“FROM TALIBAN TO TEXAS: THE PATRIARCHY STRIKES BACK”
Caroline is recovering slowly but surely from her major back surgery two weeks ago on August 30. Thanks to all of you who have prayed and called and written and e-mailed and provided food and respite care! We’ll keep you posted – her next scheduled doc appointment is October 6 via telemed, and we hope that her progress remains steady enough that she will not need anything else. After being blessed to have not been in the hospital overnight since 1982, we both have learned a lot in this process.
The headlines move fast in the 24 hour news cycle, so I am a little bit behind in this blog. Yet this phenomenon of the patriarchy striking back never seems to go away or seem dated. There are many examples of it in our world, but nowhere more clearly seen than in the events in Afghanistan and Texas, where the same kind of political mindsets seem to have won the day through violence and seizure of political power. The Taliban truly are scary in their approach to women and to political dissent. One can admire their staying power – at least 30 years of Soviet and American occupation, and yet here they are, back in power. Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” seems appropriate reading for these days in Afghanistan, as it is for all days.
The fiasco in Texas over women’s rights and the need for safe and healthy abortions are another sign of the patriarchy striking back. The refusal of SCOTUS to intervene in the Texas law that allows only 6 weeks for legal access to abortion is a portent of more bad things to come for all of us, especially women. As many people have pointed out, many women do not even know that they are pregnant by six weeks into the pregnancy, so this is clearly designed to end legal access to abortion in Texas. It is still hard for me to believe that the political party that preaches individual rights and local governments is now preaching about total control over women and their bodies. Texas has also picked up a Soviet style manner of enforcement – neighbors telling on (and suing) neighbors.
One other disturbing aspect of SCOTUS’ refusal to intervene in the Texas law is that such a refusal basically endorses the idea of “nullification,” the doctrine that John C. Calhoun of South Carolina tried to use in order to preserve slavery. Calhoun called it out in the 1830’s in response to a federal taxation act, but everyone knew that lying underneath this argument was the struggle over the legality of slavery. Calhoun claimed that states had the constitutional right to “nullify” federal laws that the state felt were unconstitutional, looking towards a time when the federal government might outlaw slavery. President Andrew Jackson came down hard on Calhoun and this approach, but Jackson knew that this was no political foil for power. The antipathy was so deep that Jackson prepared federal troops to enter South Carolina and defend the law if necessary. Calhoun and his followers backed down on this one, but it prepared the groundwork for the next generation in South Carolina to start the Civil War 25 years later.
Texas used the doctrine of nullification to develop its law on making abortions illegal, and SCOTUS has seemed to endorse the doctrine in its response last week. As awful as this law is for women’s rights, let none of us think that it will stop there. In this approach, states can seek to “nullify” federal laws and federal rights in many areas, especially voting rights, as we see happening all around the country. In striking back, the patriarchy has moved not only to nullify women and their rights but the rights of all of us. The redistricting battles and decisions of this fall will tell us a lot about where we all will come out in this struggle, but whatever those decisions, voter turnout in 2022 will be crucial. And, however the patriarchy and Soviet-style politicians choose to strike back next, let us find those Jedi warriors in ourselves and together so that we may find ways to assert the fundamental humanity and equal dignity of all human beings.
