I won't protest too much the term "fetus fetishist"...

My name is Robert Caponi. I am a white male ages 18-49.

I have never discriminated against a woman. I have never
battered a
woman. I have never used boorish sexual innuendo around a woman
or accosted her with unsolicited descriptions of my genitals. I
have only ever once described a woman as a "piece of *****"-- I
was referring to Avril Lavigne, and it was safely in the context
of a joke.

But all that counts naught to my favor; I am a sexist beyond
sexists,
and I have the temerity not to care.

I am a pro-lifer.

I am an ungrateful pro-lifer.

t.a pro-choicers' displeasure with the ingratitude of people
like me is
made clear enough by the cat-snarl sibilance of their scorn-- "I
protect your freedomssss, even if they're the very freedomssss
wou sssseek to dessssstroy" (that is, impossssse my will on
women and forccccce them to do as I wisssssh.) It was only when
I read phrases like these aloud that I realized the depth of
their searing disapproval. I also hear something of the same
disapproval in the stock questions to people like me surfacing
again and again, with only minor variation, from the same pool
of anonymous pro-choice tropes. Again, indictments of
ingratitude, either towards the noble cause or towards my mother
( ...oh gosh, my own *mother* for heaven's sakes!)


"Why do you want to deny women the very freedoms
*you*
enjoy?" Why yes, I just fatally disconnected a famous
violinist from my life systems last April... OF 2057!
Yes, the reason I hold an event that's flukish even in a
suppositional America and something that's happened in
the real America 4000 times today to a double standard
is because I'm *selfish*! I'll tell this violinist, I'll
tell him-- "Do you know how to play 'Taps' on that
thing, Yo-Yo Ma? I am an ungrateful pro-lifer!"

"If you as a fetus knew you were unwanted, wouldn't
you abort
yourself?" The correct answer here is "yes,"- unless
you're a rapist- but I say-- "Let the ***** who's
aborting me at least have to fork over four hundred
bananas just like everybody else! I am an ungrateful
pro-lifer! Grrr!"

"Your mother chose not to abort you... why wouldn't
you want
*every* woman to have the same choice your mother had?"
Besides the fact my mother probably didn't see abortion
as being much of a choice, this moral defense of
everything my mother either chose or never chose to do
has a kind of stun-gun effect on me, which may be the
effect intended. But I will spring back and make it
equally personal for the pro-choicer-- "*Your* mother
sucked my *****... why wouldn't you want *every* woman to
suck the ***** of the same guy whose ***** your mother
sucked? I am an ungrateful pro-lifer!"


Ask me a question in good faith- a question I could answer to
your
satisfaction without having to abandon the premise that abortion
is murder- and I will not give you such splenetic responses. But
there is nothing I can tell you that would interest you; there
is no person whose motivations and beliefs are understood as
many times over as the pro-lifer. I should be grateful to be so
understood that even to be asked a question in good faith would
be a waste of time.

A person can call themselves pro-choice and be lauded as
being both
caring and compassionate (nevermind that those terms technically
share the same polar relationship introvert and extrovert.) The
situations of all the individual women having abortions are as
unknowable to them as they are to me, only in my case, telling a
woman what she can't do with her body is an enormous
presumption, but in your case is cause for great praise that,
despite the fact all that is required of you is *suspension* of
judgement, and despite the complete absence of any conflicted
moral interest you may have of fetal personhood, you can find it
in yourself to issue to these same women your one-size-fits-all
compassion. (Oooh, but only I get to look through my pro-life
spy glass to see that these women are all being
controlled/punished/humiliated to my satisfaction!) They should
all be grateful!

