Bidding Goodbye to the Fourth of July
My morning exercise took me past a decorative display of stars and stripes, the good old red, white, and blue.
My jaw clenched. My hands formed fists. My running pace increased because, although I have never perpetrated an act of vandalism before in my life or committed any crime (other than a stolen chapstick in the seventh grade, which my guilt led me to return to the store), I wanted to rip into that patriotic display and destroy it.
Those on the right no doubt read that last paragraph and cried, “Ah-ha! We knew it! The left is violent! Down with Antifa (the irony inherent in that statement apparently lost)!
Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn what they think. They are a bunch of sadists who would rather condemn a 10-year-old-child to carrying her rapist’s demon seed at tremendous risk to her life and health than admit that hey, science is a thing and compassion is more important than theology, hell, is at the core of any true theology. I value their opinions about as highly as I regard the preachings of Jim Jones.
However, they’ll be comforted to know that instead of doing what I want to do this long weekend, I’m sitting here writing a rant post that no one will read. I will not be participating in this society in any way. I certainly won’t be shooting off firecrackers, lighting sparklers, or in any way celebrating this shithole country where women have fewer rights than corpses. Overturning Roe v. Wade was the death knell of American independence. There is no freedom without bodily autonomy.
Another Revictimization at the Hands of the USA
I’ve had a hot lava pit of rage boiling inside my belly for a real long time. Because I’m a reasonable, peaceful person who is somewhat in touch with my higher self, I typically try to control my emotions through yoga and meditation.
It’s what I do to heal myself from the horrors I’ve experienced as a disabled woman in the United States. Long story short, my overwhelming medical debt coupled with that pesky need to keep a roof over my head and eat led me to essentially sex traffic myself in despair a few years back — it was that or homelessness and death. I almost died. However, I survived and was making progress in recovering from my wounds.
Until that is, the Supreme Court decided a little revictimization was on their docket for that day. When they overturned Roe v. Wade, they may as well have taken a rusty blade to my genitals and those of every other sexual violence victim out there — because that’s exactly how I felt when I got the news. I felt as if I had been torn open from groin to the gullet, utterly eviscerated by a system that already worries more about rapists’ psychological health than their victim’s welfare and which now wants her to live with a permanent reminder of his violence.
I can’t even describe the degree of rage, frustration, terror, outrage, and utter furious panic I feel right now. I am trying every tool in my box to regulate my emotions, but frankly, it’s not working. Part of me can’t help but think that maybe that’s because the time for emotional regulation has passed.
I’m thinking crazy thoughts. I suspect many women are. There’s nothing going down in my rural area, and I can’t drive because of my aforementioned disability. But I woke up this morning wanting to hitchhike to a more urban area to take part in whatever protest action I can find. If nothing else, surrounding myself with other people who feel similarly could make me feel less alone.
I hesitate for two reasons. The first is that the thought of my hitchhiking threw my lover into his own panic. We’re long-distance — and I understand his concerns. Hitchhiking isn’t nearly as dangerous as many make it out to be, and I’m used to not really caring about the danger, anyway. After all, society never cared about the danger to me when I was sick and giving blowjobs to try to buy bread. As much as I’ve tried to repair my self-esteem, the constant messaging society sends poor people — your plight is your fault, you should simply bootstrap harder if you’re suffering, and the only reason for poverty is your personal failings, not a messed up society — take their toll after a while. Therefore, I’m content with the knowledge that it doesn’t really matter what happens to me. I’m nobody — who are you?
However, I’m somebody to my boyfriend. As much as I feel thrown away by this society, I feel cherished by him. Therefore, I’ll refrain from hitchhiking out of respect for his feelings.
That’s only one part of the story, though. The other half? I simply don’t trust myself right now.
The little Fourth of July display that triggered me is nothing. Small potatoes. My higher mind kicks in within two seconds flat: “The shop owner’s just trying to make a buck. It’s not his fault this happened.” I let exercise mitigate my cortisol levels and move on with my life.
When I think about the forced birth crowd, though, my thoughts get much darker. My mind turns to knives and self-defense claw devices and certain soft parts of the male anatomy. Wanna end abortion? Mass castration ought to take care of that problem real quick.
My ideas turn more midnight than the deepest caves. “Just one. Maybe it doesn’t have to be everyone — but I could strike just one. Just one of these forced-birth muthafuckers. Slice and dice and oh! Is your body permanently altered now? What a shame! Maybe you should know that if you perpetrate acts of violence against women, they may turn around and do the same to you? Run along now, little gelding…well, once you heal up, anyway.”
My higher self recognizes such daydreams aren’t okay. It understands on a cognitive level that committing more violence in an attempt to end violence is a horrible dynamic that’s bound to fail. It’s done so time and again throughout human history. It’s why war is a stupid waste of time that has never solved anything and destroyed human potential, but that’s the game our narcissistic leaders love to play with us as their pawns.
