1 Comment
User's avatar
⭠ Return to thread
Jana Linderman's avatar

Thank you as well for your thoughtful replies! I should emphasize that I don’t assume anything about the nuance of your beliefs/thoughts other than what I can glean from your writing (which I enjoy) and much of my critique, such as it is, is more inspired by/directed at the white men in progressive circles that I have interacted with directly in party politics and the NGO advocacy community. I am curious - to the extent you are bolstered by increased permission or space to be more rhetorically forceful on an issue like abortion, from whom does that permission flow, and what form does it/should it take? I don’t feel like there was a shortage of women/activists speaking forcefully on reproductive rights before Dobbs. To the extent the institutional Dem party has more recently been radicalized, it was by the spectacle/gut punch of seeing women’s basic human rights turned into a smoking ash heap by a corrupt right wing court. Which again, many women saw coming and tried to warn of, to no avail. And it still took convincing party leaders that it was to their electoral advantage to take up the cause. So I’m wondering, what does it look like to give white men/white people/people in power “permission” or the needed level of encouragement to be better? And how can we be mindful of the often impossibly high price of creating that permission structure? I definitely am tired of endlessly watching my party decide that my rights/my daughter’s rights/the rights of so many vulnerable people in our communities are just not worth alienating power structures. That’s not a morally defensible position and no way to live your life. But I also feel like the thing blocking people in power from making shifts on so many issues is not wanting to cede power or alienate others in whatever “in group” confers that power. People in vulnerable groups can and do fight to create different incentives but often only by sacrificing themselves and their safety to do so. And I just wish we could find a different way to approach this. But unsure of what that should/could look like.

Expand full comment