We progressives love to live in our factions. It's part of being in the Democratic Party: we're essentially a fractured group of activists with our own agendas, telling people to "butt out" when it's clear that they cannot toe an ideological line, especially if it has to do with race, gender, sexual orientation or labor.
I experienced that today, and in a way which was particularly hurtful.
This is going to be short and sweet, over the fold.
I made a reference to abortion as being a "difficult choice" for the women I know who have had one, including my own mother in the context of empathizing and agreeing with and supporting the diarist's post. I got told, in so many words, that I was insufficiently feminist and it was suggested that I was repeating a right wing meme on this.
My mother's abortion saved her life.
I participated in another diary, where I was confused, and asked for clarification. The diary suggested that gay rights needed to step aside for women's rights. I wasn't the only confused person either. The diary also alluded to the totally discredited meme that gay men are at a significant financial advantage in the workplace. Worse, it suggested that very few men work as Administrative Assistants. As a former long-time Administrative Assistant at the executive level and a man, I found that a bit off.
Why are we fracturing ourselves like this? We're all progressive here. Or so I thought.
We are allowing ourselves to be fractured by this "conversation" initiated by people who hate every progressive; female, male; gay, lesbian, bi; man or woman, trans woman or trans man--and it's working. It's fracturing our community. We are allowing ourselves to be fractured by the idiotic suggestions from the right that a woman doesn't have a right to decide what she does with her own body, and that the LGBT community is ruining the nation. For Feminists to pick up this meme to me, is really perverse.
We have got to stick together on this. I am, and have always been for a woman's right--and a woman's alone--to decide about her reproductive and health rights. I have always been for equal pay for equal work. Look at these two women:
Both of them supported the ERA. One of them had an abortion. Both of them had two kids. Both of them used birth control. Both of their husbands supported the ERA. Both of them were the major breadwinners for the family at certain points in their lives, to the eternal gratitude of their husbands, who treated women as equals, who understood that anyone can do anything and it has nothing to do with gender, and who raised us kids to understand that every person is an equal individual but that some of us, because of senseless prejudice, may have to work harder because--in the words of my grandfather--"The majority of people out there are idiots". And "Not being equal, between the genders, is a total fallacy".
To paraphrase John Donne, "Having said that, I am done".