Frozen still
4/11/04 23:59![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkemeraldsI want to thank my LJ friends for expressing succinctly, angrily, calmly, sarcastically, and from the heart much of what I've been feeling since the election outcome, but have been too frozen to express.
"I'm more depressed than I've been since 9/11," my brother told me the other evening, when the counts (and the fixes) were in. And I realized that the ice that's been in my belly these past two days is like a smaller version of what I felt then, too: hopeless, powerless, lied to and angry in the face of a disaster of monumental proportions.
I'm not gay. Reproductive rights are no longer of much personal concern to me. I'm 30 years too old to be drafted. I have no kids whose legacy I need to worry about. So I don't need to move to Canada. The fact that I'm "different" and "non-Christian" and childless and odd no longer poses any threat to anyone. None of my activities will be seriously monitored, none of my opinions tallied. Hell, my disposable income isn't even worth an advertisement to the people who run the show. None of this disaster, in short, is likely to affect me personally.
Does this mean I don't care about what we've wrought for the next four years? No. I care that my online and real-life friends are being systematically marginalized; that young women are almost certain to lose the right, which I fought for, to make their own reproductive choices. I care that other personal rights will almost surely follow. I care that whole groups of people in my life will now be barred from entering into a certain type of contract, and that other types--and other groups--are sure to follow.
And I care that for the sin of being female, or gay, or a tree-hugger, or from Oregon, or a pagan, or a vegetarian, or a consumer of slashfic or over 40 or unemployed, almost all of my friends and family, liberal to the last drop, have been excommunicated. Aren't part of the "mandate." Don't need to be heeded. Don't need to be polled.
Don't count.
As an aging woman and therefore a Person of No Interest, I've felt that way for several years now. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Sadly, the other 51% of this nation has just wished it on my friends. When I get past my hatred of that fact, I'll post again.
"I'm more depressed than I've been since 9/11," my brother told me the other evening, when the counts (and the fixes) were in. And I realized that the ice that's been in my belly these past two days is like a smaller version of what I felt then, too: hopeless, powerless, lied to and angry in the face of a disaster of monumental proportions.
I'm not gay. Reproductive rights are no longer of much personal concern to me. I'm 30 years too old to be drafted. I have no kids whose legacy I need to worry about. So I don't need to move to Canada. The fact that I'm "different" and "non-Christian" and childless and odd no longer poses any threat to anyone. None of my activities will be seriously monitored, none of my opinions tallied. Hell, my disposable income isn't even worth an advertisement to the people who run the show. None of this disaster, in short, is likely to affect me personally.
Does this mean I don't care about what we've wrought for the next four years? No. I care that my online and real-life friends are being systematically marginalized; that young women are almost certain to lose the right, which I fought for, to make their own reproductive choices. I care that other personal rights will almost surely follow. I care that whole groups of people in my life will now be barred from entering into a certain type of contract, and that other types--and other groups--are sure to follow.
And I care that for the sin of being female, or gay, or a tree-hugger, or from Oregon, or a pagan, or a vegetarian, or a consumer of slashfic or over 40 or unemployed, almost all of my friends and family, liberal to the last drop, have been excommunicated. Aren't part of the "mandate." Don't need to be heeded. Don't need to be polled.
Don't count.
As an aging woman and therefore a Person of No Interest, I've felt that way for several years now. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Sadly, the other 51% of this nation has just wished it on my friends. When I get past my hatred of that fact, I'll post again.