Ashli Babbitt never imagined she would survive fighting for regime change “over there” only to die fighting for regime change “over here.” feministgiant.com/p/white-women-…
The 14-year Air Force veteran who fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan was the only person shot by Capitol Police while trying to storm the Congress of her own country.
So eager of a footsoldier of white supremacist patriarchy was Babbitt that she was the first to scramble through a window in a door separating the insurrectionists from an area where members of Congress were sheltering from the mob.
She never imagined the Capitol Police would shoot her because the police in the U.S. rarely shoot white women, unless it’s a cop who shoots his wife at home. feministgiant.com/p/white-women-…
Ashli Babbitt supported QAnon, a far-right conspiracy movement that formed around a baseless belief, born on the internet, that Trump has been secretly fighting deep state enemies and a cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibals operating a child sex-trafficking ring.
It is the latest polite mask for white supremacy and was instrumental in driving the insurrection.
Although media were full of male QAnon supporters who stormed the Capitol, QAnon--which FBI labelled a domestic terror threat in 2019--was driven largely by suburban white women.
Babbitt was described as “never afraid to speak her mind” and her sedition: “in a way, this was her way of speaking her mind.” We are told that the woman who survived a war of regime change in other countries only to be killed attempting regime change in her own country 👇🏽
Babbitt family insisted they “really don’t know why she decided to do this.” The innocence afforded white womanhood, even when they join an insurrection, white women are still remembered for the best versions of themselves.
Women who joined ISIS were never afforded such an audacious innocence.
But those comparisons must be made. As I read that the bereaved relatives of Babbitt said they'd argued with her not to go.
Or that QAnon had created a wedge within families, it reminds me of the backstories of armed Islamists I reported when I was a Reuters correspondent in Cairo and later of the women who became suicide bombers for movements such al-Qaeda.
Babbitt & other vets who stormed Capitol on #Jan6 remind me of men who joined mujahideen to fight vs Soviet Union in Afghanistan only to return home to Egypt or Algeria and turn their guns on governments there. Is the U.S. ready to make those connections? feministgiant.com/p/white-women-…
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Who has the guts to make an ad “I want an abortion because I don’t want to be pregnant.” This 👇🏽is awful. Reject these worst case scenarios, full of pain & trauma, for abortions. Stop appealing to zealots that your abortion is “good.” h/t @rerutled
I had an abortion because I did not want to be pregnant. That’s it. I was not raped. I was not sick. The pregnancies did not threaten my life. I did not already have children. I just did not want to be pregnant. feministgiant.com/p/abortion-is-…
In so many of abortion narratives, it is as if women were pleading for a mercy & forgiveness that belonged to no one to give; it was as if they had to prove they were “worthy” of the abortion feministgiant.com/p/essay-lies-s…
Will it be #Eng women who bring football home at the #WEURO2022 finals this weekend? I don’t know. But I can guess that when they play, incidents of domestic abuse will not increase as they do when England’s men team play. feministgiant.com/p/essay-when-f…#Lionessess
“If England gets beaten, so will she.”
Researchers from UK’s Lancaster University who analysed domestic violence figures from England’s men’s games in 2002, 2006 & 2010 World Cup found that incidents of domestic abuse were 11 percent higher the day after an England men’s match.
More alarmingly: incidents of domestic abuse rose by 38 percent when the England men’s team lost and increased by 26 percent where England men won or drew, compared with days when there was no England match. feministgiant.com/p/essay-when-f…
And the person who is carrying that unintended pregnancy is just a walking incubator?! Fuck this shit. Abortion is a human right that must be available to any pregnant person who wants it. Not only if there aren’t coaches willing to “raise that baby.”
I wonder sometimes how much of a role The Handmaid's Tale played in making (white) Americans think that abortion would only ever be illegal (again) in a dystopian future, a world that looked nothing like their own, and so
easy to keep at arm’s distance. feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-ha…
It has less to do with the book’s author, Margaret Atwood, and more to do with the inability of (white) Americans to imagine losing a right they’ve had recognized, albeit for less than 50 years.
The idea that a right could be revoked is so alien to so many white Americans.
The privilege of whiteness meant that for many in the U.S., there was something wrong with you if you were losing rights. And so banning abortion was the stuff of a dystopia they could keep at a distance, that they refused to recognize.
"I am being attacked by the godless left because I said I'm a proud Christian Nationalist...The left has shown us exactly who they are. They hate America, they hate God, and they hate us," Marjorie Taylor Greene h/t @rerutlednewsweek.com/marjorie-taylo…
These white supremacist Christian zealots have built a theocracy and still the U.S. will blather on about "religious freedom" because they are white and Christian and so often women and not considered dangerous. feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-wh…
No matter how often those of us from authoritarian countries who know to be suspicious of state power, and those of us who have fought fascism -- be it via military rule/rule of religious fundamentalists -- warned & warned, white Americans arrogantly said it couldn’t happen here.
When will US media finally say that this is a white supremacist Christian movement driven by white supremacist, Christian zealots who are patriarchal to the core? From abortion bans to “women must stay in abusive marriages.”
The U.S. media don’t want to call them zealots, don’t want to call it a theocracy, don’t want to say they’re patriarchal, don’t want to say they’re anti-feminist. They tiptoe around all of this because these are white Christian people, ie “default.” feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-wh…
From Vance to Gaetz and a whole bunch of misogynist fucks in between
"Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb."