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nabilSo, I was pissed off at the description I heard of Obama's recent speech that we all just need to hold hands and sign Kumbaya with the anti-choicers. And pretty shortly after that speech Dr Tiller was murdered by Christian terrorists, and I'm even more pissed off. Obama, you are being pretty deeply offensive right now to say that pro choicers have common ground with pro lifers.
1. We don't assassinate people in church. Seriously, I have never heard of a pro choice person murdering a pro life person, not in church like Dr Tiller, or in a synagogue like the last doctor murdered by pro life terrorists, or anywhere else for that matter.
2. We don't claim to want to reduce abortions, while opposing contraception and sex ed. There is no national group of pro lifers that supports contraception and comprehensive sex ed. There are individual pro lifers who support contraception and comprehensive sex ed; rock on, I have no beef with you. But the national groups all oppose contraception and comprehensive sex ed-- this means that they don't actually want to reduce abortions, they just want to make sure that women suffer for having sex. They'll lie about it though.
For more information, check out Amanda Marcotte's recent piece on a training program for pro lifers on how to talk to college students-- they're advised to pretend that they support contraception, and pretend that they care about the lives of women, in order to soften up the target to be receptive to the ultimate message: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/06/02/the-prolife-movements-hot-rhetoric-and-allout-lies
3. We don't make death threats to pro lifers, gather outside their churches and wave signs and scream that they are murderers, epoxy the locks of their churches shut, or otherwise harass them. We don't try to force them to have abortions. Many of us feel icky about abortion, too-- but we fight for the right of women to choose what they want to do with their bodies.
It's offensive bullshit, btw, to call the routine behavior of anti choice organizations non-violent. I have a friend who did nonviolent protest of a gay-hating church in Virginia; he talked to me about the discussions in his group on how to avoid looking at the folks they were protesting in a way that would hurt their feelings, he and his friends wanted to avoid "violence of the eyes." For more information on the violence that doctors and nurses are exposed to every day, check http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/06/02/susan_hill/index.html and http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/06/01/george_tiller/
4. Obama, I hear that you brought up an example of two people who disagree, but work together to solve a real problem. And that you gave the example of a gay activist and an anti-gay Christian who work together to reduce HIV. What a lovely little fairy tale! How unfortunate that you chose an example that has never happened. How interesting that you were not able to give a real-life example of a gay activist and an anti-gay activist working together to do good-- a real-life example of two people who have names, who actually exist in reality-- BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ONE.
I would love to live in the fantasy world where pro choice and pro life people are both ethical, loving, compassionate people working together to cause positive change. That's not where I live though. I live in a world where ethical, loving, compassionate pro choice people have spent thirty years trying to compromise with lying, murdering terrorist who pay lip service to compassion and justice, but undercut it in every way. How fortunate Obama is that he hasn't worked in reproductive justice long enough to learn that the national pro life movement doesn't argue in good faith-- that it pretends to be about reducing abortions, while actually campaigning to eliminiate contraception and enforce abstinence only sex-ed. How deeply offensive that Obama isn't listening to, or acknowledging the work of, the people who have been working in reproductive justice for thirty years, and have learned that you can't compromise with pro-choicers. In the immortal words on Molly Ivins, Obama, time to dance with who brung ya. Quit disrespecting the people who voted for you in order to placate the lying murderers who didn't.
I may have common ground with individuals who aren't comfortable with abortion, but are reasonable human beings. I have no common ground with the lying, murdering terrorists who run the pro life movement in the US.
xoxo
Nabil
1. We don't assassinate people in church. Seriously, I have never heard of a pro choice person murdering a pro life person, not in church like Dr Tiller, or in a synagogue like the last doctor murdered by pro life terrorists, or anywhere else for that matter.
2. We don't claim to want to reduce abortions, while opposing contraception and sex ed. There is no national group of pro lifers that supports contraception and comprehensive sex ed. There are individual pro lifers who support contraception and comprehensive sex ed; rock on, I have no beef with you. But the national groups all oppose contraception and comprehensive sex ed-- this means that they don't actually want to reduce abortions, they just want to make sure that women suffer for having sex. They'll lie about it though.
For more information, check out Amanda Marcotte's recent piece on a training program for pro lifers on how to talk to college students-- they're advised to pretend that they support contraception, and pretend that they care about the lives of women, in order to soften up the target to be receptive to the ultimate message: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/06/02/the-prolife-movements-hot-rhetoric-and-allout-lies
3. We don't make death threats to pro lifers, gather outside their churches and wave signs and scream that they are murderers, epoxy the locks of their churches shut, or otherwise harass them. We don't try to force them to have abortions. Many of us feel icky about abortion, too-- but we fight for the right of women to choose what they want to do with their bodies.
