Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Buy Your Favorite Uppity Woman a Drink Today, But Don't Be a Sexist About It
Today is International Women's Day, and a few bloggers have declared it Blog Against Sexism Day. It's well-timed, given South Dakota's new law that essentially bans all abortions, period. It's a nasty bit of legislation, primarily because it exalts the fetus at the expense of the mother. That little fact opens a window into the sexist psyche of the anti-choice movement, a window that Amanda Marcotte and her pals at Pandagon have used to produce some brilliant stuff over the last week or so. (Latest example here.) Abortion restrictions, in their view, have a lot to do with men controlling the lives and bodies of women. By restricting abortions, the patriarchy reasserts itself over its women, who've gotten all uppity since the 1960s, and reestablishes the social order As It Should Be. And that's the very opposite of Blog Against Sexism Day.
(Parenthetical thought: Since the anti-choicers keep repeating that "abortion is murder," why is it abortion doctors they want to prosecute, and not women who choose to abort? After all, if you hire a hit man to do away with somebody and he gets caught, you're going to jail, too. Why isn't the woman who hires the abortion doctor just as legally culpable? Digby suggested yesterday that it's time to start asking that question, if only because even hardcore anti-choicers don't have a good answer for it. Digby thinks that by asking the question, we can reveal how untenable the position of the anti-choicers is. If abortion really isn't murder like murder is murder, laws that are founded in treating it as such are ridiculous.)
So anyway: South Dakota's Repug governor, Mike Rounds, who signed the new law last week, tried hiding from it today. "It's not my bill," he said. And if the bill's opponents take it to referendum this fall to keep it from going into effect, Rounds said he wouldn't campaign for it or against it. So if he doesn't support it all too terribly much, how come he signed it? Well, he revealed, inadvertently perhaps, that he--along with his legislature--was just a tool of people who were looking not to protect the fetuses of South Dakota necessarily, but to find a way to get Roe v. Wade overturned. Plus, Rounds is up for reelection this fall, and if he wins, it might make him a viable Senate candidate in a couple of years against Democrat Tim Johnson. So there's political opportunism in the air, too.
Mmmm, smells like leadership.
Plug: Tonight at The Hits Just Keep On Comin': The Day I Lost My Virginity.
Today is International Women's Day, and a few bloggers have declared it Blog Against Sexism Day. It's well-timed, given South Dakota's new law that essentially bans all abortions, period. It's a nasty bit of legislation, primarily because it exalts the fetus at the expense of the mother. That little fact opens a window into the sexist psyche of the anti-choice movement, a window that Amanda Marcotte and her pals at Pandagon have used to produce some brilliant stuff over the last week or so. (Latest example here.) Abortion restrictions, in their view, have a lot to do with men controlling the lives and bodies of women. By restricting abortions, the patriarchy reasserts itself over its women, who've gotten all uppity since the 1960s, and reestablishes the social order As It Should Be. And that's the very opposite of Blog Against Sexism Day.
(Parenthetical thought: Since the anti-choicers keep repeating that "abortion is murder," why is it abortion doctors they want to prosecute, and not women who choose to abort? After all, if you hire a hit man to do away with somebody and he gets caught, you're going to jail, too. Why isn't the woman who hires the abortion doctor just as legally culpable? Digby suggested yesterday that it's time to start asking that question, if only because even hardcore anti-choicers don't have a good answer for it. Digby thinks that by asking the question, we can reveal how untenable the position of the anti-choicers is. If abortion really isn't murder like murder is murder, laws that are founded in treating it as such are ridiculous.)
So anyway: South Dakota's Repug governor, Mike Rounds, who signed the new law last week, tried hiding from it today. "It's not my bill," he said. And if the bill's opponents take it to referendum this fall to keep it from going into effect, Rounds said he wouldn't campaign for it or against it. So if he doesn't support it all too terribly much, how come he signed it? Well, he revealed, inadvertently perhaps, that he--along with his legislature--was just a tool of people who were looking not to protect the fetuses of South Dakota necessarily, but to find a way to get Roe v. Wade overturned. Plus, Rounds is up for reelection this fall, and if he wins, it might make him a viable Senate candidate in a couple of years against Democrat Tim Johnson. So there's political opportunism in the air, too.
Mmmm, smells like leadership.
Plug: Tonight at The Hits Just Keep On Comin': The Day I Lost My Virginity.
