12 responses to ““It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies.””

1. 

   granville

   10/04/2024

   David Graeber has become one of my intellectual heroes. I only discovered him after he died a couple of years ago and have read nearly everything he's written (well, books, online is a different story).

   If you haven't, I think the author of Pathetic Life would find something interesting in "Bullshit Jobs." Your meme captures quite a lot of the thread that underlies his writing: we made society this way, so we could make it another way. His final book, The Dawn of Everything, points out exactly several of those "alternative paths" society could have taken and could still take, starting out be demolishing basically everything we learn in high school level history classes.

   They're very readable and extremely thought-provoking. Dunno if you know where to find books as easy as you find movies but I could share a few. He's dead, nobody's getting paid from them anymore anyway.

   Reply
   1. 

      Doug Holland

      10/04/2024

      Don't know much about David Graeber, but what little I know is intriguing. I can't read books on a screen, gotta be on paper. I've placed a library hold for Bullshit Jobs, and I'm pleasantly surprised that the title is even allowed. Wouldn't mainstream media clutch pearls? The title couldn't even be mentioned in my hometown paper.

      Reply
   2. 

      granville

      10/04/2024

      Haha, true! That's something I've been thinking about. YouTube will apparently de-monetize any video that contains certain words — fuck, shit, and other curses, but also "assassination," "abortion," "knife," etc. Try having any kind of political discussion in the last several months without those words. As a result they bleep or avoid saying the word altogether. Which is not a coarsening of the public debate, quite the opposite.

      They could obviously just say the words and lose money and get dropped by the algorithm, but few seem willing to try it even once.

      Reply
   3. 

      Doug Holland

      10/04/2024

      I find almost everything about YouTube either icky or awful, but I hadn't known that. Lemme get this straight: Someone's monetized their work, maybe reviewing cookware or discussing health matters, and YouTube will let them publish but won't let them monetize, if they mention knives or abortion. Someone talking politics merely mentions the act and crime of assassination, and their income is reduced to zero?

      Sweet jeebers, I'm suddenly extra-double-glad I've never tried 'monetizing'.

      But I'm distantly acquainted with the algorithms. Like YouTube, this site is built on Google-owned software, and if I make a joke about blowjobs, a post here jumps behind a scary age-verification wall. Which seriously slashes readership. Even as someone who doesn't give a dang about such numbers, it makes me pause and ask myself whether the joke is worth the goody-two-shoes wall that comes with it.

      Reply
2. 

   Anonymous

   10/04/2024

   I hate when people bring up rape when talking about abortion. If abortion is murder then a previous rape would not justify it. If its not, you don't need a justification.

   I get why people bring up rape in that context but I think it leads to people subconciously thinking about whether an abortion is justified, while that's just not relevant.

   Reply
   1. 

      Anonymous

      10/04/2024

      Still the OP:

      For people who support abortions it shifts the conversation towards "in what cases is an abortion justified," while it won't sway people who think about it as murder.

      Reply
   2. 

      Doug Holland

      10/04/2024

      It's about the joy of judging others. Their thinking is, if a woman's had sex she's obligated herself to raising a child for the next 18 years. It's her punishment. The more 'reasonable' among these judgmental monsters are willing to make an 'exception' for rape, but you're absolutely right, it's all part of their absurd judgmental-and-punishment mindset.

      Reply
   3. 

      Anonymous

      10/04/2024

      Yeah, my point is that a lot of pro-choice people do it too though, the reason I brought it up is the image with the Texas case you posted (I assume it's just a theoretical?).

      "A woman gets the death sentence for an abortion (after she got raped)" sounds worse with the part in the brackets added obviously, but I don't like how that sentence implies that her punishment would somehow be more justified if she hadn't got raped.

      Maybe I'm overthinking it.

      I'm just glad I don't live in America.

      Reply
   4. 

      Doug Holland

      10/05/2024

      Nah, you're not overthinking it. You're just-right thinking it. 🙂 It's a meme is all, and I'm not the guy who created it, but it plays with the Republican anti-woman perspective.

      America's right-wing bad guys dominate the media, and control the terms of dialogue on any political issue. What they say sets the terms, and the opposition can only argue against those terms (if they even bother arguing).

      "Pro-life" is an asinine and obviously false term, but it's standard, unquestioned. That's where the debate *starts*. Even lefties and women's and abortion rights believers play by those rules. The discussion can never start with, women have bodies and rights. First we have to dispel the right-wing turd that, "If women didn't want babies, why would they fuck?"

      Reply
3. 

   johnthebasket

   10/05/2024

   Literally EVERY person I know who is pro-choice uses the terms "pro-choice" and "anti-abortion". That's a few dozen people in a middle-sized American city, but I think that nomenclature is not unusual.

   John

   Reply
4. 

   Anonymous

   10/05/2024

   In Germany we don't have any terms for it, because no one here argues against abortions. 🙂

   Reply
   1. 

      Doug Holland

      10/06/2024

      I've definitely heard "pro-life" from the lips of a friend who who's very pro-choice. In *lots* of lingo, people adopt the rat-bastards' vocabulary, because the media parrots it, frames things the way the rat-bastards like. Me, I don't even like the term "pro-choice." I'm pro-abortion.

      Reply

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