Wtf Meghan Murphy

[CassieMaddox]

A feminist I used to really admire, deciding pussy grabbing, porn loving, convicted felon Trump and his misogynistic, fickle, anti abortion, running mate Vance are the best choice for American women.

https://x.com/MeghanEMurphy/status/1814817323754381763

Feminists/'feminist' men keep insisting to me that @JDVance1 is a misogynist who wants to 'take away women's rights' yet Trump/Vance are the only choice if we wish to restore women's sex-based rights in America (never mind the fact that Vance is anti-p*rn). I am not a fan of letting the government have any say over what women do with their bodies, but 'abortion rights' have for decades been used as a pawn in political games, and women keep letting themselves be played.

Voting Democrat solely because they'll let you have an abortion while they allow all the rest of our sex-based rights to be destroyed seems unwise to me. Women need to take their bodily autonomy into their own hands imo — this means we need to learn about and educate other women about their bodies and reproductive system, so we aren't relying on the government to dole out hormonal birth control (which is HORRIBLE for us) and dictate our reproductive choices. It's far from an ideal situation, but I resent being told I must vote for a party that can't even define the word 'woman' because they'll allow women to have abortions. That gives me the icks and should give you the icks as well.

I don't believe we should be handing over our power to governments, and the more we understand about our own bodies, the power of food/herbal medicine, the less we need to rely on the state or the medical establishment to allow us bodily autonomy and pretend to be invested in our health and wellbeing.

I do think we should fight against anyone/any laws that tell us what we may or may not do with our bodies, but the Democrats are not the party of body sovereignty either, so I'm not sure why women give them that credit.

I'm not sure what's going on with her but this is a huge shock. Very glad I'm not in the States right now.

If a rapist is the best choice, I'd emigrate.

I thought she was Canadian anyway!

Lordy. I'm betting the issue is that the Dems are totally in the tank for TRAs. I don't know when they're finally going to wake up and notice that all-TRA-all-the-time is anti-women, anti-gay, anti-anyone-discriminated-against-on-the-basis-of-sex.

So this is probably her way of being a single issue voter, since the Repubs are on the side of Stepford Wives and are anti-trans in the wrong way and for all the wrong reasons.

Good example of why single issue voting can be a Really Bad Idea.

Oh true! Good job the Americans don't have the same rule as the Canadians, that it's illegal to comment or try to influence the election from abroad...

She's based in vancouver - just googled to check. So just sticking her oar into something that's not going to affect her anyway

I do think some women have lost their minds. Trump will not be good for any woman or the planet as a whole.

She lives in Mexico.

Is this a full or partial analysis of the political landscape for American female voters? 🤔

I feel for women in the US. What flavour of shit sandwich do you want? I can kind of see her point. Banning/restricting abortions is something that is more likely to inspire a pushback leading to a turn around. GI becoming even more embedded will be much harder to unpick.

But women voted for Farage for the same reasons. They wanted to get rid off trans ideology and protect women's sex based rights. Even though austerity cast many women into poverty and made them a lot worse off, many 'feminists' voted Tory over this single issue. I don't understand why you're shocked it's happening in the States.

Is there much evidence that women voted farage or tory on the single issue basis of sex-based rights?

OP were you misled then in the reasons for your previous admiration of her? She seems to me here to make several good points. I think one of the reasons we are in the mess we are all in, is the partisan nature of any opinion. Can you not disagree with her on this, and yet give her credit for the points on which you agree?

Not enough to get them into power.

And I'm not shocked by "many women", I'm shocked by this particular feminist who always covered a good range of feminist topics in the past. There is quite a lot of that I think is extremely blinkered and harmful to women. Not just the Trump/Vance piece, also the anti abortion/contraception and "big pharma" vibes.

Very weird.

"Voting Democrat solely because they'll let you have an abortion while they allow all the rest of our sex-based rights to be destroyed seems unwise to me. Women need to take their bodily autonomy into their own hands imo — this means we need to learn about and educate other women about their bodies and reproductive system, so we aren't relying on the government to dole out hormonal birth control (which is HORRIBLE for us) and dictate our reproductive choices. It's far from an ideal situation, but I resent being told I must vote for a party that can't even define the word 'woman' because they'll allow women to have abortions. That gives me the icks and should give you the icks as well.

I don't believe we should be handing over our power to governments, and the more we understand about our own bodies, the power of food/herbal medicine, the less we need to rely on the state or the medical establishment to allow us bodily autonomy and pretend to be invested in our health and wellbeing."

I mean, much though I'd rather vote for an old white dude who is demonstrably mentally incapacitated over trump, I don't disagree with her on any of this.

Our reproductive and sex-based rights, choices and health should be in our hands, not those of any government. She's barking if she thinks Trump will advance and not regress women's rights though.

I wonder if she has changed her stance at all with last night's news?

