By Diane Roberts
What’s America’s biggest problem?
Not catastrophic climate change; not income inequality; not systemic racism.
It’s women.
OK, also communists. They’re everywhere, but the Florida Legislature means to nip that in the bud. Schools will be forced to teach kindergarteners about the Evils of the Proletariat owning the Means of Production and how this makes Jesus cry.
But even the threat of a worker’s revolt pales in comparison to the Woman Problem.
To the increasingly hysterical Right, women — and their unruly bodies — are a danger to the Republic.
Christopher Rufo, the man behind the destruction of Florida’s once-renowned honors college, says women in higher education cause “all sorts of cultural problems,” turning universities into “social justice ghettos.”
Trust those girls to insist on learning about social justice. Whatever happened to getting that all-important MRS degree?
Back when New College was nationally ranked and celebrated for its creative approach to learning, enrolment was two-thirds women.
Rufo’s response to New College’s success? Admit lots of men instead. Shut down gender studies and lower academic requirements so a critical mass of jocks can get in.
More Kens, fewer Barbies.
A campus full of dudes will help run off those woke professor wimmin who agree with suffragist and writer Rebecca West, famous for saying, “People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.”
As if doormats and prostitutes aren’t useful!
To Rufo and his anti-intellectual fellow travelers, college was better when it was all about mandatory chapel and sports and frats and pretty girls in hard-to-get-off panty girdles.
Challenging corsetry might help address another burning issue: the scourge of “recreational sex.”
Sex with consequences
Rufo, whose attitude toward women would embarrass John Knox, claims the Pill causes “health problems for many women.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists begs to differ, but why let medical science get in the way of misinformation?
Undeterred by reality, Rufo declares “single-mother households,” which are to blame for “poverty, crime, and dysfunction,” stem from having sex for fun: “The point of sex is to create children — this is natural, normal, and good.”
Didn’t those single mothers have sex to create those children?
Was it OK if the sex was lousy?
Rufo is not the only idiot reactionary to hold these opinions. The Heritage Foundation says it wants to “restore the consequentiality to sex” by “cracking down on the senseless use of birth control pills.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas agrees. The concurring opinion he issued with the Dobbs decision suggests the court should “reconsider” same-sex relationships and contraception.
It’s not enough to take away the right to abortion, you need to make sure that if these jezebels have sex they can’t try to avoid getting pregnant.
You have one job, ladies: Pop out those Bundles of Joy!
Which brings us to Alabama, where they store kids in the freezer.
Clearly tired of losing out to Florida as Stupidest State in the Nation, Alabama says to Mississippi, “Hold my beer,” and declares that vitrified clumps of cells are, in fact, children.
“Extra-uterine” children.
Fro-’bryos
To the Alabama Supreme Court, frozen embryos are precious babies just waiting to glue themselves to the nearest uterine wall.
Here’s how we got here: Three couples who had conceived using IVF froze their extra embryos in case they wanted to give pregnancy another go without the expensive and painful hormone treatments and egg harvesting.
But a patient at the hospital housing their “cryo-preserved” eggs opened a liquid nitrogen tank full of fro-’bryos, pulled some out and dropped them on the floor.
As far as Alabama’s justices are concerned, that is “wrongful death.” Those fro-’bryos were people just like you and me, only much, much smaller. Also limbless, brainless, and shapeless.
The ruling means IVF clinics have stopped providing services. Companies that could send fro-’bryos out of state are afraid to touch them lest they fall foul of the law.
The court’s “reasoning” ain’t reasonable. Can the parents of extra-uterine youth claim child tax credit? Can those ice cube babies get a pre-born Social Security number?
And has anybody told the justices embryos are non-binary?
Alabama’s justices might want to read up on how humans develop. A born human has between 20 and 30 trillion cells (pending on physical maturity), while that twinkle-in-daddy’s-eye blastocyst can claim only around 200.
Yet they persist in saying that little smidge of matter should have the same rights as the walking brooders we call “women.”
Maybe more rights: Alabama, Florida, Texas and other neo-medieval states force women to incubate that blastocyst, even if it might kill them.
Pipe down!
The uber-Right keeps wishing chicks would just pipe down and accept their place in the Christian Nationalist order as good mothers and good wives, serving wenches at the masculinist feast, worker bees helping to make America 1850 again.
Some girls got the memo.
The book-banning, fit-pitching Moms for Liberty want to make sure America’s innocent babes never encounter icky realities such as our history of racism and genocide, or the complexities of human sexuality.
Those pearls they wear are for convenience of clutching.
Moms for America, a MAGA chorus line of Handmaidens associated with the pit of vipers that is CPAC, want to counter “radical feminists” and promote a nation dedicated to “faith, virtue, and patriotism.”
Their role model is the Victorian “Angel in the House,” a home-making machine focused on keeping the bread-winning husband happy and keeping the babies coming: After all, raising the next generation is a woman’s “most important work.”
