Dispatch #100 White Lesbian Age 70 Considers Ascendency of Misogyny in the 21st Century

December 18th 2022

666 Days Since Inauguration of First Woman Vice-President

429 Days Until the 2024 Presidential Primaries Begin 

Faithful Dispatches Readers! My 100^th Dispatch since I began writing in November 2016 the post-election of, and before the installation of, the White-Supremacist-Misogynist-Pussy-Grabbing-Self-Aggrandizing-Demagogic-Bully-Illegitimate-PeeeOTUS & his Fascistic-White-Nationalist-Christian-Supremacist-Quislings. 

Yes, I wrote in white-hot out-rage and with the fury of the Furies, and I rightly declared Misogyny pivotal to the election result. (Just in case your Greek mythology is fuzzy, the Furies are mythical chthonic female deities of vengeance who curse/destroy those committing crimes against the physical and moral order of things.)  How many times have I wished for -- and written for -- 21stC Furies.  

Six years later, extreme right-wing views such as the Great Replacement, QAnon conspiracies, stolen elections, misogynist Incels, white homeland, and support for the violent overthrow of government are being mainstreamed. While this extremism was already present, the 2016 election pandered to these views and the aftermath cultivated their resurgence.  A Foreign Affairs article authored by Cynthia Miller-Idriss and titled “From 9/11 to 1/6 The War on Terror Supercharged the Far Right” offers an illuminating analysis about the origins and resurgence of 21stC US domestic terrorism.  www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-08-24/war-on-terror-911-jan6 

And as usual, the leading edge of this resurgence is the ramped-up War on Women’s Bodies.  My March 30 2022 Dispatch #93 featured a Foreign Affairs article titled “Revenge of the Patriarchs: Why Autocrats Fear Women.” Authors Chenoweth and Marks provide decades of historical evidence for how the rise of fascism, nationalism and authoritarian governments is preceded and cemented by misogyny, i.e., restrictions on women’s rights. They assert that restricting women’s human rights is the ‘leading edge of anti-democracy.’ www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-02-08/women-rights-revenge-patriarchs  

Yeah, the penultimate accomplishment of those prosecuting the War on Women is that women are distracted from fighting fascism and authoritarianism because they are scrambling to save women’s lives from the latest shredding of women’s human rights. 

“The idea that a fetus is not just a full human but a superior and kinglike one—a being whose survival is so paramount that another person can be legally compelled to accept harm, ruin, or death to insure it—is a recent invention.” Jia Tolentino “Abortion is Sacred” July 2022 The New Yorker www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/is-abortion-sacred    

Tolentino is a powerful erudite writer/thinker/philosopher. In this essay she reflects on her strict Christian upbringing (abortion = murder), the dynamics of her pro-choice evolution, and how her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter affected her.  Tolentino’s subtitle offers a clue: Abortion is often talked about as a grave act. But bringing a new life into the world can feel like the decision that more clearly risks being a moral mistake.

Tolentino situates control of women’s bodies within political/economic/patriarchal institutions of power. E.g., the emergence of capitalism in post-plague 16thC Europe requiring increased production of humans resulted in severe penalties for abortion removing pregnancy from the purview of women and midwifes.  E.g., male doctors in late 19thC America marketed their bona fide profession by forcibly excluding/denigrating midwives and thereby proclaiming their superior medical and moral authority vis-a-vis pregnancy.

In an eloquent reference to Reproductive Justice, Tolentino reflects: “One need not reject the idea that life in the womb exists or that fetal life has meaning in order to favor the right to abortion; one must simply allow that everything, not just abortion, has a moral dimension, and that each pregnancy occurs in such an intricate web of systemic and individual circumstances that only the person who is pregnant could hope to evaluate the situation and make a moral decision among the options at hand.” 

Reproductive Justice is the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. www.sistersong.net 

Check out ‘In Her Shoes’ Podcast : Jia Tolentino on Life After Roe if you want to learn more about Jia Tolentino. www.thecut.com/2022/07/in-her-shoes-podcast-with-jia-tolentino.html