AOC's Nasty Side Comes Out in Jaw-Dropping Insult: Women with Cancer Should Be Horrified
It’s the oldest canard in the liberal playbook when it comes to male legislators and the regulation of abortion. When reason fails, one need only say, “You wouldn’t understand, though — you’re not a woman. You don’t get to control my body.”
Here’s a pro tip if you’re going to use that one, though: It helps if you can actually call a woman a woman.
One understands that such language is “transphobic” nowadays. You don’t want to end up like J.K. Rowling, after all.
However, modish though it may be, it doesn’t have the same sting when you phrase the standby clapback thusly: “You wouldn’t understand, though — you’re not a menstruating person.”
It also doesn’t work if, when asked to clarify what a “menstruating person” is, you note that it’s far more than just a woke way of saying “woman” to keep alive the fiction that men can get pregnant. For instance, if you’re a cancer survivor, you might be excluded!
That is, more or less, the jaw-dropping bit of linguistic prestidigitation Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York tried to pull when attacking Texas’ fetal heartbeat abortion law.
Her original take on the law was actually more of an ad hominem rebuke of Lone Star State Gov. Greg Abbott — who is, you might not be surprised to learn, not a “menstruating person.” He’s also not a woman, but AOC’s stilted language got most of the attention, almost all of it negative.
Instead of slinking away and accepting defeat, however, AOC doubled down on the Daily Mail, which mocked her insult. In the process, she used cancer survivors as a pawn, accused Republicans of “protecting the patriarchal idea that women are most valuable as uterus holders” and said anyone opposed to all of this piffle needs to “grow up.”
The kerfuffle began when CNN’s Anderson Cooper invited Ocasio-Cortez on his show Tuesday to talk about, among other things, the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans abortion after an unborn child’s heartbeat can be detected.
Either Cooper is an undercover Republican looking to sabotage Democratic opposition to the bill or the post-Trump slump at CNN is hitting him unusually hard and AOC gets better ratings than someone who might be able to state the liberal case more effectively, at least on this matter.
Whichever is the case (I lean toward the latter), Ocasio-Cortez was sticking to what’s become the liberal line: The bill could, in certain circumstances, give women only two weeks after a missed period to obtain an abortion.
“I’m sorry we have to break down Biology 101 on national television, but in case no one has informed him before in our life — in his life, six weeks pregnant means two weeks late for your period,” she said.
“And two weeks late on your period for any person, any person with a menstrual cycle can happen if you’re stressed, if your diet changes or for really no reason at all. So you don’t have six weeks.”
Except the congresswoman already had proved she was the wrong person — menstruating or not — to break down Biology 101 on national television.
“He speaks from such a place of deep ignorance, and it’s not just ignorance. It’s ignorance that’s hurting people.”
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams Texas’s GOP Gov. Abbott for defending the state’s abortion law by saying he’s working to “eliminate all rapists.” pic.twitter.com/lAGG731QGP
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) September 8, 2021
“I don’t know if he is familiar with a menstruating person’s body,” Ocasio-Cortez said of Abbott. “In fact, I do know that he’s not familiar with a woman — with a female or menstruating person’s body.”
“What this is about is controlling women’s bodies and controlling people who are not cisgender men,” she added.
“This is about making sure that someone like me, as a woman, or any menstruating person in this country cannot make decisions over their own body and Gov. Abbott and [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell want to have more control over a woman’s body than that woman or that person has over themselves.”
On Twitter, the Daily Mail described the interview thusly: “AOC calls women ‘menstruating people’ while explaining the female body.”
Like a wobbly ejected bar patron coming back for a second shot at the bouncer who manhandled him just a few minutes prior (or “personhandled them,” if you so choose), Ocasio-Cortez returned for another swing at the British tabloid.
“Not just women! Trans men & non-binary people can also menstruate,” she tweeted Wednesday.
The congresswoman also used cancer survivors as an example of why this wasn’t just a transgender issue, saying, “Some women also *don’t* menstruate for many reasons, including surviving cancer that required a hysterectomy.”
“GOP mad at this are protecting the patriarchal idea that women are most valuable as uterus holders,” she said.
Not just women! Trans men & non-binary people can also menstruate.
Some women also *don’t* menstruate for many reasons, including surviving cancer that required a hysterectomy.
GOP mad at this are protecting the patriarchal idea that women are most valuable as uterus holders. pic.twitter.com/BJovcw1qPa
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 8, 2021
Whoa, that’s deep. It’s almost like we’re living in “The Handmaid’s Tale” or something! I bet no one’s thought of using that metaphor. And then there’s the deeply insulting decision to hide behind cancer survivors — something no one on the left has thought of trotting out yet, for reasons that should be self-evident.
“Trans, two-spirit, and non-binary people have always existed and will always exist,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a follow-up tweet.
“People can stay mad about that if they want, or they can grow up,” she concluded, throwing up a peace sign along with the LGBT pride and transgender flag emojis.
Trans, two-spirit, and non-binary people have always existed and will always exist.
People can stay mad about that if they want, or they can grow up ✌??️? ?️⚧️
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 8, 2021
Deuces! That’ll show’em.
Trans, two-spirit, and non-binary people have always existed and will always exist.
People can stay mad about that if they want, or they can grow up ✌??️? ?️⚧️
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 8, 2021
This, again, isn’t the burn AOC thought it was.
I’m sure clarifying this might indeed go over well with the people who understand woke language in up-to-the-minute Talmudic detail. The people who need to be convinced by this, however, probably aren’t convinced by anyone who’d use the term “menstruating person.”
This is especially true when Ocasio-Cortez went out of her way, for reasons unbeknownst to all but her, to single out cancer survivors who no longer have periods because their uterus has been removed as a reason that we need to use the term “menstruating person.”
Not only are these cases rare, but using them as ideological cover for awkward woke Newspeak manages to both insult the intelligence and diminish the struggle of survivors.
For those on the fence, it’s like a basic logic puzzle: All people who get pregnant menstruate. Not all women menstruate. All people who menstruate are women. Therefore, all people who get pregnant … are women.
But wait! Here comes AOC, crashing through the brick wall like the Kool-Aid Man (or Kool-Aid Non-Menstruating Person of Masculine Bearing) of wokeness. Not all those who menstruate are women. Some identify as men. Some are nonbinary. Some are two-spirit. Also, some women had uterine cancer and therefore don’t menstruate because of hysterectomies. Also …
And while Rep. Kool-Aid Woman, D-New York, tries to split hairs about what genders menstruate, those on the fence go listen to people who know that only women menstruate. You know, the ones who passed Biology 101.
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