you can’t be serious
mark morford gets it right again:
Here’s a fascinating aspect: Most women are stunned by this news. Most women not living in one of the few remaining prehistoric red states cannot believe their ears, eyes, souls. I’ve told a number of my youngish female friends of this hideous development and they all respond the same way: stunned silence, then “You can’t be serious,” then this ashen “Oh my God” feeling of utter horror, followed by, “Does anyone else know this? Why isn’t this making bigger headlines? Where the hell is Oprah?” Etc.
See, modern women under 40, they simply don’t accept it. They have no conception of a world in which they don’t have complete control over their flesh, their reproductive rights, their sexuality. For most women of this generation, reproductive choice is simply a fundamental, incontrovertible human right, obvious and ironclad and indisputable, and so to hear that it’s being deeply threatened in this back-ass BushCo world is so foreign, so surreal, it induces an immediate cringing recoil, like watching Tom Cruise stick his tongue in Katie Holmes’ face, like watching flies feed, like seeing Dick Cheney naked. It simply does not compute.
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south dakota, abortion rights, abortion ban 
Comment by Victoria
10.03.2006 @ 19:42 pm
Very well said. For my own part, I am feeling increasingly paralyzed to act, precisely because there is such a dizzying array of fronts upon which action is screamingly necessary. I end up writing for hours on this travesty or that one or whatever, wondering if my efforts amount to little more than preaching to some nebulous, barely existent choir.
And in the meantime, I am getting almost nothing else done. Really, in practical terms right now, my life is in open-throttle disaster mode. It’s just that while I’m in this particular hell-bound handbasket, I’m narrating a few random segments from the journey: issues that arise with such overpowering force, blotting out my ability to focus on anything else, until I have written about them. Really, it’s more exorcism that goes on in my writing than “creation” as such.
So, don’t ask me why I find your post inspiring. By all rights, it should only increase my anxiety. (For example, I had no idea about the homophobic protests at soldiers’ funerals. Holy crap.)
But, for whatever reason, I take comfort in knowing it isn’t just me, feeling so excruciatingly overwhelmed. Which in turn, eases the ‘overwhelm’ state, to some extent.
So perhaps I can talk myself out of this hole of despair (while listening to the echoes of sisters and a few brothers who may be equally despairing), and return to some state of empowerment. (If I can remember what that state feels like.)
And perhaps you can derive some comfort, grace, power, etc. – knowing what strength your own words have managed to impart.
Thank you for your words.
Comment by Jen
10.03.2006 @ 21:14 pm
(victoria’s comment moved to post above)