And the Hits Just Keep on Coming

Reproductive rights are non-negotiable. Reproductive rights are non-negotiable. REPRODUCTIVE. RIGHTS. ARE. NON. NEGOTIABLE.

What's that? Oh no, I'm not talking to the Republican Party. I'm not even talking to the Txxxp administration. Believe it or not, I'm actually talking to the Democratic Party leadership.

Just yesterday, the Democratic campaign chief, Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) indicated that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) will continue to fund Democratic candidates who oppose abortions, stating that "There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates....As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America.” In other words, they seem to think that licking the boots of the Republicans and the alt-right will help them win back the House in 2018.

I'm here to say that, if they think making reproductive rights a negotiable bargaining chip will help them gain more votes, they are delusional. They will lose more votes from women, LGBTQ people, etc. than they will gain from old, white, male Republicans, as we do not take kindly to having our rights reclassified as being non-essential when they become inconvenient to the Democrats' success rate.

It is not a coincidence that the all-male Democratic leadership does not consider reproductive rights to be essential--not just to the party platform, but to women! Apparently we can just drop the issue for the moment and we can pick it up again when the time is right, sweetie. If you need any proof that the current Democratic leadership doesn't give a fuck about women, think about this: anti-abortion politicians, whether Republican or Democrat, will vote for anti-abortion legislation. The Democratic Party leadership is not stupid--they know this. However, even with that knowledge in mind, instead of doubling down on reproductive rights and continuing to press it as a non-negotiable issue after the presidential election, they have instead decided that our right to bodily autonomy, our right to decide if and when we have children, is worth sacrificing for votes.

The Democratic party, as it stands right now, does not give a fuck about women. It does not give a fuck about LGBTQ people. It does not give a fuck about anyone who needs reproductive healthcare services, abortion or not. It does not give a fuck if they vote in anti-abortion politicians who will continue to strip us of our reproductive rights until they disappear, as long as they get the votes they want. We really need to think about what will happen if there comes a future when candidates from both major political parties, the parties that tend to win elections, are anti-abortion.

Do you want the Handmaid's Tale? Because this is how you get the Handmaid's Tale. And it's clear that, with men in charge, we can't have basic human rights in ANY party.

Call to Action: Day 4 of the Resistance

The Women's March, which had representation in all seven continents, took place on Saturday, January 21st, to the tune of 3.67 million marchers on the low end and 4.6 million on the high end of estimations. More than one out of every 100 Americans took to the streets to voice their outrage at this incoming administration and voice their determination to fight and resist at every turn. Many people, Drumpf included, voiced their confusion about the necessity of this march. They argued that women already have all the rights and privileges that they could possibly need. What was the point of this march, really?

A bill was recently introduced to the House of Representatives on Tuesday, January 17th. A full four days prior to the march, and yet nobody knew about its existence until yesterday and today. Even now, most people you inform of the existence of this bill are surprised to know that it's there. This bill, titled H.R.586, posits that "human life shall be deemed to begin with fertilization." This is why women marched. This is EXACTLY why. Because from the moment Drumpf set foot into the Oval Office, we knew that he and his administration would start decimating reproductive rights as we know them. This bill sets a dangerous precedent for our country, on a number of levels, and needs to be voted down.

If this bill passes into law, it will make abortion access, and very likely contraception, a thing of the past. With life defined as beginning at fertilization, abortion will be criminalized and defined as murder (even though, interestingly enough, when you ask pro-lifers what the punishment should be for women who have abortions, they usually cannot, or will not, give an answer). The "pro-lifers" who believe that contraception terminates pregnancies, some of whom are our political representatives, will look to deny women access to birth control using the language of H.R. 586 as their justification--seeing as "alternative facts" are perfectly acceptable now, the legitimate fact that contraception does not actually terminate pregnancies will not matter. Women's bodily autonomy will be a distant memory, and all the bloodshed from pre-Roe v. Wade will return to our doorsteps, back alleys, and hospital ERs in very short order. This bill will also set a dangerous precedent for women who have wanted pregnancies and are facing a miscarriage, fetal anomaly, or other medical issue that requires an abortion (early or late term). What's to stop Congress from forcing women to carry non-viable pregnancies to term, even if it kills them? What's to stop Congress from criminalizing miscarriages and imprisoning women for something along the lines of "suspected abortion?" What's to stop Congress from ultimately using The Handmaid's Tale as an instruction manual rather than a cautionary tale? 

The reality is that bills like these, laws like these, do not "save babies." They kill women. Women like Savita Halappanavar, who died after being refused a life-saving abortion during a miscarriage. Women like all those who died prior to the Roe v. Wade decision--approximately 5,000 women ANNUALLY in the United States--bleeding to death in back-alley abortion clinics and dying of sepsis in hospital emergency rooms from DIY abortions gone wrong. Women who poisoned themselves with whatever they had in their medicine and/or kitchen cabinets rather than go through with an unwanted pregnancy. As I wrote in a previous post, women will have abortions, bills and laws notwithstanding, whether they are safe or not. Whether they are done by a professional or a back-alley "doctor" or the woman herself. These politicians know this. They know. They know that women who do not want to be pregnant will do whatever they have to do in order to no longer be pregnant. They know that women who do not have access to safe, legal abortions generally end up injured or dead. 

