Gangsta Feminists

And then, the day before I graduated from college, the news flooded my inbox: in Kansas, Dr. George Tiller had been shot. Point blank. In the head. In his church.

Welcome to America. You don’t know shit.

One of the things that was most different, and most complicated, about this country was the vehemence and violence of its anti-abortion politics. In Australia, where I grew up, there are people who are deeply anti-abortion. There are anti-choice organizations, and there are protesters with signs outside clinics. But clinics don’t get bombed. Australia doesn’t have to pass laws mandating where protestors can stand outside clinics to ensure they don’t prevent patients from getting in to see a doctor. Australia’s abortion laws aren’t ideal, but we don’t have mandatory penetrative ultrasounds and we don’t require doctors to lie to patients about what abortion does and we don’t have politicians going around saying that the state should force a rape victim to carry her rapist’s baby. And where I come from, people don’t get shot over abortion.

Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.