By: Stefanie Williams (@StefWilliams25 on Twitter), Guest Writer
South Carolina, I used to be so in love with you. When I moved here in 2014 from New York (for weather purposes, not political purposes, mind), I was beyond excited. I had fallen in love with Charleston, the Lowcountry, the beaches, the people. I felt so at home in a community that seemed diverse and friendly. Charleston became home very quickly.
Today, I find myself constantly looking on Zillow and Redfin for homes in Maryland, where I went to college, and more importantly, where men don't threaten women with financial, legal, and medical ruin with the glee and self-righteousness of men like Sen. Richard Cash and his Republican colleagues in both the House and the Senate.
Watching men — not women, but men — talk about women's bodies as if we are nothing more than a machine to be poorly explained in a fifth grade book report, has been nothing short of infuriating. But what's more rage-inducing, is seeing how many of these men don't even know anything (and I mean ANYTHING) about what they're crafting policy around — women's bodies. They don't understand how gestational age is calculated, how long an egg takes to be fertilized, how long a fertilized egg takes to implant, what Plan B does, what its side effects are, what birth control is used for, when ovulation happens, what happens to a woman's body during a pregnancy, how menstrual cycles change, or any basic fundamental functions of women's bodies in general. They have made that abundantly and embarrassingly clear on a local and national level numerous times over the course of recent weeks. South Carolina has become a laughing stock because of the sheer volume of stupidity put on display in these debates.
It has been insulting and maddening to have our bodies described in ways that make no sense to those of us who actually live in them, while not even being asked to weigh in. I can't count how many times I heard members of the South Carolina House and Senate say things like, “I'd have to look into that more,” “I don't know,” “I'd have to do more research on those side effects,” or “I don't know how or when anomalies can be determined.” You don't know? You haven't even bothered to look this stuff up before you decide to make laws about it? Well you want to know who does know? Women. Women who can get pregnant, women who have been pregnant, women who want to be pregnant, women who don't want to be pregnant. And instead of humbly deferring to the people who actually know the very easy answers to these questions because most of us have spent the majority of our adult lives making decisions around that information, these men like Cash decide that even though they don't know a damn thing about any of this, they still know better and can tell us all about it because, hey, what do women really know, you know?
Women of South Carolina, what the fuck is happening? How did we come to this? How have we been sidelined in the discussions, conversations, and implementations of laws about OUR bodies? How have we allowed men like Sen. Cash and Sen. Tom Corbin to reduce us to nothing more than bags of flesh capable of nothing more than carrying their babies? How have we allowed these men to make the most important, personal, difficult, and life-threatening decisions for us when those men are too lazy to even Google how Plan B works, or what birth control pills are used for other than birth control, something I knew as a sixteen year old girl? How have we allowed ignorant, uneducated men like Sen. Cash control the narrative about our bodies with nothing more than fiction derived from his personal Bible that is wholly incompatible with biological facts? How have we given the okay to our neighbors, family members, doctors, and friends being turned into deadly snitches and dangerous bounty hunters for a financial incentive?
This isn't a Republican or Democrat thing. Democrats aren't the only people who get abortions, and Republican women know this very well, whether they admit it or not. Republican women, is “owning the libs” really worth this humiliating and dangerous bullshit? Is staying in party lines really worth giving up your basic dignity to these men so they can pat themselves on the back while they laugh about how incapable you are of determining not only your own health choices, but life? Are you really, truly comfortable with men like Sen. Cash and the rest of his government colleagues making decisions for you, your daughters, and your granddaughters? Do you really trust Sen. Cash, or Sen. Corbin — who admitted he didn't even know when you could determine fetal anomalies in a pregnancy — more than you trust your doctor, your OB/GYN, your own gut and experiences?
We are better than this. And we are better than these men. I refuse to let men who don't know the difference between menstruation and menopause, who think a medical abortion at eight weeks is murder, but a woman dying of sepsis because the hospital's attorneys are erring on the side of caution so they don't get sued isn't, who think women don't know or understand what's happening in their own bodies, who think women should be polite and civil while discussing issues that could literally mean life or death for them in order to appease the man they're challenging, who want us to know our place and be sweet and sit down while the big, smart men make all the important decisions, determine anything about what happens to my body. I am so sick of listening to men talk about me and the rest of the women in this state like we aren't in the room. I am so full of rage, I sometimes don't even know what to do with myself because it feels like I'm living in a fever dream where blatant stupidity and willful ignorance are rewarded, and humble experience and science-based reality are punished.
South Carolina, we are better than this. We are better than going viral for ignorant comments, hypocritical crocodile tears, and fire-and-brimstone warnings when it comes to our own biological realities. We are better than the stupid, brain-washed idiots like Rep. Josiah Magnuson made us out to be, better than the shrieking, “uncivil” and “immature” children Rep. Neal Collins continuously tells the world we are on Twitter, better than the devilish whores and murderous sinners Rep. Jonathon Hill preaches us to be, and we are better than the meek victims stripped of our voices that Sen. Cash is trying to turn us into.
It's not just our bodies on the line at this point, ladies it is our dignity. Liberal, conservative, or somewhere in between, we will all lose dearly if we continue to allow these imbeciles to treat our bodies like a 10th grade test they only decided to study for in homeroom. Your uterus knows no political affiliation, and when it's you, or your daughters, or your sisters, or your grand daughters on the operating table, it won't matter whether there's an R or a D on your voter registration card. And I will tell you right now, I will never, ever allow a man as ignorant, ill-informed, and smugly self-righteous as Sen. Cash take my dignity away from me, and you shouldn't either. Because I would rather rot in prison than willingly bow down to a man that horrifically terrible and terrifyingly ill-informed.
I am full of rage. And I hope you are too. Because at this point, rage might be the only thing the Republican leaders of South Carolina haven't yet stolen from women.
Rage on.
