I started to experience overwhelming waves of rage upon the repeal of Roe v Wade. What made things worse was that no one seemed phased in the slightest. Deny women healthcare -after 50 years of clear precedent – just another day in America. There were no protests….no news coverage…no outrage.
Then women with intended pregnancies started dying. Politicians in states with total bans had determined that D&Cs – standard miscarriage care since 1843 – were in fact abortions and; therefore, illegal. Show up to an emergency room pregnant, hemorrhaging with a high fever and they’d stick you in a bed and wait for you to die of sepsis. No treatment.
TikTok was the only place where anyone was talking about these women. Fuck legacy media. I’m glad they’ve been barred from the White House press room. Their omission of our narrative, of the women dying “preventable deaths”, all to satisfy religious misogyny, is indefensible. FUCK THEM ALL.
One day I will fund a monument to these women. Most were mothers who left behind children:
Amber Thurman
Candi Willis
Joselli Barnica
Nevaeh Crain
Taysha Wilkinson-Sobieski
And the solution to all these pesky deaths: simply stop tracking maternal mortality. Today, we don’t even know how many more women have died because they’re just not keeping records. How rich, America.
I feel a certain satisfaction watching segments of our population finally feel of the burn – the indignation they display now that Christian Nationalist/tech nazi policies are impacting their lives. Oh, you thought they were going to provide grants for your farms or fund IEP programs for your autistic kids – yeah, no, cruelty is one of those all or nothing propositions. Either people are human beings or they’re not. I feel no sympathy for people who voted for policies they believed would only fuck over women, minorities, immigrants, and trans people. You are officially a piece of shit.
Can you imagine how better the world would be right now – how relaxed we’d feel – how excited we’d be for Spring – how much joy there would be around us if these stupid fucks simply believed women. You don’t even have to value us….just believe us.
Anita Hill was right
Christine Blasey Ford was right
Hillary Clinton was right
Michelle Obama was right
Elizabeth Warren was right
Liz Cheney was right
Kamala Harris was right
In the end, you can scrub our names from the Nasa site, place brown paper over our pictures in national museums, delete our contributions from the national archives BUT WE EXIST.
We don’t hold up half the sky – we are the fucking sky. And if we lacked power then you wouldn’t even bother trying to keep us down. You only try to push out your competition. 70% of Master’s degrees are earned by Black women; in 5 years, 60% of the world’s assets will be held by women. It’s fucking over.
Betty always said that women needed to get in touch with their anger. Well, I’m all in Aunt B. I’m channeling my anger into a new initiative: BAD women – an online community for women to connect and learn and grow and support each other. No tech bros, no restrictions, and no trolling.
Let’s see what happens when we start to nourish women, acknowledge their accomplishments, empower them to create their own lives free from diet advice and dick pics. This is my new fantasy image: women leaving social media in droves so all they’re left with is each other. Try to market a product or launch a podcast or drive traffic without our bodies. All we wanted was health care, paid maternity leave and equal pay. We just wanted a few crumbs.
I feel a pull from my ancestors, the women who fought the good fight, who created, who divined but were omitted from history. Betty is with them and she’s cheering us on.
I will live to see a female president.
