To me it looks like what you have there is a whole book, condensed down to nine pages. It just needs to be reorganized and fleshed out, but you've got all the points you want to hit written down.
While I find the entire analysis enlightening, and the book would want everything, I think my brain is more focused on what does it take to win …
To me it looks like what you have there is a whole book, condensed down to nine pages. It just needs to be reorganized and fleshed out, but you've got all the points you want to hit written down.
While I find the entire analysis enlightening, and the book would want everything, I think my brain is more focused on what does it take to win the argument with policy in the real world? How do we secure reproductive rights?
To that end I look for necessary and sufficient, to the exclusion of anything else. The background is important for understanding, but I don't want to make overturning capitalism a prerequisite to reproductive rights, not if I don't have to, and the same with racism, and religion, and so forth, because I don't want to make the challenge one iota bigger or harder than it needs to be. I think the more wrongs one tries to address at once, the less likely we are to achieve any of it. I know there are some who argue the opposite though.
I think we get the best chance with something that broadly fits in with Western legal (and economic) traditions, freedom and individual rights. Even though we know those have a long history of being used to justify oppression. It's just that I don't think trying to overturn the whole table is going to be as promising or fruitful; it's not going to get the buy-in that something narrower can and will. We know that the people of this country are broadly more in favor of reproductive rights than against them, and it's probably BECAUSE of American tradition and values rather than in spite of them. I'd much rather secure this battle before moving on to the next one, rather than link them all.
Anyway that's what I'm looking for, and I'm tired and I'm rambling :) You've always said they're trying to give fetuses rights to someone else's body and life functions that literally no one else is given. That's where I would start, if I were a lawyer.
Wow Laura so much good stuff here. "The uterus is the only organ that does not belong to the person it is in. It belongs to the state." Maybe I'm just fresher in the morning :) but this is really compelling. I like the idea of starting with something at the scale of an essay, rather than a book, and many a book has started as an essay anyway. I assume you have all of your footnotes with sources? It certainly still needs more organization, editing, adding and subtracting, etc. but any piece of writing goes through dozens of revisions before it's publication ready. The first step is always writing down everything you want to say. The rest is just organizing and polishing, and in that process you find out where you want to add more detail and where you might have something you don't need that you save for another project. When I have the time and energy I should try to make an outline from what you've written. There are a lot of messages here that deserve to be widely read. Idk how much is "original work" and how much is synthesizing the ideas of others, but both are worthy endeavors; you just have to make sure you give credit when it's the latter. I will definitely come back to this!
Thanks so much Zach. It's just been sitting in my Google docs for months. Been stuck on what to do with it. That's why I wanted to hire a cowriter or ghost writer or something.
Wow Zach. This is awesome. Looks like you put a lot of work into it. That's quite the complement. I really appreciate all your feedback. It's a lot to think about and I'll see what I can do with it. Might sign up for a writing workshop or something. I noticed that Andrea Watkins does them when I looked her up so maybe I'll ask her.
And you're right about the lack of the role of fatherhood in my writing. I was going to write about it in the final section with a focus on the role of brotherhood. This is in inspiration of my research on matrilineal cultures that value brotherhood and prioritize the relationship between the uncle and his nephews/nieces. Not sure if you want to read anymore but I have a chapter on a novel I was working on where the main character (who is Navajo) travels to China to visit a matrilineal indigenous culture called the Mosuo if you want to get an idea of what I wanted to write. It will be crucial to get this part right to make my case against patriarchy by offering a better alternative for men.
Wow, I really need to make a point to look at people's bios instead of just going by what I read in their comments. I had no idea Andra was a NYT bestselling author! 🤦 Probably a good thing actually or I might have been more intimidated in interacting. Idk we're all equals here I guess (but some animals are more equal than others? 🤷 :) Yes I just tried to kind of identify the pieces and then see how they seemed to fit together. I'm sure there are other ways they fit together too. When you figure out whatever that is then you have a map, and you just fill in the details. Fatherhood was something that only really occurred to me at the end, when I realized that men were absent (or at least optional) in the new paradigm. And in my opinion whenever males of any species aren't given something productive to do they are very dangerous. Showing what matrilineal cultures do would be a perfect antidote. It really isn't that hard to give men a purpose; they just need to be willing to do it and that means shelve the ego!
