My Body, My Choice: Are Liberals being hypocrites?
Turns out, hypocrisy is in the politics of the beholder…
So a number of Conservatives are claiming Liberals are hypocrites because Liberals support vaccine mandates, but a woman’s right to control her body when it comes to abortion.
(And by “number” I mean I’ve heard it twice now, but two’s a number and that’s enough to inspire a cartoon and an essay.)
But if you think about it for a minute – and apparently the Conservatives in question didn’t – the same two political issues could be used to call Conservatives hypocrites because when it comes to vaccination mandates they think the government has no right to tell people what to do with their bodies, but then flip-flop when it comes to abortion.
The cartoon at the top of this post makes that point.
So that’s it, clearly both sides are being hypocritical; game over, be sure to tip your waitresses and drive home safely.
Or…maybe not.
Dig into those issues and pay attention to the details and things start to look a little more complicated, which is when a lot of people get bored and decide to go watch the season premiere of Yellowstone instead of hearing more political bickering, but assuming you’re still reading here are some things to think about.
As promised…some things to think about
As I’ve already pointed out in a previous post, which didn’t seem to make the slightest dent in some people’s world view, so I’ll point it out again:
1. Vaccines aren’t actually mandatory.
Under the new rule, which has some people losing what’s left of their minds, workers still have the right to refuse to be vaccinated, but if they refuse vaccination they have to wear a mask in the workplace and be tested weekly or demonstrate the ability to hold their breath for 8 straight hours and if they’re not willing or able to do any of that they might need to work someplace else.
In other words: you have the right to refuse to be vaccinated, but don’t have the right to expose your co-workers to a dangerous virus. Here’s a story about that if you want to read more:
2. Businesses have a right to set workplace rules.
Businesses have a right to set rules for their workplace, like No shirt, No shoes, No service a policy dating back to the 1960s when Tarzan was a fashion icon and generally speaking Conservatives were OK with that policy because they believed businesses had a right to do just about any goddamn thing they pleased, including polluting the environment (which we’re paying for now), hitting on female employees and setting up sweat shops that could serve as a set for 12 Years a Slave.
It seems a bit suspicious that Conservatives, who have historically been OK with 12-year-old coal miners, are suddenly concerned with the rights of workers.
To be fair (and I won’t make it a habit) Kansas governor Laura Kelly is a Democrat and opposes the vaccine mandate, but she’s a politician just trying to do the “right thing” if by “right thing” you mean whatever it takes to get reelected and she just got exposed to COVID-19, but is refusing to take a test to see if she’s infected because she wants to appeal to some of the blockheads that live West of Missouri so any day now I expect her to come out and deny there’s such a thing as evolution and gravity is just a rumor spread by Hollywood elites.
Anyway…
If you want to read more about the rights businesses have and don’t have, here’s another article:
https://www.hourly.io/post/right-to-refuse-service
But the current situation is different because this is a federal mandate being imposed on businesses and an appeals court has issued a temporary halt to the rule, but the Biden Administration has told businesses to go ahead and get ready anyway because they think they have the right to do this under OSHA’s powers.
This is from OSHA’s website:
“With the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, Congress created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to ensure safe and healthful working conditions for workers by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education and assistance.”
So if OSHA gets to ensure “safe and healthful working conditions” the Biden Administration is arguing that their vaccine mandate clearly falls under that description and if you want to read more about that, here’s yet another article:
So assuming you’ve now read all those articles or suddenly realized you just don’t care that much and would rather watch (spoiler alert) some fly-fishing douchebag get hit in the face with a well-aimed rattlesnake, let’s move on Point 3.
(And yes, I’m going to keep making Yellowstone references because I’m hooked on the show and think it’s pretty much The Godfather Comes to Montana. And speaking of The Godfather; I used to tell people that I wanted to be more like Michael than Sonny – Michael was logical, Sonny was emotional – but subsequent events have shown me I’m a lot more like Fredo so if anyone asks me to go fishing on Lake Tahoe, that’s a hard no.)
