I am so frakking pissed off right now that I can barely see straight. This morning, Dr. George Tiller was murdered, shot to death in the vestibule of the Lutheran church in Kansas where he was an usher. Tiller was one of the only doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions, which made him a frequent target of anti-choice protestors. In fact, he survived a shooting 16 years ago.
This is terrorism, no two ways about it. That's what we call it when someone commits an act of violence designed intimidate those with different political, religious or social views. If the suspect arrested for Tiller's murder had been a 20-year-old Muslim man rather than a 50-something white guy, there wouldn't be any question. The FBI already would've raided whatever mosque the guy attended and confiscated the computer of everyone who'd ever sent him an e-mail. But now instead we're going to get a lot of tsk-tsking from people who, at least on some level, think that Tiller got what he deserved. Maybe you think that. But know that, on Sept. 12, plenty of people in the world thought the same thing about you. Doesn't feel very good, does it?
Anyone who knows me knows my views: every woman who terminates a pregnancy does so for a different reason, and it's impossible for any government to draft a law that covers all those circumstances fairly. I do believe that humans are human from the moment of conception, but I also believe that laws are comically incapable of managing life. Abortion is a last resort, which is why I support the dozens of interventions that could prevent unplanned pregnancies, or unprepared pregnancies, in the first place - comprehensive, honest sex ed; access to birth control and EC; adequate support for mothers, including paid leave, etc. Lastly, I profoundly believe that, when the potential life inside a womb conflicts somehow with the living, breathing woman carrying that child, that only that woman has a right to decide what to do. Many woman would - and do - sacrifice their lives for the health of their babies. Many don't. I'm not going to presume to pass judgment on anyone placed in that gut-wrenching situation.
Of course I respect the people who think differently. I don't demonize people who oppose abortion - I don't really get where they're coming from, but that's exactly why we need to be talking to one another. Tiller's shooter wasn't engaging in dialogue any more than Mohammed Atta and the 18 other motherfuckers who hijacked the planes on 9/11. "Pro-life" my ass.
Dr. Tiller was a hero for performing the work he did. If I had any aptitude for medicine at all, I'd be doing exactly what he was doing. I'd also be fighting for the right of women to give birth at home, to have vaginal births after C-section and every other reproductive health issue. But since I don't have that aptitude, instead I'm going to call my local Planned Parenthood tomorrow and ask if they need any volunteers. I'm going to send a donation to Medical Students for Choice and any other group I can think of.
Dr. Tiller's murderer and the people who support him may think they're scaring pro-choice activists into hiding, but they've only done the opposite. Tonight, I'm more commited than ever to protecting the reproductive freedom of women, and I'm far from the only one.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
BREAKING NEWS: Michael Steele gets it right for a change
It's interesting to contrast the reactions by various Republicans to President Obama's nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor to fill retiring Justice David Souter's spot on the Supreme Court. Republicans who actually have some accountability to voters basically say she appears to be qualified, but they definitely want to look at her closer (which is why God invented confirmation hearings).
On the other hand, those conservatives who currently hold no elected positions - and therefore no actual responsibility for anything - have called Sotomayor a racist, compared to her to a former KKK Grand Dragon or just insulted her name (or forgotten it).
Which is why it's refreshing to see Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele - the guy whose job it is for the party to stay relevant - caution against "slammin' and rammin'" Sotomayor. As the leader of a party facing some serious demographic challenges in the near future, Steele's absolutely right to remind the GOP that reflexively opposing Sotomayor before we really know anything about her could backfire. It could look like Republicans still have some racism/sexism problems, which is not what they need right now.
My unsolicited advice to Republicans: listen to your chairman. It's totally appropriate to question Sotomayor on her worldview and positions, and to parse exactly what role she played in decisions handed down by a panel of judges. On the other hand, it's BS to hold her to a different standard than other Supreme Court nominees have been.
On the other hand, those conservatives who currently hold no elected positions - and therefore no actual responsibility for anything - have called Sotomayor a racist, compared to her to a former KKK Grand Dragon or just insulted her name (or forgotten it).
