my body, my choice

there are anti-vaxx people who are now saying "my body, my choice" which, obviously, upsets pro-abortionists. here's the thing, they're not the same bodies or choices. anti-abortionists don't generally deny abortions in order to take control of your body, they do it because (they say) they don't want the fetus (which probably would become a baby) to be "murdered." there's a direct causation that if you have an abortion, this baby will not be born.

on the other hand, anti-vaxxers want to control their own bodies mostly for themselves. yes a large pool of unvaccinated people will give a virus opportunity to mutate into something that be cause vaccinations to become ineffective which in turn may cause you to become sick, but you can't say that this person not getting vaccinated will definitely get someone sick.

this is a poor analogy, and we should stop getting riled up about it. 

all this being said. I do believe in a right to abortions, and also lean towards mandatory vaccinations. I can't say that I'm 100% for it because, like, how would be enforce that? by forcibly vaccinating people at gunpoint or by threatening fines or jail time? those options seem crazy. altho, we have actually vaccinated people by gunpoint before (seriously, see slide 4). I do like that in many public schools kids can't attend unless their vaccinated against certain things (usually DTaP and MMR) but I don't quite know how you can enforce that with adults working in non-governmental agencies. I guess you could say people entering federal land need to show proof of vaccination along with govt issued ID, but that seems kind of ridiculous since there is a LOT of federal land and what does this regulation even really do?

one thing I would like to see if that the govt should at some point establish a deadline of "get the shot before then or we won't pay for your medical bills if you do get COVID." like, you had PLENTY of opportunity to get the shot, for free, and you just didn't. there would be exceptions for certain people (those who can't vs those who won't), but most of the currently unvaccinated have just chosen not to get it done.  

asian american - pt 2

Conscious Style Guide - Drop the Hyphen in Asian American

when I was a kid, I played around with Asian American or American Asian, and for some time I classified myself as American Asian, because I felt American first. my parents, not having been born or raised here, were Asian American.

I don't remember thinking much about the hyphen tho. I think agree with Maxine Hong Kingston, that “I have been thinking that we ought to leave out the hyphen in ‘Chinese-American,’ because the hyphen gives the word on either side equal weight, as if linking two nouns. …Without the hyphen, ‘Chinese’ is an adjective and ‘American’ a noun; a Chinese American is a type of American." this runs parallel to the idea I had about Asian American vs American Asian. 

in the comments where I found the above article linked, someone said that "Asian Americans are Asian migrants who now have American citizenship, and so, they're in the same category as African migrants who now have American citizenship, and therefore are African Americans. There's therefore a distinction between African Americans and Black Americans." which is true! white Charlize Theron was born in South African and is now American. she is fully African American, tho not Black. and Rhianna is part Black and was born in Barbados, not Africa (tho her mom is Afro-Guyanese), so she's not African American. but then, what are people like me? I guess the rather wordy: American of Asian descent, because I don't think we'll ever be referred to as yellow Americans (nor should we be!).

p.s.
we SHOULD start using white American a lot more, or at least until we stop using race as a common identifier. otherwise, American will always default to being a white person.

asian american - pt 1

I remember from when I was kid, my dad told me a story of him and his Asian Hawaiian coworker. something about how the coworker called himself an American, but that my dad thought that was only half the story since white Americans will never see Asian Americans as truly American.

when I was much younger I disagreed with him. it was true for him, maybe, since he was a naturalized citizen who only came to the US in his 20s and still spoke in a heavy accent. but me, I'm American! I was born and raised here; I speak with a SoCal accent. white Americans will see me as one any other American.

I think it was only in high school that I realized he was right. by then I was at a school white a ton more people (2000 students) and more racial diversity.  

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the last part of this article in the NYT: 
...I told my parents they were wrong about who we were. We were Asian-American, not Asian, and we were definitely not Oriental.
“We’re not American,” they said. “We’re Asian." At least they didn’t laugh me out of the house for my arrogance.
“Asian-American,” I said. “Not Asian Asian.”
That was more than 20 years ago. On a recent visit to New Jersey, I asked my parents, former Reagan Republicans turned staunch Obama Democrats who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary, if they felt American now that they’ve been in the United States for half a century.
“Of course,” my mother said. “What else would I be? Even though other Americans don’t see me as American.”
“Well, who cares how they see us,” my father said. “They can think what they want, but it doesn’t matter to me.”
I hope he’s right. Regardless of how we are seen by others, we are the ones who can best see ourselves.

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New American Economy - Combatting the AAPI Perpetual Foreigner Stereotype