Barefoot and Pregnant

[Thad]

The core GOP strategy on this was about diversion, downplaying anti-choice policies in favor of economic ones to get votes, which always for decades left them unwilling to touch Roe because they knew it was a harder position to generate support.

I don't fully agree. They were very clear on their intent to overturn Roe; I think most people just ignored it or thought It Can't Happen Here.

It's true that, at a federal level, they'd run on culture-war issues like passing a constitutional amendment to ban abortion or gay marriage and then never actually do those things once in office. But their strategy's been clear for decades: attack abortion rights in state legislatures and the Supreme Court.

The difference between a 5-4 court and a 6-3 one is that Roberts cares about strategy. His approach to Roe has always been death by a thousand cuts: with every ruling, give the state more power to restrict abortions, but never actually come out and say you're overturning Roe. That was an effective strategy. Most people didn't see what was really happening, and the news media did their usual job uncritically repeating GOP spin.

Roberts would have preferred to maintain that strategy, but ACB's confirmation meant it wasn't his decision anymore. The GOP did exactly what it had been promising to do for decades: focused on state legislatures and the Supreme Court until Roe got overturned.

[Mongrel]

IMO Roberts, while certainly in the GOP camp and still sympathetic to many GOP policies, is also not fucking insane, and would have always stopped short of overturning Roe.

Whether this is because he personally doesn't believe in a total ban or simply had enough brain cells to know that what's happening now is exactly what was going to happen should a total ban ever be enacted, and that that would be a disaster for the GOP, doesn't really matter for practical purposes.

[Mongrel]

You really, really hope it was just tossed, but... Blizzard.

[Silversong]

I guess, maybe? But tossed seems just as likely here. I had a coworker keeping breastmilk in the fridge in a sippy cup with a non-sealing top, so someone knocked it over and it all spilled and soaked through my lunch bag. Tl;dr office ladies are entirely too blasé about breakroom breast milk.

[Silversong]

omfg
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-gover ... -it-ballot

"Welcome to the great "kerning" debate of 2022, the biggest fight over a seemingly tiny petition issue since a font size challenge in 2012 nearly derailed an eventually successful push to repeal the state's emergency manager law."

If two Republicans can successfully overthrow what 735,000 petitioners want, how can anybody even pretend to take government the least bit seriously?

[hngkong]

If two Republicans can successfully overthrow what 735,000 petitioners want, how can anybody even pretend to take government the least bit seriously?

The only ones who still take them seriously are the ones who want to overthrow what the majority of people want.

[Thad]

omfg
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-gover ... -it-ballot

"Welcome to the great "kerning" debate of 2022, the biggest fight over a seemingly tiny petition issue since a font size challenge in 2012 nearly derailed an eventually successful push to repeal the state's emergency manager law."

If two Republicans can successfully overthrow what 735,000 petitioners want, how can anybody even pretend to take government the least bit seriously?

Overturned by the Michigan Supreme Court. The proposal will be on the ballot. As will the early voting amendment.

[Silversong]

Thank goodness.

Also,

"Justice Zahra notes that, as a wordsmith and a member of this court, he finds it 'an unremarkable proposition that spaces between words matter.' As a blind person who is also a wordsmith and a member of this court, I find it unremarkable to note that the lack of visual spacing has never mattered much to me," Bernstein wrote."

[nosimpleway]

The technical term for bad kerning is "keming"

[Yoji]

So, you probably heard about how Herschel Walker allegedly paid for an abortion for a woman he got pregnant in 2009, with receipts to prove it if you believe in a woman's receipts. This is the guy who is currently saying he wants to ban abortions completely, with zero exceptions for anything.

What I'm sure you haven't heard of is how I went to read that story on The Daily Beast and got hit with a full-page ad overlay for baby formula, or how in response I got so mad that I accidentally snapped my phone in half like a tostada.

[Mongrel]

Not 100% sure this is right thread, but it actually feels appropriate as it discusses the sometimes-overlooked other side of the equation.

Transfella experiencing the intrinsic emotional loneliness of being male. Not something I (or many of you) are unaware of, of course, but his uncommon perspective lets him describe it so well.



It's good that people aren't half so silent about this as they were even ten or twenty years ago. Long way to go though.

[Yoji]

Like a lot of things, it kind of makes me worry about my son. I seem to have turned out okay, all things considered; general US male culture always felt so needlessly mean and repulsive, and I've never wanted anything to do with it. It never seemed like anyone was actually happy to see or be around a real manly man dude, not in my lived experience or in all our media, so who would actually want to be one? We have really tangible examples in dudes and their cars/trucks; are any women really attracted to some meat head roaring down the street in a loud, jacked-up truck? Most women sure seemed turned off by that kind of thing and most of the important people in my life were women, so what would I get from emulating that?

But what about my boy? I feel like I had it easy somehow and was more lucky than anything, like I stumbled across a dangerously busy road and somehow didn't get hit by a car. Good for me, but it leaves me feeling unprepared to teach him what it takes to fly right. Kind of the same feelings I have about Red Ribbon Week/D.A.R.E., come to think of it. He's going to have me, more people like me, and plenty of women in his life, and I sure hope that's going to be enough.

[Mongrel]

I think there's an important distinction between the sort of manly men who are very comfortable with themselves in a positive way (there's a lot of crossover here with the "gentle giant" archetype, I find, though it's by no means 1:1) and the kind of supposedly-manly men who are deeply, deeply insecure (regardless of if they act like assholes or not). Confidence versus bravado, etc.

Some people find the two hard to tell apart, at least from a distance/at first glance. To me they seem to stand out like water and fire, but I get that not everyone sees that shit writ so large. I mean, by definition we wouldn't see it if it didn't work at least once in a while.

Genuine confidence doesn't arise in a vacuum; it usually requires some understanding of healthy relationships and of self. Whereas bravado come from ignorance - arguably ignorance specifically born of isolation.

[Mongrel]

I don't even really know what happened in my case. For some reason I ended up being drawn to friendships with women who were clearly too old for me to have any romantic interest in, maybe because part of my lizard brain recognized that as a shortcut to unfiltered interaction. I mean, I had male friends my own age too, but not exclusively so.

[atog]

I don't even really know what happened in my case. For some reason I ended up being drawn to friendships with women who were clearly too old for me to have any romantic interest in

And then he married one of them OH SNAP
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Women get to have boyfriends and girlfriends, and neither of those necessarily imply a sexual relationship

Men don't get to have either without the assumption that there's sex. And everyone gets to judge you based on whom you have sex with. Everyone.

It's fucked up.

[Yoji]

...I have just been informed that the actor for Alfalfa has grown to become an actual He-Man Woman-Hater.

I know it's not a particularly pressing or relevant story or anything, but... fuck, the world makes me feel so dizzy sometimes.

[Thad]

Still not the worst person who was in that movie.

[Mongrel]

The Alfalfa role seems to have been uniquely cursed.

(Yes, I know the "Our Gang Curse" is baloney)