It's offensive bullshit, btw, to call the routine behavior of anti choice organizations non-violent. I have a friend who did nonviolent protest of a gay-hating church in Virginia; he talked to me about the discussions in his group on how to avoid looking at the folks they were protesting in a way that would hurt their feelings, he and his friends wanted to avoid "violence of the eyes." For more information on the violence that doctors and nurses are exposed to every day, check http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/06/02/susan_hill/index.html and http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/06/01/george_tiller/
4. Obama, I hear that you brought up an example of two people who disagree, but work together to solve a real problem. And that you gave the example of a gay activist and an anti-gay Christian who work together to reduce HIV. What a lovely little fairy tale! How unfortunate that you chose an example that has never happened. How interesting that you were not able to give a real-life example of a gay activist and an anti-gay activist working together to do good-- a real-life example of two people who have names, who actually exist in reality-- BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ONE.
I would love to live in the fantasy world where pro choice and pro life people are both ethical, loving, compassionate people working together to cause positive change. That's not where I live though. I live in a world where ethical, loving, compassionate pro choice people have spent thirty years trying to compromise with lying, murdering terrorist who pay lip service to compassion and justice, but undercut it in every way. How fortunate Obama is that he hasn't worked in reproductive justice long enough to learn that the national pro life movement doesn't argue in good faith-- that it pretends to be about reducing abortions, while actually campaigning to eliminiate contraception and enforce abstinence only sex-ed. How deeply offensive that Obama isn't listening to, or acknowledging the work of, the people who have been working in reproductive justice for thirty years, and have learned that you can't compromise with pro-choicers. In the immortal words on Molly Ivins, Obama, time to dance with who brung ya. Quit disrespecting the people who voted for you in order to placate the lying murderers who didn't.
I may have common ground with individuals who aren't comfortable with abortion, but are reasonable human beings. I have no common ground with the lying, murdering terrorists who run the pro life movement in the US.
xoxo
Nabil
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Date: 2009-06-05 08:47 pm (UTC)I agree with your #1-3: sure, congratulations to us for not being crazy violent assholes. Inasmuch as it's possible to pick out two general sides on this, it's true that the worst of the worst are on one side.
But I think you're attacking a straw man. You didn't read Obama's speech, right? I did. What's "pretty deeply offensive" to me is that you can't look past the flippant caricature of "oh, it's all about holding hands and singing Kumbaya" -- that because you don't think he expressed enough anger, you would not just discount the importance of the individual true and admirable things he's saying, but actually distort them to mean something totally different. It's especially weird because in your last paragraph, you are totally agreeing with him-- but in the rest of what you wrote, you seem to be outraged that anyone would even suggest that there could be reasonable human beings on that side, or that you might have common ground with them.
Look, I agree that Obama is not a fiery progressive. And he may indeed have a unrealistically generous picture of what motivates the right wing (although I think that's really unlikely at this point, given how openly they've let their hate flags fly during the campaign and ever since). And it may be trite to say that we're all in this together and have to find common ground, but that's what he said -- that the country as a whole has to become able to live together -- not that it's up to pro-choice people to compromise their beliefs and accommodate the liars and thugs on the right. And his other main point was, even for people who are not crazy and violent, it can be incredibly hard to get past anger and mistrust, because it's always tempting to see people as a caricature of what we hate and ignore what they're actually saying as an individual. Which is exactly what you're doing now.
I mean, how on earth could you write such a passionate rant based on "a description" of Obama's speech, and not even read it? Here's the example you attacked in #4: "a gay activist and an anti-gay Christian who work together to reduce HIV". Yeah, Obama sure is naive to think that's how life works! Except no, what he said was that in real life, those two don't work together-- the divide is too great, so if there was anything they could've helped each other with, it doesn't happen. He doesn't say that that's the gay activist's fault. He doesn't say anything about the leaders of any national organizations. He doesn't say anything else about it. He just says the situation sucks and we all need to be strong and have open hearts. Is that the only thing anyone ever needs to say about it? Of course not. Is it a naive, unhelpful, or offensive thing to say? Fuck no.
If my brother tries to steal the cookies and Mom says "Look, everyone has to be fair and not steal the cookies," it's natural for me to want to yell "But it's only HIM who tried to steal the cookies! Don't tell ME to be fair!!" Natural but dumb. It's not about whether I get enough credit for doing the right thing, it's about whether we can actually keep the cookie jar from getting broken. If you think Obama is, say, holding back law enforcement from protecting clinic workers, then that sure would be bad and he should answer for it. But that doesn't seem to be what you're talking about, and I don't know what principle it is you're defending here, except a desire for more angry words.