Far fewer women than men voted reform (13% F, 17%M)

Not as marked a gap but still there for Tories (23% F, 26%M)

https://www.focaldata.com/blog/how-britain-voted-2024

Trump is horrendously harmful towards women's rights. His ideas on contraception, abortion, Christian values, traditional families, women's rights, gay women and so on - there's no way he's at all progressive regarding women.

However I know women who voted for Farage just on this issue and he is just as regressive, so I'm not surprised to hear a feminist advocating for Trump.

Doesn't look like it - she tweeted this

I literally cannot believe that after all we've witnessed over the past week+, never mind all we've witnessed over the past near decade I am once again seeing feminists insist we must vote for the black woman because she's a black woman and CNN told me the alternative was Hitler

Would you consider for a moment that women are free-er in the bodies in which they were born, that develop naturally, and freely operate within female reproductive cycles than they are in dependency on medication/manufactured hormones or reliance on the provision of surgery. This might seem far fetched, but to women of my generation there was no automatic provision of abortion or contraception. It is my sense that women were far free-er for say no to unwanted sex and to have a feeling of ownership of one's own biology/sense of self. It is really worth thinking hard about this. I'm not anti-abortion, but the idea that this is a right does a lot of heavy lifting, and to my mind it doesn't serve us in the way many young women seem programmed to believe.

Do you know any feminists advocating voting reform? Actual feminists, not "womens sex based rights" activists?

I don't think I saw any feminists supporting reform. Not surprising given they are a bunch of racist misogynists.

As has been discussed many times in the run up to the election, if the left political factions choose to not listen to or care about women's rights, and leave all that to the right political factions, it's pointless them acting all surprised when women voters are driven to voting for the right.

Possibly as a short term measure to try and drag the pendulum back, possibly in desperation, what does it matter?

But the days of saying 'even if the left want to burn your house down and eat you for lunch you still must vote left, obviously, because not voting left makes you a terrible person' are probably over. The results of the election showed: the electorate want middle ground. They didn't vote 'for' the left, they voted for change. Reluctantly. Not really wanting any of the options. Tribalism is a bit fucked.

Hormonal contraception screwed me up and I spent most of my adult life not taking it.
However hormonal contraception is far better an option than unreliable contraception and unwanted pregnancies/abortions.

If you don't need hormonal contraception for some reason (lesbian /sterilised/ vasectomised partner/ celibate/post menopausal) I can imagine it's easy to fall into a romanticised view of no contraceptives. But they are really important especially for younger women who aren't in a stable relationship.

I cannot believe any feminist would advocate removing the choice of reliable contraception from women.

For goodness sake, American feminists ( not that MM is) face a similar dilemma to many of us faced in the UK faced in our recent election, but turned up to 11. Two parties who are both shit for women, but on different issues and different ways.

I don’t see what it achieves to attack or criticize a woman thinking through this horrible state of affairs and deciding which of shit and shit they think is less shit. Reserve your blame for the people who created the shit, not those faced with the voting for the shit..

Yes, except they weren't were they. More what happened was women who wanted to vote right anyway just had a tantrum and claimed "the left" made them do it. As if they have no agency.

It is the same in the states. Women can vote how they like, I'm just very disappointed that MM seems to have moved away from science and fact into some kind of privileged alternative reality and is advocating things that will harm lots of women. It's sad.

Out of interest, which part of the anti-"big pharma" flavour of it is problematic to you?

I'm not in the least against Western medicine and pharma, it has saved my life and my health many times. But I'm also living with the long term repercussions of 20+ years on hormonal contraception, (something that Eastern medical systems call a mass genocide of women because fucking with women's repro hormones has some likely unwanted long term side effects for the whole body's system), and have had to fight quite a lot to get my sex-based health problems even just considered in a holistic (not woo woo, as in whole-of-my-body-systems) way by my NHS women's health GP who kept on parroting the line that she couldn't help me if I didn't want to take a medical course that was known to worsen my condition. I ended up vastly improving it to the point of a non-issue with the assistance of a herbalist (from Vancouver!). I'm a biologist, and a pragmatic realist, and I agree with her that I'd like to see women's health and knowledge about how to support it in our own hands, not that of any government, and that herbal medicine and nutritional knowledge are two examples of ways that this could be supported. I don't think that's particularly controversial of me, and I don't think she's saying any much different to me...?

The part where people make up conspiracy theories and then refuse medical treatment that would not only benefit them but also puts others at risk.

Antivaxxers mainly. But also people advocating risky childbirth practices (e.g. free birthing) and encouraging girls not to use contraception.

There are is a lot of medical misinformation out there and it harms people. Cut from the same cloth as people advocating puberty blockers in my mind; taking an ideological approach to medicine and encouraging others to do the same.

People can do what they want with their own bodies but spreading misinformation is dangerous.

And I said I've had endless issues with hormonal contraception and with GPs minimising my experiences, but I'd far rather have had that than many children or abortions. Childbirth has fucked my body, I hate to think what state I'd be in now if I'd had even more children.