And, predictably, the evangelicals so easily succumbed.
What changes if more people showed up to vote?
One answer emerges by comparing Minnesota and Tennessee—two states with vastly different voter turnout rates. Minnesota leads the nation, with nearly 80 percent of eligible voters participating in the 2020 election. With that, Minnesotans have elected leaders who have advanced a popular agenda: universal school meals, free public college tuition, paid family and medical leave, and the restoration of voting rights for formerly incarcerated people. According to polling, each of these proposals is broadly popular across the entire country.
Does Minnesota always have to be so awesome and wonderful? But this is not a complaint.
Hey, Tennessee. You can do better. Try a little harder. Try.
Rock on, Minnesota!
Childless cat ladies rule as far as I'm concerned.
Beautiful artwork. Thank you for posting this.
Elegantly stated - thank you.
I fully agree with your comment - thank you for sharing this.
For the life of me, I cannot conceive how the benefit of the doubt could be given to these law enforcement agents that stated it was a case of suicide when this man had an active lawsuit against an Alabama local police department - and he was found far from his home in an abandoned home.
I hope the perpetrators of this murder will be discovered and that justice will be served.
Of course the Argentinian Trump would support the embargo, so he must be full-diaper angry.
I love how she voted against it. This woman is based.
This is a brilliantly expressed comment and I couldn't agree with you more. Thank you for posting this and have a good day.
Nicky Jam was fine with Trump, seemingly, up until he was misgendered by the latter.
Meaning all Trump's deeds were fine... up until this mistake at Nicky's expense - which was unintentional.
Yet when Trump attacked numerous other people throughout the years, that did not matter for Nicky.
Anyone else see the hypocrisy of the conservative mindset here as well?
I wonder if this Nancy Reagan meme is appropriate.
The officials said the additional IRS funding provided through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act had enabled increased oversight and greater awareness of the practice.
Thank goodness for that!
And, yes, do it!
This is the way.
I found this to be a very well-written article about a concept I wasn't previously aware of. Here follow some interesting choice quotes - but I recommend reading the actual article:
When activist Jess Piper heard Alabama Republican senator Katie Britt deliver the GOP response to the State of the Union, she had a visceral reaction. The senator spoke in a breathy voice with a soft and sweet quality ― even as she described horrific acts of sexual violence and murder and painted a dystopian picture of the United States.
For Piper, there was no mistaking that sound, which permeated her childhood in the Bible Belt. Britt was using “fundie baby voice.”
Then more context - conveying submission to male authority:
“I would describe ‘fundie baby voice’ as a woman’s voice that is higher than average in both pitch and breathiness,” said Kathryn Cunningham, a vocologist and assistant professor of theatre and head of acting at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “While the average woman’s voice is higher-pitched than the average man’s due to a combination of anatomical and social factors, some women who speak this way seem to be intentionally placing their voices higher than their natural pitch range in order to convey submission to male authority and childlike innocence.”
These changes in voice are deliberate:
Deliberate voice changes are very much a reality for women in fundamentalist Christian communities, noted Tia Levings, author of the upcoming memoir “A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy.”
“From a young age, we were taught over and over again to modulate our voices,” she said. “It was all about sounding sweet, soft, and childlike. There were very strict gender roles, and women were supposed to never sound angry but keep sweet, obey, dress modestly, speak softly, be very feminine.”
Interesting roots:
This sort of Christian vocal training has roots in Helen Andelin’s 1963 book “Fascinating Womanhood.”
“This book encourages fundamentalist Christian women to sound ‘childlike’ in order to convey submission to male figures,” Cunningham said, noting that there are “references to an idealized voice that a compliant, Christian woman should have.”
I found this quote referenced in the article very remarkable:
“It is important to emphasize in this discussion that women’s voices are always scrutinized and policed. The truth is that we can’t win, no matter how we speak.” - Kathryn Cunningham, vocologist and assistant professor
Of such women in power who use the fundie baby voice, the article goes on to quote the following:
“What they produce is a lot of abuse and subjugation,” Levings added. “And it always stings more when a woman is used as a tool of the patriarchy to promote it. They’re the Aunt Lydias and Serena Joys of the program ― brought in and given power when it suits men, but they will be discarded when it’s no longer useful to those men.”
Toward the end of the article, the very valid warning:
Piper urged those who are interested in the fundie baby voice phenomenon to educate themselves on the Christian nationalist movement in U.S. politics and the Project 2025 agenda. Directing ire toward those in power is more useful than tearing down everyday women for the way they were trained to speak.
This dude's my hero.