I love this show.

1. Abortion mills to kill off any babies who have the potential to become white, heterosexual, or conservative.

2. Indoctrinate remaining babies into communism by putting fluoride in the water supply and beginning sex education in pre-school.

3. When children are old enough, force them into multiple marriages to box turtles. Weddings will be officiated by Islamofascist imams.

4. Weed out remaining undesirables by means of DEATH PANELS.

5. ...

6. PROFIT!

Hey guys, I know this might be TMI, but I had an abortion just now, with my morning coffee. (I probably should have had it with a glass of water, but whatever.) I had one the day before, too, and the day before that. I've been having daily abortions for some time now.

Granted, scientifically speaking, I'm just preventing implantation*, not removing an existing fetus. But since when did anyone in the Bush administration pass health class in junior high? What, you want a government full of egghead smartipants, or do you want a government you can drink a beer with?

Anyway, good thing I live here, where I can have daily abortions, instead of in the States. Because I am a selfish feminist. I delight, each morning, in getting up, having a cup of coffee, taking my vitamins, petting the cats, and extinguishing the lives of precious, unique snowflakes.

EDIT: If you're American, tell 'em what you think.

* Not even that, because, well, condoms.