By David Futrelle
In the midst of a too-long manifesto on “the Politics of Damaged Women” posted to the Red Pill subreddit today, a fellow calling himself RamessesVII makes an argument that reveals far more about the politics of damaged men like, well, him.
“We must overturn Row V. Wade,” he declares flatly.
And let’s be real, it’s not about killing babies. I only really care if a woman kills my kid, I don’t care about anyone else’s. [Banning] abortion is about making it so women are scared to have more than one sexual partner.
Huh. And that one partner would be you, you assume? I don’t think so.
RamessesVII, who seems genuinely confused by our political system and life in general, has a plan to ensure the end of Roe: Red Pill men should join Christian churches en masse, regardless of whether or not they actually believe in God or Jesus or any of that stuff.
[I]f you’re in the United States, consider calling up your local church and joining. You don’t have to believe any of it if you don’t want to. But the church is the only viable tool we have to turn our country conservative again. …
The point, again, is to scare women — ideally, so badly that they end up voting Republican.
If we want women to vote Republican we need to make them think that Jesus is watching them in that voting booth. AND we need women to vote Republican if we want conservative policy implemented in this country. They’re 50% of the population.
So don’t just go Christian. Start wearing crosses and saying Merry Christmas and shit.
So go to church, wish strangers Merry Christmas, wear a cross to the coffee shop, and make sure it’s visible when you order your 4 dollar coffee from Becky. Bring Christianity back into practice in this country, and all this disgusting intersectional garbage will vanish.
Yes, I’m sure wearing your cross to Starbucks will scare Becky the Barista into voting against her own interests. Brilliant plan there.
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@Naglfar
I heard one line of logic about these guys being coined does start to make a modicum of sense in regards to “Pro-life fetus fetishists” is that: the reason they want to force pregnancies to term is because “how can they brutally oppress those children when they are born”. Because if we have seen anything about Conservatives in general and
pro-lifers” in particular: they have shown constant disdain and belligerent apathy towards life and children.
At the very least, the impression they give off that along such lines certainty make such a notion ring true in practice, and for the truly malevolent of them; maybe in theory as well.
@an impish pepper
They are polluting though, and there are reasonable non-polluting options for most (though not all) asthmatics. Problem is that concentrating on this stuff is a sort of performative green-ness, just like all the publicity around plastic straws. Yes, the oceans are full of plastic, but most of it is lost and abandoned fishing gear and bulk plastic pellets, not straws. Banning straws won’t fix things, but “we must do something, this is something, therefore we must do it”.
@Pie
Yes, and that thing we must do must be achievable but annoying enough for the individual consumer that they will feel constantly guilty and overwhelmed by environmental news, and therefore not notice that any legislation that will actually make an impact isn’t being passed because it would hurt the profits of people who already have too much money.
Besides, if activists start pointing out actual things that are helpful, you can always call them out for using an asthma inhaler or using a straw once.
I read the Guardian a lot, and it’s a good newspaper, but it’s always full of stories of middle class mummies who get up at 3am to prepare their child’s carbon neutral playground snacks. In a few hours her husband will probably happily drive his Porsche to work for a hedgefund that’s investing in palm oil plantations, but he reads the Financial Times and doesn’t give a shit about his wife’s little fancies.
I read on r/badwomensanatomy that Ohio is trying to get a bill passed that would force doctors who remove an ectopic pregnancy to reimplant it in the mothers uterus or face a charge of “abortion Murder” which would carry a life imprisonment. So, that’s awesome /s
I don’t know about the rest of the people here with a uterus, but I wouldn’t limit myself to one partner if abortion was banned. I would limit the sexual activities I am willing to do to things that could not result in a pregnancy. The whole PIV part of sex is not enjoyable enough to risk a pregnancy. But then again, these people tend to have such a limited view of what sex is that they probably couldn’t imagine having a sex life that doesn’t include PIV. And I certainly wouldn’t touch anyone who supports laws restricting my rights to my own body.
About the plastic waste thing: Yes, banning straws is a huge straw man (pun intended). To combat plastic waste, we need strict regulations on the companies that produce most of the plastic waste, but I suppose it’s easier for politicians to target individual consumers than try to regulate huge multinational corporations. Sigh. That said, the whole straw debate is a bit odd over here. It’s a very American thing to drink from straws all the time. Here, straws are usually only for children. You can certainly get a straw if you ask, but the thing where any drink in a restaurant is automatically served with a straw is very American. Servers stopped giving me a straw in restaurants when I was about 11 here, so being handed straws everywhere when I lived in the US was a bit strange.
@Definitely Not Steve
I noticed the same thing. The comment also seems to be implying that there is equivalency between the views, such as that a few bad pro choice people are just as bad as abortion clinic bombers. The two are not equivalent.
We discussed abortion here before in these threads with another commenter.
