Sorry for your Loss…
and also, men, want to know what’s really sexy?
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While I was out for a walk this morning in Denver I saw a man wearing an Avs cap.
Denverites were hoping for a thrilling, come-from-behind Game-5 win in the Stanley Cup playoffs last night. I’d watched through slightly swollen eyes and was disappointed when a late tie was lost late in the 3rd period. But it was like a teeny paper-cut at the edge of the gaping hole carved in my chest that morning upon learning of the gutting of Roe.
So this morning, cognizant of my home-team’s precarious grasp on possibly winning the Stanley Cup, I instinctively smiled at the guy with the kind eyes in the Avs hat, and offered him a “tough loss” nod of compassion. He smiled back.
And then it struck me. In all of my travels yesterday and today, not a single man looked at me and offered a similar shred of compassion for the soul-crushing loss that my “team” of hundreds-of-millions of uterus-owners just endured at the hands of five radical politicians in robes.
(sorry, but when judicial integrity and the semblance of neutrality is vaporized with politically-motivated and blatantly contradictory rulings, you’ve lost the respect of being called “Supreme Court Justice.”)
Quite the contrary, when I finally pried myself from the news yesterday and tried to work but actually doom-scrolled over my coffee, it took measurable effort to drown out the cackling laughter of a large group of men celebrating their glorious manhood at the coffee shop. Just another Thursday as a penis-owner. It took Herculean self-control not to hurl rage and steaming cups of dark-roast in their direction.
The loss. The pain. The rage and at the shredding of bodily autonomy today is hard to explain. It’s visceral. Inescapable. Loaded in every breath. And there are lots of deep breaths.
Yesterday I read a convincing argument for deleting your data from menstrual-trackers and, while this seems like a little thing in comparison to being forced to give up her education when a condom breaks, or carry a rapist’s offspring to term, or having to decide how much “near-death” a woman is supposed to endure before you risk 15–20 years in prison to save her with a medical procedure, it’s still not a…
