As bad as things are, they are going to get worse.
But they’ll never be so bad that hopepunk won’t win in the end.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week, I’ve seen several friends of mine, all women, ask their male friends to speak out. I can’t think of anything more useless than me publicly sharing my opinion that I believe women should have equal rights, including and especially bodily autonomy, which I can’t believe anyone needs to say out loud. For that matter, I think we should all be able to choose when and how we reproduce and that anyone who considers my partner S to be a government-mandated incubator wildly overestimates her aversion to physical violence. And since Justice Thomas brought it up, I’m for legal birth control, which I can’t believe is now a thing, and for people being able to marry…
I mean, I feel stupid having to write all this down, and not just because my words have the consequential weight of a gnat’s fart. The idea that a minority of our country has so wrested control of our lives that taking birth control pills might soon become an act of resistance is a bit much. Everything, all of a sudden, has become incredibly dumb, not to mention mean, stupid, cruel, and infuriating.
Having thus added my words to the discourse, I can see that saying that I support abortion rights, birth control, and same-sex marriage has changed exactly zero. In fact, for reasons I’ll go into below, I’m not even sure those are the right words any more. We are suddenly playing a much different game.
There are among the subscribers of The Experiment those who oppose legal abortion and same-sex marriage, and among them are some I love very much. I encourage those to choose alternate sources of entertainment because brother, this one ain’t for you. I’ve got something else planned for this weekend you’ll like, and on Wednesday you’ve got the mid-week edition to look forward to, so check back then.
But first, have I ever told you about one of the greatest days of my life?
In June 2015, S and I were living in the DC area, and not only were my sons, then 14 and 11, in town but a bunch of friends from around the country were in DC for a conference. On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court was expected to hand down the decision on Obergefell v. Hodges, the marriage equality case, so I suggested we all go.
There was a crowd, overwhelmingly hopeful, but still a crowd, so I positioned us all at the fence by the press. I wanted my sons to be able to see the running of the interns, but they were small, and I wanted to be able to lift them out of danger if things got hinky. The funny thing about being right there is that you find out with everyone else. The interns run the decision across the plaza to the reporters who sight-read it live on the news. And it’s not until the news station tweets it that we, the people standing next to all of this happening find out at all what is going on.
The news finally spread in the crowd. My friend Kevin, who was standing right in front of me, could now get married just like I had already done twice. But he didn’t know it yet. He turned, asking for news. I smiled at him and told him what I’d heard, but he needed to hear it again. I told him again what I’d heard, and by now everyone around us was jumping up and down hugging and waving little flags. Kevin accepted that it must be true. We hugged for a long time, and a lot of our friends touched Kevin’s head and patted his back. He was now as free as we were, at least when it came to getting married. Kevin still can’t donate blood, but that’s a story for another bedtime. I’ve given a lot of good news in my day, but I’ve never been able to tell someone that they are free. 10/10, would recommend.
Remember how I said I put my sons on the fence next to the media tent? Well, while I was hugging Kevin and my sons were trying to start a “USA, USA” chant, THE ENTIRE NEWS MEDIA WAS POINTING ALL OF THE CAMERAS AT US. That’s my youngest in the Orioles T-shirt above. To the left you see his older brother facing away from the camera, and over his left shoulder you see Kevin hugging me. It was a hopeful moment filled with joy, and there are tons of clips on the Internet of me enjoying it.
The rest of the day was great. I took the boys to a Szechuan place in Chinatown before we met up with S to go to Baltimore where we took in the American Visionary Art Museum before seeing the Orioles beat Cleveland, 4-3. A day for the record books, indeed, but what I remember most strongly is telling Kevin the news and my youngest son puzzling over same-sex marriage really being legal. He kept asking, “Even in Texas?”
Hope does not fit easily into the past tense.