@Viscaria
That’s the impression I got. To be fair, planning was never the strong suite of these folks. Though I will note that there are plenty of women opposed to abortion and even a significant number opposed to women’s suffrage, as this blog has shown, so he probably won’t have a particularly hard time finding some women who agree. I still don’t think he’ll boost his support much by saying “merry Christmas” though.
@varalys the dark
Isn’t that medically impossible?
Weirdly enough, European Union already agreed to ban straws and some other common plastic disposables. This will be effective sometime in near future, I understand.
More recently, we agreed that in future all plastic caps of plastic drink bottles must be attached to the bottle with some leash-like structure. This is apparently because in China and South Asia billions of people discard their bottle caps immediately wherever they happen to open a water/soda/beer bottle. I don’t know what happens to the bottles themselves – I guess larger trash items are much more likely to be collected into landfills or incinerators or even plastic recycling.
@Lumipuna
That actually sounds kind of useful. I’m always losing bottle caps and then being unable to close bottles, so this would help. Though I will admit that it does mean more plastic would have to be used per bottle, which seems a bit counterproductive.
@Naglfar: I think the bills proponents know it is impossible. I suspect it is a bizarre legal strategy to accelerate Supreme Court review of abortion laws and / or some form of trolling.
If the string or leash or whatever was made of some kind of thick paper, that would be better. It can biodegrade and can potentially be bitten through by any animal caught in it.
@varalys the dark
The reimplantation procedure has of course never been done, and probably hasn’t even been studied before (because why would anyone?) so the law would require surgeons to perform risky medical experiments that are grossly unethical, where consent cannot be freely given and a known safe alternative already exists, that then expose them to malpractice lawsuits by way of a bonus.
@Specialffrog
I wouldn’t make that assumption, given the astonishing (and probably deliberate) ignorance of human reproductive biology by republican lawmakers. I’m sure no-one has forgetten the old “legitimate rape” line.
@Pie: I acknowledge _some_ proponents might still be unaware at this stage but this bill has been in progress — and in the media — for months. I assume it has spent at least some time being discussed in legislative chambers and that opponents would have brought up its impossibility.
So I think it is reasonable to conclude that most proponents simply don’t care.
Re: reimplantation of ectopic pregnancies
I recall a while ago hearing about a prominent GOP member (I forget who) claiming that it was possible to reimplant ectopic pregnancies. No such procedure exists, but it seems fairly likely that other Republicans would think one does.
I guess both plastic straw bans and nonsensical abortion bans are examples of political do something-ism, though the latter are primarily meant to “save” the world indirectly by the chance that they’d trigger a constitutional overhaul.
I believe the plan is as follows:
Step 1: Join churches, wear crosses, and say “Merry Christmas” a lot
Step 3: Profit
@Lumipuna Yes, I do recall reading about that. Perhaps I should say that it’s not the proposed laws I find incomprehensible, but rather the number of able-bodied adults whose immediate reaction to hearing that straws are bad for turtles was to go buy bamboo/metal/silicone/glass straws. Instead of, you know, just drinking without a straw?
I’m not an environmental scientist, but I know that those multi-use things take more energy and resources to produce and ship than a plastic single use product. I’m very curious how many times I would have to reuse a silicone straw before its environmental impact is smaller than that of the same number of single use plastic straws. I imagine it’s more times than most people would use it before washing it becomes annoying and it ends up in a landfill somewhere.
A lot of popular environmentalism is just theatre that distracts from the major economic and social reforms we need to build a sustainable society (in every sense of the word sustainable). I do my bit anyway, with avoiding single use plastics and biking and taking the train over driving and flying, but I’m not deluding myself into thinking its enough to fix the environment. Nothing we can do as individuals is.
I heard about the ectopic pregnancy law. It’s absolutely disgusting that something like that can even be proposed, much less discussed seriously by a legislative body. The procedure does not exist and isn’t even theoretically possible. You can’t just place an embryo somewhere in the uterus and have it implant. If you could, then IVF would be much easier and more likely to succeed.
I’m fortunate enough that my country has fairly liberal abortion laws, but there are at least two political parties that want to lower the upper week limit from 18 weeks to 12. And of course a nurse-midwife who is suing the government in the European human rights court because she wasn’t hired by a clinic when she said she didn’t want to participate in abortions (nurse-midwives can do medical abortions and assist with surgical ones). From what I understand her lawyer is paid for by an American anti-choice organisation and the goal is to chip away at our laws.
30th Anniversary of École Polytechnique, for those of you not in Canada and thus unlikely to remember.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Dave makes a whole post out of it, actually. (I also have one, but advertising me isn’t really the point here).
Bad news, my dude, I’m Christian, frequently wear a cross, and have no intention of abandoning any of my disgusting intersectional garbage.
Is this fucker really not aware of other strands of Christianity than ‘bigoted conservative Evangelical’?
