kalmn

violent rhetoric breeds violent acts.

here's a screenshot of sarahpac's website with crosshairs over giffords' district.

http://instagr.am/p/68p0/

federal judge john roll killed by same shooter who shot giffords.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/tpm_confirms_federal_judge_shot_at_incident_in_ari.php

when this happens in other countries, we call it what it is, a politically motivated assassination or assassination attempt.

when it happens here in the us, it's always the act of one deranged loner, acting alone, entirely his own motives, not influenced by anyone or if he was, it was all an accident and whoever said that surely never meant for it to be taken that way.

wake up.

reasonable people can in fact disagree on the issues.

that's not the situation we're in here in the united states.

Current Mood: angry
Crossposts: http://kalmn.livejournal.com/361997.html

feminism is not about choice.

every single blessed lemming that runs over the cliff does it of it's own free will. and dies on the rocks below.

feminism is about equality. equality on all sorts of multiple overlapping intersecional axes. (axises?)

does equality lead to more choice? yes, yes it does.

choice in an unequal system is a rigged game. it is not a free choice.

i want you to have free choices. i want me to have free choices.

but i don't, and you don't. and not all choices made by feminists are feminist choices, sometimes they're the choices we have to make to get along, whether we consciously realize that or not. sometimes the choices we want to make, actually really want to make, are the ones that are the ones that are the same ones the patriarchy encourages us to make. [waves at ms v, way up there on those rocks]

if someone makes a choice that isn't the one i'd make, that i wish, for feminist reasons, isn't the one they'd make, i will usually try to keep my mouth shut. (because, hello, the patriarchy hurts everyone, and do you need me poking you on a difficult issue? no.)

for the record, i do not always make the patriarchy-killing choices myself. i am currently wearing an uncomfortable yet well fitting bra, made an effort to look pulled together this morning, and dyed my hair a color that doesn't stand out from the crowd last week. not to mention that i am being fairly closeted about several things to achieve a goal that i cannot achieve unless i am not noticeably different from the norm.

people get to make their own choices, they do. me, you, everyone.

whether or not those choices are equal, whether or not those choices advance equality, *even if you are a member of an oppressed group, that's a different matter.

Crossposts: http://kalmn.livejournal.com/356577.html

http://www.startribune.com/politics/local/110276274.html

"He said Tuesday that he is not familiar with the Highland Park area and didn't know he was at Planned Parenthood when he pulled into the empty lot so that he could look for a woman he had met online. Hackbarth said he had coffee with the woman on Nov. 15, and asked her to dinner the next night but she told him she couldn't because of a commitment she had with a female friend in Highland Park. Hackbarth said he felt that she might have been seeing a man instead, so he parked his car and walked around the block looking for her car. (The security guard spotted Hackbarth's gun when he got out of his car and put on a winter coat.)"

so, either, he's parking in the planned parenthood lot with a gun on purpose, as a not very veiled threat to planned parenthood (and i've been to this one, and drive by it all the time-- clearly marked building, clearly marked parking lot, and he's a forced birth advocate, so i find it difficult to believe that he doesn't know where all the protests happen in st paul), or else he is stalking a woman he barely knows out of some overentitled sense of having a right to know what she's doing when she won't go out with him a second time.

when i was single, did i go on a lot of craigslist dates? yes, yes i did. were there some number of them when i thought "oh, a second date could be fun, but they don't want to and i wish they'd give me a second chance"? yes, yes there were.

what did i do in these cases? go home, send them a nice email saying hey, had a good time, would love to do it again, please let me know if you are free; and then distract myself out of hitting refresh refresh refresh on my email.

what did i *not* do? go stalk them! while armed!

the thing that is enormously clear here is that representative hackbarth thinks that he has a right to women's bodies, whether they are pregnant and unknown to him or known to him but don't want to date him.

if any of you reading this are minnesotans from elk river, oak grove, or east bethel, i strongly encourage you to vote for someone else next time he comes up. if you feel a need to vote republican, you can see if he is running opposed in the primaries and vote for some other republican there, or else you can vote in the general election for an opponent from another party.

(vito, i am totally stealing your tag here.)