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Nick Fuentes's "your body, my choice" is now apparently on the lips of middle school boys everywhere, if reddit / news sources are to be believed (I'm not around children much). By merely writing this I run the risk of already paying too much attention to a throwaway piece of internet trolling, forgotten by everyone by the time you finish reading this. But given that this taunt has penetrated even my own hitherto groyper-free feeds, and in fact stayed in my mind for a day or two, I wonder if it has some memetic staying power. And I confess that some part of me finds it hilarious. The anti-vaxxers couldn't ruin "my body, my choice", but I feel like this might.
Is this a display of a certain kind of genius for provocation? In rhetoric, we are told not to accept the opponent's framing of a question. And yet here he accepts the opponent's framing of bodily autonomy wholeheartedly, and simply inverts it, ridiculously. Therefore at first it appears the phrase can be dismissed as having no authenticity - a pure troll. No pro-life person would begin their argument by asserting control over of a woman's body. To take the statement at face value and be triggered would surely be to model the opponent incorrectly, to fail the ideological Turning test. Or would it? Ross Douthat isn't about to repeat this slogan, but in the world he wants, doesn't the symbolism of the father walking the bride down the aisle to hand her over have to regain some power? So cue the articles on "MAGA misogyny" and the despair and anger and discussions on how to protect oneself from rape in /r/TwoXChromosomes.
I guess I don't have anything particularly interesting to say about this, but I'm curious what people here think. First, why does it seem that the trolling and triggering in gender discourse is so asymmetric? "No means yes, yes means anal" comes to mind. Are there good examples of the manosphere being successfully provoked in such a manner? You could point to the 4B movement, for instance, but if I'm not mistaken the women declaring celibacy were being earnest, not trolling. Second, is the mainstreaming of 4chan culture, and its exposure to children, important? Or is this just standard fare for schoolyards and male group chats, and no more insidious than, say, the spread of woke ideas in schools?
The incoming administration has promised to punt the issue of abortion to the States and I hope they go one step further and enshrine this punt with a Constitutional amendment that would keep the federal government out of the business altogether, including encouraging or discouraging States or individuals via funding, services, etc. And probably also prohibiting States from punishing abortion tourists in any way.
There are so many important issues of geopolitics and energy and trade and I'm so fucking tired of this issue being at the top of mind every single national election (for literally my entire life and I'm over 40!!!), and half the electorate being one-issue voters about it so you can't even have a real conversation with them about anything else.
It might also help heal relations between the sexes but I won't bet on that, let's not get too greedy now.
Inasmuch as there's a breakdown in relations between sexes, I don't think you repair that without making abortion (at least during the first trimester) widely available.
I think this change would make its availability feel less precarious than it does now.
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