Just In Time For 5782

A couple of weeks ago, I said my initial reaction to the word manscaping had something to do with men abrogating responsibility. I think that is exactly what manscaping means. I like that better than personal grooming. And it really does sound like man-escaping.

And speaking of men escaping responsibility...

This past week, the Texas legislature passed the most draconian, arcane, and downright moronic law that bypasses the Constitution to allow individual miscreants to sue a woman, the driver of her ride to her clinic appointment, the doctors, the nurses, the providers, and anyone else who helps her to LEGALLY terminate a pregnancy. Never mind this has to happen before 6 weeks into the pregnancy when very few women even suspect they are pregnant. 

In case you think I'm making this up, political historian Heather Cox Richardson explains it well:

In May, Governor Abbott signed the strongest anti-abortion law in the country, Senate Bill 8, which went into effect on September 1. It bans abortion after 6 weeks—when many women don’t even know they’re pregnant—thus automatically stopping about 85% of abortions in Texas. There are no exceptions for rape or incest. Opponents of the bill had asked the Supreme Court to stop the law from taking effect. It declined to do so.

The law avoided the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision protecting the right to abortion before fetal viability at about 22 to 24 weeks by leaving the enforcement of the law not up to the state, but rather up to private citizens. This was deliberate. As Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explained in an article in Slate: “Typically, when a state restricts abortion, providers file a lawsuit in federal court against the state officials responsible for enforcing the new law. Here, however, there are no such officials: The law is enforced by individual anti-abortion activists.” With this law, there’s no one to stop from enforcing it.

S.B. 8 puts ordinary people in charge of law enforcement. Anyone—at all—can sue any individual who “aids or abets,” or even intends to abet, an abortion in Texas after six weeks. Women seeking abortion themselves are exempt, but anyone who advises them (including a spouse), gives them a ride, provides counseling, staffs a clinic, and so on, can be sued by any random stranger. If the plaintiff wins, they pocket $10,000 plus court costs, and the clinic that provided the procedure is closed down. If the defendant doesn’t defend themselves, the court must find them guilty. And if the defendant wins, they get…nothing. Not even attorney’s fees.

So, nuisance lawsuits will ruin abortion providers, along with anyone accused of aiding and abetting—or intending to abet—an abortion. And the enforcers will be ordinary citizens.

But I'm not here to talk about the ridiculousness of citizen spies on personal choices for health care; I want to talk about the most obvious oversight in the rush to judge: the impregnators. 

Nowhere in this clearly unconstitutional aberration is so much of a mention of the universal cause of  pregnancy: sperm. Excuse me for being a bit clinical here, but it seems to me that you cannot get pregnant without it. And near as  I can tell, sperm only comes from one place. 

In this new Texas scenario, the sperm is not held accountable at any point in this process. The impregnator has no responsibility here, even if he wants some. Which should tell you about the basis of this abortion of a law. 

According to a number of polling sources, over 60% of Texans believe abortion is a women's health issue and should remain legal. Apparently, the Texas Duma feels otherwise. They clearly don't represent their constituency if the data is correct. They only represent their own penises. 

My cousin Karen Hinton uses the phrase Penis Politics. In an op ed piece in the New York  Daily News, she wrote:

In Cuomo’s world — and he would never admit this even to himself — working for him is like a 1950′s version of marriage. He always, always, always comes first. Everyone and everything else — your actual spouse, your children, your own career goals — is secondary. Your focus 24 hours a day is on him.

If you need more time with your own family, he will treat you like you are cheating on him. If you have your eye on another, better job, he’ll try to make that job disappear. Escaping Cuomo is tough because he has to exercise total control. 

Which makes me think Texas is about Vagina Politics and it has  nothing whatsoever to do with the owner of the vagina. In fact, it has nothing to do with the family of the owner of the vagina. It has to do with some teeny-tiny dick in Austin (which is a pretty liberal part of Texas) telling women what they can or cannot do with their vaginas in order to control their lives. This is a matter of controlling what a woman does not just with her body, but with her time and energy. This is a form of enslavement by a government. 