Oh my god, 30 years?? Oh my god.
I was too young when it happened to remember, and coming of age right when Columbine happened means that school shootings were always a part of my world, so this hits me in a different way than it would have hit older people but… it’s just so chilling.
Re: calling out pro choice people – yeah, @Definitely not Steve definitely hit the nail on the head there. Saying that X is bad, but look at Y, that’s bad too! Implies that both sides are equally bad.
Obviously those pro-choicers shouldn’t have said that. The commentariat on this site would never say that, and would call it the hell out. I wouldn’t wish even an unwanted or desperately wanted but unviable pregnancy on pro-lifers, because that can be a tragedy.
In your second comment, the one kupo replied to, you made no distinction about who you were calling out, besides ‘pro-choicers’.
We obviously need to make sure people on our side aren’t being horrific ghouls. But was this the post to bring it up on?
In the States, it’s starting to look terrifyingly likely that there will be a challenge to roe v. Wade that is going to go before the supreme court.
In Canada, Scheer (the leader of the Federal conservatives) said that while abortion law is settled (barring access, we have no legislative restrictions), he won’t stop a back bencher from introducing a bill targetting it. (The cons are the official opposition to our minority Liberal government.)
I can’t speak to other countries, but know for many commenters this is a sensitive, and potentially triggering, life or death topic. People will always respond strongly, in a pro-choice space, to any both-siderism.
@Crip Dyke
30 years. And we’ve still made so little progress on stopping mass shootings.
I agree that the Onion article is inappropriate for today. I can’t tell if it’s deliberately trying to make light of the massacre or if it’s out of ignorance and not knowing the day. Either way it’s a bad thing to do.
@Citerior Motive
Most of the bigoted conservative Evangelicals I’ve met have been of the belief that other branches are not “true Christians.” So he probably knows about them, but doesn’t see them as valid.
@Rhuu
Already in some states (Alabama being the most notable example) it’s pretty much impossible to get an abortion, with the Gileadesque law passed earlier this year banning abortion in almost all cases.
Both-siderism as a whole is a red flag. It ends up equating very dissimilar ideas. I will in no way defend harassment, but there is a major difference between a few isolated instances and pro choice individuals harassing anti abortion individuals and the regular harassment and assault done by anti abortion protesters to women seeking healthcare at Planned Parenthood. Where I live, the clinic had to have a hidden entrance to stop prevent protesters from blocking it. Of course, now the protesters just set up across the street by the CPC and harass any passersby on that side of the street as well.
As well, I don’t recall any instances of pro choice people bombing buildings or shooting anti abortion protesters, but there have been a number of times that anti abortion people have shot at or bombed clinics.
A lot of the ectopic pregnancy push seems to come from one specific crackpot doctor who’s convinced, despite all the evidence, it’s doable.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a chunk of the right-to-life movement embraced it as a fig leaf: either they outright ban aborting ectopic pregnancies or leave doctors too afraid to try it, then mutter about how if the medical community would just get onboard with this procedure everything would have been fine.
Yeah, this is how I know this guy is only referencing White women (and, as has been pointed out, he’s still horribly wrong). Black people tend to be just as Christian, if not more, than White people, and the vast majority of us (especially Black Christian Women) still vote Democrat.
These types pf guys are myopically simplistic.They really can’t see or hear anything outside of the angry wasps that have made nests in their skulls because something tells me that none of this about women having babies, or too many sexual partners. For these guys, it’s all about the terrorizing of women.
@Crip Dyke
You should advertise that article because it was fantastic! I’ve mentioned on this blog before that the Montreal Massacre hits closer to home to me. I’m an engineer from a family of engineers (my uncle was teaching at Concordia in 1989) and while I am a guy, the profession instills a sense of kinship. All Canadian-trained engineers undergo the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer and wear the Iron Ring on our pinkie fingers. We lost twelve sisters of the profession among the fourteen slain. I always remember this sad day as a result.
That’s cuz you’re not listening! It’s going to change women’s minds because a (probably) white, conservative man SAYS IT IS!!!
What other analysis is even NEEDED?!?!?
[meta] There’s a comment by Rhuu I can’t view. Something has glitched. When I reloaded this page to catch up the “recent comments” showed a new one by Rhuu on the capybara thread (which is odd in itself, as that was a long inactive thread). When I right click that and “open in new tab” though there’s no new comment by Rhuu there — and it doesn’t show it in the “recent comments” sidebar in the new tab either.
I tried closing the tab and repeating the right-click-open-in-new-tab a couple of times, and the results were consistent.
So either there’s no comment by Rhuu and this page is lying to me by claiming there is, or there is but I’m somehow blocked from viewing it.
I don’t feel that I should be either being lied to or blocked from viewing nominally-public comments posted to this site, so this is clearly wrong. What is going on?