Thank you so much for taking the time to read it. I do appreciate it. I've been pretty self-conscious about it. Yeah I was trying to write from a reproductive justice framework and its intersection with race, labor and capitalism. It is pretty dense considering the breadth I was trying to cover. But yeah succinctly it is about how fetuses have rights to other people's bodies that literally no one else is given.
Yes, as I worked my way through it, there were times when I was quick-reading or skim-reading, because I could see what you meant about the stream of consciousness and it was hard to take in. I could tell that it just needed more organization and more fleshing out, so it would be easier to follow. If everything was sorted into chapters and subchapters and the arguments were laid out more slowly and in detail, you'd have a book there. And it could certainly be made accessible to any reader if you take your time with every concept and add in more stories, illustrations, anecdotes (i.e. things that make it "easier" for the lay person). But yes all of that is the hard part!
I think my brain is kind of on emergency mode in this country, so maybe for me that's kind of the opposite of doing a whole book! :) I'm thinking, how do we hit back and deliver them mortal wounds? We can't take 49 years the way they did. We can't let the changes take root, and infect everything at every level. We can't let any of this become normal, because we can't lose the progress women have made in this country over the last five or six decades (and of course if they can they'll take even more than that).
Women won't go back. I recently read that Poland's birth rates plummeted 8% in a year after they banned abortion. I think a de facto birth strike will be the only way we can fight back. Most especially of white women. The more Black and brown births, the more the fascists will lose their goddamn minds. I just hope it won't come at the expense of high rates of poverty and maternal and infant deaths.
Yeah, what worries me about that is Poland isn't a solution to anything. It's a very apt comparison, since their democracy is compromised and they're dealing with many of the same issues as the U.S. is. It kind of looks like a death spiral. What's ironic is conservatives claim to want to prevent that, but instead it's exactly what their actions cause. If White Christian civilization disappears it will be because of what the White Christians did to "save" it.
To me it looks like what you have there is a whole book, condensed down to nine pages. It just needs to be reorganized and fleshed out, but you've got all the points you want to hit written down.
While I find the entire analysis enlightening, and the book would want everything, I think my brain is more focused on what does it take to win the argument with policy in the real world? How do we secure reproductive rights?
To that end I look for necessary and sufficient, to the exclusion of anything else. The background is important for understanding, but I don't want to make overturning capitalism a prerequisite to reproductive rights, not if I don't have to, and the same with racism, and religion, and so forth, because I don't want to make the challenge one iota bigger or harder than it needs to be. I think the more wrongs one tries to address at once, the less likely we are to achieve any of it. I know there are some who argue the opposite though.
I think we get the best chance with something that broadly fits in with Western legal (and economic) traditions, freedom and individual rights. Even though we know those have a long history of being used to justify oppression. It's just that I don't think trying to overturn the whole table is going to be as promising or fruitful; it's not going to get the buy-in that something narrower can and will. We know that the people of this country are broadly more in favor of reproductive rights than against them, and it's probably BECAUSE of American tradition and values rather than in spite of them. I'd much rather secure this battle before moving on to the next one, rather than link them all.
Anyway that's what I'm looking for, and I'm tired and I'm rambling :) You've always said they're trying to give fetuses rights to someone else's body and life functions that literally no one else is given. That's where I would start, if I were a lawyer.
Btw I go into more detail about this argument of fetal exceptionalism. And how this is about punishment and not "saving babies."
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m3jxrBEo6-qIQ6CzecBapzeCWsv9sTMcIHuaWP_MHUg/edit?usp=drivesdk
Can't tackle this tonight but maybe another time! :)
I might should have posted this one first since it's more on this topic. But yes maybe another time. Thanks again!
Wow Laura so much good stuff here. "The uterus is the only organ that does not belong to the person it is in. It belongs to the state." Maybe I'm just fresher in the morning :) but this is really compelling. I like the idea of starting with something at the scale of an essay, rather than a book, and many a book has started as an essay anyway. I assume you have all of your footnotes with sources? It certainly still needs more organization, editing, adding and subtracting, etc. but any piece of writing goes through dozens of revisions before it's publication ready. The first step is always writing down everything you want to say. The rest is just organizing and polishing, and in that process you find out where you want to add more detail and where you might have something you don't need that you save for another project. When I have the time and energy I should try to make an outline from what you've written. There are a lot of messages here that deserve to be widely read. Idk how much is "original work" and how much is synthesizing the ideas of others, but both are worthy endeavors; you just have to make sure you give credit when it's the latter. I will definitely come back to this!
