BBs for short
Yes this is the way to defend abortion rights, pretend you don’t know who does the baby-having.
“Birthing bodies.” How fucking insulting.
Tip Jar
Yes this is the way to defend abortion rights, pretend you don’t know who does the baby-having.
“Birthing bodies.” How fucking insulting.
this kind of twisting your language into obscure knots to avoid offending people who actually thrive on being offended, while clouding the serious major issue and putting off far more supporters than you would loose just by saying woman drives me nuts.
Then again, there are a bunch of people who probably think of themselves as quite liberal, maybe even progressive by US standards, who get upset at language and have a hissy. I saw a pro choice tweet yesterday likening a foetus to a parasite, and a person who I know from previous tweets is broadly supportive of liberal causes replying that ‘people like them’ would never support pro-choice while they used language like that.
When support for something as critical as women’s reproductive rights and health is so easily eroded by ‘failure to include’ people who are definitional already included or who are irrelevant to include, Oh you’ve used language that makes me feel squeamish, and just plain old women are just bitches and have it coming, how do you win?
I saw tweets yesterday from people still blaming HRC for having been unreliable and the Democratic Party because of poor messaging, or having thrown it’s weight behind HRC instead of Sanders. Fundamentally these types of people just care a whole lot less than they claim to. They’re unreliable allies because they expect you to jump through hoops to please and engage them, but then they might still withhold support because of even the smallest perceived slight.
And, like Lucy Van Pelt, once you try to jump through the hoop, they will move it. And they’ll set it on fire.
As for a parasite, it actually is. The definition of a parasite is when one individual lives on or in the body of another and takes nourishment from that body. If that isn’t a fetus, I don’t know what is. The thing is, at some point, it will become a free-living creature, but until it does, the woman has to risk her life and health to take care of it and make sure everything happens the way it is supposed to. People can’t see that because they keep calling it a ‘baby’. It isn’t a baby until it’s born; prior to that, it’s an embryo, then a fetus. But a lot of people visualize a baby, around three or four days old, or older, all cleaned up and cooing.
I mused tonight on facebook that this decision by SCOTUS will backfire on the GOP in general, and a mutual friend replied something along the lines of “don’t be so sure–the democrats have been pushing screwed up language for so long now that they’ve lost much of their support”.
She also pointed to a poll (a good one, imo; I read the methodology carefully) that found that support for abortion rights in the USA goes up by nine points when language explicitly mentioning “women” is used. That’s a huge jump, and far outside most error margins in scientific polls of this nature.
A link to an article that includes a link to the above poll:
https://4w.pub/how-a-decade-of-democratic-delusions-failed-women-on-abortion/
Using the term parasite in what is fundamentally an emotionally charged issue isn’t wise when you’re trying to persuade people (though I’m on board with the term personally). Pretending women don’t exist similarly puts people off I think…
James, that is a quite stunning effect, and one I’m actually not that surprised about on reflection. Direct and relatable language motivates and grabs attention. Passive, obscuring, generalised or pseudo academic language does not. I think that the political right is currently much better at tapping into peoples motivation on a sustained basis than the left is, or has been for a couple of decades frankly. Recent advances in gay rights notwithstanding.
iknklast, I agree that technically parasite fits the bill, and I wouldn’t flinch at someone using the term personally. I may even have been known to joke with future parents about such matters (one of the privileges of being the ‘bad’ friend without kids). It’s not good messaging in a fraught environment though. That said, I’d give someone a piece of what is left of my mind if they said they were going to support abortion rights, but now wouldn’t because someone used a word they didn’t like.
Any organism which takes more than it gives back in exchange is called a a ‘parasite’ in everyday language. Ecologists commonly refer to ‘the mutualism-parasitism continuum’. The classic parasite is the blood-sucking flea, tick or mosquito; all take and no give. At the other end of the scale, we have relationships like those of legumes (eg clovers) with the nitrogen-fixing bacteria found in their root nodules: a genuinely mutually beneficial exchange without which neither could prosper, or even survive.
Politicians are commonly evaluated according to their perceived position on this continuum.
Babies inevitably start their lives as total parasites on their mothers, and commonly finish up caring for them in their dotage, reversing the relationship. The parent-child relationship thus goes on commonly for longer than the 9 months duration of a normal pregnancy; in some cases well beyond the adolescence and ‘coming to age’ of the child.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_Parasitism_Continuum#:~:text=The%20hypothesis%20or%20paradigm%20of,fitness%20outcomes%20for%20each%20member.
Nine points, huh? So that’s the degree of support the TQ cuckoos are taking away from women’s rights with their insistence on special euphemisms.
I think we’ve identified the parasites.
I am distraught for my female friends and family.
I’m a gay male, have never had to deal in my personal life with battery, unwanted pregnancy, rape, or trans women horning in on my interests.
Yet, this still hurts me….
Precisely. In the environmental science world, I have to be cautious about the wording I use. I can say what I like around my husband and about three of my friends; after that, it becomes a tight rope act. I don’t see that as selling out so much as getting others to buy in.
A fetus doesn’t need to be a parasite (or called one) to support abortion rights. It’s more about women, if we were honest, than babies (or embryos, fetuses, or parasites). The use of “baby” by the anti-choice crowd shifts the message.
What? The words we use have effects beyond matters of personal feelings, preference, and convenience? Whaaaaat?
“Using inclusive language costs you nothing,” say the activists and the wokebros and the handmaidens.
“Nine points. It cost us nine points and Roe vs. Wade,” is something of an obvious retort now, it seems.
iknklast:
The 1996 case of Dolly the cloned sheep showed that there were at least two new facts that from that point in time on, we would all have to contend with: 1. Dolly was as amiable a little lamb as any child or farmer could wish to have as a pet, and 2. there was nothing to stop some future Hitler or Stalin from turning out factory-made humans to order. They would only be as devoid of personality and as robot-like as the tyrant ordering their creation wanted them to be. Every one of the 60 billlion or so cells in the average adult human body became a potential clone of that person: an identical twin right down to the finest detail, but none the less a distinct and different person and personality.
Dolly when a fetus was not Dolly the born and living lamb with whatever rights lambs have according to law of place and time. It is perfectly legal to kill a living hair follicle cell (I kill them by the dozen every time I brush my hair these days) but it is not legal to kill the living and breathing baby that any one of those cells could be cloned into, if such cloning was to occur. Where along the transition lne from zygote to howling infant the mother must cede such life and death decisions to others is arbitrary, but cede she necessarily must.
Authoritarians come in two basic models: individual (eg Hitler, Stalin as extreme examples) and collective, eg outfits like the Catholic Church, which will leave no stone unchucked and do everything they can to stack any legislature or court with stooges happy to do their bidding. With a blanket rationale to suit all siuations, of course.
They will blur the distinction between right to abortion right to murder as much as they can. So IMHO what they are actually doing as distinct from what they say they are doing should always be pointed out to them, and especially by those they are trying to control and manipulate.
https://dolly.roslin.ed.ac.uk/facts/the-life-of-dolly/index.html
They will blur the distinction between right to abortion and right to murder…
Always worth repeating anyway. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it. ;-)
Some of the Democrats are gettig the message about using the word “Women” now, such as Amy Klobuchar and Ilhan Omar.