They tell me we espouse hatred, that we are intolerant. I
honestly
don't know why they say this. The premise of "they have the same
rights we have" seems in opposition to hatred or intolerance,
but maybe the hatred and intolerance is that I think pregnant
women *don't* have the rights I have-- a dubious claim, since I
can't think of any situation in which I get to simply "choose"
who lives and who dies, and in any case is not supported by any
disproportion of women being pro-choice. I think the accusation
of hatred is simply an article of faith, as a grounds of
dismissal out-of-hand. As the saying goes, "tolerate everything
except intolerance." Maybe the newfangled liberal way of dealing
with ideas we don't like is to just call them hateful or
intolerant- whether justified or not- and simply dismiss them as
if they were.

"We are open minded," they boast. press them a little harder,
and it
becomes "We are open minded... to the findings of science!" But
these are the same people who tell me that whatever the fetus
might or might not scientifically be is a moot point in the
issue of abortion. You can quash the issue in as much time it
takes to type "Woman? what woman!?!" These are the same people
who battle unborn victims of violence and unborn health care
legislation because they set a precedent of fetal personhood.
Pray tell, what kind of open mindedness would this be? Why do
people fly into outrage when you tell them you're pro-life? I
could tell them I was a Nazi and they would be less outraged.
Why have two people in the editorial offices of the Village
Voice started giving Nat Hentoff the silent treatment as soon as
he outed himself as a pro-lifer? Are they afraid his closed
mindedness might rub off on them?

A sixth of Planned Parenthood's funding is taken straight
from the
pockets of pro-lifers so it can infiltrate their children's
schools,mock their religion, censor them and- on one occasion-
bar them from their own public libraries. Why aren't we more
grateful to these people protecting our freedoms? Millions of
pro-lifers are forced to pay union dues that go to support
politicians who, if elected, will then try to force them to
bankroll a proceedure they find morally abhorrent. Why aren't
these people more grateful to the champions of choice? Because
we're ungrateful pro-lifers!

I won't protest too much the term "fetus fetishist"-- it is
an epitet
that suggests the same characteristic of misplaced affection as
"tree-hugger" or "*****-lover," and as such is not unique. No,
what bothers me is when pro-choicers, and I hear it again and
again, describe pro-lifers "squealing with orgiastic glee"
thinking about the way women's lives are crushed by the economic
burden forced on them. This squealing and frothing doesn't
really happen, of course, and is unestablishable even as
hyperbole, but it's allowable because we're only talking about
pro-lifers, and these tactics have long since been sanctioned by
pro-choice top brass. I've read that we tend to eroticize our
fears; my red flags go up- it could be niggers with ping-pong
ball eyes chasing white women around the mountain or Jews
defiling pure Aryan girls- when the task of eroticizing the
fears of the "us" is transferred to the "them". (And, quite
honestly, if economic hardship got me aroused I would be walking
around with permanant wood.)

But I am a pro-lifer. I am the socially sanctioned ***** for
American
liberals; I get to see them from their most illiberal angle.
Would they be hurling these epitets at me- epitets allowable in
no other discourse- if nothing other than a woman's freedom were
truly at issue, if I wasn't onto something that made them
uncomfortable, haranging on that intimitation of doubt? No, the
issue is as uncomplicated as a woman's right to get a ear
pierced. All the epitets are in good fun. Be grateful you live
in a society where you aren't strung up by your toes for
disagreeing with us!


