Did you know that Piers Morgan appeared on Celebrity Apprentice? He actually won the 2008 season, according to his Wikipedia entry. Fortunately, I never followed the series in any of its iterations and was happily unaware of Morgan’s victory, although he surely he found it gratifying. It was while the two men were together in Davos that they met for a mutual ego stroking that resulted in the breaking news that Donald Trump was not a feminist.
BREAKING NEWS:
President Trump has declared he is NOT a feminist.
He tells me: ‘No, I wouldn't say I'm a feminist. I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far. I'm for women, I'm for men, I’m for everyone.'
Full interview, Sunday, ITV, 10pm.
The man has finally said something that I can agree with: He is not a feminist. I also agree with him that he is for women, but only insofar as they gratify his twisted desires, not as individuals with full human rights and independent existence.
Conservatives, led by the notorious blowhard Rush “Is-He-Still-On-The-Air?” Limbaugh, have redefined feminism as anti-male, coining the term feminazi in an attempt to demonize women who feel they should have an equal shot at success.
A year ago at the annual conservative CPAC gathering, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said
“It’s difficult for me to call myself a feminist in a classic sense because it seems to be very anti-male, and it certainly is very pro-abortion, and I’m neither anti-male or pro-abortion,” Conway said during a conversation onstage with conservative commentator Mercedes Schlapp. “So, there’s an individual feminism, if you will, that you make your own choices. … I look at myself as a product of my choices, not a victim of my circumstances.”
Again we see the use of the anti-male slur. This is a conservative construct, and so is the pro-abortion slur. Feminists tend to be pro-equality and pro-choice. A firm belief in white male supremacy lies at the root of this anti-equality, anti-choice administration, as shown in the choices it has made.
According to the New York Times, Trump’s cabinet is the whitest, most male cabinet since Ronald Reagan’s. Clearly, he really, really likes men—white men, in particular.
The federal judiciary is critical in determining how we will live together in this nation. It was the Supreme Court that finally defined marriage as a union between two people. Appointments last a lifetime and are very, very hard to revoke. And 81 percent of Trump’s nominees to the federal bench have been male; 91 percent have been white.
Advocates for putting more women and racial minorities on the bench argue that courts that more closely reflect the demographics of the population ensure a broader range of viewpoints and inspire greater confidence in judicial rulings.
One court that has become a focus in the debate is the Eastern District of North Carolina, a region that, despite its sizable black population, has never had a black judge. A seat on that court has been open for more than a decade. George W. Bush named a white man, and Barack Obama at different points nominated two black women, but none of those nominees ever came to a vote in the Senate.
Trump has renominated Bush's original choice: Thomas Farr, a private attorney whose work defending North Carolina's redistricting maps and a voter identification law has raised concerns among civil rights advocates.
Trump has shown how much he likes women (outside of his bedroom) by allowing states to limit their health care for any reason, real or imagined, that a care giver chooses to profess.
Under the new regulation, hospitals, universities, clinics and other entities that receive funding from HHS programmes such as Medicare and Medicaid must certify that they comply with about 25 federal laws protecting conscience and religious rights. Most such laws address medical procedures such as abortion, sterilisation and assisted suicide.
The HHS also took action that may help conservative states cut or eliminate Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, a major source of routine medical care for women.
The department rescinded guidance from the Obama administration that narrowed the circumstances in which states can exclude a medical provider to cases involving fraud, criminal activity or being unfit to provide care.
We can look to Texas to see what happens when we cut funding to the premier provider of women’s health care in the United States. In Midland, Texas, where the state shifted funds from a Planned Parenthood clinic in 2013, only one-tenth of the active patients sought care at the Midland Community Healthcare Services (MCHS), a federally-funded network of providers that emerged as the only major alternative to Planned Parenthood. Mike Austin is the director of the MCHS, which provides many of the same services as Planned Parenthood.
In fact, just before the Planned Parenthood clinic shut down, the two providers made a plan to minimize the fallout. Planned Parenthood sent nearly 5,000 patient medical records – up to 1,000 belonging to active patients – directly to MCHS.
But to Austin’s dismay, only about 100 former Planned Parenthood patients ever showed up at his door.
“We are seeing a subsequent rise in STDs and a subsequent rise in unplanned pregnancies,” Austin said. He believes they could be linked. “And I’m sitting here going, ‘See? I told you so. This is what happens.’”
The irony in Conway’s assertion is that she claims that she is the product of her choices. She sees no conflict in denying other women the opportunity to make their own choices. I am not pro-abortion, although I have had one. I am not necessarily pro-root canal either, although I have endured one of those as well. I am an adult and fully capable of making my own health care decisions.
Perhaps there is an alternate reality in which true equality exists, in which a woman has as much control over her own body as a man has over his. In that reality the statement that “I'm for women, I'm for men, I’m for everyone,” would be perfectly acceptable. But in our reality, control over a woman’s body seems to be a subject of debate and political point-scoring, freely claimed by everyone except the woman herself, making her little more than an object, an incubator, who can never be the equal of a man who maintains complete control of his own physical being. So, to say, “I'm for women, I'm for men, I’m for everyone,” is to say, “I’m for the continuation of male supremacy. I’m against any suggestion of equality for women.”
Until I can exist In that reality, I will be voting for any Democrat, even if she is personally anti-abortion but votes in favor my rights to make my own adult choices, as an equal member of our shared society.