I am at a loss

[Soph0571]

With the slew of rapid and draconian laws, denying reproductive justice, in the last few weeks coming from red states one needs to ask what the hell are the women in these states thinking?!?!

The war on women is legend. It is a feast of misogyny and sexism. From equal pay to reproductive justice to education to rape conservatives really do not like women. Unless of course they are stupid (or at least they pretend to be) how can any woman pretend that the conservative male gives any kind of thought to them at all, unless that thought is to subjugate them as much as humanly possible.

I am at loss to understand the seeming willingness of conservative women to willingly align themselves to a group of men who care nothing for them, unless they happily embrace draconian concepts of their role in life.

I am at loss to understand how a conservative woman can call a liberal woman a feminazi because she is sure that the erosion of women’s rights is a clear and present danger and speaks out about such things.

I am at a loss to understand how a conservative woman can allow loud, coarse, blowhard voices to influence her over and above the needs and rights of her own daughters.

I am at a loss to understand how a conservative woman can ignore, make light of or make a joke about sexist and misogynistic language promoted daily by conservative talking heads.

I am at a loss to understand how a conservative woman can excuse, forgive and gloss over the most egregious and outrageous violence in speech and actions towards women.

I am at a loss to understand how you could be a woman and a conservative and not have some element of self-hatred.

I am at a loss.

[dewsgirl]

1. It is horrifying, I live in Fl and am expecting something here

anytime now.

[Baclava]

6. They tried, it died in committee

Florida Heartbeat Abortion Ban (HB 235)

HB 235 would make it a felony to knowingly perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant person when a fetal heartbeat has been detected.

GENERAL BILL by Hill ; (CO-INTRODUCERS) Altman ; Bell ; Beltran ; Brannan ; Byrd ; DiCeglie ; Fernandez-Barquin ; Fischer ; Gregory ; Hage ; McClain ; Perez ; Ponder ; Roach ; Robinson ; Rodriguez, A.M. ; Sabatini ; Smith, D. ; Stone ; Yarborough

Abortion; Requires physician to examine woman obtaining abortion for presence of detectable fetal heartbeat; revises informed consent for abortion procedure requirements; provides criminal penalties; prohibits termination of pregnancy when fetal heartbeat is detected; provides exceptions.

1/10/19 – Introduced.

1/23/19 – Referred to House Health Quality Subcommittee.

5/3/19 – - Died in Health Quality Subcommittee

https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2019/00235/?Tab=BillHistory


Companion Bill died too


Florida Heartbeat Abortion Ban (SB 792)

2/6/19 – Introduced.

5/3/19 – Died in committee.

https://rewire.news/legislative-tracker/law/florida-heartbeat-abortion-ban-sb-792/

[dewsgirl]

25. Thank you for this, I didn't know.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Taking away the rights of women's reproductive rights is the first step.

Other rights for all people for just opposing an authoritarian, non-constitutional government will be eventual -- unless we stop this now.

[warmfeet]

20. Quite so, and quite well said.

They are itching for a fight. If we do not give it to them, they will walk all over us. The crossroad is now, it is here.

[bdamomma]

24. So why

should I watch Handmaidens Tale when we are horribly getting there.

[MuseRider]

3. To quote my relatives

who are very anti choice they are thinking, BABIES..OOOOOH SWEET BABIES! How could you not want any BABY. BABY BABY BABY BABY! And their other thought is Jesus.

The rest of them, if my phone banking is any evidence, are thinking that if they do not go the way their husband tells them they will pay in a very big way. I asked one of them once when working a phone bank against a Phelps challenge to our city law, how could he possibly know how she voted? She said he would see it in her eyes.

[Corgigal]

4. I guess they never think,

when a young lady is missing from the neighborhood, hmmmm, wonder if she was pregnant?
As a former 911 dispatcher, this is labeled the second most dangerous time in a woman's life. I'm not talking about the medical issues, I'm talking about domestic violence and death. If you think all men want all children, then get to paid for them for 18 years, your babies from Jesus is faulted.

Lord, the things I've heard on 911. I fear for my womenkind when she's leaving a relationship, or are pregnant. We know these facts to be true, and more women will die.

[Volaris]

23. And THATS a woman that divorce was fucking INVENTED for.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. The answer to most of your wonderings is white privilege.

I am at loss to understand the seeming willingness of conservative women to willingly align themselves to a group of men who care nothing for them, unless they happily embrace draconian concepts of their role in life.

Many women are willing to give up feminist alliances for white privilege. It's why white feminism can be seen as untrustworthy; so many are willing to throw black women and WOC under the bus to protect their status with the top of the food chain, white men.

