She knows what's going on
Seems we got a cheaper feel now
All the sweeteaze are gone
Gone to the other side
With my encyclopaedia
They must have paid her a nice price
She's putting on her string bean love
—Tori Amos, Cornflake Girl
Cornflake Girl was one of my favorite songs coming out of high school. I was entirely ignorant of its meaning back then, honing in on Amos’ vibrant style and beautiful melodies. It wasn’t until recently that I took the time to sit with the lyrics and look up the reference. Turns out, the song is about “female genital mutilation in Africa, specifically how a close female family member would betray the victim by performing the procedure.” (Wikipedia) It struck me as horrid that though it was generally agreed that such a practice was horrendous, someone close to the victim would be the one to give them up to it. We trust those with whom we share situations with, because we expect empathy to be a universal trait, despite evidence to the contrary.
The Kate Cox case is wild. Tragic, but wild. What’s even more wild to me, though, are all the women coming forward with stories about other women in their lives who have had at least one abortion, who are now championing the pro-life cause and swearing to secrecy anyone who was privy to their prior abortions. I read a post on X about a woman who was white-knuckling her way through a conversation with her brother-in-law about abortion rights, while biting her tongue about her sister’s—his wife’s—past abortions.
Here’s the problem I find with this. The very people who institute these barbarous bans are the ones who find ways to circumvent them. How many Republican representatives who supported abortion bans have paid for women, whether wives or mistresses, to be flown out of state for abortions? How many women have supported these representatives, funded their campaigns, voted for them in elections, and themselves have looked for ways around the trouble they’ve helped institute?
Personally, this places me in a moral crisis. On the one hand, we all should be extended kindness, grace, and mercy, for this life is not easy by any means for the vast majority of us. However, on the other hand, these people have made their bed; why should anyone lift a hand to keep those who have done so from sleeping in them? And with regard to the women who are voting in solidarity with the Christian Nationalist establishment, is this not a betrayal on some level of the struggle that women must navigate through most of their lives—that of men seeking to control them?
This is not really
This, this, this is not really happening
You bet your life it is
You bet your life it is
Honey, you bet your life
I will be first to admit that I may be overstepping my bounds in discussing this. I do, however, know what it feels like to be betrayed. Perhaps I’m projecting the emotions underlying those experiences onto a situation that doesn’t call for it. Or, perhaps, no one wants to talk about this aspect because it’s unpopular and unsettling. I honestly don’t know. What I do know is this: creating legislation around the control of anyone’s body is wrong, and no one should be forced to bear a child no matter the conditions under which that choice is made.
I don’t know how Kate Cox votes. I honestly don’t really care. I hope she makes it. There’s a solid wall of support going up around her and I think that’s beautiful. It stills bothers me, though, that another case like this may arise in someone who was staunchly in support of these bans and the same wall of support goes up. At what point do we simply allow people to face the consequences of their actions?
Anyway, here’s a design I made of @alenagzhel in another procrastination session in Procreate. I need to start playing around with fonts and blending modes a little more:
