Laws, now I've seen everything.

Let's see: Apparently it's muy bueno to flip the finger to the gub'mint when they're confiscating my firearms, shutting down Christmas, or nagging me to quit smoking and eating fatty foods, but lemme make one little objection to being defined by my reproductive organs, and boom!--I'm an HYSTERICAL FEMINAZI.

Same shit, different day, huh?

You would think the Fucked Companeros would have other things to worry about, maybe unemployment or something, but what do I know? Until 'bout five minutes ago I'd forgotten Fucked Company existed. Hey, I thought it was a 90s thing. Go ahead, sue me.

And then there's this, the title of which invites a remark along the lines of "physician, heal thyself."

Call me an internet etiquette Nazi, but generally when you want to dispute what someone's written you link what they've written, and not some blockhead's distinctly ignorant paraphrase of it--unless, of course, you've got all the backbone of a jellyfish and you fear that I may presume to wipe the floor with your ass, which in fact I just may.

So let's recap, as succinctly as possible, some of the feminist blogging coverage of these CDC guidelines. That will save us having to embarrass ourselves by linking to Russell Wardlow in order to get the feminist perspective:

First you've got Jill's post, which is how I found out about the CDC guidelines, the subject of the Washington Post article Jill's responding to. (Got that?) Jill's berserk too, naturally:

Avoid cat feces and discuss fetal alcohol syndrome when you aren’t pregnant and don’t plan to be? Sure, doc, I’ll give up my pets and stop drinking because it might hurt the fetus that I’m not carrying.

FEEL THE HYSTERIA!

Then, you've got Amanda Marcotte--or St. Amanda of Fornicatus, as she's known in some circles--and, hell, if we can't bank on Amanda to be hysterical, then, then, I just don't know, because it is an article of faith among the right-wing internet community that Amanda is always hysterical. It's like death and taxes, man, death and taxes:

The guidelines are a little less breathless with excitement over a brand new chance to control women and discriminate against us than [the Washington Post] article implies. They suggest that doctors treating women talk about health care in terms of their own health but also in regards to their reproductive future. The actual article very firmly suggests, and the WaPo skims over this point, that the big recommendation is to emphasize the importance of planning your pregnancies to women.

And the shrieking and caterwauling, she don't stop:

So the recommendation is not to scold all women between 12 and 60 never to drink or smoke or own a fucking cat. In fact, while there’s not a lot of language in the actual report condoning social control of all women as a health care initiative, there’s a whole shitload of suggestions to doctors that they discuss the importance of spacing children and preventing unplanned pregnancies. Prepregnancy visits are also encouraged, which again indicates that these guidelines are more about doctors telling women to take conception and pregnancy seriously than they are trying to imply that doctors should assume all women are equal pregnancy risk.

I mean the way she gets on the mainstream media for misrepresenting the issue and blatantly revealing its insidious biased agenda--OH, WAIT:

So why did the WaPo misrepresent this report? Hell, they don’t even mention how important birth control is to this entire project except in passing at the bottom of the article. I think it’s because it’s a political hot potato to openly admit that the two most important steps towards reducing the infant mortality rate and improving the health of newborns in general is to get health care to every woman and to empower women with the knowledge and tools they need to get pregnant only when they want to.

You with me so far? We've got Jill saying "It's stupid to ask me to protect the fetus I'm not carrying," and then we've got Amanda saying "Wait, it's actually not the way it was reported in the press," i.e., the sort of statement which, if you banned conservative bloggers from ever making it again, would reduce the output of conservative blogs by at least 90%; and somewhere in there you've also got a followup post by Zuzu at Feministe, in equally fine crazy-hysterical form:

What I’m concerned about is that the guidelines will provide more cover for doctors who already do things like withhold effective treatments from their non-pregnant patients on the grounds that the treatments are harmful to a hypothetical fetus, even when the alternative, fetus-safe treatment does not adequately control the condition or has more severe side effects for the patient than the fetus-harming treatment.

And then--what nerve--she provides an example of exactly that scenario occurring:

I have been unable to obtain adequate medical care for my epilepsy because I am what they'd call pre-pregnant. As my neurologist puts it, I am a woman of child-bearing age. As such, they flat-out refuse to try me on any medicines other than the ones proven least likely to affect a fetus (read: the ones that are paying off my neurologist). Despite the fact that I have declared my belly a no-fetus zone.

My neurologist does not trust me to not get pregnant. My neurologist puts a potential fetus's potential health over my health.

That miserable harpy! With her SOURCING and her FACTS! Take a Valium, Zuzu; you'll never get a man like that!

As for Bitch, Ph.D., well, her blog title's never fit better. Such emotionalism:

It seems to me that the biggest news here isn't the CDC; it's the interpretation of this document in the broader context of increasingly conservative ideas that women are primarily baby-factories and mothers, rather than actual human beings whose health care matters for its own sake. Luckily the CDC (and, in my experience, most health care providers, especially in women's health) still belong to the reality-based community.

How dare she use the word "reality" in such an obviously hormone-fueled screed?

And then, of course, you have me and my potty mouth, which added bupkis to the discussion and in fact was not worth posting at all, if you think about it (which clearly I seldom do), but it did, however unwittingly, serve one purpose: It provided fresh meat to conservatives who CAN'T READ, the ones who just plug everything vaguely wimmen-related into their tiresome-but-tireless narrative of "Anything feminists object to, I automatically favor, because I am like what would happen if someone invented a robot that was specially, intentionally designed to be retarded." "Anti-intellectual" doesn't even begin to cover it. "Stupid" is inadequate. "Ignorant" is insufficient. "Lobotomized" only just barely approaches applicability.

The sweet, sweet irony is that there was plenty of material for conservatives to pick on in all this, if only that pesky "reading" activity weren't required to detect it. How 'bout the "no, no, the CDC is a GOOD bureaucracy" attitude prevalent in some of the above posts? It's not one of my pet issues, personally, but I would think a true limited-government aficionado could make hay for days outta that.

And then there's the wealth of common-cause material: Feminists think the press misrepresents important issues?--Conservatives think the press misrepresents important issues! Feminists think federal guidelines are mostly for shit?--Conservatives think federal guidelines are mostly for shit! Feminists want the feds out of their personal lives?--Conservatives want the feds out of their personal lives! Holy crumb, it's almost like you could all sit around making friendship bracelets or something.

"I still hate that you oppose same-sex marriage, but the way you point out the jerkiness of the WaPo is like awesome."

"I know, and I still hate that you abort babies, but the way you tell the federal government to mind its business really moves me."

But again, that would require laying off the pipe for a minute, you know, the pipe labeled "Almost Half the Population Voted for the Party of Death Last Election and That Makes Almost Half of my Fellow Citizens my Sworn Enemies 4Ever. Now Hit That PayPal Button, Bitches, Because You Can't Get This Kind of Meaningful Discourse Just Anywhere, and Certainly Not on 40,000 Other Blogs Exactly Like This One."

So. If the goal of Andrea and Russell was to make me think that maybe the liberals who tar all those to the right of Dennis Kucinich as unthinking backwoods reactionaries might just occasionally have a point, congratulations, dears: Goal achieved. Have yourselves a big fat hysterical cookie each. Maybe later I'll take a break from boozing it up, cleaning the cat box, and aborting yet another freakin' baby in order to bake my famous Berserker Brownies: Two cups Hysteria, one and one-third cups Outrage, three-fourths cup Shrieking Incoherence . . . .

Posted by Ilyka at May 21, 2006 01:47 PM in f is for feminism