However, I also believe that every human being has an innate right to defend themselves. And I’m hard-pressed at this point not to look at this as a self-defense situation.
I try to reason with myself, “JFC, Jenn. You don’t even have a horse in this race anymore. You don’t even have a uterus.”
That doesn’t matter, either. My sisters do. That 10-year-old little girl in Ohio does — and now she has to live the rest of her life not only with the nightmarish trauma of rape and sexual abuse but the controversy arising from her plight — which never should have made headlines. The only thing making the news should be the image of her rapist’s face behind prison bars.
I’m trying to stay logical. I’m trying to take what positive actions I can take. I’ve got an appointment scheduled with my PCP to get my arthritis medication refilled — something women that still have uteri now have to worry about being denied because a handful of Supreme Court justices consider them to be broodmares, not human beings. I manage my arthritis through yoga, but I want to have plenty on hand for anyone who needs a bit of medicinal help.
I desperately wish I could drive so that I could start a service bringing the drug back from Mexico. As it is, all I can do is suggest a VPN and Tor browser to hit up online pharmacies. Don’t put in your real information, just in case. Use a Visa gift card instead of a traceable credit card.
There are underground networks forming to help women. I know my energy is best directed toward working with an established organization to help in their mission, not going guerilla.
But oh, am I ever angry enough to do something crazy. I want to make tossing a little tea in the harbor look like a Sunday outing at the park. I wish I had an army of similarly enraged women to storm Washington with right now. Forget January 6. It’s time to go big and bold for the right reasons — like the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness promised to white male landowners in the Declaration of Independence but now denied to modern American women in 2022.
It Doesn’t Even Matter How You Feel About Abortion
Here’s the real kicker. It doesn’t even matter how you feel about abortion. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s murder. Your philosophy doesn’t give you the right to deny other people of their basic liberty — the first and foremost of which is bodily autonomy.
American courts have ruled time and again that you cannot be forced to give up a part of your body, even if doing so would save the life of another. For example, let’s say you have two perfectly healthy kidneys and have no medical conditions that would make surgery risky or prohibit you from living a full and happy life to a ripe old age if you donated one. The President of the United States needs such an organ, and in all the country, you are the only one who can save their life.
According to established precedent, you would be under no obligation to go under the knife. You might volunteer your kidney for the good of the country or the higher value of saving another human being, but no one could force you to do it.
You know, the way the Court now forces women to become incubators.
That’s why it doesn’t matter what your personal views on abortion are. No one is going to ever force you to have one. It doesn’t matter if your obstetrician says proceeding with pregnancy means a 99.99999% chance that both you and the fetus will perish. You would be perfectly free to assume the risk and carry to term.
What you’re now not free to do in more than half the country is act to save your life. News that should have been joyous is now fraught with terror.
Worse, your doctor might be prohibited by law from acting — in direct opposition to the Hippocratic Oath — until it is nearly too late. Imagine lying on a gurney bleeding to death and having to wait for an attorney to give the okay to operate. I mean, people dying from lack of healthcare in America is nothing new, but you have to be blind not to see how denying this essential care to women is gender-based violence.
I wish that doctors would stand up and walk out en masse. Of course, they can’t. They have other patients.
I wish that women would stand up and take to the streets en masse. I guess they are in some places. We need a lot more than I’m seeing. However, as in nearly every lousy political decision ever made, it’s the poor who suffer most. Those who would like to participate in mass action are hopelessly busy working multiple jobs to make ends meet and feed the mouths they already have — not to mention, those they might be forced to add to an already hungry table.
When Your Country Forces Women to Die, American Independence Is a Lie
I wish people would stand up and take mass action in this country. Right now isn’t a good time for anyone to be isolated. Deaths of despair spiral out of control here more than in any other country because we have no social safety net. Now, the powers that be want to tax poor and working women even more.
When will enough finally be enough? When will the breaking point finally come?
I guess all I can do is try to manage myself. I know acting on my emotions won’t solve anything. I know perpetrating acts of violence will only make things worse. But oh, god, do I now understand the “lone gunman” mentality better than I ever wanted to. It’s like what Nietzsche once said about looking into the abyss. Gazing into that darkness is one thing, but I feel like I have been pushed right into that void these past few weeks. It’s only human for me to want to come out swinging.
I’ll restrain myself from performing any gelding operations on 2-legged animals. I will not, however, participate in this farce of a fucking holiday.
I will not shop for nor attend a single barbecue.
I will not light a single sparkler.
I will not go to a light show or a county fair.
I sure as fuck will not wear red, white, or blue.
Instead, I’ll stay home. I’ll continue to look for meaningful ways to help women who have been hurt by this sadistic, unscientific, antediluvian, and utterly FUBAR Supreme Court decision. I’ll write chants for the protests I wish I was attending and try to dismiss Molotov daydreams.
Because when your country forces women to die, American independence is a lie.
Fuck the Fourth of July.
