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RantGoing to an “abortion rights” protest leaves you with guilt and shame akin to a fundamentalist church
Posted July 1, 2022 by [Deleted] in GenderCritical

Hi all, I’m a new user here.

I was a pretty rabid rad-fem for a while, but I think like many of us (or maybe it’s just me) it became too hard. It hurt too much. I hid, and yes I’m ashamed.

Anyways, I’m back here as Roe obviously woke many of us up. And for me, the desire to be engaged in activism, to utilize my long repressed anger, and the desperate hope to find other women with my convictions finally had me go out and protest for the first time, as someone who struggles with social anxiety this was a big deal.

What do I find?

Every protest I go has a new symbol that is canceled. God forbid you were not warned before-hand, because the speakers WILL call it out and WILL very rabidly shame you.

So far, the handmaidens’ robes are canceled, the Venus symbol is canceled, clothes hangers are canceled, telling men to get vasectomies is canceled, “no uterus no opinion” and I’m sure more.

At one point as the list of “WHAT WE WON’T DO (meaning what symbols we won’t use” was proclaimed from the pulpit, I was stricken with absolute fear that my sign might be, in some way offensive, and threw it away.

I find myself compelled to speak about my disabilities, about the fact that I was raped, about my trauma, in order to have any right to have a voice. But I do not WANT to disclose these things in public. I don’t want to align myself with a subsection of subsection of women. I want to fight for ALL women. But as it stands, I am a white, 30 something woman who has been called Karen more than once (not because of my anger, I’m too afraid of that, but because my haircut lands above my shoulders).

In reality, I am part of the disability statistics, I have an “invisible” disability, one of the ugliest mental disabilities, but why is my disclosure demanded as a voucher for me to have a voice? What if I don’t WANT to talk about that?

After the public shaming of symbols that are now canceled, a parade of women who suffer from different isms come up to microphone/blow horn to remind you that YOU have privilege that they don’t and that YOU need to uplift THEIR voices.

To be clear, I do believe that is the case for BIPOC women specifically, but that’s not who I primarily see on the microphone. No, instead it’s white women who are some variety of disabled/non-binary/etc etc etc. If they are anything like the “disability” advocates I’ve run into in my own support groups, they are more than likely to be self-diagnosed autistic. They present as 100% female. I get the impression that it is now more acceptable to appropriate identities than it is to be honest. To collect them as tickets redeemed in order to voice their opinions.

What I find really disturbing about this is that the same way TIMs appropriated woman-hood to speak over us, white people are appropriating oppression points and taking space away from women who actually deserve to be supported in having their voices uplifted. It’s a self fulfilling prophesy as “womanhood” isn’t a valid reason to speak on women’s issues, and because I believe there is some jealousy over actual minorities as there is an increasing call for their voice to be heard.

So-far we have symbols the movement has deemed offensive thrown out. If you happen to have a sign or are wearing any of these offensive symbols, you ultimately have a scarlet letter around your neck and will likely leave from shame.

After that, there is a parade of identities competing for who is the most oppressed, and they take the stand to tell you how you are complicit and the reason for your oppression, as well allies also berating you for NOT DOING ENOUGH (presumably unlike them.)

Don’t you dare ask questions, such as why your sign is offensive all of a sudden when it was okay just three days ago. That requires “emotional labor” that no one has, and you will be berated once again and told to “educate yourself” which you can only do through instagram or tik-tok reels because these conversation are mostly had online.

At the end of the protest “TRANS RIGHTS ARE WOMENS RIGHTS” is repeated ad naseum. I wonder how if trans women are women, why we have to constantly qualify them as extra special. Or are they talking about NBs and trans men? Because isn’t it offensive to relate them to women?

I leave the protest feeling defeated, confused, and unsure of how to engage in activism when there is no collective identity to work around. I feel like I did as a child leaving my pew at a Southern Baptist church, conflicted about the unity I was promised with god mixed with the taint of original sin.

But now it’s the amorphous hope that women might one day stand in unity, mixed with the infinite labels used to both describe and shame me. I promise not to let this defeat my resolve to stand with women, even if they feel “women” is not a label that deserves fighting for. But each time I come home I feel defeated, not empowered.

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