State Rep. Laurie Pohutsky’s account was cheered by the left-leaning protestors and condemned by right-wing social media accounts.
The 36-year-old Democrat said the surgery was a personal decision she had been considering for a few years and was finalized by Trump’s election. She wanted to validate the fears other women might have about access to contraception by sharing it.
She told The Associated Press that she has received threats since speaking this week, referring at least one of them to Michigan authorities. The Associated Press reached out to Michigan State police for comment.
“I don’t fully grasp the level of animosity that people have about this,” Pohutsky said.
I won’t disagree with you, but I think there’s something else going on also.
They’re really into symbols of allegiance and obedience. Once something becomes “officially” a bad thing, they have to show their loyalty by attacking it. Using language in a certain way, not wearing face masks, being officially Christian, being officially anti-trans/anti-woman, not watching the wrong news sources, watching the right news sources… they want to feel comfortable that they are part of the tribe, and you are too. If you make even a single decision that isn’t the official tribal decision, they’ll get wild and suspicious and angry towards you.
I think that’s what’s going on here. What she’s doing isn’t contraception (strictly speaking) or abortion or transgender surgery… but it’s close enough to those things that she’s showing she’s not part of the tribe. And she’s a Democrat. So what do you do with people like that? You fuck them up because they are the enemy.
If you’ve been close to a culture like this you will have seen it in action, how they attack in order to keep everyone in line.
classic “us vs them” cult mentality, see also JW, scientology, LDS, etc etc
Yup. You see the same damn thing happening in churches, workplaces and institutions. The powers-that-be, whether capitalistic or morality-based, just want replaceable cogs for their machines.
I once heard a preacher tell his congregation that freaks were not welcome in his faith. I guess he forgot all about Ezekiel, who cooked his food over cow dung and had some of the wildest visions recorded, or Isaiah, who preached publically for three years while barefoot and naked.
They would have had a huge problem with those old prophets, too. The religious establishment of the day was coming after them to try to stop them pretty much constantly.
Religion in the mold of Ezekiel and Isaiah I’m actually fine with, which probably puts me in the minority on Lemmy. But if you read the New Testament, a lot of it is Jesus and friends versus the preachers and religious people, because the two groups were more or less at war with each other.
It starts young, too. These exact same mechanisms are used and reinforced in schools, both by administration and by students.
Bullies thrive on ganging up to attack those who are “different.” Ever wonder why school admin does jack shit about bullying? Part of it is because when a group of kids bullies another for not being like everyone else, they’re reinforcing the administration’s desire for kids to fall in line. A kid who blends in and stays quiet is favored by both groups for the same reasons - the quiet kid doesn’t challenge anyone’s authority.
Yeah.
I don’t really know, but what it looks like to me is that humans have some ugly wiring to figure out who’s “supposed” to be a boss, and who’s supposed to be a peon. And they’ll get upset if someone is behaving outside of their assigned role.
It’s why the Trump people think it’s normal for them to bully or harass or silence someone, but it’s all of a sudden a crisis when someone does it to them. It’s why no one really minds if someone is getting bullied in school, but then if they start fighting back, it’s a crisis.
I won’t say that the wiring did not originally have a good purpose, but it feels like in the modern environment (with less urgent threats to our safety which demand tight-knit cohesion and organization to the tribe, and more loose interactions with a wider world of millions where there’s no opportunity for checks and balances to come into who’s “supposed” to be treated like the boss), it needs to go.