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The war on reproductive rights continues apace. Republicans are trying to roll back abortion rights with a potential federal ban on the abortion pill mifepristone.
While the religious aspect of the anti-abortion movement is pretty evident, new research uncovers the secret sauce: white supremacy and male supremacy. In an essay in Salon, Lehigh University political science professor Anthony DiMaggio explains his research and its conclusions. Conducting a survey of more than a thousand Americans in association with the Marcon Institute for the study of racial and social justice at Lehigh University, DiMaggio discovered that
more than a third of Trump’s followers embrace white supremacist values, and link them explicitly to their anti-abortion views. … What’s even more disturbing is the finding that an even larger number of Americans are susceptible to “men’s rights” ideology, and that such values are linked to the racialized ways that people look at abortion.
The study, among other things, looked at reactions to the following statements:
- “Sometimes a man may need to use violence if they feel it is necessary to get respect.”
- “In a marriage, women should obey their husbands.”
- “It is unnatural to identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.”
- “It is unnatural to identify as transgender.”
Disturbingly, DiMaggio notes,
Forty-one percent of respondents agreed in the Marcon survey with at least one of the four values, while 28 percent agreed with at least two or more, and 11 percent agreed with three or more. These are not insignificant numbers. These values are also tied to susceptibility to the men’s rights movement’s values and opinions regarding white supremacy and abortion.
Using statistical regression, he found that
Susceptibility to the reactionary heteronormative values that drive the men’s rights movement is a significant predictor of white nationalist-friendly views of abortion.
In short, the study found that support for the Roe v Wade-ending Dobbs ruling on the pro-Trump right isn’t just about the so-called right to life; it’s about controlling women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color. None of this is surprising, but it is good to see this analysis backed by research.
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@ nequam
There’s a tale from the early days of WW2 when a Berlin resident (who later became famous for reasons I can’t remember) initially refused to use the bomb shelters. His reason “There are two million people in Berlin. What are the odds?”
A short time later though he did start using the shelters. When asked why he replied “There are two million people in Berlin, and one elephant. Last night they bombed the elephant.”
(There were actually 9 elephants in Berlin and sadly all but one of them were eventually killed in bombing)
I will also add that if you shuffle a deck of cards, every possible order of cards in the deck is improbable in the extreme, so it means nothing that you got something which seems extremely improbable. Also, since there are 52 cards (54 if you include the jokers), the odds are high that you’re going to see something in the deck which looks like a pattern or very close to one, but that’s only going to be part of the deck and is still random.
The irony is, what looks like true randomness to some people is actually too non-patterned to be truly random (assuming it pops up frequently), as a complete lack of structure is a form of order in itself. True randomness contains spurious patterns, most of the time.
@ snowberry
This is something we call ‘the prosecutors fallacy’; and the example used is the Archbishop of Canterbury being dealt a Royal Flush and whether that must mean he was cheating.
See page 23 here.
https://www.icca.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/RSS-Guide-to-Statistics-and-Probability-for-Advocates.pdf
When you press ‘shuffle’ on an Apple device it initially creates a genuinely random playlist. Then it goes through and moves things around if say two songs by the same artist are next to each other. As you say, people find truly random things unnatural. This is also an issue when designing multiple choice tests.
But if you ask people to spread put randomly they will spread out evenly. They won’t cluster as things do in really random situations. But this is one of the reasons epidemiology is so hard.
Surplus, please chill out. You’re just dealing with some weird and bad shit right now, and I feel bad for you, but we all have to deal with weird and bad shit from time to time. I went to pick up some new glasses yesterday only to find the shop closed due to fire. Highly improbable, but it happened, My computer crashed just as I was first typing out a response to you and I had to type it all out again. Shit happens. There’s no plot.
@ david
If this was a Twilight Zone episode the fire would have been caused by your glasses being exactly the right prescription to focus the sun so it burns up the bit of paper were the optometrist has just written down his cure for shortsightedness.
And then we’d get invaded by aliens.
