Here is a righteous Storify about why NPR letting abortion protesters get away with portraying themselves as wee praying grandmas is hot nonsense.
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Here is a glorious angry screed about the tainted water in West Virginia:
To hell with everyone who ever asked me how I could stand to live in a place like this, so dirty and unhealthy and uneducated. To hell with everyone who ever asked me why people don’t just leave, don’t just quit (and go to one of the other thousand jobs I suppose you imagine are widely available here), like it never occurred to us, like if only we dumb hilljacks would listen as you explained the safety hazards, we’d all suddenly recognize something that hadn’t been on our radar until now.
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Virginia man is a dickwad.
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Juliet Jacques (quite wonderfully), on what “before and after” pictures fail to convey about transition:
I doubt that anyone who looks only at the before and after pictures of me would be able to see much of this. Although they would probably be better placed to tell me how my features had changed. But, really, that always struck me as the least interesting thing about my experience. And after everything that’s happened, it still does.
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“The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered“:
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.
It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion
Beneath the yoke.
What avail him now his awards and prizes,
The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,
His individual new voice?
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Wait, is this sushi roll about abortion? I can’t tell.
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Katie Heaney is really, really working on it (dating):
One of the things I’ve agreed to is Tinder, which I remember to go on maybe once a week. It allows me (and my roommate) to feel like I’m doing something about dating, kind of the same way moving various cookbooks and ceramic dishes into and out of my Amazon shopping cart “counts” toward learning to cook.
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These INCREDIBLE Gustave Doré illustrations for “The Raven,” guys! Go look!
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
JULIET JACQUES! She is great. And, rumour has it, writing a book.
she’s the best, I’m really looking forward to her book. Her new football column is a total delight as well.
Oh my god, that is brilliant. “Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by 800 people, with whom I’d consciously identified myself, screaming “Wanker! Wanker! Wanker!” at a ten-year-old.” Thanks for the link.
“the former Norwich defender Gary Doherty looking frightened and confused by a ball bouncing in front of him, freezing as mediocre Burnley forward Andy Gray races past, lurching after Gray before tripping over, rugby-tackling Gray as he fell, begging not to be sent off and then holding his head in agony on his dismissal, as if any other outcome had been possible,”
i totally love this bit – how the experience of sports fandom is just as much about how sublime its disappointments and bathos are. (this Emma John piece on cricinfo from last year covers some of the same ground, and is also excellent.)
Ah, that’s great. thanks for linking!
Seems to be missing a couple links: to the Storify and the Gustave Doré illustrations
I would refresh, they didn’t show up on my browser at first either, but they’re appearing on the front page and seem fine now?
It’s actually been a little weird lately, they’ll show up on the excerpt that appears on the front page, but disappear from the body of the post.
It won’t appear for me with any number of refreshings. 🙁
Definitely clear your cache, they are there.
For me, the Storify link was borked; I had to trim a The Toast prefix out and then it worked fine.
oh man too many of these links are so good, bye bye productivity
Dick Black is an idiot, and it is astonishing that he is in the state senate. He is running in the district next to mine.
When I read his “theory” about the nightie I could actually feel my blood pressure go up.
Baby pesticide. Baby pesticide. I’m focusing on how hilarious that is to avoid rage-induced heart defibrillation.
For me it was his comment on the time-honored tradition of military rape.
“Think of yourself at 25,” Black told a newspaper in 1996. “Wouldn’t you love to have a group of 19-year-old girls under your control, day in, day out?”
My skin is still crawling.
Ok, about the West Virginia spill:
My whole job is knowing about environmental laws and regulations, particularly regarding chemical retention and water quality. I’ve worked in government my whole career both as a regulator at the state level and as a regulat-ee at the local level. I live in KY, on the same highway as Charleston, WV, just a few hours drive west. The plume from that spill is hitting my city tonight. Lemme just say, that spill could have happened anywhere in the country. Federal regulations didn’t apply here, and while states can (and some have) pass their own stricter regs, no one has the money to enforce the kind of regulations that would cover every chemical storage tank.
Also, Appalachia is a beautiful part of the country and anyone telling people from there to move is a Jerkface.
Sadly, since it’s Appalachia and not the upper Hudson watershed, no fucks will be given and nothing will change.
That comment is wholly inadequate to convey my bitterness and rage and sorrow, but it’s the best I can do right now.
