I like to consider myself a refugee from the South. I was once surrounded by a lot of ideas and prejudices that I didn’t like, so I went far far away and sealed myself in a bubble of reason and creativity. I like my bubble. It’s full of artists and free thinkers. Makers and doers. My bubble has no TV, but really fast internet. My bubble has an ass groove that Homer Simpson would envy. Unfortunately it’s not impenetrable to all exterior influences and every once in a while some terrible truth about the outside world pierces its bubbly walls.
One such truth, ugly as they come, is that the Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill that defines personhood as beginning at conception. Although not banning abortion outright, it would mean that if a pregnant woman was attacked and she lost the fetus as a result then the offending party could be prosecuted for manslaughter. It then becomes a matter of constricting the regulations on what constitutes a legitimate abortion, until doctors, nurses and patients can be prosecuted for the slightest misstep.
When I learn about these things I begin to panic. Very viscerally panic. I start thinking about how quickly I could pack my bags and board a boat. I start climbing the walls and yelling at my house mates like a nutter. Then my fiancée makes me some tea . Then I go to the Mad Art Lab back channel. Then I see that everyone else in my bubble is on my side, and we’re all in it together. Then Steve D says something mind blowing and I make a tasteless joke.
Then this happens…
Then Everything is okay again.
In case anyone would like to make their own little menstruation coffin here is how you could do that, I dunno, maybe you can keep your tampons in it…whatever. http://miniatures.about.com/od/seasonalminiature1/ss/papercoffin_2.htm
Do you offer bulk discounts? I’m gonna need like a gross of these.
As a Mooncup user I’m looking forward to you expanding your product range… 😛
I recently moved from New England down to South Carolina.
It’s a little bit terrifying. The woman at the dump bitched at me about her coworker who was out sick even though people couldn’t be sick because Jesus said so.
My first trip to the grocery store resulted in the cashier asking if I’d found a church yet.
And yesterday I see a poll that says 20% of Republican voters in SC think interracial marriage should be illegal.
The difference between where our bodies live and where our hearts and minds live can be monumental.
Rasputin, I have nothing but respect and awe for anyone who can live in the South and maintain their calm. Even a week long visit over the holidays is too much for me most years.
On a visit two years ago I was at a former teachers house (yes, I’m a nerd) and she was lamenting that her new beau lived a few hours away and that she didn’t want to leave the county she lived in because it’s so comparatively liberal. That idea blew my mind. When I was in high school rednecks would throw cups of chewing tobacco spit at me and yell “fagot” (they seemed to believe this word was appropriate to use on anyone different). But she was from South Carolina originally, so I guess to her that was just normal.
I also remember sex ed. One day a woman came in with a bowl full of hershey’s kisses and she said that one in 10 was actually exlax and did we really want to take the risk? Then she said how you could get pregnant through heavy petting and that waiting for marriage before sex was so much more gratifying.
Ah, the South.
Up here in Canuckistan we don’t get as much of that overtly, our Conservative gov’mint is trying to sneak these sorts of things in so by the time we realize we’re losing these rights, it’s too late.