[Soph0571]

8. so many are willing to throw black women and WOC under the bus to protect their status with the top

Not me. And I have to challenge the idea that conservative women are feminists

[WhiskeyGrinder]

10. Conservative women? No, they definitely wouldn't describe themselves as feminists.

Some, however, certainly see themselves as strong women -- the woman who sponsored the Alabama bill probably does, as does the Alabama governor. They embrace regulations that they don't possibly see as ever applying directly to themselves, because they believe they're protected by class, their whiteness and/or their proximity to white patriarchy. They wrote off black woman and WOC a long time ago, and are fine writing off white women they don't see as equals because of other oppressions -- addiction, chronic illness/disability, education, sexual orientation, politics.

The challenge for white women who are dedicated to liberation for all is not compromising with the white male hegemony. Proximity to power can make that hard, and black women and WOC are the ones who bear the brunt of it.

[The Mouth]

37. Sarah Palin, Phyliss Schafely

Margaret Thatcher.

Especially the last two, STRONG, powerful women. Smarter than most of the men around them. All of them identified far more with the white power structure than their gender, even as their personal power (I might not have liked Sarah Palin's politics, but we dodged a bullet keeping her from national power, she DID have charisma and an aura of 'genuineness', I personally think). Margaret Thatcher didn't see herself as the 'equal' of anyone, she saw herself as absolutely fit to rule. And Phyliss Schafely had a whole lot of IQ points on any conservative man of her era, she knew it, they knew it.

[StarfishSaver]

16. This.

[EffieBlack]

17. Bingo!

But God forbid anyone say it because that would be divisive and, of course, #notallwhitewomen

[WhiskeyGrinder]

35. I mean...

[CrispyQ]

30. I thought feminism was all the same until I started taking public transportation

& saw how WOC were treated so much worse than me.

Once a year, everyone should have to work one week in retail & another week taking public transportation. Maybe then, we'd have a kinder, gentler nation.

[PunkinPi]

36. Yep, and they've been trying to brand it as "Alt-feminism"...

posted about this a few days ago --> https://www.democraticunderground.com/12541279

[monmouth4]

7. I believe Al abama is 50th in education nationally so that would answer many questions. Sad. n/t

[emmaverybo]

9. Think Colonial wives, Stepford wives. They will see to it their daughters have a choice...

[smirkymonkey]

11. A combination of stupidity, self-hatred, greed, racism and misogyny toward

other women. They think their "men" will always protect THEM if they toe the line.

They make me absolutely sick.

[RedSpartan]

28. I see you've met my mother-in-law.

[smirkymonkey]

29. Yes, she's lovely.

You should consider yourself very lucky.

[sandensea]

12. It's the church lady mentality:

"You screwed; you're screwed."

So much of what Republicans do, as you may have noticed over the years, is done out of sheer spite.

[LiberalLoner]

18. Yes, exactly right!

[sandensea]

22. Thanks!

I lived in Mississippi for several years, and saw quite a lot of that in action.

[LiberalLoner]

31. I wrote this post the other day, coming to that same conclusion.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=12101434

[pdsimdars]

13. All those state that fear Sharia law is being imposed, want to impose their own Christian version

[earthshine]

14. What seems normal and egalitarian for you is not necessarily the case for other cultures.

And hyper-conservative regions (generally parts of the South and Midwest) instill these values into their young, who grow up with it as normal and desirable, and it flows from the supposed word of their Gods (usually Jesus).

Values like no premartial relations, no abortions, and punch any hippie (liberal) you can.

To us, it's almost an alien culture.

To some, voting for a Democrat is a manifestly evil thing. (Perhaps similar to the way most DU people would see voting for any Republican as 100% wrong-headed.)

Try not to judge them. (It'll only hurt your own brain.) We must work with them or defeat them at the ballot box.

Peace.

[DoctorJoJo]

15. Well, Repuke Wives Are Required to Vote As Their Husbands Command. However, You'd Think ...

... that quite a few might disobey their hubbies this trip!

[Atticus]

19. Very well said. These women are comparable in their cowardly hypocrisy to

Log Cabin Republicans. As you observed, self-hatred is almost a given.

[Kind of Blue]

21. From Why Do White Women Keep Voting for the GOP and Against Their Own Interests?

The numbers are disheartening and disappointing and, for some progressive white women, shame inducing, that they are part of a demographic that has the power to decide key elections but continually uses it in favor of candidates whose policies are anti-women. But either way, the rest of us shouldn’t be shocked, because if history serves, there is plenty of precedent for white women protecting their own power and status.

And yet society at large tends to make an assumption about white women voters—that because they are oppressed by white men and the patriarchy they will stand with progressive social movements and rally in solidarity with the underrepresented. Whether we like or agree with them or not, “women’s political identities are complicated and they aren’t essentially tied to a particular expression of what we imagine for females,” according to Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, historian and author of Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy.

“These women aren’t talking to one another about what feels wrong,” says Jackie Payne, who this year founded GALvanize USA, an organization that is focusing specifically on engaging white women voters.“Their perception is that they’re alone and it reinforces thinking ‘I’m wrong.’”