Yeah. I grew up in WV; it’s a profoundly beautiful and profoundly fucked up place. I got out, because my family had the resources and education to help me do it; that’s not the case for many many people there. But they’re not stupid, and they’re not a fucking punchline. The hate WV gets as a general rule is so bizarre and undeserved and sad (that Detroit journalist who made the incest joke on Twitter the other day is only one in a long, predictable line).
My family and friends don’t live in the affected area, thankfully, but all of my social media outlets have been simmering with rage for days.
Ugh, frustrating. You’d think someone from Detroit would have some empathy for a community in trouble.
I remember when a huge tornado leveled much of my smallish (about 50,000 people) town about 15 years ago and all the late-night shows were making trailer park jokes. I was like, ok, I don’t have a school anymore but at least you got some redneck jokes in. Great.
And it’s worth noting that some people have the resources to leave and just don’t want to. I could go pretty much anywhere, but I like it here.
Seriously! The lack of empathy is disturbing, especially when you’re sacrificing empathy for jokes that are boring and lazy and unfunny. “Comedy” that targets people at the lower end of a power structure — social or economic or whatever — is just kind of desperate and depressing (one of the many problems with rape jokes as well).
And that’s a fair point, about not wanting to leave. My parents moved to WV from a major city (you know, a “real” place) when I was a baby because they wanted to live there. They’re still there, living in an adorable small town that they love. I love it too — there was just no chance I’d ever get a job in my field there. But yeah, not everyone is fleeing from the supposed horrors of rural America the first chance they get, which is entirely valid.
But it’s only Appalachia, obviously. It hardly even counts as a place, really.
I’m from east Tennessee and I have mixed feelings about the region a lot of the time, but it kills me how people can be so dismissive without even knowing what they’re talking about. And it hurts people, this dismissiveness. Argh.
Yes yes yes to this, esp. the last part 🙂
Anyone who’s ever told someone from a place that has problems that the solution is to “get out” or “just move, lol” can turn in their progressive feminist card right now and go sit down.
cf. liberals in the US south, lgbt people in anywhere not-a-metropolis.
Like, fuck you, you know?
Yeah, a lot of progressives start talking a lot like conservatives when it comes to Appalachia/the rural south. Only poor people in blue states are worthy of compassion, apparently.
The author of the piece does call out his fellow West Virginians, specifically. And I like this line: Having been made to endure fucked up Air, Earth, and Water, we ought to be mindful of that history, and make sure that history goes with us, always, into the voting booth, into the streets, into the home, into the wider world.
I lived in Louisiana during the BP spill, though, so I say good luck with that.
I don’t disagree with that, as a liberal environmentalist in a coal state. But you also have to realize that when asking people to vote for a cleaner, safer environment, you’re often asking them to vote against their own immediate economic interests. I mean, it’s hard to care about the long-term health effects of pollutants when you’re afraid of losing your job by driving out industry and not being able to feed your family.
I definitely think that long-term, progressive policies will help Appalachia, but it’s a hard sell when progressives talk about the region with disdain while conservatives hail it as full of “hard working, real Americans”.
Yeah, people are going to fight to keep their coal jobs unless you have something else to give them in terms of a livelihood. And of course those struggles will be co-opted by Big Coal as how “liberal policies hurt Real Americans,” while all while they keep screwing said Real Americans for profit.
That’s sometimes a false dichotomy, though. Dirty industries do a much better job, PR-wise, of getting their message out, though they’re helped immensely by the government and forces of inertia. And, of course, sometimes you’d be asking people to wait a few years for the better options to be available. But in the industries we’re fighting in my state, the companies that promise to bring in tons of jobs generally give temporary ones to locals and bring in outsiders for the rest, claiming the talent isn’t here and that the state needs to pay to train people. (The same state that is offering them literally billions of dollars in tax credits and whose environmental protection agencies are essentially run by former industry heads.) The accident and death rates for workers in the same industries are also out of control, again partly due to their depence on temporary workers. I went to a bunch of public hearings for Christie’s pet Pinelands pipeline (which has been temporarily defeated, thankfully), and it was so frustrating to feel like we were seen as the enemy of the men who’d been dragged in to say that the pipeline would give them jobs.
Right?! I know so many people who are theoretically compassionate towards the poor but who think that the rural poor are a bunch of disgusting Mountain-Dew-drinking rednecks who obviously deserve what’s coming to them. If you’re dividing the poor into “deserving” and “undeserving,” or if you’re going on about rural communities without ever having visited these places or thinking for five seconds about how their economies work, you are not a compassionate person.
