moominmuppet

A whole run of interesting and infuriating articles on feministing and feministe recently, especially as relates to clinic escorting, and to murderous fuckwad Roeder.

On "voluntary manslaughter" and the encouragement of future murderous fuckwads -- I cannot begin to express the extent of my rage over Dr. Tiller's assassination, or over the fact that we're suddenly happy to surrender civil liberties left and right, endorse torture, and profile people with the "wrong" religion or skin color, but we still don't take the homegrown terrorists seriously enough to apply the actual legitimate laws to them.

Always fascinating: What antis say about their time spent harassing women outside clinics -- I like listening to them introduce new members to the fold by telling them about us, and who we are, and what we're like. In our case, as at most clinics with escorts, there's a strict no interaction policy on our side (not on theirs). The only things we can say to them involve informing them if they're breaking a law. Everything else, they extrapolate from what they can overhear of our conversations. And in terms of dealing with the insults and threats, nothing prepared me better for clinic escorting than getting bullied in middle and high school. A reaction is what a bully wants, more than anything else. If you can't make me react, you have no power over me. And if I do react, I'm damned well going to be laughing at you.

stories from clinic escorts "Your job is to make sure the situation doesn't escalate, and you're trained to make it happen. In the rest of my life, I have no problem yelling at people like this. But when I'm at the clinic, I have different priorities." -- Yes. This.

And this is so stupid, and offensive, and idiotic in every possible way: Carrying condoms could get you arrested. More than three equals possible charge of prostitution (much like the stupid texas law about how many sex toys -- 6, I believe -- meant you obviously intended to sell them). I can't think of a time in my life when my idea of a sensible number of condoms to carry, especially if traveling, was 3 or less. Polled the household got unanimous agreement on the point from everyone present. (and don't get me started on targeting of prostitutes, and our stupid laws, and anti-harm-reduction practices like scaring women _out_ of carrying protection! *headdesk*) Correction: Here's a closer look at what's actually going on

A little-discussed provision of the Senate bill allows insurers to penalize subscribers by hundreds -- and even thousands -- of dollars for not meeting certain "wellness targets." : I will be _pissed_ if this makes it through, especially given the amount of biological variation that's genetic. They're already doing it here at my job, so I'm fucked either way.

And because everyone needs something cheery after all this crap, have a chlorophyll-containing slug -- I love this planet!