If every one of several attempts in a row to pick up those glasses runs afoul of a different, and escalatingly improbable, obstacle, such as “once-a-millennium flood” the next time and then “leveled by a meteor impact” the next, do be sure to drop me a line here …
Meanwhile, the rot in the US seems to be accelerating. Tennessee is no longer a democracy (or a republic or whatever), with defacto single party rule and defacto disenfranchisement of Dem neighborhoods in downtown Nashville; Biden has thrown trans athletes under the bus; and more fascist victories or appeasements in Kansas and (of course) Florida.
Well, I am being careful not to get any blood on my phone while typing this, but since that isn’t once in a millennium level of seriousness, I suppose it doesn’t count
Florida postsecondary schools now have political officers, Soviet-style.
Sigh. Texas judge issues “preliminary” nationwide injunction of the prescription of Mifepristone, the emergency abortion drug. Preliminary in the sense that it doesn’t go in effect immediately, to give the higher courts a chance to review it.
The plaintiffs for the case were doctors, on behalf of hypothetical Mifepristone users who were “too traumatized by their abortions” to come forward. I’m not a lawyer, but I know that’s not how standing works. Probably the stupidest argument is that “legal Mifepristone might overload the medical system with emergency patients”. It’s been legal for two decades, nothing remotely like that has ever happened.
Shouldn’t a Texas judge’s authority stop at the borders of Texas?
AOC called it “an unprecedented and dramatic erosion of the legitimacy of the courts”. This is a rare occasion where I must disagree with AOC: that ship sailed when Kavanaugh was confirmed with very little Senate scrutiny and only a bare-minimum going-through-the-motions FBI investigation of his participation in a series of gang rapes during his college years. (That would also have brought the Senate into disrepute, had McConnell not long since done so, and the FBI, had their blatant harassment of MLK Jr. not long since done so.)
Meanwhile, the rich guy bankrolling Clarence Thomas is a collector of Nazi memorabilia, because of course he is. North Dakota Republicans take food out of the mouths of children while giving themselves a raise. And … wait, what? That can’t be correct.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2023/04/06/foxs-own-fact-checking-team-knew-the-claims-of-election-fraud-were-false/
No, it really does say “Fox’s own fact checking team”.
I suppose they operate out of a building located amid the vast, verdant interior forest of Antarctica, commuting by way of jets that take fast great circle routes that go over the planet’s east pole, while getting paid in wads of three-dollar bills on the eighth day of every week, with bonuses handed out to them by upper Fox management each year on Feb. 30.
David, Surplus,
As for Rx’s being difficult, there are some decidedly weird “supply chain” problems. Some of them depend largely on geography – particularly for Australia. Also an Oz issue is the never ending war waged by US and other international firms against our PBS funding scheme.
But there’s always Covid making some things totally strange, serves everyone right for allowing the whole world’s supply of ingredients for a vast range of drugs has been basically blocked. Nobody seems to be joining my barrier just yet. I’m always available to coach a choir in The Red Flag and Union Maid though.
I was utterly amazed when a pharmacist told me they couldn’t supply Thyroxine in the dosage I always take. Thyroxine!!! Cheap as dirt, common as dirt.
Doc tells me he doesn’t write useless Rx for antibiotics which either don’t exist or have been stockpiled by hospitals & specialist clinics. Everyone should btw start arranging, saving up if necessary, for yet another Covid shot. The “ next wave” is marching across the countryside here and sure as eggs is eggs into other countries. We’re at risk here because we didn’t kill off as many old folks (like me) first time round.
And for Surplus?
Maybe you’re not from a military family but there are a few guiding principles to bear in mind. Not just the army, everywhere.
1. If it wears a hat and the boots are shiny, salute it. If it’s standing still, paint it green.
2. Hurry up and wait.
3. SNAFU. Always and everywhere, Situation Normal All Fucked Up
@ oncewasmagnificent
I was a bit surprised to find SNAFU was the Wordle answer the other day!
ETA: and if we’re doing military aphorisms…
“The most dangerous thing in a war zone is an officer with a map.”
“All battles are fought at the intersection of two maps printed to different scales.”
“Tracer works both ways.”
“Never say ‘you and what army’ to a general. They just point out of the window.”