Dispatch #97 White Lesbian Age 70 Considers Post-Roe Normalization

December 10th 2022 

658 Days Since Inauguration of First Woman Vice-President

437 Days Until the 2024 Presidential Primaries Begin 

Women of color, young people, and community activists led the hard work that dried up the “Red Tsunami” predicted for the 2022 Midterms. Defying both powerful historical precedents and our current toxically polarized political landscape, Democrats, particularly Democratic women kept their seats and gained new ones at the federal, state and local levels. Outrage about the “fall-of-Roe” Dobbs decision, powered this work.  

Yeah, black women led once again to save the Democrats’ butts.  

Almost immediately post-elections, Congress rushed to pass legislation citing the potential for a future Supreme Court decision that might restrict the right/ability of same gender couple to get a marriage license all the while trumpeting self-serving congratulations. (If you think this bill amounted to anything other than confirming religious rights trump LGBT rights, then read Jonathan Capehart’s Opinion “Gee, thanks for this tiny step to protect my same-sex marriage” www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/29/respect-marriage-act-protections-insufficient/; and “The Respect for Marriage Act Is Also a Victory for Same-Sex-Marriage Opponents” www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-respect-for-marriage-act-is-also-a-victory-for-same-sex-marriage-opponents

But wait, what about an actual Supreme Court decision that just degraded women’s human rights!?  The Women’s Health Protection Act sits moldering in the Senate – and puleeze don’t tell me that nothing can done.  Something always can be done. If Democrats were really committed to women’s full humanity, then efforts to enact federal legislation stating that women’s right to reproductive healthcare cannot be abridged would be a constant priority. 

The Respect for Religion-Oops-Marriage Act tosses a bone to LGBT communities and lets the Senate claim a fig-leaf for their disregard for women’s human rights. Yeah, same sex marriage involves no challenge to structural patriarchy/misogyny; progressive LGBT activists, usually lesbians, have always questioned prioritizing this most patriarchal institution.  But, dangerous indeed to the patriarchy would be codifying women’s human rights, reproductive justice foremost among the rights gaining legal protection. 

On December 10^th 74 years ago, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that outlined basic guarantees for all human beings. Bodily autonomy -- the capacity to make decisions about one’s body, personal life and future – undergirds these guarantees and demands gender equality and universal access to reproductive health and rights for girls and women.

And yet, two decades into the 21^st Century, America’s white supremacist patriarchy, increasingly driven by white Christian nationalism, succeeds in sanctifying women’s status as less than fully human within the institutionalized gender binary hierarchy – the hierarchy of oppression where women are seen as vessels for childbearing. 

I recommend Jessica Valenti’s daily substack column Abortion, Every Day launched in response to Dobbs. Quoting (with edits for brevity) from the 12.9.22 edition: 

When Roe was set to be overturned, a friend used a word to describe her feelings that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: Humiliating. 

It’s humiliating to have to try to convince people of your humanity, to watch as your personhood is debated on the evening news as if it’s simply a political issue and not your actual, literal body... 

Now that we’re nearly six months into a post-Roe America, that feeling has only gotten worse. In part because of the constant stream of horror stories—but also because we’re somehow still debating. 

And we shouldn’t be. We already know that America is a pro-choice nation—despite the mainstream media narrative that paints abortion as a polarizing issue, restrictions and bans are being enacted against the wishes of most voters. So why talk about abortion rights as something people need to be convinced of? 

Why play into the idea that there is anything up for debate other than the notion that a powerful minority of politicians shouldn’t get to steamroll over what their constituents really want?

Because every time we engage in a conversation about the morality of abortion, we are accepting a premise that says our humanity is up for debate.

That’s why conservatives want to waste our time by constantly putting us on the defensive—they know that the more we’re reacting to their lies and extremist rhetoric, the less we’re having real, in-depth conversations about abortion. 

There’s no need to lower ourselves, or to feed into the humiliation that comes along with living in a country that sees you as fundamentally less than. 

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This picture in the Guardian brought me to tears – the courage of Iranian women in chadors marching publicly to support the ongoing protests in Iran. Despite the brutally violent reaction by Iranian authorities, the protests led by women with the chant “Women Life Freedom” continue.  www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/dec/08/iranian-forces-shooting-at-faces-and-genitals-of-female-protesters-medics-say  Do read this interview with Historian Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet to gain perspective on women’s activism in Iran. https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/iran-protests-explained