To counteract this cycle of low information, self-doubt, and isolation, Payne says that, based on her conversations with moderate white women voters in red communities, it is hugely impactful for them to find solidarity in one another. She knows of a secret women’s society in Texas in this vein, and points to a group of women who connected in traditionally conservative suburban Georgia after the 2016 election while volunteering at their children’s school: “It was on their faces; they’d been crying and looked like hot messes,” Payne says. They went on to build a network unified by a car magnet that read “LMRC”—Liberal Moms of Roswell and Cobb counties. The magnet was at first covert, a “bat signal,” Payne quips. But the moms from the group got more active, with one telling Payne she had gone canvassing for the first time, connected with an activist of color, and is striving to be a better white ally. “I needed to learn to advocate for myself,” the woman told Payne, “before I could stand with others.” In the LMRC’s long-red district, the Georgia 6th, Democrat Lucy McBath just flipped the House seat.

And now, in addition to head-hanging and hand-wringing and spurious, scolding tweets, the efforts by Democrats and progressives to understand and organize and reach out to white women voters continue. When we got off the phone on Wednesday, Payne said she was heading to Iowa to talk with white women who voted for Trump and then voted progressively in the midterms. Who knows? They just may be instructive for the future. As Payne says: “We need a larger share of white women standing up for progress for all.”

“We abandon them at our peril,” says Payne. “We can’t not connect with these women. We have to go and get them.”

https://www.vogue.com/article/white-women-voters-conservative-trump-gop-problem

Join Jackie Payne and other white women focused on helping their sisters. Lord knows they don't listen as a group to we WoC. Payne might be asking these women the right questions and help break the cycle.

https://galvanizeusa.org/

[spanone]

26. K&R...👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍

[Evolve Dammit]

27. Orange Julius knows he has Kavanaugh and the Christo fascists told him it's time...

[CaptainTruth]

32. It's all about the rise of rich, white, "Christian," male supremacy.

That is the threat we must fight.

[jayschool2013]

33. By their actions, it is clear

that a significant portion of Americans truly do not believe that all people are created equal.

And that's a major problem. Always has been in the USA.

[ancianita]

34. You're not wrong. I'll give this a try.

I've seen much discussion go on about this surrounding women's free will and choice when it comes to reproduction, religion, and most of women's life decisions. (Like 'how can they vote against their self interest?!)

The individual's rights vs. public's rights could be applied to pretty much any issue of public interest.

Starting in childhood, girls are often "immunized" against even knowing for themselves about the ideas of private v. public rights, much less applying those ideas to themselves.

Children assume they have no choice. Legally, socially, economically, religiously, they don't. They adapt. They have "Go along to get along" resilience. Children's minds, behavior and free wills are trained all over the Earth. Which is why they -- girls more than boys -- are so easy to lead even in adulthood. Some childhood trainings never die. They are passed on to sons and daughters.

As for myself, I've never seen a minor child make a choice to be trained into religious life. I have, however, seen many of them, once feeling independent of their families, opt out of their religious training. I've only seen them make a choice when families give them visible choices (most families don't) about how one might live one's life; or when trauma relocates a girl's formative thinking toward other ways of "seeing" and living.

No adult can convince me that a child, boy or girl, who sees women defer and submit to men's rules and belief systems-- interruptions, condescensions, mocking, threatening gestures, gaslighting, threats of violence, hearing stories of violence to women who resist, seeing violence toward women on TV -- all around her/him, including her/his mother, is not subtlely groomed to make her/his "free choice" later.

Any child exposed to food, language, dress, deference to boys and men, silent obedience from women, religion as law, is conditioned into the free choice to be that way. It's self reinforcing, isn't it.

Believers in male-run religion that hold belief as more dear than science and law have done this to the world. These believers also believe that secular world systems are "godless;" lost souls, who they must suffer and tolerate.

When it comes to belief systems, if anyone born into them uses any excuse to stay in them once they have accessed and exposed themselves to scientific and other kinds of knowledge and non-religion based morality, they are aiding and abetting believer systems, unjust laws in promoting their own interests and survival.

Grown conservative women are not "innocent" when they don't look around at realities around them. And they are conditioned by stockholm syndrome.

Just because I think I understand how they are the way they are, doesn't mean I accept it.

These women you're at a loss about? They don't mind it, really. It's your issue, not theirs.

So even if we all finally understand them, the next question is, okay, now what? Can you do anything about them? For them? With them? To them? So, to me, understanding is the booby prize.

I've always thought there are two kinds of people in the world: those who have problems and know it, and those who have problems and don't know it.

It seems to me that all we can do is accept the differences and coexist with it. It's one reason why church and state have their own lanes in democracy.

[Nay]

38. If you can find a copy, read Andrea Dworkin's "Right-wing Women."

It goes into the RWW thinking in great detail.