Thing You Should Read This Week

There's a really good response article over at Feministing this week in response to a really annoying article on the Double X blog, which is the neo-con "feminist" site that Slate put up in hopes of achieving Jezebel fame. Man, I'm sorry but the XX blog (otherwise known as Double X) really gets my blood going. I used to listen to their podcast but I can't even do that anymore. With article titles like "How Can You Possibly Outdo Eat, Pray, Love" and "Why I'm Sick Of Volunteering at My Kids Wealthy School", well, I'd say its a blog for wealthy Park Slope moms, but I almost feel like that's offending wealthy Park Slope moms. This is why people discredit feminism for being an upper-middle class white movement - because of "feminism" like Double X.
So Double X founder Emily Bazelon wrote this piece about the senate's debate over abortion coverage in the health care bill. While she acknowledged that its a bad idea to have abortion coverage separate from health coverage she says that its not bad to send the issue to the states and let them decide individually. This is the thing with Double X, it always sounds almost okay, but then its just not.
So then Feministing put up this great response explaining what is so problematic to start thinking of parts of the country as our sacrificial lambs.....

I realized from whence my disturbance comes...that it is sourced in that space of us and them and of have and have nots...of a movement that will forever carry the scars of past compromises that result in real consequences for some women who live in "conservative parts of the country" and thus live in a different America where the lack of "national reach" translates into a denial of rights.

One of the really creepy things is that with fights like this it doesn't just end at abortion. The easiest way to role back basic rights is to start small and gradually increase so that people barely notice that its sneaking into their lives. And it won't just stop at abortion.

It's a place many women and minorities know all too well.We who know this place know that when shit rolls down hill it picks up speed and mass and that these compromises never stay simple...and that little comfort can be found in knowing that women who live someplace else will have the same health care insurance options they had before reform when we who know this place teeter on the edge of reproductive Jim Crow.

The view is different from here, in a conservative part of the country where privacy and choice are deemed negotiable...where the denial of reproductive justice that is causally discussed in the luckier parts of the country manifests itself in pharmacy denials, sex education curricula designed to perpetuate sexual illiteracy, and waves upon waves of anti-choice legislation fueled, in part, by the apathy of those who either can't imagine needing the full range of reproductive health care services or know that a proper cushion of money solves pesky little problems like access and geography.

Political parties can be annoying and subscribing to labels like liberal or leftist can be trite, but I really do feel strongly about a belief in the fact that we are in this together. Maybe its because we're all ruled by the same government, but also cause those gals down below the mason dixon line driving for days to find a clinic or even a pharmacy are gals too, like us.