3. People need to accept the consequences of their actions.
If you made the terrible mistake of not being born White, Male and Wealthy, that’s clearly on you and generally speaking Conservatives have argued that people need to take responsibility for their own choices, but now they’re arguing they should be able to choose to not get vaccinated, but suffer absolutely no consequences for making that choice.
And as somebody else pointed out (and it was a good point, so I don’t mind borrowing it and I promise to give it back with a full gas tank and no new dents in the fenders) vaccination and abortion aren’t exactly comparable issues because a woman who chooses to get an abortion does not endanger her co-workers and someone who refuses to get vaccinated does.
(Thinking about stuff gets complicated fast, doesn’t it?)
So for a variety of reasons it seems pretty clear Conservatives (and at least one Democratic governor) are seizing a chance to appeal to Trump voters and being Big Fat Hypocrites in the process.
So does that mean Liberals are pure as the driven snow?
Nope.
If nobody can tell a woman what to do with her body, is it OK to make porn?
If Conservatives wants to call Liberals hypocrites when it comes to “My Body, My Choice” they would have done better to bring up some Liberals (and Liberals are divided on this issue) stance on pornography which goes like this: a woman has a right to do whatever she wants with her body right up until she decides to use her body to make pornography. And if the pornography is too “hard-core” somebody needs to step in and decide what’s OK and what isn’t.
While trying to define “hard-core” pornography (which could be suppressed) from soft-core pornography (which sounds like a case of erectile dysfunction) U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said:
“I know it when I see it.”
And as we all know the very best Supreme Court decisions are based on gut reactions from a guy who went to Yale and belonged to Skull and Bones, a secret society where they do weird shit and give each other nicknames and call each other “Bonesmen” and one of the rumors about them is they stole the skull of Geronimo and do even more weird shit to it because stealing the Continental United States didn’t go far enough in their effort to say “Fuck you and the mustang you rode in on” to American Indians.
Yeah, I’m sure that guy doesn’t have any rats running loose in his attic, so why don’t we let him decide what everybody else can watch?
I have yet to be nominated to the Supreme Court (an oversight I’m sure President Biden will soon rectify), but even I know two people can look at the same thing and one can be offended and the other might ask:
“Do you have any more pictures where she’s doing the same thing, but wearing a Wonder Woman costume?”
There’s no one standard of what’s overly-offensive and trying to create one tends to cause more problems than it solves. How about: if it doesn’t break some other law and involves consenting adults, we let it go because once you start banning stuff for being offensive to someone who gets upset about anything that isn’t Man-On-Top-Get-It-Over-With-Quick sex, where does it end and here’s an article from a woman who says it will end poorly:
As she points out, the Stick-Up-Their-Ass Conservatives who want to ban certain kinds of pornography would then move on to other issues like non-traditional relationships, birth control, abortion, LGBTQ rights and Metallica lyrics that will make you kill your parents, so it turns out Liberals need to be careful who they climb in bed with and I’ll keep writing because I don’t want to end a sentence with a proposition.
Right here in Kansas City a group of overly-nosey parents has decided they want books about sexuality banned from school libraries and I think the point worth making is that these books aren’t textbooks or assigned reading; they’re in libraries and the only people who will read them are the people who want to read them, but some parents have appointed themselves the Gatekeepers for what someone else’s kid chooses to read.
Where’s Rip Wheeler when you need him?
The Bottom Line
In my opinion, which isn’t all that humble:
1. Some Conservatives and some Liberals are being hypocrites when it comes to “My Body, My Choice”…
2. But it takes a lot of explaining to describe exactly how and most people don’t want to think about it all that much…
3. So why don’t we call it a day and get ready to watch this week’s episode of Yellowstone?
Have a nice weekend, assuming I haven’t already ruined it for you.
Sure-fire way to get everyone to read a book: Ban it!
I wasn't planning on thinking today but now it looks like I'll have to. Damnit!