Obviously, I have a problem with that concept. My vagina, the vaginas of my daughters-in-law and my granddaughter are nobody's business but their own. NO ONE....and I mean NO ONE has the right to tell them what to do with their own vaginas...unless......

UNLESS THEY START PENALIZING PENISES for irresponsible behavior...stuff like incest, rape, domestic abuse, predatory sex acts, anything that ends up with an unwanted pregnancy.  Not really. But if you're gonna insist on legislating sex, it had better be quid pro quo. 

And speaking of irresponsible behavior, this week Texas also passed a no-permit-required conceal-and-carry law. Wow. Can you imagine some self-righteous zealot pulling a gun on an uber-driver taking some miscarrying woman to her doctor's appointment in a quest to collect that $10,000 bounty on pregnancy termination. Oh, wow, indeed!

The way I see it, Texas should just secede from the union and get it over with. Or  we can attempt to boot 'em out for total disregard of the Constitution? Can we do that? But wait! A whole bunch of other states are waiting in the wings to see if the impotent (as in no balls for defending the rule of law at all) Supreme Court just stands there while women are reduced to unprotected chattel while penises run amok. Yup, there are a whole bunch of rubber-stamping dumas waiting to see if they can legalize attacks against women. 

Folks, make no mistake about it: Texas is the bellwether here.  This is a map of the reality of abortion availability:

And if Roe v. Wade falls, this is the expected result:

The right to an abortion as guaranteed by the US Constitution is not just about abortion. The bigger picture is how states can and will limit freedom. Voter rights are currently in the crosshairs for more restrictions. Every day we read some other GOP attempt to overthrow the election. The attempts to stop the investigations into the attempted coup on January 6th should be sending very real shivers up your collective spines. Tip o'the iceberg, people.

If state dumas can erode the Constitution on women's rights, what makes you think they are going to stop? Or do you need to see the "no-working-while-pregnant" rules be reinstated? How about the one that says a husband cannot rape a wife? Or a man can beat his children for disobedience?

Have you figured out how really angry I am yet?

On April 16th, 2012, I wrote:

But it’s becoming increasingly clear that there is a growing political movement that would quash the gains we have made. Candidates Perry, Santorum, and Romney stood behind their podia and made pronouncements that would limit the choices women have. They would penalize us for having that which they don’t have: a uterus. We can grow new life and they cannot. That, dear readers, is not penis envy; it’s uterus envy. And we’re on to them.

Now, who hasn’t heard of LYSISTRATA? This is a little play written about 2500 years ago by a Greek guy named Aristophanes. In the play, the women want the interminable Peloponnesian War to stop. So when other methodologies fail to convince the guys running the war to knock it off, Lysistrata convinces the women to do what comes naturally: cut the menfolk off in the bedroom to force them to negotiate for peace.

If our male politicians want to use our sex against us, I would suggest that we follow Lysistrata’s example. If they want to inhibit access to birth control, we inhibit access to the birth canal.  If they want to limit our choices of what we can do with our bodies, well, I suggest we limit what they can do with theirs.

I am holding to my suggestion that women of Texas take up Lysistrata's mantle and start weaponizing their vaginas the same way these dickless wonders are attempting to weaponize their dicks. 

Or is it really their attempt to bring back the past? Are vaginas such a dreadful threat? 

You betcha.

A wise social studies teacher once told our class that even if man cannot control the weather, he can control the rivers. Once he controls the rivers, he controls accessibility to water for fields, villages, towns, cities, the nation, and ultimately the world. Eventually, however, every dam erodes and crumbles. In the  end, water always wins.

Women are rivers; we do what we need to do when left to our own devices and we do it well. You can harness our energy, or you can attempt to control it by damming us up. But like water, we will eventually wear you down, wash over you, and you will disappear. It's what we do best.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Day

Beginning Monday night, Jews worldwide celebrate the birthday of the world.

A very nice birthday present would be kindness toward the planet.

That will go a long way to ensuring we get to celebrate next year, too.

L'shana  tova u'metukah