Small Town Wren

One of the first and, to date, one of the most-bitter fights Daniil and I have ever gotten into had to do with something most people would probably raise an eyebrow or two at. It was a bitter, drawn out affair that resulted in somewhat of a compromise. To this day, though it only occasionally comes up, we struggle and butt heads about it.

You see, when I met him, he was not registered to vote. While some might not care, to me this was an issue of great and dire importance. It still is. He finally caved and registered right after last year’s elections (sigh). The compromise was he very adamantly insisted that though now he was registered and I should be happy, he would never, never, ever exercise his right to vote. And, as far as I know, he hasn’t.

And this still troubles me. Perhaps even more so than it did a year ago. Why?

I’ve noticed–and I’m not the only one–that politics is become a lot more like TMZ every day. And no one seems to care. We happily swallow up Trump’s birtherism, giggle about Jon Kyl’s ‘non-factual’ statements, and snicker about Rep. Weiner’s…well…weiner. And while we process what is happening with these news bits, we simply move on without, well, doing anything.

But then things like this happen:

They happen and we don’t notice because there’s nothing entertaining about it, and we want to be entertained. LZ Ganderson wrote on CNN:

It shouldn’t really matter which side of the fence you stand on regarding abortion: that tone, that rationale, has no place in the debate. That more people, more women, were not angered by DeGraaf’s statements only highlights just how little we are paying attention to lawmakers.

He’s right. We’re not paying attention, and crazy whackadoo lawmakers have figured that out. As long as political news coverage is actually entertainment in content, these politicians can do and say whatever they like. My 4th grade teacher always said that who you are is the person you are when no one is watching.

No one is watching what’s going on. No one is watching and the masks are coming off. And since no one is watching, no one notices when they change the law in ways we don’t like, to reflect values we don’t believe in.

I am shocked and horrified that it’s okay, politically and socially, to say things like that, to say that you should plan ahead for rape. I’m upset this isn’t more news worthy. I’m ashamed that we could stand for it in this country.

Politics isn’t entertainment, people. It’s real life, and it has very real consequences. And sadly, punishing women and making the lives of women more difficult has been a common theme of late (or almost forever, really). But it’s not just women, it’s happening to the poor and to the brown, too. It’s only going to get worse if we continue to view politicians the same way we do celebrities.

As a side not, it was pretty ingenous of DeGraff to sugges his wife and daughter would “never need an abortion” if they were raped. Last time I checked, ‘never need’ was not synonymous with ‘I will forbid’.

I first picked up The Beauty Myth three years ago. I was writing a paper for a class, for The Anthropology of Gender & Sexuality taught by Nia Parson. It was a great class, and the first time where I was inspired enough to engorge myself on outside sources for a final paper.  I ended up writing a treatise on intersection, third wave feminism, and abortion rights. It was a great paper. I shared it with the group of shamans I was observing later in the year when they started getting grumpy about the right to choose.

The only problem is I never finished it.

Some books have that problem with me: I just can’t get them read. American Gods is a book I’ve started at least a dozen times and as much as I love reading the first 100 pages, something always comes up and I can’t finish it.  With The Beauty Myth, life happened. A series of catastrophic events in early 2008 left me unable to do much else but cry and feel sorry for myself.  I had read what I needed for the paper with the intention to finish it at my leisure during the following semester. It has languished on my shelf ever since.

No more. While generally I would say I have never bought into the monolithic beauty myth, I think I am at a point in my life where I need to read it again (and actually finish it). It’s an important text and it will be good for me and the goals I am working toward right now. The whole strong woman thing.  And, in general, I need some non-textbook reading to happen in my life.

Law & Order is one of my guilty pleasures, though it’s not exactly guilty.  One of my favorite undergrad professors worked as a producer and writer for Criminal Intent, so I can’t bash it as a series/franchise by any means.

Tonight’s Law & Order episode, “Dignity,” took on the abortion debate.  The New York Times posted an article today about the franchise’s history of abortion coverage, which has been spotty at best.  This isn’t surprising consider the issue is, um, abortion.  Not exactly a bed of roses issue for prime time television to waltz through without thought.

It started out very promising: an obvious take on the tragic murder of Dr. Tiller. From there, it went downhill in its attempt to cover way too many aspects of the pro-choice/anti-abortion debate. A shout out to Mom Martyrs/Shamers was nice, but the detour into Jill Staneck crazyland that didn’t point out that babies being murdered after surviving abortion is a big fat (obvious) lie kind of killed it for me. And then they tried to divide the DA’s office along the pro-/anti- lines in a way that didn’t feel right for any of the characters. The show refused to explicitly say that their Dr. Tiller stand-in had as much right to his life as any that could be argued for unborn fetuses.  And that, ladies and gentleman, is where the EPIC FAIL lies. Law & Order completely failed to stand up to everything it has postured itself to believe in: that murder is wrong, that crime is wrong, that justice is what is important.

I watched this episode with my father. It was nice to hear him agree with my complaints. I like to think that he enjoyed my explanations of the nuanced references this episode made.