By Helle Bent
“Abortion and access to abortion affects other people, too. Not just people with uteruses.”
“Why is there no straight pride?”
“Blue lives matter too, you know. Not all cops are bad.”
“Why don’t we get a white history month?”
#notallmen (eyeroll)
These are reactionary statements meant to dismiss and re-center the conversation around individual agendas, through either intentional manipulation or oblivious self-absorption.
A lot of people are mad. Rightfully so. Nearly everyone in every community is affected by this decision and what it means for the future.
But if someone’s rage stems from a shift in the conversational orbit, or from a fear of being potentially inconvenienced because “what if MY girlfriend / sister / daughter gets pregnant, now it affects ME!” instead of the fact that we, HUMANS, are being hunted without consequence, and democracy, decency, and our personal sovereignty are disintegrating, then I reject their rage and do not want their commiseration.
“Wow, that bullet could have hit the brand new tires on my car, and my daughter girlfriend neighbor wife mother would have had to take THE BUS!”
This is not a compassionate thing to say to the person who has just been shot. Their desperate need to be validated as an ally does not mandate my sympathy.
Yes, the collateral damage is massive, this hits everyone, but not everyone finds themselves with the actual target on their backs. There are no words to describe the terror brought on by that second fucking line on that pregnancy test.
Not everyone will be forced to carry a fetus to term, viable or not.
Not everyone risks being jailed for a miscarriage. JAILED. FOR. A. MISCARRIAGE.
Not everyone fears physical retaliation by their partner because their partner doesn’t want a child.
Not everyone risks their life for a high-risk-pregnancy, something my friend called “disability eugenics” which hadn’t even occurred to me. They are right.
Some folks have the choice to find themselves slightly less “inconvenienced” by this whole forced-birth mandatory-parenthood thing.
People of color and the Indigenous community. Queer, trans, and nonbinary folks. Women. All have been screaming this at society for years through what seems like soundproof glass.
Directly unaffected people, myself included, have historically not had to pay close attention, or chose not to, for whatever reason. It didn’t look like it was in my backyard. I thought the fight was a foreign one that didn’t involve me. But these days, with the world so small and visible, there is no excuse.
We are being hunted for sport and this shit, right next to a lot of not-guilty verdicts over the past few years, was the highest, loudest government sanctioned shot-in-the-air notice that a no holds barred hunting season has begun and it’s sick, it’s PAINFUL, to see the relief they feel from not having to pretend anymore that there were rules.
I feel like the flaming bullseye in their target practice, running for cover while they laugh with their rifles and dumb safari hats and cheers each other with their crystal champagne flutes.
We are being collected, captured, and imprisoned for either their sexual consumption, their perverse religious subjugation, the interminable propagation of their seed, or maybe just for when they have an owie and need us to glue their fragile masculinity back together because a mean, nasty woman said something horribly threatening to them like “I have an opinion” or “…no thank you…” and the sense of entitlement they wear ripped open, incredible hulk style.
I am so, so insincerely sorry that Broflakes can’t enjoy their ballgames and beer as much, what, with all this rage-whining and overreacting going on. Someone can relate because he has a daughter? Great. If other folks mean nothing until it’s a one degree of separation sort of thing, then please be quiet and listen rather than prepare your defense before we’re even done speaking. There are actual traumatized humans who have valid things to say.
If someone has taken offense to or issue with any of these statements, please know and understand that there is probably a reason for that, and I am not sorry and I do not care.
To my dear Rebels in Uteri – Sigh. I know … I know. Choose your battles. Save your energy. Don’t give them even more control over your life and your health than they are already trying to take.