Ugh, yes, like when supposed liberals talk about benighted red & rural areas being economic leeches on their fair, industrious coastal cities, as though having a good local economy is mark of their own personal virtue. Fuck that.
I went on a date with a guy once who said he thought southern accents sounded dumb. And sir, that’s when you sounded dumbest of all and why we had no second date. Ain’t no one’s accent inherently dumb, its the stupid words coming out of their stupid face that decide that.
1. Has anyone actually ever participated in an abortion counter-protest? Do you have thoughts about it? It’s been something I have been thinking of doing for a while, but I don’t know if it would serve anyone other than myself (eg, the women going in really don’t need more opinions on them)…on the other hand, I’ve seen some truly horrendous protesters in pretty liberal cities (Portland, ME, Boston) and been absolutely enraged by it. So yeah. Nngh?
2. Gosh I love Katie Heaney, I wish I knew her because I want to set her up on dates with so many people! And I know that’s not really the point but whatever KATIE THERE ARE DUDES IN BOSTON WHO’D BE GREAT FOR YOU
3. ALSO – can I just say thanks to the Wicked thread yesterday I watched the Legally Blonde musical MTV recording and it made me SO HEPPY
Participating in a protest is a big commitment (not to discourage you) but the other side is ruthless and will scream at you, perhaps follow you home, harass you in other places NOT at the protest and act like the living demon spawn that they are. Take precautions – go with an experienced person. Those No-Choice Peeps are indescribably resourcefully BAD NEWS
Getting spit at and screamed at was not fun. I can only imagine how the young afraid pregnant women and girls feel
This is great advice. Fortunately, I am a Huge Lady (6′ tall) so people are slightly less eager to get in my face/cannot reach my face, but I hadn’t thought about the personal safety aspect and that is important. I’d rather they spit at me, though, than the women who are going in.
My mother and our neighbor volunteered as clinic escorts in Virginia for years in the 90s, when I was a kid. It’s not so much a counter-protest as being a safe/neutral presence, but a lot of it is getting your own face screamed in so as to deflect the screams at people seeking medical procedures.
My city’s clinic is very safe, except on Good Friday, but in some places, the escorting work is vital.
That’s a great idea. Are there outside groups that organize escorts, or would you go directly to the clinics to volunteer?
Maybe consider escorting instead of counter-protesting (if you’re interested of course)? I’m going to do this when I move back to my crappy guns-n-Jesus hometown with a single PP (but probably like 6 CPCs).
I’m so glad you watched the Legally Blonde musical and am now also curious where you found it because every time I look for it to rewatch, I come up with nothing 🙁
YouTube! I found the whole thing on there, surprisingly, after minimal searching.
I have. A long time ago, a group of us recent high school graduates got fed up with the harassment and decided to picket the picketers. We informed the city of our intentions and asked for an increased police presence in the area to start with because we didn’t know quite how the protestors (or local residents) would respond. Our group got to the clinic early and staked out our spot south of the clinic driveway so that passing cars on the one lane road would see us first. When the picketers began to show, some of them crossed over to speak to/yell at us. The city police stopped by and informed both groups that so long as we each stayed on our designated sides and there was relative peace we could stay.
Our counter protest went on intermittently over a period of several weeks. During that time, we had soft drinks and cigarettes thrown at us by passing motorists, insults and slurs lobbed our way, but we also had people coming to thank us, people honking and clapping, giving us thumb’s up and peace signs. We made the local paper a couple times. Unfortunately, not many new people came to assist and eventually life got in the way of our original group being able to continue. Burnout, it’s a thing, even when you’re quite young.
Increasing the chaos outside clinics with multiple protests may not be the best approach, especially for patients just trying to get to an appointment, but people have picketed deceptive crisis pregnancy centers before. Give them a taste of their own medicine, and such. Bonus points if the CPC is near the actual clinic and tries to trick people into entering the wrong building. (Just be sure they actually do manipulate or lie to patients – there are a small number of innocuous ones out there.)
I only know two dudes I would willingly set anyone up with, but one is in LA and the other in Dallas, so I can’t help Katie out much. Would it be weird to make a Toast personals-like thing for both dudes? Date (one of) these two awesome dudes I know, Toasties!
