#This is also why I'm an anarchist for reasons too tangential to go into

[grenade-maid]

great example of why it is so valuable to be always in the habit of talking about your shit to a wide variety of people--my woodworking bench has this bizarre issue where when I use it for sawing boards the whole thing resonates, producing a loud warbling tone like the world's worst cello. I couldn't find any mention of such an issue in any book on the subject or online. So I leave a comment asking about it to Chris Schwarz, widely considered one of the world's biggest experts on woodworking benches. He was also completely stumped with no clue to the cause or solution! But several regular readers who happened to be upright bass players chimed in recognizing it as what's called a wolf tone, what causes them, and how to address them.

I wouldn't have thought to search out musicians or acoustic scientists to ask after this problem, and even if I had, most I asked would likely not have enough background in woodworking bench construction to understand or address it. Looking at it from the outside abstract we're talking about niches within niches within niches. Too many that it wouldn't be possible to try and identify them all before starting, which is, I think, something many people are inclined to do when encountering a problem or thinking about trying a new skill or hobby, and which leads to them giving up at the enormity of the prospect. But in truth, on a human scale it's very simple. As long as you keep talking to people and asking questions the vast network of weird human knowledge and experience contained within all of us and everyone we know will connect those dots through paths of association strange and impossible to see from the outside.

[blackamite]

Given the fact that pretty much every state banning abortion makes exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother, the only way that I as a lesbian would need an abortion, I would hypothetically be able to get one, as well as most of the people in your examples. I'm not saying this means the lack of abortion access is ok - I'm precisely saying it's not ok, and yet using someone like me as an example is silly for that exact reason.

Don't get me wrong, there are cases where someone trans would need an abortion and still be banned from it. Because HRT doesn't always make someone sterile, sometimes trans people misjudge and need an abortion too. That might be relevant to briefly mention, and the misinformation about HRT as a contraceptive should definitely be talked about much more* (*specifically in trans spaces because trans people need to be fighting for more education here instead of just relying on abortion to solve a tangential issue) but honestly I feel like the frequency of this issue irl is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of straight women that suffer from lack of access.

That's why, when I go to an abortion protest and the focus keeps on coming back to LGBT, I'm confused. Not because it's never necessary, but because this group of relatively so low concern should not be mentioned every time it comes up. That's like mentioning that burning buildings are bad because some people breathe in the smoke and not because there are others dying in the flames - I'm not trying to say breathing in smoke isn't bad, but why is that all we're talking about?

When we take away the ability to talk openly about an issue, it becomes harder to see what we're doing. And I think what's being done is the oppression of women. A hundred or so years ago, so many highly intelligent women had to give up their dreams to raise children full time - it's no coincidence that women's rights and achievements in society expanded explosively with the advent of birth control.

Conservative men want women back in the kitchen, back in their homes, pure dolls wearing dresses and sacrificing their dreams for children that they didn't choose to have. It's not ok just because some women have been societally conditioned to want it. You also can't opt out because this is oppression, not a personality quiz. They don't care if you identify as anything, because they want everyone to conform in that box from the anarchist punk women to the demure cottagecore fems to every trans man in existence.

It's subordination of female humans, and specifically only that, on a mass scale. And turning our heads from the truth to focus on unrelated groups will not do. If you have a better suggestion for a word for the group being oppressed here that doesn't sound as dehumanizing as "female humans", please enlighten me though.

I literally feel like a teacher writing a huge ❓ on a student's paper everytime I go to protests lately. Why are we gathered at a prolife contra protest and you have a sign with "LGBT education in schools" written on it. Why are you shouting an environmentalist slogan. This is a pro choice protest. Why are you fragmenting the group with unrelated topics? Are you a fed? Why does every protest lately have to be a buy one get one free type of event? Why is it that when our reproductive rights are threatened we feel the need to also bring up barely related topics and take away the focus from the problem at hand?