Thanks so much Zach. It's just been sitting in my Google docs for months. Been stuck on what to do with it. That's why I wanted to hire a cowriter or ghost writer or something.
Laura I worked out some feedback for you. This is what I came up with and I hope it's helpful
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DmWAbWGKPpR4RFPhzNGFPC2XHz25fzCcMA0khR2RwZg/edit?usp=sharing
I haven't done a lot with google docs so hopefully it's formatted ok :)
Wow Zach. This is awesome. Looks like you put a lot of work into it. That's quite the complement. I really appreciate all your feedback. It's a lot to think about and I'll see what I can do with it. Might sign up for a writing workshop or something. I noticed that Andrea Watkins does them when I looked her up so maybe I'll ask her.
And you're right about the lack of the role of fatherhood in my writing. I was going to write about it in the final section with a focus on the role of brotherhood. This is in inspiration of my research on matrilineal cultures that value brotherhood and prioritize the relationship between the uncle and his nephews/nieces. Not sure if you want to read anymore but I have a chapter on a novel I was working on where the main character (who is Navajo) travels to China to visit a matrilineal indigenous culture called the Mosuo if you want to get an idea of what I wanted to write. It will be crucial to get this part right to make my case against patriarchy by offering a better alternative for men.
The Holy Grail
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fehJlwHNswKSJD9pGSr_XU5BIvFQodTiFrmwbzQ8eks/edit?usp=drivesdk
Laura,
If you haven’t read The Patriarchs, by Angela Saini, I think you might really enjoy it. She dives into several matrifocal cultures.
https://www.amazon.com/Patriarchs-Origins-Inequality-Angela-Saini-ebook/dp/B0B2MHR56Z/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+patriarchs&qid=1693899414&sr=8-1
Yes I've heard of it and put it on my list. Thanks!
Wow, I really need to make a point to look at people's bios instead of just going by what I read in their comments. I had no idea Andra was a NYT bestselling author! 🤦 Probably a good thing actually or I might have been more intimidated in interacting. Idk we're all equals here I guess (but some animals are more equal than others? 🤷 :) Yes I just tried to kind of identify the pieces and then see how they seemed to fit together. I'm sure there are other ways they fit together too. When you figure out whatever that is then you have a map, and you just fill in the details. Fatherhood was something that only really occurred to me at the end, when I realized that men were absent (or at least optional) in the new paradigm. And in my opinion whenever males of any species aren't given something productive to do they are very dangerous. Showing what matrilineal cultures do would be a perfect antidote. It really isn't that hard to give men a purpose; they just need to be willing to do it and that means shelve the ego!
Thank you so much for taking the time to read it. I do appreciate it. I've been pretty self-conscious about it. Yeah I was trying to write from a reproductive justice framework and its intersection with race, labor and capitalism. It is pretty dense considering the breadth I was trying to cover. But yeah succinctly it is about how fetuses have rights to other people's bodies that literally no one else is given.
Yes, as I worked my way through it, there were times when I was quick-reading or skim-reading, because I could see what you meant about the stream of consciousness and it was hard to take in. I could tell that it just needed more organization and more fleshing out, so it would be easier to follow. If everything was sorted into chapters and subchapters and the arguments were laid out more slowly and in detail, you'd have a book there. And it could certainly be made accessible to any reader if you take your time with every concept and add in more stories, illustrations, anecdotes (i.e. things that make it "easier" for the lay person). But yes all of that is the hard part!
I think my brain is kind of on emergency mode in this country, so maybe for me that's kind of the opposite of doing a whole book! :) I'm thinking, how do we hit back and deliver them mortal wounds? We can't take 49 years the way they did. We can't let the changes take root, and infect everything at every level. We can't let any of this become normal, because we can't lose the progress women have made in this country over the last five or six decades (and of course if they can they'll take even more than that).
Women won't go back. I recently read that Poland's birth rates plummeted 8% in a year after they banned abortion. I think a de facto birth strike will be the only way we can fight back. Most especially of white women. The more Black and brown births, the more the fascists will lose their goddamn minds. I just hope it won't come at the expense of high rates of poverty and maternal and infant deaths.
Yeah, what worries me about that is Poland isn't a solution to anything. It's a very apt comparison, since their democracy is compromised and they're dealing with many of the same issues as the U.S. is. It kind of looks like a death spiral. What's ironic is conservatives claim to want to prevent that, but instead it's exactly what their actions cause. If White Christian civilization disappears it will be because of what the White Christians did to "save" it.