First things first: I am the most feminist person I know.
Seriously. I have a daughter. I want her to be able to go wherever her merits and qualifications take her in her life, whether it’s a career or domestic life or…whatever. So if and where equity is the goal of feminism, I’m totally on board.
Of course, in the vast majority of our society, the equity feminists have long since won the battles that matter. Feminists with any common sense are currently sorting out the aftermath of those victories (how many women really want to put off having kids to join the work force?), but for the most part the “war” for women’s equality is down to a mopping-up operation.
Now, the feminism that’s most concerned with establishing womyn as a separate fiefdon with its own victimology-based pseudo-religion? Not so much.
So you’d figure – rightly – that a blog called “Feministe” would provide a rich vein of fisking material. Someone planted a bomb at an Austin, TX abortion mill “female health clinic”.
Had that bomb been found outside a post office or a school, the headlines would have been hysterically running on about ZOMG TERRORISM TERRORISM IS AL QAEDA INVOLVED?
Dunno, “Zuzu”; statistically, bombs in the US aren’t aren’t nearly as rare as we’d like.
And the right-wing warbloggers would be pissing their pants and hyperventilating about profiling Arabs and banning Muslims from public life and dhimmitude and how if they had been there, they’d have stopped it with their concealed carry and their extra-super special powers of righteousness, just like they saw in a movie once and BOMB IRAN! and 9/11 CHANGED EVERYTHING!!!
Are we done yet?
No?
but they still have better things to do than join the military, but they’ll be happy to go into the woods and hunt Russians and shout WOLVERINES!!
But it’s an abortion clinic, so. Ho-hum.
Now are you done?
Yes?
Is it “terrorism” to put a bomb in an abortion clinic, with an aim toward scaring people out of being suppliers or consumers? Absolutely. And as anti-abortion as we are, I don’t think you can find a single credible right-of-center voice that doesnt’ condemn it.
But is a bomb in an abortion clinic the deeply-evil act of a person who is putting his or her personal quest to protect human life above the law of the land, or part of a coordinated attack against the US?
For some reason, terrorism doesn’t count if it’s directed against women and their health care providers.
Er, right. Which is why protestors at Planned Parenthood clinics are kept across the street, right?
It’s just not news, and the fact that it goes unremarked in the national media — and hell, even in the local media, as in the case of the Austin bomb — contributes to the idea that women are not important and that violence directed at women is not only to be expected, but to be dismissed.
To the extent that it didn’t get covered in the news, it’s more a symptom of the values of the news industry; nobody bleeds, the story doesn’t lead. It’s worth noting that while abortion-related violence has been declining, eco-terrorism has been growing, even though the media aren’t knocking themselves out covering that, either.
Does that mean that the nation doesn’t care about loggers and meat producers? Or that it’s really not news?
But if all you’re after is to assuage your own sense of invincible righteous victimhood, knock yourself out.
And I don’t mean “knock yourself out” to imply I support domestic violence against women, even if it’s self-inflicted. We’re clear on this, right?
UPDATE: Lesser feminists than I chortle at my opening sentence, proving two things: Twin Cities leftybloggers are largely incapable of carrying on a logical discussion (preferring, with a few exceptions, snark and obscenity), and George Soros is a terrible comparison shopper.
Seriously, Rew: try to ding my premise. Preferably in terms other than “bwahahaha” or “Mitch has a crush on me”. Side benefit: If you manage to do either and/or avoid dumb scatology or wondering why I’m not in the Army, you’ll be staging a better argument than 95% of leftybloggers, including the entire Minnesota Monitor staff, can manage.
“But is a bomb in an abortion clinic the deeply-evil act of a person who is putting his or her personal quest to protect human life above the law of the land, or part of a coordinated attack against the US?”
Dang those rhetorical questoins. Wait a minute, was this a trick question? Aren’t all anti-abortion activists were hypocrites deep down.
People that judge an entire goup of people for one characteristic are stoopid.
The problem is emotion vs logic, and intellectual laziness.
What is it like to be that damn pathetic? I wonder if people like this actually are that pathetic or if the whole victim thing is a put-on. And I’d bet anything that the writer would applaud if a logger was killed or injured due to a spiked tree due to eco-terrorism. Goes with the territory of what these types “care” about (other than themselves). Like save the whales and baby seals…but abort human babies.
If you’re going to make that comparison, then the abortion clinic bomber is actually on a higher moral level than the eco-terrorists. One can argue that bombing an abortion clinic kills people who “are killing innocent children.” It’s much harder to argue justification for “saving the life of a tree” by killing a human being.
The whole thing is just another pitiable attempt by the victimization industry to elevate their grievances and gain attention. Somehow, the thought of a WMD-armed terrorist killing millions of us has distracted the public from the pursuit of a woman’s right to kill her unborn offspring. Since radical Islamists teach their kids to be suicide bombers, isn’t there room to ask who is more like a terrorist, here?
“But is a bomb in an abortion clinic the deeply-evil act of a person who is putting his or her personal quest to protect human life above the law of the land, or part of a coordinated attack against the US?”
Why can’t it be both? The degree of coordination from bombing to bombing may vary, but it’s always an attack on America, on American soil, directed at Americans in opposition to American law, by fundie zealots. Just because you sympathize with their cause doesn’t make them morally superior to any other terrorists including Arab terrorists who are just as sincere, just as certain and just as willing to kill.
And lets be accurate. These people’s quest is to protect fetal life until birth, not human life. There are plenty of other types of humans losing their lives, including soldiers and death row inmates, all of whom are of no interest to the abortion clinic terrorists. In fact, when conservatives carry signs at executions or war rallies, they are never in protest, always in support. Yep, pro-fetal birth is what they are. Once the fetus is born, apparently, it becomes of much less interest to them.
rew and her ilk feel that anyone who is in the least squeamish at the thought of bashing in the skull of a partially born infant can simply not be a feminist.
I guess you could call it the “ball-peen” litmus test.
BTW Mitch, and speaking of Ultraliberals..
Do *you* know what a “nappy cut” is and do you know why Flash and his pals think it’s funny that George Bush has one?
http://restraininorder.blogspot.com/2007/04/can-someone-help-brother-out-here.html
Now Swiftee, they don’t use a ball-peen hammer. They use a scissors-like device gto pen etrate the soft tissue on the skull, seperate the plates and then suck the brain out so the skull is easier to collapse.
It’s womyn’s health care, you silly wing-nut!
I’m really torn. Can I be a half-womyn? I am against abortion and against women getting the shaft in the media. Where do I fit in? I’M A FREAK of the21st century. Sad. No, wait. I’m a femyle. Now what. I’m confused.
Feemail?