Which is why it's refreshing to see Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele - the guy whose job it is for the party to stay relevant - caution against "slammin' and rammin'" Sotomayor. As the leader of a party facing some serious demographic challenges in the near future, Steele's absolutely right to remind the GOP that reflexively opposing Sotomayor before we really know anything about her could backfire. It could look like Republicans still have some racism/sexism problems, which is not what they need right now.
My unsolicited advice to Republicans: listen to your chairman. It's totally appropriate to question Sotomayor on her worldview and positions, and to parse exactly what role she played in decisions handed down by a panel of judges. On the other hand, it's BS to hold her to a different standard than other Supreme Court nominees have been.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The best news I've heard today
This makes me insanely happy. Seriously, I will run from another room to mute the TV when one of these commericals comes on...
Just for fun, check out this related quiz at MentalFloss.
Just for fun, check out this related quiz at MentalFloss.
Reconsidering McCain and health care
Former Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich makes a case for what he calls "John McCain's best idea" - taxing the health insurance benefits that many of us get from our employers. Reich argues that, while McCain's version was "regressive," the concept was on the right track.
Reich is very persuasive in pointing out how employer-provided health care still disproportionally benefits the well-off (what doesn't?) while skewing other aspects of the job market (like people afraid to leave jobs because they don't want to lose their health insurance). But I'm one of those people who heard McCain suggest this back during the campaign and just felt my chest tighten. I mean, my health insurance would probably be considered at least a few thousand dollars of extra income, which would really hurt me at tax time. But... along with the new tax would come the option of a public health care system that I could choose instead, right?
Or we could just go with Reich's final suggestion - exempt employees who make under $100,000 a year. That works.
Reich is very persuasive in pointing out how employer-provided health care still disproportionally benefits the well-off (what doesn't?) while skewing other aspects of the job market (like people afraid to leave jobs because they don't want to lose their health insurance). But I'm one of those people who heard McCain suggest this back during the campaign and just felt my chest tighten. I mean, my health insurance would probably be considered at least a few thousand dollars of extra income, which would really hurt me at tax time. But... along with the new tax would come the option of a public health care system that I could choose instead, right?
Or we could just go with Reich's final suggestion - exempt employees who make under $100,000 a year. That works.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Did a transman fight in the Civil War?
I’m re-reading Tony Horwitz’s brilliant Confederates in the Attic, and I came across this interesting passage about Civil War monuments in Vicksburg, Miss.:
One monument stood out. Modeled on the Pantheon in Rome, it was inscribed with the names of 36,000 Illinois soldiers, including an extraordinary private named Albert D.J. Cashire.
“In handling a musket in battle,” a comrade recalled, “he was the equal of any in the company.” Cashire also “seemed specially adept at those tasks so despised by the infantryman,” such as sewing and washing clothes. Cashire fought in 40 skirmishes and battles and became active in veterans’ affairs, marching in parades for decades after the war.
Then, in 1911, while working as a handyman in Illinois, Cashire was hit by an automobile and taken to the hospital with a leg broken close to the hip. The doctor who examined Cashire discovered what the Illinois veteran had so long concealed; Cashire was a woman, an Irish immigrant nee Jennie Hodgers. Hodgers was eventually sent to an insane asylum and forced to wear women’s clothing until her death in 1915.
“I left Cashier [sic], the fearless boy of 22 at the end of the Vicksburg campaign,” one former comrade wrote after visiting her at the asylum. “I found a frail woman of 70, broken, because on discovery she was compelled to put on skirts. They told me she was as awkward as could be in them. One day she tripped and fell, hurting her hip. She never recovered.”
I don’t know if Cashire would have identified as trans. But his example makes it clear that this right-wing idea that everybody was perfectly fine with binary gender designations until the evil feminists/gays/transpeople came along is BS.
One monument stood out. Modeled on the Pantheon in Rome, it was inscribed with the names of 36,000 Illinois soldiers, including an extraordinary private named Albert D.J. Cashire.
“In handling a musket in battle,” a comrade recalled, “he was the equal of any in the company.” Cashire also “seemed specially adept at those tasks so despised by the infantryman,” such as sewing and washing clothes. Cashire fought in 40 skirmishes and battles and became active in veterans’ affairs, marching in parades for decades after the war.
