‘VAGINAS WIN! VAGINAS WIN!’: Reductio ad Lady Parts

My lady parts, what’s left of ’em, are feeling mighty marginalized this morning, after waking up to the news that they did not get invited to the Grrrrrl Power party that reelected President Obama. Being respectable card-carrying feminist lady parts, activated in the 1960s, they are astonished to learn how far the mighty have fallen. “WTF?” they are asking. “Didn’t we already fight this battle? Didn’t they hear us roar in numbers too big to ignore that women are more than the sum of their lady parts? That we resist objectification with every fiber of our being?”

Apparently not. Because here‘s the HuffPost giving credit for the Obama win to a bunch of voting vaginas. And the vaginas (along with some uteri sistahs) are gleefully applauding themselves. Just a sample (all sic) from the, pardon the pun, combox:

Don’t mess with people with vaginas.

As a woman, I don’t care to have OLD WHITE GUY’s on Viagra telling me what to do with my Vajaja!!

I woke up this morning and didn’t find a republican in my vagina.

For the bible thumpin’ political holier than thou’s…when we collectively said “get your mitts off my uterus” we MEANT it!

WOOT WOOT! Ladies, show ’em your uterus! And slap their head for even looking!

Yes, I voted with my lady parts. I don’t really agree with much of what Obama has done—drones in war, no public option in health care, etc. etc. But no way were the outspoken misogynists getting my vote.

I think it’s time to stop using the sexist gender “gap”. It’s a vagina, ok? Do you hear us talking about the gender woodie, or gender Dick, when we are talking about you?

VAGINAS WIN! VAGINAS WIN!

I’d give you more, but I don’t like morning sickness unless there’s going to be a baby at the end of it.

And speaking of babies, the vagina vote not only returned the president to the White House but also made it very clear that America don’t need no stinkin’ babies. Poor Helen Reddy, in ‘I Am Woman,’ sang about being ‘still an embryo with a long, long way to go,’  but the vagina vote is delighted to abort her and save her the journey.

THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES WILL NOT STAND FOR FUNDAMENTALIST RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM IN THEIR SELF GOVERNMENT. THE RIGHTS OF A HANDFUL OF DIVIDING CELLS WILL NEVER TROUNCE THE RIGHTS OF THE WOMAN WHOSE BODY SUSTAINS THEM.

Family planning is essential to keep them from having more kids, 3 is enough economically and emotionally. This is lost on the GOPs at least the men. They see every child as a blessing, that’s fine , but most women and their mates do not want to be “blessed” more than a few times . . .

Women want to be able to CHOOSE when they have another person feeding off them, risking their lives

So, you are on the side of the forced birthers, who only want to take away birth control and force girls and women to give birth, for their own sadistic reasons?

that’s what happens when you treat women as baby-making machines, republicans.

I think it’s pretty important when women are being sentenced TO DEATH for someone’s religious beliefs. The economy will right itself or not. It doesn’t matter who is in the White House, but for the women that are even NOW facing the death penalty for miscarriages, the women that are being denied medical care because law makers have some religious hang ups? THEY NEED TO BE TAKEN CARE OF NOW. When YOUR representatives state that a woman can carry a dead fetus inside her until she gives birth to it naturally because cows and pigs do it all the time? Then YES, I have a HUGE problem with the Republican party. In case you didn’t know, a dead fetus can rot inside a woman, turning her very body toxic and it can kill her, not to mention the emotional horror of something like that. So what if they turn women into parts machines and comatose “wombs”, because you have money issues YOU want taken care of. Your kind is WHY you lost.

That last one, especially, makes my lady parts scared and sad. ‘Not to mention the emotional horror’ of knowing there are so many women who have bought the line that pregnancy is a misogynist conspiracy and a terminal disease, that a new life is nothing more than a handful of dividing cells, and parasitic ones at that. It’s that mindset—the lowered consciousness Planned Parenthood has been feeding the media and paying the president to promote—that actually reduces women to baby making machines to be quickly and permanently unplugged, and my friends, we are in for its consequences.

I’m not without hope, though, because I’m not—we’re not—without God, we loser lady parts. I took comfort from these lines in the Canticle of Zechariah as I prayed them at Morning Prayer:

Through his holy prophets he promised of old
that he would save us from our enemies,
from the hands of all who hate us.
He promised to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant.

This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
free to worship him without fear,
holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life.

I am remembering that as he sang these lines of rejoicing in the miraculous birth of a handful of dividing cells who would ‘go before the Lord to prepare his way,’ Zechariah’s dark and oppressed world gave him no other proof that God’s promises had been fulfilled than the sight of a baby’s face, a baby born from the withered lady parts of a woman liberated by God’s love.

In spite of everything, me and my withered lady parts know that we have more reason than ever to roar, to be living leaven in a mass of death-enthralled dough, to be cells of God’s kingdom dividing and multiplying joyfully in this midst, to show to a blind and hopeless world the saving sight of the Child’s face.

Woot woot! WE WIN! WE WIN!

_____

For other good news and grace-filled reflection this morning, please read:

Tom McDonald, on trust

Frank Weathers, on what really matters

Mark Shea, on why this isn’t his (or my) fault

Cardinal Dolan to the President, courtesy Deacon Greg Kandra

An after-election prayer from the bishops, courtesy pro-life Democratic representative (yes, possible!) Rebecca Hamilton

Happy Catholic‘s Julie Davis, on trying not to swear

And the terrific reflection from Sr. Mary Ann Walsh, on the USCCB blog

More links to come as we climb out from under the shadow . . .