Things were not all nifty then, of course. That same month another big day occurred, though none of us took it seriously at first. Ten days before the Supreme Court let my buddy Kevin get married to anyone who would say yes to him, Donald Trump descended his golden escalator and announced for president. Things are never all good or bad. The problem is that it’s hard to see what is actually happening at the time. I thought we were becoming a more perfect union that day, that the arch of the moral universe was bending toward justice. I didn’t realize that the game show host had fundamentally changed the game from trench warfare over incremental progressivism to whether we would have democracy at all.
Remembering how I felt on June 26, 2015 has been painful lately. Hope does not fit easily into the past tense. It doesn’t want to stay there and tries to cut its way out. Even worse is the memory of my self-satisfied mockery of Trump. I saw the meteor heading right at us and decided, “Well, that will never happen.” I didn’t see how his one move changed the game.
Now the game has changed again. Think of all those old ladies you saw at the rallies holding signs that said, “I can’t believe I still have to protest this.” An entire political infrastructure was built up to prevent a thing from happening that just happened. And my friends want me to speak out against the thing that happened, and if they take any comfort from that I am glad. But I think Friday’s decision changed the game again, and we might need to take a step back from the board to figure out what is really going on now.
The new game is about what it means to be free in America.
Everything we counted on before to protect our rights — the courts, elections, representative democracy — doesn’t work like it used to, and we’re looking ahead at a generation in which a woman’s ability to control her own body will largely be dependent on her ability to navigate obstacles erected by the government. Add to that men who like birth control because of the freedoms it affords, as well as Kevin and the LGBTQ community that might want to get married, and possibly people from different races who likewise might want to get married, oh, and maybe even gay sex acts that only this century became legal in some states, and then there’s trans people. The reason that’s a run-on sentence is the list of people who are likely to have their life choices dictated by the government keeps going on and on without end.
Put differently, the game has changed. It’s not about viability or six weeks or 20 weeks or rape or incest. The game we are now in is about freedom, namely your personal freedom of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And it’s all of us, or at least a huge majority of the country. The new game is about what it means to be free in America.
If you want to protest, have at it, but we need new tools for the resistance. This is a different world than pre-Roe America. We have new ways of manufacturing, distributing, communicating, and exchanging money than before. Blockchain and cryptocurrency can allow us to exchange money and medical records outside the government control and sight. If my son could figure out how to create a VPN so he could circumvent the blockers and play video games at school, then surely we can create a virtual network that can get everyone the medical care they need.
We need new tools for the resistance.
The funny thing is that the War on Drugs is a case study on how to fight all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. The abortion pill is safe and effective with fewer dangerous side effects than using recreational drugs or misusing pharmaceutical drugs. If there is one thing the government has proven particularly bad at, it’s stopping the trade of illegal pills. Now imagine a trade in illegal pills where doctors will provide covert advice and care and millions of strangers will happily kick in contributions.
But those are just technical possibilities to building a network. The real challenge now is to find the post-Roe words to describe a fight now defined by your ability to make your own choices about your life, because now it’s not just women of reproductive age, or trans folks, or the LGBTQ community, or anyone who likes having sex and not getting pregnant.
This won’t look better in retreat.
We’re not fighting about choice anymore, and we’re not just talking about women. Now they’re coming at all of us, they are taking away our freedom, and there are millions of us who don’t have the luxury of moving to another country where things aren’t as bad. This won’t look better in retreat. It only makes sense when you take a step back and realize that we’re in a completely new fight.
So let’s talk about that. Let’s find the words for what it means to be free in America and this time make sure everyone is included. Let’s plant that flag on the horizon, spend the next 50 years heading straight for it, and let’s take care of our people along the way no matter what. Because as bad as things are, they are going to get worse, but they’ll never be so bad that hopepunk won’t win in the end.
Jason Stanford is the co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. He works at the Austin Independent School District as Chief of Communications and Community Engagement, though he would want to point out that these are his personal opinions and his alone, but you already knew that. Follow him on Twitter @JasStanford.
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