It's A Feature, Not A Bug

So I had something already scheduled for today, but it all seems like pointless nonsense now. So into the breach with us!

The hatred of women/AFAB and minorities is a feature, not a bug. We all know this by now, right?

The rights, rules, and laws that hurt women/AFAB and minorities are not there by accident, they’re not mistakes, they exist by design. To hold people down and keep them vulnerable and desperate. To make sure they don’t have options and access to things that could help them to change their situations.

Who designed it? Well, the least offensive way to put it is to say the rich and powerful designed it. But let’s be real, it’s mostly straight white rich cis men, then and now.

My head SPINS when I think of how fast these laws would change if they adversely affected men in significant numbers.

And the key word there is adversely.

Because all these things DO affect the rich and powerful. It affects them in that it helps them very effectively keep a FUCKING BOOT ON OUR NECKS. And that’s exactly what they want.

Because it’s hard to rise up and change anything for the better — whether it be “politely” through peaceful protests, donations, voting, and activism, or whether it be “less polite” like through a motherfucking rebellion, for example — when you don’t have access to health care, or enough security to keep a roof over your head, or enough rights to make your own choices about what to do with your own body, or choose who you love, and what, if anything you choose to worship — it’s hard to do much of anything when you don’t have even those basic things.

You know how the most important things in your life fall completely apart the second you get really sick? Or someone close to you gets really sick? Yeah, that becomes the priority. It’s basic triage. Deal with the literal loss of blood so that you can maybe survive to fight another day.

That’s all of us. Every. Fucking. Day. Triage-ing it.

And our triage just got so. much. harder.

And we have to dig deeper than we ever have before — not just to get back what we have just lost — but because the dissenting judges make very clear in their opinion today (written by Stephen Breyer) that based on today’s judgement they have seen the future with this current Supreme Court and ALL OUR RIGHTS are on the chopping block (you can read the full opinion here). If you’re not a straight/white/cis/male in America, The Supreme Court just declared war on you. Even Justice Thomas said it outright in his concurring opinion:

No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen @NoLieWithBTC

BREAKING: Clarence Thomas just filed a concurring opinion to Dobbs calling for the court to consider overturning the right to contraception, same-sex marriage, and privacy in the bedroom.

More details about Thomas concurring opinion here.

We all knew losing Roe would be a cascading effect that lead toward ALL the steps forward we have excruciatingly made over the years being dismantled… making the boots on our neck ever larger and heavier. Which again, is the whole fucking point.

If we’re too tired and busy surviving, they can just do whatever the fuck they want.

I’m no brave hero or brilliant activist, and you can surely find better resources and more inspiring, rousing, hopeful, and/or angry words from better than me. I’m just like everyone else today… reeling and already tired and trying to figure out what I can do. I don’t for sure know what that means yet for me — certainly more calling of representitives and donating of money — but while I figure out better things I can do, when I wrote about this in May I included some links at the bottom of the post that you might find helpful now. That said, a lot is happening and happening fast. So I urge you to keep looking for updated and better information as we go:

Three Things: 001

There is no peace without justice and thus here we are: NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE.

I expect we’ll be hearing that A LOT in the coming months. As we should. You’re not alone. <3

~Kelly