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Wednesday
Someone on BlueSky recently posted a Danielle Coffyn poem in response to the GOP’s S.A.V.E. act, recently passed by Republican members of the House. Part of the GOP’s ongoing attempts to disenfranchise as many voters as possible—their constant accusations of (virtually non-existent) voter fraud are designed to justify their own (very real) voter suppression efforts—SAVE would require voters to show a a birth certificate, U.S. passport, naturalization paperwork, or certain versions of the Read ID that indicate citizenship. As an NPR article points out,
[F]or as many as 69 million American women who have taken on their spouse’s name, their birth certificates no longer match the names they use today, according to an analysis by the progressive Center for American Progress. Meanwhile, more than half of all Americans do not have a passport, according to a 2023 YouGov survey.
While it is true that Republican women as well as Democratic women would be impacted by the law, Republicans probably see them as necessary collateral damage in the attempt to reduce the overall number of women voting, given that more women vote Democratic than Republican. This is certainly true of poor women voters, who are less likely to have any of the documents required.
And of course, there’s Peter Thiel, the Trump-supporting billionaire who doesn’t believe that women should have the right to vote in the first place.
The good news is that Democrats in the Senate will probably filibuster the bill. Still, like GOP efforts to assert control over women’s bodily autonomy, the SAVE act reveals Republicans’ patriarchal ambitions.
With that in mind, here’s Coffyn’s poem:
If Adam Picked the Apple
By Danielle Coffyn
There would be a parade,
a celebration,
a holiday to commemorate
the day he sought enlightenment.
We would not speak of
temptation by the devil, rather,
we would laud Adam’s curiosity,
his desire for adventure
and knowing.
We would feast
on apple-inspired fare:
tortes, chutneys, pancakes, pies.
There would be plays and songs
reenacting his courage.
But it was Eve who grew bored,
weary of her captivity in Eden.
And a woman’s desire
for freedom is rarely a cause
for celebration.
Note: As much as I love Paradise Lost, which includes Eve complaining that God “forbids us to be wise,” Milton’s division of men and women into thinkers and feelers reenforces the stereotype that underlie GOP patriarchal assumptions. When angels are sent to Eden to deliver TED talks on the origins of the universe and what is to come, they speak only to Adam. For her part, Eve is sent away before Raphael warns Adam about Satan, and she is sedated before Michael foretells human history. While she is depicted as more intuitive than Adam, Reason is clearly man’s domain.
Let’s just say that the GOP at the moment is being guided more by emotion than by Reason.
