The Rage II

I am full of anger. I am full of despair. Fear. Hopelessness. Frustration and a sort of…. powerlessness. Like my hands are tied behind my back and I’m just screaming but no one can hear me.

Obviously this has been a really shitty week in a really shitty several years in America. I am desperately trying not to be cynical so pardon me if some cynicism slips out – I am still processing all of it. I am angry that the minority rules the majority and that 6 people (out of 9), 5 of whom were put in their positions of power on the Supreme Court by presidents who lost the popular vote, were able to undo protections that – let’s be real- were barely hanging on by a thread anyway. I am so angry that this happened, I am even angrier that we knew this was going to happen. They told us they were going to do this. We knew. And what really makes me so angry is all of the people who are JUST NOW joining the conversation. I am trying to have grace and understanding for people. But in half of the country, abortion rights were already a joke, already incredibly undermined by lawmakers who made sure that clinics that performed abortion procedures were underfunded until they were shuttered and whatever clinics still managed to be open and practically impossible to get to were put under so many outlandish and unnecessary regulations that it made it impossible for them to operate. I am SO ANGRY that when it disproportionately affected the poor and people of color in these states for years, it didn’t fucking matter but now that the protection is officially dismantled for the entire country, now that it affects you, you care? The thing that frustrates me so much about this country, and maybe it’s not just America, maybe it’s human nature, is that so many of us don’t give a shit until it affects us. We don’t care about our neighbors’ struggles. We have no empathy for other people. This can’t be true, can it? There are more good people than I think there are, right?

The really incredibly frustrating thing is that it feels like I’m screaming into a void. This is a “woman’s” issue so men will not hear about it, they won’t care about it, they won’t talk to their friends about it. I am begging men to PLEASE talk to your friends. Talk to the women in your lives about things that might be uncomfortable for you or you might not understand, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE talk to the men in your lives about these things. I woke up yesterday sad and angry, and hopeless, and the first thing I thought of was that moment way back in 2016 when Hilary Clinton and He Who Shall Not Be Named (hint: he is very orange) had their big televised presidential debate. That moment where he loomed behind her while she spoke, turned away from him, he was angry, big and puffed up, too close for comfort, trying to intimidate her in the way that predators do when they are trying to make a person feel small. So many of us watching had a collective moment of fear and worry, a visceral anxiety that swelled inside of us. I can’t think of that moment without wanting to cry. And then I think of that moment where future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh sat at his nomination hearing, angrily spittling and crying his angry white male tears because a woman he terrorized in his younger days chose to put herself in the spotlight (and in real danger of harm) and tell us exactly who he is…. he showed us exactly who he is then, he showed us many times since then, and he showed us this week. I thought of every time I saw Joe Biden touch a female colleague’s shoulders or kiss her inappropriately and that awkward uncomfortable nauseous feeling I get in my stomach. I am not surprised by this week. Not at all. Not when we let monsters, abusers, assaulters and those complicit in their behavior run the country and decide the laws.

I mean, I voted. (Eye roll)

Then there is the anger I have for elected officials. It’s not even about “us versus them.” You can blame Republicans all you want, they are unified and have perfected their propaganda machine. They do not fight fair and they are winning. Their white supremacist agenda has been clear to see for decades. And they are winning. The Democratic party is just as much to blame. They uphold systems of white supremacy while being a completely disorganized mess and when shit like this happens, they tell us to fucking vote. Literally. President Joe Biden just said it this morning about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Nancy Pelosi as well. They tell us to fucking vote. We voted, we voted for YOU. Voting is not enough. Get your fucking shit together and do your fucking jobs and stop passing the buck. You are all complicit in this. I am so tired. We are so tired. I am so sick and tired of these old career politicians who have been doing it for too long that they are so fucking out of touch. Term limits. Term limits on everyone. A pox on all your houses! J/k.

It’s hard for me to feel like things aren’t hopeless. And don’t get me wrong, I will support others however I can and I will fight like hell, but I have to be honest. We surpassed over a million dead from COVID recently and this just feels like that. We didn’t care and didn’t do enough and allowed a million + people to die, isn’t it folly to think that we will care about all the people with uteruses who will die because a zygote has more bodily autonomy than they do?

Side bar: I am not entertaining anyone who dares to tell a person with a uterus that they “should just not have sex then” or whatever nonsense. First, what a person does in private is none of your fucking business. IT IS ESPECIALLY NOT THE GOVERNMENT’S BUSINESS. Also, why are some people (those with uteruses) demonized for having sex while those without uteruses are not? The thing is, the person with the uterus is 100% responsible for the pregnancy/fetus/baby. The sperm donor is not. The sperm donor gets to fucking walk away without repercussions and responsibilities and sure, you can get a paternity test and have Maury Povich tell a guy that he is in fact “the Father” but unless you can afford a lawyer and a paternity test and whatever else it takes, that person doesn’t have to be responsible if they don’t want to. The burden falls to the person with the womb. Not a single person should be demonized for having consensual sex and not a single person should be FORCED to carry a baby they don’t want/can’t have.

By the way, abortion bans are not about saving lives. “Pro-life” is a misnomer. It’s about control. It’s about controlling the population. If these people actually cared about lives, they would protect our right to choose whether or not to have children. They would care about the unhoused population. No, they want us to birth babies into poverty without access to good education, an easy work-force to control and exploit, and more soldiers for future wars. And they do not care about the body count – those who die in childbirth, those who die homeless, those who are murdered by police, those who die in detention centers at the border. They do not care. As long as their pockets keep getting filled off of our blood, sweat, and tears, they do not care about us. And they never did. It’s the dragon sickness. (Hobbit reference y’all!)

And then there’s the fear. I think if anything, this week has proved to a lot of people that absolutely nothing is guaranteed. Our rights are not guaranteed. Democracy is not guaranteed and honestly, the very little that is left of it is very much in danger. We have to fight for it and right now, for the last few years, I feel like we’ve just been watching it slowly slip through our fingers like sand. As American citizens our rights to privacy have been eroded so much over the last several years. The NSA has been surveilling us for decades, corporations created algorithms that track our every move and sell our data to other companies so that they can do the same, and now the minority rule is chipping away at our right to make decisions about our very lives. They have been chipping away at our right to bodily autonomy and just took a major step. If you aren’t worried about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and 50 years of precedent, you should be. Your freedom is not guaranteed. Your constitutional right to life, liberty and justice has been eroded so badly without you even realizing it.

So when you celebrate American independence in a week, I want you to really think about what you’re celebrating. Freedom is a lie, unless you are a cis white man in America (and even then, it’s still a fallacy).

Be kind to yourselves, hug your friends, support your sisters, and make a ton of fucking noise.

Too soon?