Dylan said I explained this well, so lemme try and recreate it here.
The “American Taliban” reaction to what’s playing out in Texas is weird.
It has racist and xenophobic subtext, implying that oppression and subjugation is an invention of those brown people, over there, being exported from them to us.
And those implications are, in addition to being in isolation fucked up, ahistoric. Remember, Reagan indirectly helped form the Taliban through funding the Mujahideen.
And if anything, the Taliban are Middle Eastern Republicans.
Oppressing women and staging coups is kinda the Republican thing.
To put it less glib and more direct:
conservatism so severe it forces uterus owners to be CISgender, pregnant, and uneducated is literally OUR export.
Leaving explanation and getting into further thoughts: It might seem stupid to fixate on semantics, but I don’t agree.
The white feminist tendency of the last few years to try to melt complex, dangerous situations down to cute little slogans and Handmaid’s Tale references perpetuates all sorts of other ‑isms and uncritical biased thinking, and alienates the people who are victim of that mindset.
It’s also perpetuates misinformation, and perpetuated misinformation specific to this situation, like that fetal heartbeat bills are dismantling roe v wade.
Fetal heartbeat bills have already been declared unconstitutional, but Texas S.B. 8 was written in bad faith to obfuscate legal process, and they did that by making it enforceable exCLUSIVELY by private citizens via lawsuits, with payouts of at least ten grand per proven committed abortion if they win.
It may feel like I’m splitting hairs, but it literally changes what the fight looks like. It’s not against fetal heartbeat bills, it’s against bureaucrats who know the law complexly and will wield that knowledge for evil.
It’s uh … kinda always been that.
It’s the enemy on basically all fronts right now. THAT has been our uniquely American problem for decades, and simplifying this whole thing to “taliban-esque ideology is taking our abortions from us” ERASES IT.
That’s what made clogging the pro-life whistleblower lines and putting pressure on the server hosts so effective, it was fighting bad faith bureaucracy with bad faith bureaucracy.
We need legal minds writing and enacting bills like “you can only sue pro-life protesters and pro-life clinics for damages for every person whose abortion they interfered with if you’re a private citizen,” since that’s, uh, so far cool with The Supreme Court.
And then we need people who help the poorest and most disenfranchised file those lawsuits and navigate that legal system for the $10k+ check at the end.
And we need to figure out how to get on the offensive with the legislation.
I’m spitballing here, I don’t claim to have The Solutions but first down is already in play.
And I just do know that none of this has anything to do with Middle East politics.
—melony ppenosyne
Flommist Melony Ppenosyne is a writer and weird artist type. In the last year alone, she’s traveled to Virginia as a competing poet, co-written a play on mental illness that is presently being produced, and crafted a published essay checking the privilege and scope of art galleries. Copyright © 2021 Melony Ppenosyne. Top foto source.
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