Then there are the “Tradwives,” girly girls who buy “biblically-inspired cosmetics” and anti-woke tampons as they go about fulfilling God’s plan for their second-class status.
Blame it on Eve.
Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker probably does, judging by the amount of Old Testament scripture he quotes in his concurring opinion, skittering from Genesis to Jeremiah: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee.”
So much for separation of church and state.
It’s the 21st Century. We all thought women’s rights were a done deal. We assumed contraception and reproductive freedom were permanent tenets of our democracy.
We thought wrong.
A feature, not a bug
Misogyny is not a bug, it’s a feature of America’s blooming love affair with authoritarianism.
Dobbs is just the beginning.
Meanwhile back in ’Bama, the legislature is scrambling to pass a bill giving civil and criminal immunity to IVF doctors and clinics, lest their own constituents turn on them.
Turns out IVF is popular with the kind of upwardly mobile couples who might — except for this crap — support them politically.
It’s hard to tell if Alabama’s hastily scribbled new laws will clarify much of anything: Up in Washington, Mississippi Sen Cindy Hyde-Smith has blocked legislation that would provide national protection for IVF, calling it a “vast overreach.”
The damage has been done. The Alabama court has created a precedent: fro-‘bryos have been declared children.
No telling where this will lead: If they’re people, can they stay frozen? Will that be deemed cruel?
Will all the fertilized eggs a couple create have to be implanted so these extra-uterine citizens become intra-uterine and thus able to exercise their right to be born? Will there by a sudden rash of sextuplets?
Conservatives, both male and female, have always sought to control women — their bodies, their sexuality, their opportunities.
They’re afraid the old bumper sticker is true: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.
Deirdre says
Don’t forget about overpopulation being one of the major issues throughout the world, the population has doubled multiple times since I was born and we only have so many resources on earth. As it is, we’re killing off the natural world or whatever’s left of it. When it dies, we’ll die too.
I remember when women used to have reproductive rights, when I was a younger person and I would go to Planned Parenthood for regular GYN care (including birth control!), not an abortion, I was broke and it’s a great resource for women that can’t afford a doctor.
I would have to fight my way through crowds screaming at me as a murderer. I never thought these lunatics would be in power, but there you go.
I’m looking forward to having funerals for these poor little fertilized eggs that never got the chance to live a full life. Much more important than their life will be if born, and they’re female.
JimboXYZ says
Not sure what the solution is ? Planned Parenthood is a good thing, otherwise abstinence works better than birth control & abortion is an unnecessary procedure when the part of the equation that gets pregnant says no ? It’s an individual accountability & responsibility. If the research is accurate ? 65K pregnancies (July 2022 -January 2024) are 12.5% of the rape induced pregnancy. 87.5% of rapes alone don’t require an abortion as there is no resultant pregnancy. I get it, it’s of little comfort to those victims of rape that they would not be able to possibly get an abortion. There’s a different damage for mental health that happens with rape. But my point is, the study infers to indicate that the pregnancies that happened beyond 65K was consensual ? How many of those pregnancies are unwanted vs planned parenthood ?
Part of me wants to think there are OBGYN’s banking on the way an abortion pays out on, whether it’s a out of pocket cost or a fee for service procedure. Let’s make that a capitated procedure that is part of the health care premium with no out of pocket costs and see if abortions are even an issue ? With abortions being banned the alternative is obviously a bigger payout on a procedure for the entire process of inception to birth. Disincentivising having a baby might be the way to go on this. But that doesn’t fit the direction of unaffordable Bidencare or any POTUS version of Affordable Care Act since Obama. When healthcare hasn’t been financially lucrative procedures for anything, the politics of it all disappear. Covid is a perfect example ? Is the government paying out on Covid anymore like it was doing in 2020 ? It always comes back to the financial of it all, that’s the sad part of unaffordable healthcare.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/24/1226161416/rape-caused-pregnancy-abortion-ban-states
Deborah Coffey says
OMG, Diane! I can’t even “conceive” of the thoughts that go through your mind giving birth to the best satire on Earth. Thank you for the best laugh of the year. We’re having a very difficult time carrying the pregnancy of today’s reality but, we will certainly march our threatened and undervalued bodies to the polling place. Maybe we can give birth to freedom and respect.
Skibum says
Here, here! I heartily agree!
Richard Fay says
Support the ERA – Ejaculant Responsibility Act – liberating women from the responsibility for containing ejaculators’ desires for dominance & control as well as serial sexual behavior.
Deborah Coffey says
Nice to hear a man’s support, Richard. Thank you.
Jane Kranz says
Bravo Diane! Fabulous article!
The dude says
Meanwhile Alabama:
1. has declared that embryos created through IVF are considered children.
2. created legislation to protect the killing of those same children.
Evidently MAGA can have its cake and eat it too.
Ed p says
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Alexander says
Leave women’s bodies a lone and stop shoving your religious beliefs into our government. Roe vs Wade was written into law 60 yrs ago and it should have been left a lone. This will be the largest down fall of the Republican party over turning that law.
