Climate action…
Racial justice…
Reproductive rights…
Healthcare for all…
They’re all connected. They’re all about not hurting people.
You can’t have one & skip the others. Because the callousness necessary to deny any of them will leak over into the one you care about.
All the good things you want in life, you’re more likely to get them if you live in a world with kind and compassionate leaders who care about your needs.
But a truly kind and compassionate leader who cares about YOUR needs will care about the needs of EVERYONE.
Kindness and compassion can’t deny science, because fundamentally, science is nothing more than a process for figuring out what’s real.
Denying reality is neither kind nor compassionate. It’s delusional, dangerous, and cruel.
I’m still mad that after literal years of me dragging my whole family down to the Bay Area (from Oregon) for holidays that my in-laws cared more about peace and politeness (meaning me keeping my mouth shut about the hatefulness of forced-birthers) than about seeing any of us.
It really messes with your sense of worth when people that you’ve cared about for years make it clear that you mean less to them than THE CONCEPT OF A FETUS. Not, like, even ones they really know or have investment in or EXIST. Just, like, the idea that some MIGHT exist.
Because there are literally people out there who will vote for stupidity and cruelty, figuring those are acceptable collateral damage, just to protect the IDEA of fetuses. And yes, it’s just the IDEA, because there are LITERALLY NO FETUSES out there fighting for their rights.
You know why fetuses don’t fight for their rights? BECAUSE THEY’RE LESS ALIVE THAN GRASS. A cat will scratch you to make its feelings clear. A dog will bite. ACTUAL BABIES CRY. Fetuses are fucking nothing. And the fetishization of them is goddamned sick. GODDAMNED SICK.
Apparently when I get angry, I use the word “literally” a lot. Correctly… but possibly unnecessarily.
The toxic smoke in the sky; the virus carried invisibly by other people; and the hate, cruelty, and incompetence from the republicans in charge…
It feels like being in Ghostbusters 2 when the pink slime, charged with bad feelings is ready to make the whole city boil over.
When you’re more gentle with the feelings of people causing harm than the feelings of people they’re harming, that’s not kindness. It’s complicity.
The beliefs of forced-birthers are fundamentally hateful and violent, because they dehumanize people with the mixed fortune of having uteruses.
Pretending otherwise is participating in that dehumanization.