The u-word
Uh oh, Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri seems to have missed the memo.
Oh, good. I was just thinking: I have too many rights. We’ve got to cull, cull, cull! Do I really need to be voting and controlling my own body? That feels like much too much. Also, it’s spring! What better time to go through all the rights and see which ones spark joy (access to assault weapons) and which ones don’t (uncensored proximity to books, bodily autonomy). Just like they’re doing in Florida! Constitution? Please! If we were all meant to be covered by it, we would have been explicitly included!
Isn’t all this rights nonsense getting in the way of more important things, like the ability of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to consider exciting hypotheticals not borne out by science: What if a drug that has been proven safe for decades … weren’t? Plus, millions of Americans have been given the gift of learning the name Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, most often used in the sentence, “Wait, Judge Kacsmaryk can undo the FDA approval of a drug used safely by millions for 20-plus years just … because?” It was good that the 5th Circuit did not need to think about the people most impacted by the decision to overturn Food and Drug Administration approval. After all, we’re not really people! If we were supposed to be people, we wouldn’t have uteruses.
Oops oops oops – trouble ahead. You’re not supposed to say aloud that women have uteruses. It makes men who call themselves women very angry, so angry that they threaten to assault you.
“But wait,” you are saying. “What about the enormous stress and pressure that losing access to a safe medication abortion will place on people?” Easy! They are not people, for the purposes of this case. The math works if you remember that women are people only sometimes. All the math works if you remember that only certain folks get to be people all the time.
Ok now she’s really on thin ice.
But then she catches herself, and makes up for it.
It is a mistake to think that harm to the possibly millions of pregnant people nationwide at risk of suddenly losing access to a safe drug commonly used in medication abortion due to a single judge’s whim might be considered when deciding whether to stay the ruling that denied them access to a safe drug commonly used in medication abortion due to a single judge’s whim!
Whew. That was close. Women’s rights, uteruses, women are not people – but she probably caught it in time.
Since Freddy McConnell calls herself a man, and has a baby despite the vaunted gender dysphoria (make it make sense, please) men now can have babies (stay with me a second?) So, why isn’t it a sacrament yet? When will the Church catch up? And could collared people have uteri in the Catholic Church?
Catholic organizations have said sensible things in regard to transgender ideology: sex is immutable, sex is based on biology, love the body you have, and so on. I have been denounced for daring to agree, for the most part, with a Catholic Church page on the topic, because obviously anything they say is always wrong, guilt by association.
Mike, I argued when Dobbs was decided that if gender ideology is true, one of the big arguments about abortion is automatically conceded. There’s no misogyny or sexism or undue burden if men and women are both equally banned from killing human fetuses.
Sackbut,
I think the very misogyny of the Catholic Church will prevent it from ever being taken over by gender ideology. If the special powers of a priest cannot be given to women, because the ritual just does not work on a woman, and if being a man or a woman depends not on the physical body but on a feeling in the mind, then a lot of priests and bishops in the past may have been women and not validly ordained, without anyone knowing. That would call into question the apostolic succession.
Sackbut @2 I’m feeling the same way about how sensible the conservatives sound about gender ideology. The Mulvaney Bud Light endorsement, among other things, has stirred up much commentary among them lately. It feels strange to be in agreement with anti-abortion and pro-gun people, but it sure illustrates how wrong and harmful the trans movement is generally. Just like LGB and Feminism, the trans cult has seized the left for it’s own purposes and calls itself “progressive” when it’s no such thing. What’s really amazing is how many on the left uncritically go along with it. The problem with gender ideology is much deeper than (transcends even) any political ideology. I think it rots people’s brains.
twiliter: I’ve been toying with the idea that Genderism actually is “progressive” despite not being progressive. That is, while it doesn’t represent any sort of progress along the course of liberalism, the way Genderists use the word is consistent with how it’s been used for at least sixty years.
Yeah, like stage 4 cancer is considered progress from stage 3…
I was thinking more of how the word has been used in humanities departments where the likes of Queer Theory have been festering for decades and the destruction of meaning is considered progress.
I suppose in the raw, space-time sense, nearly everything could be considered progress. In the sense of improved conditions brought about by social or cultural advancements via scientific and technological progress? Not so much. I do see people identifying as progressive who harbor very regressive ideas, but people fashion themselves all sorts of things with no justification. A cursory glance at twitter bio’s tells the tale. Self descriptions cannot be taken at face value anymore, not that they could before advanced communication, but now it’s ridiculous. I’m sure the Judith Butlers of the world are widely regarded as progressive, but I could easily argue against that notion.