Then, in 1911, while working as a handyman in Illinois, Cashire was hit by an automobile and taken to the hospital with a leg broken close to the hip. The doctor who examined Cashire discovered what the Illinois veteran had so long concealed; Cashire was a woman, an Irish immigrant nee Jennie Hodgers. Hodgers was eventually sent to an insane asylum and forced to wear women’s clothing until her death in 1915.
“I left Cashier [sic], the fearless boy of 22 at the end of the Vicksburg campaign,” one former comrade wrote after visiting her at the asylum. “I found a frail woman of 70, broken, because on discovery she was compelled to put on skirts. They told me she was as awkward as could be in them. One day she tripped and fell, hurting her hip. She never recovered.”
I don’t know if Cashire would have identified as trans. But his example makes it clear that this right-wing idea that everybody was perfectly fine with binary gender designations until the evil feminists/gays/transpeople came along is BS.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Makes you wonder how they wrote it with a straight face...
You know, reporters don't have the most glamorous job. They have to write stories about city council meetings, profiles of people no one cares about and the really swell stories about entire families getting wiped out in house fires. I like to think that when something like this comes across the crime feed, it makes it all worthwhile:
Note to self: If you plan to shoplift, don't write a note planning out your day of theft and carry it with you.
That's what a man arrested last week for shoplifting at a Wal-Mart store appears to have done, according to a Winston-Salem police report.
Wal-Mart employees told police that they found the "to-do" note outside the store, stashed with clothing they had seen the shoplifter wearing. It was filed with arrest papers and lays out these steps in bullet points:
□ Catch the 6:00 bus to Wal-Mart & walk home
□ Cut hair off
□ Take a bath
□ Brush teeth & hair, get clothes on all black, or black design and black shirt & black shoes
□ Grab my bag
□ Go back to Wal-Mart & steal me an outfit.
The note then lists items, including a suit, CDs, a CD player and "crazy ass glasses."
Note to self: If you plan to shoplift, don't write a note planning out your day of theft and carry it with you.
That's what a man arrested last week for shoplifting at a Wal-Mart store appears to have done, according to a Winston-Salem police report.
Wal-Mart employees told police that they found the "to-do" note outside the store, stashed with clothing they had seen the shoplifter wearing. It was filed with arrest papers and lays out these steps in bullet points:
□ Catch the 6:00 bus to Wal-Mart & walk home
□ Cut hair off
□ Take a bath
□ Brush teeth & hair, get clothes on all black, or black design and black shirt & black shoes
□ Grab my bag
□ Go back to Wal-Mart & steal me an outfit.
The note then lists items, including a suit, CDs, a CD player and "crazy ass glasses."
Friday, May 22, 2009
Encountering Malcolm X
So Malcolm X would’ve turned 85 this week, had he not been murdered in 1965. It’s curious – though maybe not really – that no one in the media acknowledged this opportunity to reflect on his legacy, as it would for Martin Luther King Jr. or JFK. Mainstream America has never really known what to do with Malcolm X, and I’m including myself in that.
I first read The Autobiography of Malcolm X in my junior year of high school, so I would’ve been about 16 at the time. And, as anyone who knew me then will tell you, I considered myself to be pretty enlightened compared to most teenaged white girls in Mayberry. It was purely an act of rebellion against the small-town conservatism surrounding me. My attitude when I started reading the book (co-authored with Alex Haley and released after Malcolm’s death) was a recognizable mix of white liberal guilt and condescension – look at me, I’m soooooooo down, I’m reading about Malcolm X where people can see me! And let me tell you, the man formerly known as Malcolm Little humbled me like I’d never been humbled before, and maybe since.
You see, I had this very simplistic Big Rock Candy Mountain outlook on the world, and earnestly believed that we were all the same and should just get along. But we’re not. Our society doesn’t treat everyone the same, based on arbitrary categories like our skin color, our gender identity and where we grew up or how much money and education we have. We’re not going to find solutions to our common problems if we just pretend that privilege doesn’t exist. And only by examining the experiences that inform another person’s worldview are we ever going to figure out how to talk to one another.