But, as I also mentioned in that same previous post, it was never about protecting women's health. Our political representatives who claim to be "pro-life" are fully prepared to ignore (or even condone) the fully preventable deaths of actual living, breathing women, fully prepared to step over the corpses of women in the streets, in order to prove how "pro-life" they are. The fact of the matter is, we have laws in this country that state that we cannot be forced to donate organs, blood, or any other living tissue to another human being, EVEN AFTER WE ARE DEAD, unless our express consent has been given. And yet, somehow, it's perfectly acceptable to force women to give up their bodily autonomy for approximately 40 weeks--from the moment she becomes pregnant, her body is no longer hers. She becomes a mere vessel for the fetus. In many states where abortion access is practically nonexistent, pregnant women literally have fewer rights than corpses do. To say that this is unacceptable is the understatement of the century.

For those of you who have read up to this point, for those of you who are beyond angry, I'm issuing a call to action and I want you to do three things:

1. Contact your House representative and tell them to vote NO on H.R. 586
2. Contact your Senators and tell them to vote NO on H.R. 586
3. Read this short story titled "ILU-486". Bookmark it. Read it every day that you feel like you can't fight anymore, because this could very well be our reality if we don't fight back NOW.

Why Nice Guys aren't actually nice

[TW for denial of autonomy and entitlement]

There's a phrase floating around in the ether that goes: "nice guys finish last." It might be true, it might not be true, I don't know. The validity of the statement isn't what I'm talking about here. I'm here to distinguish between Nice Guys and nice guys, and believe me, there is a huge difference. Everyone, I think, has that one friend that complains about how they're always so nice to women and yet they get nothing in return for it. Despite their best efforts, their best girl friend always winds up with the jerks, and they get nothing. Despite everything nice that they've done for that hot girl at school, they simply cannot "get it in." They feel that they deserve some sort of recompense for their good behavior. Most of these guys will probably receive an abundance of sympathy, mostly from other Nice Guys; I mean, they HAVE been nice, after all, don't they deserve a little something in return, whether it's sex or a relationship or what have you?

No. No they do not.

Why is that, you ask? First of all, no woman is obligated to give of herself, whether it's physically or emotionally, on demand. Let's get that clear right now. It's fantastic when men want to do nice things for us, and we are very appreciative, but we are not obligated to have sex with you or enter into a relationship with you because of that. Therein lies the difference between Nice Guys and nice guys: truly nice guys do nice things for women because they genuinely want to be nice. Nice Guys do nice things for women because they expect to get something out of it; they consider the woman as obligated to reciprocate, either with her body or her heart, and they, because of their actions, feel entitled to her. They don't care about what the woman wants, and they do not respect her freedom to decide, nor do they respect her feelings; the only thing that concerns them is their own desires.

You can tell which is which by the reactions they have to rejection. Truly nice guys, when faced with rejection, will be disappointed, of course, but they will respect the woman's decision and eventually move on to someone else who reciprocates their feelings. Nice Guys, on the other hand, will often spiral into self-deprecation so badly that even Robert Smith would look at them askance. However, it is not the self-deprecation that makes them Nice Guys: it's who they blame after being rejected. You've probably heard it before: "I've been so nice to you and you've done nothing in return for me. All women are bitches. You all say you want a nice guy but you're lying: you all just want douchebags. Well, guess what? Now I'M gonna be a douchebag, and I'm gonna bag all the women I want! And it's all YOUR fault! Bitch."

Yeah.

There's a million and one things wrong with this reaction. First of all, holy entitlement Batman. Like I said before, the act of being nice does not automatically entitle someone to sexual favors or romantic involvement as a result. The woman is not obligated to fulfill those demands. And they are indeed demands, no matter how you slice it. Also, the statement "all women are bitches" isn't going to get anyone any brownie points; mass generalizations generally do not help one's case. Neither does telling all women that they're lying when they say they want a nice guy, and by proxy telling that one woman that she's lying to them. It's not that she doesn't want a nice guy; she doesn't want you. Which, yeah, sucks completely, but if that's how you're going to react I don't fucking blame her; she certainly doesn't want a Nice Guy complaining that she's not fulfilling an obligation that she never agreed to in the first place.

And as for the "I'm gonna be a douchebag to get women" part, not to burst your pretty little Nice Guy bubble, but you're already a douchebag. No drastic change in personality is necessary. If you really want a woman to have sex with you or get involved romantically with you, try respecting her autonomy and giving her the space to make her own decisions about her life without freaking out when they don't include you.