New Year, Same Shit in SC

But we have another woman in the state Senate!

Happy New Year, all! If you do have any resolutions, I hope they’re purged of patriarchal and/or capitalist bullshit. My resolution for the year is “deal with it,” both as a way to try to stay on top of things that need doing (laundry always, or that weird burning smell in our oven that turned out to be a mouse hoarding dog food, omg now we have to move, jk we’re getting a new oven tomorrow) and to accept that South Carolina politics will continue to suck until we have some competent women and/or actual feminists running the show (goal for 2100?).

Until things change, we’ll have to just deal with all the foolishness planned for our next state legislative session, which starts up on January 9th. Our favorite bigoted representatives (Hiott, G.M. Smith, McCravy, Davis, Vaughan, Trantham, Pope, Chapman and Taylor) have gotten to work right away and prefiled an anti-trans kids bill (H. 4624). If you can make it down to Columbia, you can attend the Medical and Health Affairs Subcommittee hearing scheduled for Tuesday (1/9). WREN folks (Women’s Rights and Empowerment Network) will be convening at 1:45 in Room 427 in the Blatt Building of the South Carolina State House. Alternatively, call or write your representatives to let them know you oppose the bill. The hearing will be livestreamed here, if you can stomach it.

In some good news, Tameika Issac Devine won the District 19 special election on January 2nd, so we’ll start the session with six women in the SC Senate. (The state Supreme Court still all men, probably will turn into an all-white-men court when Justice Beatty retires this year.) In the SC House we have 20 women, abysmal. Good news: we can change the numbers if we vote in more women in November! I say a good resolution is to work for local, state and national political campaigns. We know when women run, they win. In other good news, my SC Senator Dwight Loftis is stepping down, so he won’t have the incumbent advantage on his side. Bad news is that he’s anointed fellow anti-women’s healthcare bud county councilman Steve Shaw to replace him. Shaw does go by “doctor,” but it’s a Ph.D. in land use and planning so don’t be fooled that his anti-abortion stances carry any scientific weight. Excited to support any Democrat that runs against him!

If all this is just too much, put some parties on your calendar to have some fun and fight the power all at once. Show up for reproductive justice with our Palmetto State Abortion Fund, and if you haven’t set up your monthly contributions, you can do so here. Helping women get the care they need has gotten much more expensive with the bans in SC and in neighboring states, so these contributions are even more urgent. Here’s some events PSAF is hosting this month:

And who doesn’t love a gala? Buy tickets here.