Not long after I read the autobiography, Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz was critically wounded in a house fire. My family and I were visiting New York when I read that a group in Harlem had organized a blood drive to try and save Shabazz’s life. Of course I got all excited – OMG, we should totally go up there and donate blood, it would be the best experience ever, and aren’t I such an enlightened little white girl?
But it didn’t feel right. I don’t know what kind of reception I would’ve gotten, and I certainly don’t think I would’ve been in any danger. I couldn’t articulate this at the time, but on some level I understood that it would have been deeply wrong to insert my need to assuage my racial guilt into a sacred space – literally and figuratively – for the area’s black community. It’s not about racial separation (something Malcolm X did NOT push, despite the myth to the contrary); it was about respect for someone else’s needs. If I’d gone to that blood drive, it wouldn’t have been about Betty Shabazz; it would’ve been about me. And to this day I’m glad I didn’t barge into Harlem like some little Caucasian Mighty Mouse to save the day.
I got more schooling this week, when Samhita at Feministing did a post about Malcolm X’s birthday. The comments got pretty heated at times as some posters crashed head-on into their assumptions. I learned a lot. For one thing, I have a greater understanding of the challenges that feminist women of color still face in “mainstream” (aka white) communities. A non-white feminist doesn’t like being told to be “polite” in her critiques any more than I like being told to be nice and smile while resisting patriarchal BS.
I still have a tendency to want a pat on the back when it comes to dealing with people of other races. But I shouldn’t get a cookie just for treating other people as if their personhood is just as valid as my own.
I first read The Autobiography of Malcolm X in my junior year of high school, so I would’ve been about 16 at the time. And, as anyone who knew me then will tell you, I considered myself to be pretty enlightened compared to most teenaged white girls in Mayberry. It was purely an act of rebellion against the small-town conservatism surrounding me. My attitude when I started reading the book (co-authored with Alex Haley and released after Malcolm’s death) was a recognizable mix of white liberal guilt and condescension – look at me, I’m soooooooo down, I’m reading about Malcolm X where people can see me! And let me tell you, the man formerly known as Malcolm Little humbled me like I’d never been humbled before, and maybe since.
You see, I had this very simplistic Big Rock Candy Mountain outlook on the world, and earnestly believed that we were all the same and should just get along. But we’re not. Our society doesn’t treat everyone the same, based on arbitrary categories like our skin color, our gender identity and where we grew up or how much money and education we have. We’re not going to find solutions to our common problems if we just pretend that privilege doesn’t exist. And only by examining the experiences that inform another person’s worldview are we ever going to figure out how to talk to one another.
Not long after I read the autobiography, Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz was critically wounded in a house fire. My family and I were visiting New York when I read that a group in Harlem had organized a blood drive to try and save Shabazz’s life. Of course I got all excited – OMG, we should totally go up there and donate blood, it would be the best experience ever, and aren’t I such an enlightened little white girl?
But it didn’t feel right. I don’t know what kind of reception I would’ve gotten, and I certainly don’t think I would’ve been in any danger. I couldn’t articulate this at the time, but on some level I understood that it would have been deeply wrong to insert my need to assuage my racial guilt into a sacred space – literally and figuratively – for the area’s black community. It’s not about racial separation (something Malcolm X did NOT push, despite the myth to the contrary); it was about respect for someone else’s needs. If I’d gone to that blood drive, it wouldn’t have been about Betty Shabazz; it would’ve been about me. And to this day I’m glad I didn’t barge into Harlem like some little Caucasian Mighty Mouse to save the day.
I got more schooling this week, when Samhita at Feministing did a post about Malcolm X’s birthday. The comments got pretty heated at times as some posters crashed head-on into their assumptions. I learned a lot. For one thing, I have a greater understanding of the challenges that feminist women of color still face in “mainstream” (aka white) communities. A non-white feminist doesn’t like being told to be “polite” in her critiques any more than I like being told to be nice and smile while resisting patriarchal BS.
I still have a tendency to want a pat on the back when it comes to dealing with people of other races. But I shouldn’t get a cookie just for treating other people as if their personhood is just as valid as my own.
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