reasons to be a feminist, part eleventy billion

Jill:

We’ve already seen rape survivors being refused emergency contraception, women in the process of miscarriage being refused treatment, and lesbians and unmarried women being refused fertility assistance. So what if a pharmacist wakes up tomorrow and decides that AIDS is your punishment for being gay, or your STI is a punishment for being a big whore, and refuses to fill your prescription for the medication you need? What if a Scientologist decides that he shouldn’t have to leave his moral beliefs at the door, and refuses to write or fill any prescriptions at all? What if an ER doctor or EMT’s religion forbids them from touching someone of the opposite sex and so they refuse to treat half the population, even in emergencies? What if my moral belief is that sanctimonious fuckwits who don’t do their jobs shouldn’t be given medical treatment — if I were a more vengeful person, could I go ahead and let them suffer, like they would do to me?

That's all really bad, no doubt. It sucks to think that I might have to drive around town to get a birth control prescription filled, and it's even worse to think that someone in a more remote or conservative area might not be able to get her prescription filled at all. And it makes me really angry that it's all so clearly about birth control, even though all the rhetoric is about abortion; I'm sure the lies make it more palatable, but they're still lies.

Really, though- I'm mostly just sad for my more conservative Christian friends who think that the Republican party gives a crap about them. Bush II had eight years to screw over American women, and he does it now? When it's going to be undone almost immediately, if not soon enough? I certainly feel disrespected, as a woman who like to make her own decisions about her body, but I also feel like the whole congregation that I grew up in just got disrespected, too. They've been telling each other for 7.75 years now, "Look, he's appointing pro-life justices to the Supreme Court! I'm sure he'd do more, but he's jousting with Congress/saving us from the infidels/whatever." I wonder what it means to them to find out that Bush could have done this all along, and just didn't.

snow!

This is a close up of snow gathering on my windshield wipers.


This is the beef stew I made to warm up with.

short note

Fafblog has new posts!

done!

I'm not a big fan of these sorts of machines. I have to admit, though, that it's a reflexive position for someone who spends a lot of time reading liberal blogs, and I haven't looked into it much myself. This machine didn't give me any trouble, and the poll workers apparently didn't notice or didn't care that I looked like I was trying to call a friend for help while voting.

why Echidne is a feminist

I hear a lot of my friends, particularly female ones, refusing to identify as feminists. That's their right, I suppose. It's a position that I don't really understand, though, since feminism is pretty central to my understanding of building a more just world. I happen to like voting, owning property, safe houses for abused women, the availability of contraception, and so forth. I really liked this (thus far) four-part series at Echidne of the Snakes, in which she explains why she is a feminist:
The Right To Go Out
The Planet Of The Guys
Our Father Who Art In Heaven
The Invisible Women

comparing apples to smushed apples left under the fridge

You know what's worse than picking up sequins spilled onto carpet?

Picking them up with the assistance of a small kitten who thinks she is the heroine of a movie called Sparkle Kitty, Cowgirl Princess of the Sequin Rodeo.

caffeinated tipsyness

I am all in favor of coffee, particularly in concentrated forms. Coffee flavored vodka, though, is just disturbing.

Link.