Vote Smart Vote Blue.
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
Vote Blue from the National down to the Local Elections, know your local candidates that’s where it all starts.
Joan says
Thank you for so beautifully articulating the heartbreak and trauma we are experiencing, along with the vile, sexist reasoning behind it. I never would have believed we could sink so low. Those who invoke the word of God to justify their hate and prejudice, and to enhance their own power, deserve the worst He has to offer.
Local says
Just for the record that’s every religion.
Laurel says
Yet another clever satire by Diane Roberts. I appreciate what she wrote, however, the problem I have is that it isn’t funny. It’s way too close to truth, and alarming, so it’s hard to crack a smile. As an old saying goes: There’s a lot of truth in a joke.
As a woman, do I want to go back in time? No. Is this serious? Yes. There are, however, women in Congress who are more than willing to do this to their own gender, to their own country, for the sake of power. That power is obtained by pleasing one man.
“Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man’s soul and faith”
Yesterday did it for me. I watched a recent episode of ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephenopolous interviewing South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace, and sat there completely stunned while she gave her response to the question about why she would endorse Donald Trump after he had been found guilty of the assault (essentially, rape) of E. Jean Carroll. Her rabid response was scripted, and the script was repeated over and over again. She accused Stephanopolous of “shaming” her for being raped (she claimed she was raped at age 16 and was afraid to come forward). He was not. He was asking the simple, obvious question how she could endorse a man who was found guilty of sexual assault. Mace continued her claims of “shame” and told him, repeatedly, that she found Stephenopolous supposed intention “disgusting” and because of people like him, women do not come forward when raped. It was a head shaker!
Mace also attacked the victim, E. Jean Carroll, for joking about how she was going to spend the money she gets from Trump, after winning the sexual assault trial, and winning the second trial of defamation. We may have not seen the rape with our own eyes, but we did hear the defamation with our own ears. To downplay what happened to E. Jean Carroll is the real sin, and it appears the sins continue with these scripts. Carroll took a long time to come forward, but Mace blamed Carroll, along with Stephenopolus, for women not coming forward, not because of fear of the rapist. Mace repeated this script over and over, too. Whenever Stephenopolous changed the subject, Mace stuttered and brought the conversation back to her script. Mace continued with downplaying the sexual assault trial, being a civil trial, that it sounded as if civil trials shouldn’t be in court at all. After all, if we took it seriously, Trump would not be the candidate to be elected by many voters.
Near the end of the interview, Mace continued her script with a smile on her face. She talked about rape, fear of coming forward, shame and disgust, with a glossy smile. What’s wrong with that picture?
After the State of the Union Address, Alabama Congresswoman Katy Britt did a “rebuttal.” She, too, was on script. She over dramatically gave misinformation about President Biden and migrants. It was so disingenuous, that it was comical. Actually, Scarlett Johansson did a bang up job satirizing Britt on Saturday Night Live. I’m surprised Britt didn’t clutch her obvious, diamond studded cross while trying to squeeze out a tear.
So what do we have here? Scripted testimonies by Congresswomen. Young women willing to sell their souls, their country and their gender to a man who appears to have no soul at all, while a fog descends over so many Americans who sees these scripts as truth. What does it do to the soul of a woman who is sparing for the chance at becoming the Vice President…this way?
“Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name
But what’s puzzlin’ you is the nature of my game”
Skibum says
I agree with you, Laural. When I watched, or more precisely attempted to watch Alabama Sen. Britt’s GOP rebuttal to President Biden’s SOU speech, just seeing the staging of that catastrophe told me, and should have informed all of America, all that we need to know about the Republican Party. For the GOP to stage that thing by placing Britt in the kitchen (where women should be, apparently) was laughable. I’m surprised she wasn’t stage dressed in an apron, cooking her man some meat and potatoes for dinner while reading her GOP scripted rebuttal.
While there is much that could be said about Britt’s word salad that came spewing from her mouth, I couldn’t get past her weirdly uneasy looking facial expressions as she attempted to excoriate the president’s policies. I kept thinking that some appropriate sound effects should have been playing in the background, maybe from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. I know for sure that Britt was able to check off ONE of the conservative republicans’ requirements for women, because she was in the kitchen where women “belong”. I just couldn’t tell if she checked off the boxes for their other two requirements, because we could not see if she was barefoot and pregnant.
Deborah Coffey says
Spot on as usual, Laurel.
endangered species says
I guess I’m not surprised, when you elect people that make up their own facts and use propaganda to influence the masses based on total lies you get republican policy which doesnt help or support anyone rather is used as a tool to control and keep profits rolling in. We should likely hit some tipping points in the next couple years as we hit 1.5C already last year 76 years early. then maybe people will realize the real value of their “jobs”. good thing one of the two parties outright dont care and you cant force them to believe in science. Sad that we must kill all life on earth for fake money and convivence but hey bald ape get what bald ape wants.