Morning, ladies! Oh, and gentleman. Welcome to Women’s Studies 101. We’re going to be talking today about reproductive rights and how we can combat legislative attempts to curb them. I am sure that you already have some ideas on this topic but I’m going to take a new approach here that I'm certain that you haven’t been exposed to before: math! I’ve prepared this lesson to take your special needs into consideration and I have faith that you’ll grasp the concepts, but if anyone has any questions, just raise your hand. There are no stupid questions, just stupid answers! I’m sure I’ll have many because I'm a man! Hahahaha haha!
Before I begin though, how about a round of introductions? I’m Tom Perez, new leader of the DNC and I’ll be your professor even though I have never studied this topic before. Perhaps our (hopefully white knight) gentleman would like to introduce himself?
Um, hi! My name is Bernie and my phone number is 555-486-9365 in case any of you ladies would like to hear about my plans to solve classism for you. Just make sure to hit mute after I start talking because I hate when women interrupt me. The call costs 27 cents per minute and should be made once per week to show your ongoing fealty. You can also subscribe by email.
Lovely! Now ladies, just yell your names out all at once. I want to hear the collective roar of your fierceness!
Hmm. We’ll have to keep working on that every day, I guess. To restore your self-esteem! You are smart and valuable and I am going to make sure that each and every one of you learn enough to ace my class!
Now, as I said, this topic is going to be covered using math! Isn’t that exciting?
While many people disagree on whether reproductive rights actually exist or should be accessible or even matter at all, I’m going to put that aside so that we can focus on the facts. This is where math comes in! I know that some of you might be new to math, so I’ll be hosting a social tonight in the student union for anyone who needs tutoring or anyone who just wants to hang out with our other excellent ladies. And man. Mustn't forget our very special man!
The math tutoring agenda is secret so you don’t have to be anxious about people identifying your need for help by your attendance. I’d like everyone to copy the event information down from the board so no one can tell who needs help and who doesn’t. Great! Thanks!
Math. The thing that’s really great about math is that it’s completely objective. By using an objective, scientific approach, we can show how best to protect existing reproductive rights. We’ll just assume for the sake of argument that everyone here agrees that reproductive rights are good.
Well, of course we do but in terms of the overall struggle, we can’t pay attention to “identity politics” issues like that. We need to be focusing on economic issues at all times. I learned all about them in Econ 101 this morning and I think that's what we should really be talking about.
Thank you for that valuable input, Bernie. It was Bernie, right? Ok great. Unfortunately, women’s economic issues are Women’s Studies 102, so we won’t be covering them this semester. I hope that’s ok. Moving on!
We’ve already agreed to a premise that reproductive rights need to be protected, by which I mean, we’ve decided that this is the point upon which we will be basing our argument.
I didn’t.
You don’t have the option to disagree with a given premise. That’s not how a premise works. You give a premise and you argue based on the assumption that it’s true. Arguments about the premise aren’t part of the exercise. We can argue the validity of the premise some other time.
Grumble. Fine. I’ll agree that that is a promise. For now.
Perfect! Well, premise, not promise, but otherwise, perfect. You are exceptional, Bernie!
Yeah, I know. A little birdie told me that before.
How lovely for you! So the real question is, how do we protect reproductive rights and the answer, as I keep saying, is math! The important thing about protecting reproductive rights is ensuring that Democrats are in as many seats as possible, even if those Democrats are expected to vote against reproductive rights. Makes sense, right? I’ll give you an example, in case that was too confusing. I hope word problems are ok.
If there is a legislative body that is 52.9% Democratic, and 76.6% (repeating of course) of those Dems are pro-reproductive rights, that offsets the 47.1% of the body that will be voting against them. It’s just basic, simple math. By having that 52.9% Dem count, the vote will be won by 2.9%. Now if the Dem count is 47.1% instead, we have a problem, because now the vote will be lost by 2.9%. This is why it’s so important to support Dems even if they disagree on reproductive rights.
Hi! My name’s Hilla…
For the safety and security of the women in the class, I’m going to ask the women all to avoid using your real names. I totally forgot to say that earlier, sorry. This is a good policy for other classes as well, so if you don’t mind, could you pick a name to go by that can’t be used to identify you? Thanks. Oh, you should use different names in different classes too. That way creepers can’t follow you around just because they have you in a class and know your name. Your safety is important!
Um, ok, uh, I guess I’ll go by Hildegard? I’m not following this logic very well. Could you show us that math on the board please?
Certainly! And thanks for being brave enough to ask that first question! After all, there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers! And stupid men, amirite? Hahahaahahaha oh. Ha. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Hopefully the men in your lives aren’t terrible, but if they are, our student health center and our Women’s Department have resources to help you, all free of charge and anonymous! Just come talk to me after class and I’ll pass your name and number to them.
So let me write these numbers out again, since that’s literally my job, and… here we go!
So here’s what I’m confused about. If we have 52.9% Dems and 76.6% of them would vote to protect reproductive rights, that would only be about 40% of the vote being for reproductive rights.
Ahh yes, a common misconception! Remember that we premised that we all agree on reproductive rights, so that 76.6% figure is just a distraction. Just forget that that number was even mentioned. In fact, let me just erase…
But…
Now then, as everyone can see, if we have 52.9% of the body as Dem, then the vote goes 52.9% for protecting reproductive rights! This is why it’s important to vote for Dems even if they stand against reproductive rights. It’s the only way to counter the GOP’s anti-reproductive rights votes.
If I may come to the board for a moment?
Well, I guess that’s ok. I mean, if you feel safe coming up here. I mean, I have no objection if you don’t.
Why does she think she’s entitled to have a turn at the board?
I need to explain this to the women so that they will understand as well as you do. Since you already understand, you don’t need a turn. Hopefully, my working side by side with a woman on this problem will make it easier for them to do the math in the future all on their own, which is the real goal here.
This class is rigged.
Since only 76.6% of the Dems would vote for…
Remember the premise.
This isn’t how math works!
No, I promise you that the math works. We’ve had teenage boys looking at this for months over at Reddit and they all confirm the validity of the math.
I’m a geometry professor. I teach logical proofs in math.
Well then, I’m certain that you can see how well the math works out.
This isn't even how to use a premise! Your conclusion was a subjective non sequitur!
Ladies? Let’s give a hand to “Hildegard” here, I mean "Professor Hildegard" here for helping you with this very difficult math problem! Kudos to you, smarty skirt!
But we’re talking about people’s rights to own their body-- a huge safety and human rights issue-- which by the way, allows women to work, making it an important economic issue.
Wo ho ho let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Economic issues are next semester, remember? That's the advanced math.
But this is important.
That's it for today! Next class we'll start looking at abortion data to statistically determine which demographics are most in need of this crucial service!
Attributions:
Tom Perez speaking at Duke, original image, photoshopped
All other images blatantly snagged from the internet for this piece of obvious political satire, falling under fair use.
