There are no women
The Nation (the magazine) is such misogynist garbage. Long piece on abortion; women not mentioned once.
There is an alarming disconnect between the agenda of our most powerful organizations and the real needs of abortion seekers and providers on the ground.
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Local abortion funds from across the country are eager to share their perspectives and expertise on the challenges of funding abortion in their area, and the frustrations that are brought on by the failure of national reproductive health, rights, and access organizations to attend to the needs of so many pregnant people on the ground.
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Abortion funds created a bridge between the theoretical right to an abortion and the real-world ability to access that right for the most marginalized…Unlike national funds, most local funds have no client requirements or restrictions–such as around gestational age or income–and trust the people who seek their help as the experts in their own lives.
Since the Dobbs decision, and subsequent enforcement of extremely restrictive state laws, local funds have used their decades-long expertise, deep relationships, and infrastructure to collectively meet this moment of crisis and support the growing number of people struggling to access abortion…While the expenses, misinformation, and fear tactics continue to rise, local abortion funds have doubled down on their commitment to supporting their callers, no matter what.
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In June, for instance, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) announced that it would be cutting back on the amount it gives people who qualify for its financial assistance program. Where the NAF previously paid for 50 percent of the cost of care, it will now pay for just 30 percent, with no exceptions for exceptionally high abortion prices later in pregnancy. For example, an abortion seeker in Nevada who qualifies for NAF assistance will now be responsible for $1,330 of their $1,900 procedure.
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The choice of these well-funded, national organizations to drastically deprioritize their assistance will be felt by abortion seekers
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This statement is not only incorrect but an erasure of the work of local abortion funds that have been coordinating access for individuals across the country despite increasingly hostile conditions.
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Reproductive freedom is a fundamental human right, and people cannot and will not wait for laws to change—especially over the course of a decade—to exercise that right. In communities like those supported by abortion funds across the country, the work of reproductive freedom is already happening. Without prioritizing material support for abortion seekers, we are putting pregnant people at risk and failing to live up to our movement’s mandate.
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Without the ability of those at the grassroots to sustainably do their work, the already fragile abortion access landscape is at risk, and abortion seekers are positioned to lose the most. Now is not the time to put policy advocacy and wealth hoarding over material support. Now is the time to dig deeper into the work that is happening in our communities.
In order to most directly support abortion seekers now, donate directly to your local abortion fund to ensure that your donation gets to abortion seekers, and realizes abortion access right NOW.
Contortion after contortion after contortion, all to avoid saying the filthy word “women.”
Despicable.
Come on now, be kind. Everyone knows that old family story, so hush hush, that you’re not meant to know. The one about your uncle, who fell in love with the girl he met on holiday, the one who promised to marry him, said she’d be back in spring, right after she graduated from college. She was going to work in her mother’s firm, quite prestigious. They had a holiday home in Brighton. Your uncle could visit soon, she hoped. But then, after a beautiful and intense fling, your uncle found himself pregnant, and Beatrice wouldn’t reply to his letters. Your grandfather hit the roof. Didn’t Douglas know better? He’d been taught to keep his legs closed! Now he’d shamed the family. The whole town would tattle about their “loose lad”, and what would that mean for his younger sisters? The family had hoped one would marry the local green grocer. Such a shame. But nothing to be done. Douglas was sent away to the unmarried father’s home, run by the Brothers. Douglas washed in the laundries for months, then after the baby was born, they took the little lad. For the best, they said. Douglas returned, but was never the same, and never forgave grandma. He never married. Never had any more children. A sadness lay on him the rest of his life. If only Doug could have had an abortion.
My neighbourhood bank had posters up for an intiative launched by a local organization called “Fairy Godparents.” The campaign, called”Fill the Truck”, part of the “Period Equity Project”, is collecting menstrual products for free distribution to those in need who can’t afford them.
Yes, you can see where this is going from a mile off.
It’s for “anyone in London who bleeds!”
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=453603297449472&set=a.128542513288887
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=446905997986680&set=a.239689355375013
“But we won’t mention ‘women’, ‘girls’, or ‘female’, so fuck the ‘with dignity and without shame’ part.”
I looked at that Facebook page. I get the feeling the motivation is not making menstrual products available but doing the whole “never mention women” thing. An opportunity to conspicuously erase women! What fun! How can we resist?!
I remember someone saying “”The Nation” magazine used to support Norman Thomas; now it supports Lia Thomas”.
I would not be surprised if the woker-than-thou “Nation” staff like Chris Lehmann and Elie Mystal are pushing the magazine in the pro-trans direction.
That’s a good quotation.
The more I looked at it, the more I thought the same. As far as I went (which, granted wasn’t that far, as there’s only so much delusion and dishonesty I can stomach), it was all sex denial and female erasure from both directions. The “Equity” in the Period Equity Project seems to come from their belief that anyone can have one:
But you believe that the fact that only females menstruate is one of those “harmful social norms and taboos”, so you’re not really helping with that part at all, given that you’re willing to erase and stigmatize half the population (i.e. women, i.e., the only sex capable of menstruating at all) in order to “centre” and appease a tiny percentage of women who mistakenly think they’re men, and a tiny percentage of men who mistakenly think they’re women.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=449230864420860&set=a.239689355375013
A shared post from “Trans Army” shows a graphic of an apparently female figure (but as this figure is in front of a background of Trans Pink & Blue, it might be meant to be a TiM) with the slogan “You don’t have to menstruate to be a woman” (which is something that sex realists have never claimed). It is introduced on the PEP Facebook page with a post with the Yin to this Yang: “Nor do you have to be a woman to menstruate.” Women are only mentioned in order to be dismissed and denied. Very dignity. Much unshameful.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=795335222703484&set=a.580124797557862
Another post they shared had a screen cap of somene writing “Men don’t use menstrual products” along with the response that “This one does!” A helpful soul by the name of Stevie Bees chiming in with the cheerily dehumanizing “Men and non-binary bleeders are valid! ”
Replies to both are uniformly deluded and denialist. Here’s one of them:
One of the posts advertising the “Fill the Truck” event on the Fairy Godparents FB page tells people to “Bring your kids from 11am-12pm to meet some special guests with a special truck!!!” Yreah, let’s completely screw up and distort their understanding of the human sexes. Let’s make girls ashamed of both being female, and knowing what being female actually is. To quote some weightlifters, “No thank you.”
Thanks for reading all that so that I didn’t have to.
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You’re welcome. Looking at this stuff is right up there with creationism, flat/hollow Earth, body thetans, and homeopathy as my favourite ways of killing brain cells and burning away the precious moments of my short, finite existence.
Whatever floats your boat!