Holy wow, you guys! Who scheduled all the news to happen all at the same time? This week has been the kind of whiplash-inducing emotional roller coaster that your drama queen friend from college only wishes she could produce. But we have moxie, you and I, and so we will soldier on.
No, wait. Not moxie. From now on, when we wish to explain that we have true grit, heart, and staying power, we will say that we have Wendy.
This Week in Holy Jumping Uteruses, Did You See What Happened in Texas?!:
If you were online Tuesday, your heart was probably close to bursting. If you recall, Texas Governor Rick Perry is not so much a friend of women or ladybits. He prefers to keep them locked down and out of options. He’s backing a Draconian anti-choice bill (no need for mandatory ultrasounds; the Texas GOP already got those) that the state House approved and needed to clear the Senate. It didn’t in the regular session thanks to a moving citizen filibuster.
(Read this account of the Republicans’ behavior during that if you want to get your rage on.)
Special sessions of the Texas legislature are supposed to be called only for emergencies, but Perry decided that really wanting to effectively ban abortion in his state counted. So he officially called the special session for a couple of other bills and, whoops, lookee here, while we’re talking, why don’t we just tack on the abortion bill too, just for giggles. How bad is the bill? 80% of the people in the state didn’t want it addressed during the special session, and it closes all but five of the 42 abortion clinics in the state. That’s a state the size of France. Women in West Texas will be essentially out of options if it passes. And, yes, of course there’s one of those inhumanly cruel 20-week abortion bans, because apparently there’s nothing Republicans love more than to punish women who discover grave medical issues with wanted pregnancies. What’s a little mental and physical cruelty when there are donations and headlines to be had?
Well, the women of Texas who think they should get to decide who controls their bodies (not to mention many wonderful men who agreed) were not having it.
The legislators of the Texas GOP figured they could still slide the abortion bill by — and under the national radar — by passing it in that special session. But they didn’t count on State Senator Wendy Davis, who said:
The special session started and Wendy arrived in pink sneakers, ready to filibuster. And that’s a Texas-rules filibuster: No drinking, eating, or bathroom breaks; no letting a colleague fill in for you for a few minutes; no sitting down; and not even any leaning on the podium. And you have to keep talking — no reading the phone book either. You have to stay relevant to the bill at hand, which will become very important in a minute. Three strikes on going off-topic and you’re out. Women from all over the state and country e-mailed their personal stories to Davis so she could keep filibustering.
Davis started her one-woman filibuster at 11:18, ready to keep going until the session ended at midnight. Once the Republicans realized she might actually make it, they started trying to ding her on bogus fine points of the rules.
Ding 1: Davis brought up Planned Parenthood’s budget. Which was deemed “not germane.” To the topic of abortion and women’s health clinics.
Ding 2: Another senator tried to help Davis put on a back brace, which was called “assisting.”
Ding 3: And then Davis brought up the charming forced sonograms that Texas makes women who need an abortion go through. That was also deemed “off topic.” For an abortion bill. I repeat: The fact that Texas already forces women who undergo medically unnecessary sonograms — essentially punitive sonograms — before they can get an abortion was deemed “not germane” to the discussion of unconstitutional abortion restrictions. Third strike. This happened at 10:00, with just under two hours to go.
The crowd in the gallery did not care for the weaseling. Thank you, Texas Tribune, for the live feed, for so many reasons. (There’s some NSFW rowdiness in here. Put on your headphones and enjoy.)
The Democrats raised parliamentary questions and stalled like the heroic grooms of mighty racehorses, while the Republicans kept trying to declare the filibuster over. Wendy Davis, just in case she would be allowed to continue her filibuster, continued to stand for the women of Texas.
Finally, with 15 minutes to go before the session ended at midnight, Senator Leticia Van De Putte — who had rushed back from her own father’s funeral to make the session and help the filibuster — had the moment that made the crowd break out again. And then the crowd realized that they might be able to just keep screaming.
I had several ideas about what my Wednesday night might be like, but crying in front of my laptop over a screaming protest in Texas had not been one of them. And yet. You want to hear some more joyful noise?
The crowd, tired of dickishly applied points of order and broken rules, broke some of their own and shouted down the clock. The Republicans tried to hold a quick vote as the clock ran out — Oops! After the clock ran out, even though the vote mysteriously got backdated — but they lost.
I have a feeling a LOT of women are going to be buying those pink tennis shoes #wendydavistexas wore so we can be superheroes, too. #want
– GailSimone (@GailSimone) June 26, 2013
Wendy’s victory is only for now, of course. Rick Perry has already called for another special session for his creepy bill on Monday — Where is the emergency, exactly? — while lobbing a truly crass attack on Senator Davis in the meantime.
But now the nation knows what Rick Perry and the Republicans in the Texas legislature are trying to do, the Texas voters are pissed, the national media just got a huge wake-up call about state politics, and we have a new hero who just might be persuaded to run for higher office.
Like against Rick Perry.
Oh, and with luck, newspapers have learned that they need to get live feeds into all the state legislature sessions. Because that’s where things get seriously cray. For example…
This Week in Ladybits Elsewhere:
You know those buffer zones around women’s health clinics that ensure that the women going in only have to be verbally harassed while being surrounded by monstrous signs? Those are under appeal with the Supreme Court.