Re Katie Heaney: I think we should build a Toast commune, made up chiefly of small separate one-person bungalows, each with its own fireplace and cauldron, where you could be pretty sure that no one would ever advise you to boost your dating karma.
And sooner or later, you’d forget why you ever thought you wanted such advice in the first place. (Not judging – I was that girl for a lot longer than Katie Heaney will probably be.)
That sushi art blows my mind, even though I have a general aversion fetus-shaped food.
Speaking of food art, did you guys see the vagina toaster? IT SEEMS RELEVANT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/16/vagina-t…
Wait, is this sushi roll about abortion? I can’t tell.
Finally, a way to eat fetuses that won’t bring the health inspector down on me.
The anti-choice protestors called my mother Judas, and our neighbor Juanita Grandma Death, because they would walk women into the clinic in our city in the 90s. My mother would table with NARAL at the state fair when I was a kid, and I would go along, because free trip to the fair! I had to listen to a lot of people berate my mother, but I got a lot of free stickers and key chains, and I got to see a lot of cute animals and product demos. And, I got some first hand knowledge of anti-choice tactics.
Hi can I just point out that the part of VA Black represents, Loudon county, is the richest in the country and has one of the highest levels of education (not as much as some of its DMV neighbors, but much higher than VA as a whole)?
That’s worrying.
With the way Loudoun County has changed in the past 15 years though, do you think he’s really representing the county or do you think the demographic shift just hasn’t caught up to him yet? It’s not a rhetorical question–a good portion of my extended family is part of that shift so I tend to see the county through that myopic lens.
ETA: Just looked at the wikipedia page, jesus christ, the county’s pop practically doubled from 2000 to 2010.
My aunt and uncle live out there. I try to avoid mentioning politics at all around them because I’m afraid they might actually be conservative (and then I’d have to shout at them for being insane because they are also an interracial couple!) They are pretty “all American” suburbanites with a big house, big car, love football, but they don’t seem particularly religious so it’s hard to get a read. Plus I’m sure they know where I stand and don’t want to stir up trouble by raising contrary opinions =).
Anyway, the article said he moved around VA looking for a receptive district, and the one he eventually found was in Loudon, so who knows?
Yeah, I’m in a similar boat with my extended family–I don’t talk about politics with them either. They’re all former Vietnamese refugees bought into the suburban American Dream of single family homes and luxury cars (they’re really into the cars) and are rightfully proud of how successful they’ve been. I feel like that it’s easy to project that into “we made it and we came here from nothing, why can’t other people?” without acknowledging the systems and personal privilege and luck that gets an individual to success that I don’t even want to get into it!
I reread the article hoping that his move was earlier in the 2000s, but no. 🙁 I’ve heard that there’s a new progressive group in NOVA that is explicitly for organizing “New Americans” so it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out in the following years. Aha, found the link: http://www.virginianewmajority.org/about
Thanks the Toast for letting me know that I am attracted to an angel in an illustration of an Edgar Allan Poe poem
He looks like BBC Sherlock. Mmm-hmmm.
HIS HAIR IS SO LUXURIOUS
And his toga clings just so!
<3
The day I personally took advantage of what’s left of our nation’s committment to reproductive choice and bodily autonomy there were only a few weirdos outside (they were still upsetting), but I had a friend who got lucky enough to have her abortion on the day her OWN COLLEGE’S moron troupe of forced-birth advocates were picketing Planned Parenthood. “See you in seminar tomorrow, murderess! Hey, do we need to finish or just get to chapter 18?”
I used to be wishy-washy about this stuff but now I just totally DGAF and would cheerily stand in front of protestors while eating a marizpan fetus (if I didn’t hate marzipan.) You do you, but I have no interest in hearing your wee arguments for legal forced-birth until we start harvesting all the organs we desperately need from dead people, regardless of their previously-stated wishes.
Can we have a marzipan-fetus-themed Toast counter-protest? Strength in numbers etc
Or for that matter, compelling healthy people to give up a kidney. You really don’t need two!
A lobe of your lung! What’s a little inconvenience when HUMAN LIFE is at stake? Oh? There might be complications and long-term health consequences? That must be unfortunate for you.
Or, you know, living people, as in, hey forced birther person, I choose you to give me my new kidney! Wait, why are you running away?
My buddy had her procedure on Good Friday one year, which is the one day the clinic closest to her gets overrun.
