The Rant

I have a confession to make. I spend a lot of my spare time reading up on American politics. I have another confession to make. I’m extremely angry, and I’m about to rant. I apologize if this isn’t of interest to you, or if any of what I've written here offends you.

I’m not sure why I consume so much news about my homeland. I was always a fairly informed citizen when I lived there, but I never felt the need to devour voraciously every last crumb of information. (I do now.) This does not exclude the various hysterical frenzies that the US media is wont to manufacture. I need to know about all of it. Maybe it’s my way of making my homesickness manifest. Maybe it’s my way of appreciating what I have now, which is the privilege of sanctuary in Finland. Maybe it’s simply boredom coupled with an interest in politics. Probably all three are at play.

My morning ritual consists of rising grumpily out of bed when my alarm rings, stumbling to the kitchen where I brew the coffee that will jumpstart my synapses, and then settling in to check the news from the States. The news part of this ritual has surpassed both pleasure and habit. It's a compulsion. 

For a long time, I have felt at odds with my country. I’m from the den of leftists and intellectuals that is New England, which is frequently cited as a place that doesn’t belong to the “real America” by nearly all Republican politicians on the national stage. If you live on or near either coast, you don’t count. As for me, I am, at most, just one member of a demographic that Republican politicians enjoy bashing in order to excite their base. This has never been more clearly demonstrated than in this presidential primary season.

Most recently, people belonging to my demographic have been called “sluts” and “prostitutes” for feeling that Catholic institutions should be required to cover birth control under the insurance plans that they offer employees and students. Sure, the person who uttered these words is himself a useless, as-ugly-as-he-is-horny pundit who should most likely be ignored at all costs, but there was a time not so long ago that he was being called “the leader of the Republican party.” Have we forgotten that? Most Republican politicians wet their pants at the thought of criticizing him. What he says does, whether we like it or not, to some extent reflect the current Republican orthodoxy. (And the current orthodoxy is that prostitutes usually take payment in the form of birth control pills. Because, as we all know well, you must take one oral contraceptive pill for every sexual encounter. Derp.)

And, okay, let’s say you think that free speech is actually one of the last remaining beautiful and true American values, and you think that even Limbaugh should be able to bloviate hot air out of the hole in his fat face as much and for as long as he wishes. (I do.) And let’s say that this really is about religion, not the availability of contraception, and that these Republicans are simply staunch defenders of “religious freedom.” A “war on women?” Certainly not.

Besides, it was a few weeks ago. The news cycle has moved on. Well, what then of the forced ultrasound bills found in several states? These stipulate that a woman seeking an abortion would have to undergo a totally superfluous and symbolic ultrasound, often executed by way of vaginal probe. What of the personhood amendments that have so far failed to pass by referendum, even in Mississippi, that claim life beings at fertilization? What of Rick Santorum saying that he’ll do what he can to enforce obscenity laws, which would of course work to eliminate pornography? (He's said a lot of insane things about gays, having children “out of wedlock,” and the Netherlands of all places. There is a reason that his name is now synonymous with that very special frothy mixture.)

I submit that it’s not so much a “war on women” as it is a temper tantrum about sex-for-pleasure. It’s a petulant, 47-years-too-late shitshow about how things are no longer the way they used to be. Women are working, gays are adopting, sluts are seducing, atheists are disbelieving, and “socialists” are presiding. Yes, I can see why they might feel the need to make Saint Ronald Reagan blush from within his grave.

The world is a better, more equitable place because of the existence of birth control. It is because of birth control that I’m able to work, to write, to remain childless if I wish, and to exist in an equal partnership with my husband. Birth control is a medical advancement that has worked to propel many societies beyond what was once the normative subordination of women. Medicine and technology are at the height of their usefulness – their greatness -- when they achieve things like this. The pussy’s out of the bag, as it were, and there’s no putting it back again. Men and women alike enjoy having sex that doesn’t result in procreation. They enjoy viewing pornography. It’s finally becoming an accepted norm that gays should have the right to marry and care for children. These things are not wildly progressive. To portray otherwise is simply too little too late.

Listen to me, Rick, Rush, Bob, etc.: I don’t want to relinquish control over my procreative abilities. I don’t believe in your Republican god or his supposed pronouncements regarding my genitals. At least we can agree on one thing: I find you to be just as morally repugnant as you judge me to be. We’re even there.

Why don’t we change the subject and talk a little about how Citizens United is a failed experiment instead?

This slut loves her home in little northwest Connecticut, and she misses it a great deal. As things begin to melt here in Lappeenranta, she sometimes closes her eyes and imagines that she’s somewhere near her own overgrown forests and aging factory buildings.

But there’ll be no going home for me.

I apologize if that sounds ignorant or ungrateful; I realize that there are people in this world, both in Finland and elsewhere, who really can’t go home.

I haven’t even mentioned foreign or fiscal policy, both of which disgust me nearly as much. For the most part, those issues are not for this blog, which is meant to be about my life in Finland. Still, this whole procreation thing, which has now been raging for a few months, has felt personal. And I’m not in the mood to take shit from a country that has ceased to count me (or people like me) among its own.

That’s why I live in Europe. And I probably won’t even think of moving back until the day that New England secedes from the union.