"Caption!"
At around midnight Melbourne time, while circling my balcony in a wool coat and a Prosecco blanket, I find out through Instagram that Roe v. Wade has been overturned by the Supreme Court in the US.
My husband and I have been in and out of a difficult conversation all night and I’m outside in the winter air hoping it will help me levitate. I receive a push notification; a bat signal from Abu Dhabi.
“Caption!”
I follow a trail that leads from my DMs to a Reel on Gabrielle Union’s account. She’s shared something moving, vulnerable, and highly relatable about her life. Like me, Gabrielle lives with social anxiety and in this post, she’s in a gorgeous gown in front of flashing paparazzi cameras, steadying the Earth beneath her. I know that mound under her feet. I’ve experienced such severe social anxiety that the thought of taking the recycling out has flattened me entirely. I read the caption, admire Gabrielle, and enter the doom scroll.
BREAKING: US Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
(Why do I follow the New York Times on the performative comparison app?)
My husband is on the couch, watching me pace around the balcony through the sliding doors as the clock stretches towards 12:15. I don’t have my glasses on so he’s a pink blur in a shirt I got him for Christmas. The lamp and my poor vision create a halo around him. I open the sliding door and deliver the news. He makes a joke about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which I don’t find funny.
We are parents.
I am South African, he is American.
I have a uterus, he does not.
He is a little concerned, I am terrified.
In 2011 I earned a Masters degree in International Development. My thesis was on anti-migration information campaigning in Senegal – a way wealthy countries weaponise the United Nations to deter young Black people from attempting to find a new life in Europe. There were a myriad of disappointing experiences over the summer I conducted my research in Dakar but one always rises to the top. Understanding the overreach of the folks in Brussels and Washington DC. If they don’t like something (Islamic education; women with jobs; Africans rejecting farming in favour of moving to Barcelona) funding for critical services and care might dry up as a result. What I found in my research is that Senegalese development workers operate at the mercy of American and European fundamentalism. So, overturning Roe doesn’t just mean denying people with uteruses in the United States healthcare but ripping away lifesaving services for sexual health and other programmes in developing countries.
Ruther Bader Ginsburg sends me back into the winter night. Through the sliding doors I watch my husband on the couch and turn up the volume on Breaking Point by NAYANA IZ. I wonder how we’re expected to relate to the cis men in our lives now. How were we ever supposed to relate to them? Misogyny is both ambient and pointed, like the flashing lights on Gabrielle Union in the white gown on the red carpet. Or the soft glow of a tense living room in the dead of night. I watch Gabrielle’s Reel again. The vicious cameras blur her edges. She is the most beautiful woman in Hollywood. Strong and glowing, adorable and exposed, Black and glamorous, all alone. Anxiety dances through my body and the wind rattles the sliding doors as I come back in from the cold.
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