Because #IAmProBodilyAutonomy/#IAmProAbortion, I am hosting a transcript of the screenshot below for Jackie Barbosa (tweet here), who’ll be editing and publishing a Romance for Roe anthology, all proceeds to benefit pro-choice charities.
Transcript below the cut.
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A few days ago, I had a conversation with a friend about politics, sexism, authoritarianism, and more. At one point, he mentioned that he despises the way privilege is often deployed to shut people up.
Which is a fair criticism, as we’ve all seen cries of “privilege” used to police what other people say and how they say it.
On the other hand, privilege exists, most people have at least some in one area or another, and it shields them from other people’s experiences and suffering.
Thing is, people rarely see their own privilege, however limited it may be, and therefore tend not to be receptive when it’s pointed out to them.
Like, say, people who have the privilege of choosing what they engage with, and how. Another form privilege manifests is in what we even see happening in the world around us.
This past weekend, that hateful “March for Life,” wherein right wing organizations and schools bus people in to DC to march for the “right” of men to control the lives of anyone born with an uterus, took place concurrently with the Indigenous Peoples March.
One of the schools that sent teens and chaperones to march this year was Covington Catholic High School, an all-male private school in Kentucky. There are long and terrible threads on twitter¹ with personal stories of survivors from both the school and the all-girls school across the street, which Covington assholes have nicknamed “whore school.” Charming boys, no?
At one point, a fairly large group of kids from Covington was facing off with four older members of another hate group, the Black Hebrew Israelites, and things were tense and likely heading to violence, when Omaha Elder Nathan Phillips, on his way to closing the Indigenous Peoples March at the Lincoln Memorial, intervened, placing himself between the two groups–and becoming the target of the white kids’ ire, once they were deprived of their original target.
There is video² and a plethora of articles about this harassment. There are interviews with witnesses AND with Nathan Phillips. Go google them.
There are also people defending the “boys” or rather, specifically, the white male teen wearing a MAGA hat, smirking with hateful disdain to the face of an elderly Native man.
I am trying to slip this one under the wire, see if I can start the year right.
I got this novella, in print, at RWA National Conference, in July 2017, so it was totally in the humongous, overwhelming, print TBR Cordillera of Doom, and therefore it qualifies wonderfully for SuperWendy’s TBR Challenge 2019, January edition. Yay!
Also, I’m pathetically grateful January’s theme is shorts, because between life and the reading slump from hell, I don’t know I would have even attempted anything longer.
“A Study in Scandal” by Caroline Linden
While this is one of the later stories in the Scandals series, I wasn’t lost, despite not having read any of the other stories.¹ There was a bit of filling in some of the series’ backstory during the first couple of pages, but it was easy enough to follow.
I did have other problems with the story, but we’ll get to that. First, the back cover blurb:
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A bit over five years ago, I wrote a post on Karen Knows Best, about Equality House, in Topeka, Kansas.
This past week, someone else wrote a beautiful story about its meaning to him and the community and the state–and what it can mean for all of us. Continue reading
In January this year (yes, that’s like a century ago, but bear with me), over 160 women, teens and girls came forward to confront Larry Nassar, who for DECADES had abused them, while being shielded by the organization that should have protected all those young girls from becoming teens and adult women marked by sexual abuse.
One of those speaking was Kyle Stephens, who said (in part):
(I would advise any religious/devout readers to skip this one)
Today, as I was driving home from work, letting the mind wander while waiting for the traffic light to change, I noticed something about the car tags in this here hellhole that I hadn’t noticed before. You have the state in smallish letters, the the tag number in LARGE letters, then you have…”IN GOD WE TRUST” in smaller capital letters.
And I realized why I don’t.
Trust in god, that is.
