Women in Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Ohio must undergo a nine-month waiting period after asking their doctor for an abortion.
Women in Texas, Arizona, Rhode Island, and South Carolina must successfully draw a picture of what their ultrasound might look like if the fetus were a baby deer wearing a sailor suit singing “I’ve Got No Strings” from Pinocchio and holding a shakily handwritten birthday card before obtaining an abortion.
Women in California, Virginia, Maryland, Arkansas, and North Dakota must complete a six-page, single-spaced essay about the role of the emerging middle class in the Industrial Revolution before obtaining an abortion.
Customers at coffee shops in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and New York City will not be served until they have said loudly enough for a barista to hear, “We should just, like, let the South secede, you know? You know? Right? Like, fuck them, right? All the cool people should just, like, move here.”
“Stand Your Ground” laws will be more broadly interpreted after Smithson v. Schoolbus, when a Pennsylvania judge rules that any American citizen standing on or simply touching the ground has the right to use deadly force.
“Looking suspicious” now considered a Class-A felony in fourteen states; “looking suspicious after sunset” considered a misdemeanor in an additional nine.
Menstruating women will not be allowed within the city limits of Washington, D.C. A special “red tent” will be set up for them on the other side of the Potomac. Women who can prove infertility or menopause will be allowed in the city and given special grey vests. Women found in the city not wearing their Unbleeding Garments may be deported.
There will be no changes to the regulation of student loans’ or home foreclosures.
Women who fire warning shots to protect themselves and their children from an abusive spouse will be put in prison, where they will be very, very, very safe.
Rather than offering their employees health insurance under Obamacare, employers will also have the option of quietly poisoning them after they have outlived their usefulness.
All potential jurors in Montana and Wyoming will be required to say “Actually, I don’t even see race” at least four times in a grocery store, out loud, unprompted and in front of strangers, before they can be called to serve.
Children receiving vaccines in the city of Philadelphia will legally be considered “looters” and subdued accordingly.
New York’s “Stop and Frisk” policy will be implemented in all schools where students of color are learning math, in case anyone is trying to hide crimes inside of their math homework.
Anyone gathering in Los Angeles in larger numbers than groups of seven will be deemed “rioters” and relocated to San Luis Obispo.
Numerous protests after an entire wing of children recovering from juvenile leukemia in Indiana’s state hospital is gunned down by a disgruntled parking lot attendant will result in the removal of all gun-purchasing waiting periods. “If only those children weakened by their bout with cancer had been properly trained in the safe and responsible use of firearms,” the governor says in an official press release, “this tragedy might have been averted.”
Residents in Tennessee, Alaska, Colorado and Oklahoma must complete a forty-five minute fitness test that includes singing the entire libretto of the H.M.S. Pinafore while doing chin-ups in perfect form before voting. Residents who can prove they have descended from the Mayflower will, as usual, vote simply by writing down their favorite candidate on any scrap of paper they have lying around the house; Voting Butlers will perform a top-to-bottom search of their compounds and take the scraps back to the White Voting Centers.
Anyone named Brent will receive a free gun with every purchase he makes at the Men’s Wearhouse.
Tags: abortion, obamacare, racial profiling, secession, stop and frisk, the law
Oh wow.
I am hereby assigning myself as lead of the underground railroad to the UK.
We may have a lunatic who hates women, immigrants and the poor in charge here, too, but at least we’re a small enough island that if we have to we can just push him into the sea.
This is the slightly older, anglophile variant of Let the South Secede
I’m not sure how much of an anglophile you can be when you were born in and live in the UK. I mean, most native citizens sort of hate it here.
Patriotism is for foreigners.
Or racists
I was speaking to the American side of your joke, which usually takes the form of ‘if X happens I’m moving to Y!’
Or, alternately, ‘Let the South secede’ became a teenager and got Really Into Dr. Who
How dare you. You know I don’t think Dr. Who is very good at all.
Neither do I! That’s why I chose it over, say, Black Adder or Luther.
What a perfect start to the morning. laugh-crying inside.
And outside! “Hahahahhahaa” *sobs*
yep, laugh-crying. My heart can’t take much more of this. Feeling unlucky to be a woman, lucky to be a white one, and lucky, oddly enough, to be in a position where I can’t get knocked up without extreme effort.
Seriously. Scared to be a woman, lucky to be born and raised the way I was, though sometimes unlucky when people discover I am not entirely white, so happy for the pill, realizing how precarious this all is.
Bruuuuutal. But excellent.
“New York’s “Stop and Frisk” policy will be implemented in all schools where students of color are learning math, in case anyone is trying to hide crimes inside of their math homework. ”
Yeah, hiding crimes in math in NY is reserved for employees of banks and mortgage lenders…
Also unbleeding garments… hellloooooo Handmaid’s Tale.
Obviously! Those students of color should know their place: if they want to hide their crimes in math, they need to be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps enough to make it to an Ivy League school and then get recruited into an I-banking firm. It’s the American way!
Only then can they hide their crimes in math homework. C’mon now, bootstraps and America!
Or they can take the alternate route of making rape songs with Robin Thicke, there’s always that option!
Sadly, I feel like there are thousands of people who would read this and find all of it perfectly reasonable.
I dunno if it keeps more commuters out of DC then I guess I’m for it.
You know that really hellish part of the beltway where i66 and 495 meet up? That’s where the menstruation will occur. Don’t worry, it will only make the traffic worse.
The Philly one though.
Too real. Too real. Too real.