Whenever people discuss a tragedy, a sensless killing, they
invariably
scratch their heads and ask "how could sane people do such
things?" But I don't ask that question. I've seen how it happens
for myself. I've seen the miminum of social sanction required to
get people extremely cavalier about killing. To start, make it
the duty of the good citizen *not* to care- most will gladly
cede concern, as they are morally overtaxed as it is- and reward
them with flatteries of caring and compassion and enlightenment
when they do. Start a code language, introduced as soon as
"choice" is set in binary opposition to "control"-- the
privelaged nature of a woman's right to abortion evidenced by
this exclusive, hermetic oppositional bubble. Wall off your
enemy with an impenetrable foam of psitticistic blather; one
need only look at this newsgroup to see pro-choicers writing the
same things over and over for apparently nobody; look at Ray
Fischer or Paul Anderson- perhaps some awareness of their
purgatorial stations informs their coarse, tone-deaf writing
styles- or *sex kitten* or Flower Power- both of whom, nom de
guerres aside, make Rain Man look like Mick Jagger- and all of
whom draw their arguments, zingers, and bad-faith emotional
appeals from the same stagnant pool, "who think the same
thoughts without need of speech and babble the same speech
without need of meaning." But good old T.S. himself needed the
Jew for his own savedness to be meaningful; make the issue
adversarial, set your followers off on a scavenger hunt to find
new epitets and trivializations of the unbeliever so that when
these followers say something like "I support a woman's right to
choose!" it might actually *mean* something. Encourage them to
say things like "...you really just want to control womens
bodies." Unsupportable- indeed, meaningless- statements like
this have longevity built into them; people need only say them
once and they've committed themselves to it forever. The
unbelievers here aren't the ones that end up getting killed, but
their role in group identification is nonetheless essential.
Fall back on status quo with a syllogistic wave of the hand,--
"abortion isn't murder, murder is illegal" or circular reasoning
like "we have a right to abortion because the Supreme Court says
we have a right to abortion." You can pay no mind to the
shockingly irresponsible morality buttressing such statements;
it flummoxes the unbelievers, so it is useful for as long as it
works in your favor.

But it might stop working in your favor... in fact, it
probably will.
And don't think- conceit of conceits!- they're going to ring
your doorbell and consult you with every subsequent decision
concerning which killing is acceptable and which isn't. When
there is a war, people protest war. When there is a state
execution, people protest capital punishment. Maybe I disagree
with these people's methods sometimes, maybe I think they
sometimes lack perspective, maybe sometimes I think the same
things of fellow pro-lifers. But doggedly battling the premises
that allow us to simply eliminate the elements of society we
find inconveniencing- and refusing to be bullied out of our
determination in such tasks- is an essential part of the health
of a society that protects the lives and freedoms of everyone.
Perhaps you too are a little ungrateful.

=''' TWIDN € http://home.earthlink.net/~tagutcow
c oo email €

My name is Robert Caponi. I am a white male ages 18-49.

I have never discriminated against a woman. I have never battered a
woman. I have never used boorish sexual innuendo around a woman or
accosted her with unsolicited descriptions of my genitals. I have only
ever once described a woman as a "piece of *****"-- I was referring to Avril
Lavigne, and it was safely in the context of a joke.

But all that counts naught to my favor; I am a sexist beyond sexists,
and I have the temerity not to care.

I am a pro-lifer.

I am an ungrateful pro-lifer.

=''' TWIDN € http://home.earthlink.net/~tagutcow
c oo email €

My name is Robert Caponi. I am a white male ages 18-49.

I have never discriminated against a woman. I have never battered a
woman. I have never used boorish sexual innuendo around a woman or
accosted her with unsolicited descriptions of my genitals. I have only
ever once described a woman as a "piece of *****"-- I was referring to Avril
Lavigne, and it was safely in the context of a joke.

But all that counts naught to my favor; I am a sexist beyond sexists,
and I have the temerity not to care.

I am a pro-lifer.

Ask me a question in good faith- ....

They tell me we espouse hatred, that we are intolerant. I honestly
don't know why they say this. The premise of "they have the same rights we
have" seems in opposition to hatred or intolerance, but maybe the hatred
and intolerance is that I think pregnant women *don't* have the rights I
have-- a dubious claim, since I can't think of any situation in which I
get to simply "choose" who lives and who dies....

Whenever people discuss a tragedy, a sensless killing, they invariably
scratch their heads and ask "how could sane people do such things?" But I
don't ask that question. I've seen how it happens for myself. I've seen
the miminum of social sanction required to get people extremely cavalier
about killing.

look at Ray Fischer or Paul Anderson- perhaps some awareness of their
purgatorial stations informs their coarse, tone-deaf writing styles...

Ask me a question in good faith- a question I could answer to your
satisfaction without having to abandon the premise that abortion is
murder- and I will not give you such splenetic responses.