Why have I never heard of Katie Heaney before? I think we might be the same person.
I’m really glad that she’s doing a bunch of press right now because it’s basically the first time I’ve seen somebody whose experiences are so similar to my own in this regard talking about it in the media, and also because it means that a bunch of other people on the internet are going “hey, me too!”
“The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered” is one of those poems that pops into my head at odd moments and fills me with happiness.
Canard: Me too! So happy to see it get a Toast link.
Me too! Just seeing its title made me smile. (I… may have once picked up a remaindered copy of a book by an author I resent, brandished it at my shopping companion, and said “HAHAHA” out loud.)
GUYS, re: spousal rape dude — I spent a good several hours last night watching an argument unfold on facebook after one of my friends posted the link above. Some dude showed up and started ranting about gun control and how it was just like rape and why do politicians want EVERYONE TO BE VICTIMS???? It was infuriating but also kind of hilarious in its awfulness. Someone posted a link to a Johns Hopkins report on domestic violence and guns and he “rebutted” it with a link to a gun-nut forum that looked like it was last updated in 1995. Then he started posting youtube videos with titles like “Democrat DARES TO TELL RAPE VICTIM a gun WOULDN’T HAVE SAVED HER!!!!” Then he mansplained for a while about how he’s just CONCERNED about women because he has a DAUGHTER, y’know, and just wants her to be able to PROTECT herself etc etc etc.
Anyway, that guy AND spousal rape dude can eat a bag of dicks, damn.
The Storify link does not seem to be working.
Errrrm. Nevermind.
I had a really visceral reaction to the Storify. Like serious punch in the gut. I really don’t know why, I’ve heard the same stories before, walked through the people calling names, hell, I flip off the protesters by the clinic down the block from my work daily. But it just hit super hard. And again, I wonder why the hell these folk get away with their terrorist tactics.
There are exclusions to US free speech rights. They have their own wiki page ffs. Free speech is not absolute. In the stories in the link, I’ve counted incitement, false statements of fact, fighting words and offensive speech and threats. So tell me again how unconstitutional it is to have folk 35 feet back from private property when what they are doing is not protected speech anyhow?
I am so angry after reading the Storify tweets. So much gratitude to all those who volunteer as escorts and counter-protesters, you are some seriously great and kind people.
The Storify tweets shot terror and rage straight into my heart. As a rural Canadian, I am fairly insulated from this particular kind of horror but even this small, industry based town has it’s small share of pro-life advocates; and when I see the occasion billboard and/or bus stop bench promoting typical bullshit pro-life propaganda, it’s always a temptation to find a can of spray paint of pleasing hue and give a violent “um, here’s some real facts and stats regarding a woman’s right to choose” make over.
However, being Canadian means politeness prevails. But a day may come where someone could find me, under the cover of darkness, perched precariously on a ladder with spray can in hand…
Oh, also, another great Toast reading day. This site is truly, truly wonderful, inspiring and overall splendid!
Anti-choice billboards have been a battle in my rural Canadian town for years now. We’ve gone past the polite stage, I think: two years ago someone must have hooked a big rig truck up to one of them because one morning it ended up smashed on the other side of the highway, posts ripped out of the ground and everything. Now all the anti-choice billboards are all metal and concrete.and it’s back to vandalism, and then vandalizing the vandalism (“abortion is vanalism of the womb” apparently) and so on.
I've done it, although I hesitate to call it a counter-protest. The abortion clinic near us was relatively peaceful compared to the stories I've heard from other places and the antichoicers mostly just stood around quietly with their gross fetus signs. My group (the feminist group from my college) kept our presence out by the main street and away from the actual clinic entrance because we figured the women going in and out did not need more chaos and noise on a stressful day; I didn't actually see a patient all day since I wasn't close enough to the entrance and I think that was probably for the best. We got some supportive waves and honks and stuff and ended by presenting the clinic workers with a nice basket of flowers, since the idea was more to be there in support of them than to protest the protesters. I think it was a pretty positive experience for that reason, and the clinic workers seemed appreciative.
I DID LEAVE MY WV BUT IT NEVER LEFT ME. I AM SO ANGRY I WAS UNABLE TO STAY. I WANT TO CHANNEL THE ANGER. CHARGE BACK THERE TO MAKE IT RIGHT. CITIZENS ARE BEING TOLD "COME ON IN THE WATER IS FINE. DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE SMELL"