Oh, and while we were watching Texas and the Supreme Court, Ohio freaking snuck punitive lie-to-your-patients ultrasound anti-abortion language into the freaking state budget. And I do mean snuck in:
The newest abortion restrictions in the Ohio budget received zero hearings. Zero witnesses were called. There was zero debates. #Veto4Women
– Planned Parenthood (@PPAOhio) June 27, 2013
And North Carolina wants teachers to lie to seventh-graders. Dr. Maddow, can you take this one?
This Week in Are You Goobers Kidding Me:
The GOP is looking for more female Republican candidates. Presumably ones that hate their own bodily autonomy and don’t ever speak.
This Week in Even More Happily Ever After:
40 Years after the patrons of the Upstairs Lounge were burned to death and nearly 44 years after Stonewall, The Supreme Court came through, striking down DOMA and telling the people who wanted to keep Prop 8 to stuff a sock in it and accept a lower court’s ruling that the same-sex marriage ban was unconstitutional. This means that marriage equality is returning to California (How we’ve missed you!) and couples who are already married get to do things like file joint tax returns and pass on Social Security benefits to their spouses. Which is the dry way of talking about it. I don’t know about you, but my Facebook page has been full of married people happycrying over what it’s like to have their loving relationships truly recognized as legitimate instead of being shoved over into a legislative corner.
Lots of bigots lost their minds over how awful and icky it was that LGBT people might get treated like people by the federal government, then lost their minds again about how unfair it is to call them bigots just because they devote time and energy to spreading hate and fear about people who are different. Fortunately, those bigots are hilariously pathetic.
The DOMA ruling has now made the normalization of polygamy, pedophilia, incest and bestiality inevitable. Matter of time.
– Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) June 26, 2013
Haha… pic.twitter.com/Wuw82EkGFJ
– CrowDog (@TheCrowDog) June 27, 2013
Not to mention their adorably ill-advised logos and taglines. (Hat tip to the excellent Chris Geidner, who noticed and tweeted.)
Oh, hi, Nancy Pelosi. Did you happen to have the exact correct response to Michele Bachmann‘s insane Angry Avenging Jesus reaction to the Supreme Court ruling? I thought you might.
This Week in Not So Fast:
…But before the Supremes handed out some tasty rights to same-sex couples (or at least to those who live in states where they’re allowed to get married), they stuck their hands into the Voting Rights Act, ripped out its still-beating heart, and showed it to a horrified nation.
The part of the VRA that they struck down was the part that said states with a history of putting horrible racist restrictions on voters had to go through the Department of Justice before changing their voting laws. The logic of the Court’s majority was that we don’t need that anymore because racism is over. Because when was the last time you heard of states trying to put racially targeted voter restriction laws into place? Oh, that’s right, during the last freaking election.
Racism, it turns out, is so over that some states were swinging their awesome racist laws into place within hours of the announcement.
And, seriously, I know we LGBT folks and allies are all happily butt-dancing and shooting rainbows out of every available orifice to celebrate the DOMA and Prop 8 defeats, but if you’re not on the horn or at your keyboard or actually taking pen to paper and screaming, screaming, screaming at your reps to refortify the VRA immediately, you can’t call yourself a feminist or an activist or even a particularly good LGBT person, no matter how flawless your butt-dancing and rainbow shooting may be.
And it’s not just because these new Jim Crow 2 laws will make it harder to get people who women and LGBT folks like and who like us elected — though they will; Texas Republicans are already trying to gerrymander Wendy Davis out of her Senate seat.
It’s because we, as women or members of the LGBT community or any other group that has been on the less-than side of the rights equation know what it’s like and are honor-bound to call it out and shout it down, whether the inequality in question personally affects us or not.
It’s because we, as a civilized nation, cannot tolerate elections in which white people get to vote in a matter of minutes and everybody else has to take a day off work because of the seven-hour lines. Or can’t vote at all because of sudden new ID hurdles that allow gun licenses but not student IDS, or require state IDs that are burdensome and sometimes expensive to get. It is unjust at the most fundamental level of what our nation is supposed to be. And we should be putting on our pink sneakers and kicking ass until it stops.
Also? Justice Alito is a rude jerk who openly made fun of certifiably awesome Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg while she was reading a dissenting opinion on another case, pointing out that the Supreme Court had just made it way easier to get away with sexual harassment.
Do not mess with Justice Ginsberg, sir. She’s our girl.
This Week in Good:
Wow, do you even remember the uproar over Kickstarter keeping up that pick-up artist manual? It seems so quaint now. At any rate, Kickstarter issued an apology — and not one of those never-admit-responsibility non-apologies, a proper apology.
And Coy Mathis, a transgender six-year-old, won the right to use the girls’ bathroom at school.
This Week in Ugh:
A twelve-year-old girl has been kicked off her football team because some of the boys started having “impure” thoughts about her and that was obviously her fault.
Also? Fox News is not always great on ladies who think they should get to have opinions, even when they’re studio guests who have been invited to comment.
This Week in Thinky:
Artist Mike Roshuk gave some Disney Princesses a warrior makeover. (Hat tip to Buzzfeed)
How do you feel about the obvious internal bad-assery combined with the ever-impractical, much discussed boob armor?
And do geek stereotypes keep women from pursuing science and tech?
This Week in Awesome:
Take a moment (or an eternity) to revel in Feminist Yog-Sothoth. (Via The Mary Sue)
And thanks to StonerMC for this good long clip of the amazing Jane Goodall being interviewed.
Have a great weekend. Get out there, release your inner bad-ass, and stand up for your beliefs like you’re Wendy Freaking Davis.
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