It’s supposed to rain on and off for the next week or so and I am nervously watching the garden. It couldn’t be better timing, of course. Get the garden in and let the rains come. But I’m still nervous for the transplants. I want to run out there every five minutes and whisper words of encouragement to the tomatoes.
Oh, tomatoes, I have faith that you will grow and make something of yourselves.
1. For the first time in my blogging career, I get to tell you that I am working on something so cool I about can’t stand it and ask you to be on the lookout for it, right here at Tiny Cat Pants.
2. The poor dog has been suffering from allergies for days, then had to wake me up last night because she got her paw stuck in her collar somehow, and then, apparently when I picked her up to put her in my bed, I squeezed her in the wrong spot and she peed on the floor. Since she is a good dog, she about died of embarrassment, though I tried to reassure her that anyone as sick as her who has an accident when someone squeezes her can be forgiven. I am, of course, also trying to figure out how, if she continues to pee on squeeze (though I’m guessing this will clear up as her cold does), I can use this against my critics.
3. The Butcher has an interview tomorrow. Please, please, citizens of Earth, keep your fingers crossed. I don’t care if it’s the lowest paying crappy job on the planet. If it gives him gas money and the ability to buy groceries every once in a while, I will kiss the world square on the mouth.
I thought this went without saying in my “evidence that the intake worker at the Planned Parenthood in Memphis would have immediately been like ‘This is weird.'” but Lila Rose is white. And has a discernible non-Southern accent. So, a white woman with a non-Southern accent and a weird baby voice walks into the Memphis Planned Parenthood and claims to be 14 and in need of an abortion. And every Republican in the state is standing around yelling about how this proves that we need to defund Planned Parenthood.
First, it sucks that some zealot is going to get to lie her way into ruining affordable healthcare for the rest of the women in Tennessee. Most women in Tennessee are never going to need to have an abortion, but access to free or inexpensive birth control, STD screening, PAP smears (without needing a sermon on the glories of Jesus)? We need those. And where do we often get those?
And second, you could write a book about all of the anxieties about “good” white girls playing out in this scenario.
But I want to talk just for a second about the thing about this whole thing that really, really pisses me off. And that is Lila Rose’s (and most of her viewers’) assumption that she should be believed.
A white woman walks into a Planned Parenthood in Memphis, talking with a strange accent in a weird baby voice, claiming to be a 14 year old girl with a 31 year old “boyfriend” and she needs an abortion.
Each one of those things individually is not strange. White women do walk into the Planned Parenthood in Memphis, though they are not the norm. Women who have accents that differentiate them from the locals do walk into the Planned Parenthood in Memphis. Women with weird baby voices. Women claiming to be 14 who aren’t. Girls who actually are 14. Girls who are actually the victims of crimes. And girls who need abortions. But taken all together?
And yet, most people, when the talk about this, talk as if it is obvious that the woman Lila Rose is talking to should of course believe everything she says about herself and treat her as such. And, don’t get me wrong, maybe that’s the case.
But where in the world does that actually happen?
You have to be the motherfucking Goldilocks of white girls to have lived that kind of charmed life.
To get to run around the country acting like, of course, you should be believed when you tell your crazy story in your crazy edited fashion, because… Because you’re “just right.” Everything about you says “I have the privilege of being taken at my word” and then, when people do afford you that, you fucking turn on them, like they’re the ones doing something wrong, not you using your Goldilocks white privilege to sneak into where you don’t belong and try things out like they’re yours and run away the hero of the story.
Every day in this country women are actually raped and real rape victims have to listen to rape apologists talk about how you need to really be sure you’ve been raped or you might ruin some man’s life and make it harder for “real” rape victims to get the help they need. Every day, women have to hear about the evils of falsely accusing someone of rape.
And yet, here is this woman whose whole act is lying about being raped and everyone in my state is sitting around talking about what a hero she is for supposedly uncovering a supposed Planned Parenthood worker who didn’t actually do anything against the law.
You want to talk about women who lie about being raped ruining it for other women?
Look no fucking further than the darling of the Pro-(Some) Life Right in this State.
But I guess it’s okay because no actual man was harmed in the making of her vast crazy lie.
Last night, as I was coming home, Clarksville Pike was closed right at the dying Methodist church. A big emergency vehicle was flashing and blocking the road. I turned onto Echo thinking that I could cut back over to Stevens and around whatever was going on, but when I got to Stevens, there was a cop car with its lights on, and so I had to turn around, backtrack over to Whites Creek Pike and home that way. As I was pulling in, I could see that they had Clarksville Pike closed as far up as Dry Creek Road.
It must have been two or three in the morning before I heard traffic again.
I don’t see any word this morning as to what was going on.
We had a fatal accident yesterday on Whites Creek Pike. I hope this wasn’t another one. It was strange, though.
You know when something final happens and you look back and you see all these signs–things that, with that person, should have told you this was coming–and portents–things that happened that might have been mundane, but in retrospect, seem to have indicated something was amiss? Like, when your husband comes home from a friend’s wedding smelling like roses, that’s a sign. And when the big tree in the front yard crashes on your house, that could be a portent? But you jump to the most mundane conclusions at the time, and only in retrospect, when he’s left you for the woman who works at the nursery, do you say “Oh, so that’s what all that meant”?
There was something so bizarre about finding my way cut off and my obvious work-arounds thwarted on my way home last night–it was such a fitting ending to my day–that I woke up in the middle of the night convinced it meant something I was not smart enough to figure out.
Tiny Cat Pants 