Are you saying that my urban coffeeshop friends and I should not loudly wish/will the South into seceding at every opportunity?
Ugh, I LOATHE AND DESPISE that cheap urban sentiment. “We should just, like, let them SECEDE, right? Countries shouldn’t have to struggle to reconcile disparate elements, and like, fuck the sacrifices of the Civil War, amirite? And all the genderqueer and trans* folk and people of color who choose to make those places their home, warts and all, should just like, fucking move to Portland with us and become baristas, right? And then we can just leave those places to themselves and everyone who’s ever born there will have no idea that there are alternate ways to be and think and live, and just fuck those babies, right? Right.”
I totally agree, and despise the conservative counterpart to this: “if you don’t like it, leave my country!” (re: protesting the justice system, gun rights, unfair/unequal laws, etc). I’ve got some extended in laws who drive me nuts with that shit. And it’s usually directed towards people of color who are appropriately protesting something, and just SMACKS of white privilege. If they would simply read their history, they would see that protest and voicing one’s opinion is how the public can help direct their political process, and it’s protected here. uggggHHHHHHH I have been sucking up my angry retorts to these people for sooooo long.
I love when a tea partier will threaten to move to Canada over Obamacare. *headdesk*
Plus seceding doens’t really make economic sense at this point.
And we’d still have Wyoming and South Dakota.
That sentiment is the in(tro)verted leftist cousin of “If you don’t like it, you can geeet out!”
I found the order of the cities amusing and the omission of Chicago confusing at first but then again, accurate. It is a melting pot including a lot of ex-rural-dwellers so maybe people tend to watch what they say in coffee shops a little more. *stare at your screen and glance up to people watch occasionally.
And it’s the sort of sentiment that seems to obscure any reflection on the fact that the southern US doesn’t actually have a monopoly on fucked-up issues and that having the region magically secede won’t actually fix those issues elsewhere in the country.
I don’t understand the complexities of society so I’ll just spew some ignorant hyperbole that typifies my ugly undeserved elitism.
I keed, I keed! I know this is a lazy and utterly privileged sentiment.
Besides, I’m rooting for an urban archipelago, wherein we shun everyone who lives in suburbs or rural areas. We’ll be an island chain of liberal eeelites!
What about my cheap urban sentiment that we should reinstate reconstruction? Occupy all Southern states with Federal troops until they prove they can run their affairs in accordance with 21st century norms. I will happily volunteer, please put me in the next Atlanta-bound tank (a Sherman if they have any that still run).
The best part will be all the rednecks who think their cherished handguns will stop anyone calling in an airstrike on them from six miles away.
Wow this heat is really making me grumpy.
So hey, I’m writing this comment at a kitchen table in south Georgia, somewhere between Macon and Valdosta, and my day has involved shooting multiple firearms, a pit bull running loose, and lots of dirt roads. I lived in Capitol Hill, Denver for three years and loved it. I made a long visit to Seattle last month and loved it. In a couple of weeks I’m moving to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to start a Ph.D. program. And I’m going to join the Moral Monday protests, and encourage my students to do it, too.
Back in April I wrote to Nicole when she asked what we’d want to see in a site, and I told her that I wanted to see pieces that acknowledged the existence of people like me, who love Seattle and Portland and New York and Minneapolis (been to all) but also love dirt roads and pit bulls and learning to shoot with our grandfather’s rifle BUT ALSO love intersectional feminism and fucking up the patriarchy everywhere we go, which includes the rural South AND the urban South (because hey, that exists, okay? My parents met and lived in sin and married in Atlanta back when Piedmont Park was an open air pharmacy, an era they remember fondly).
I’ve been reading the Toast every day. I’ve liked what I’ve seen. But I wasn’t sure it was a place I loved and a place I wanted to hang out and a place that felt safe for someone like me until I read this piece and your comment. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
I like you, let’s be friends. I’m from Canton, GA.
(Hey, I just want to say that despite my above comment, in reality I actually totally agree Melis on this point. Maybe I think reconstruction ended too early but that’s a different topic. Please continue to grace us with your peaches and wood pulp and Andre 3000s.)
Yes. I’m from Alabama. For every backward-thinking, hate-spewing dumbass from the South who gets airtime on the TeeVee (strictly because s/he’s spewing hateful, backward rhetoric), there’s a Southern toast reader/pinner/gentle soul trying to fuck up the patriarchy, etc, while maintaining some traditions that make her feel at home (talkin slow, sweet tea, front porches, “how’s your mama & them doin’?”, college football, double names, etc).
Yeah. Yes. Just. Please don’t leave me here; I’m too broke to move someplace where it’s socially acceptable for me to have sex before marriage.
MALLORY!! Yes. I am literally shaking my computer shouting YES while my husband looks on, slightly horrified. I’m from Dallas, TX and I am a liberal and I HATE IT when people say the South should secede! I’ve just never been able to put it into such succinct words. YOU. are my hero today.
Don’t let Them see this. You’re giving Them ideas!!
Too real, Roy. Too real.
But seriously, this is how Panem happens, right?
The L.A. riot law has an important rider that says it only applies to people that the police judge, after a cursory glance, to be non-white.
Dear god, that’s exactly what the governor here (Indiana) would say.
I've literally never listened to the Mountain Goats in my life.
They're a love or hate kind of band I think (clearly I fiercely love them) but either way John Darnielle is an excellent human being, a huge feminist and pro-choice activist, and an A+++++ funny Tweeter.
Anyway I'm glad I'm not the only weirdo who immediately thinks of them when she hears "San Luis Obispo."