Someday I should make a recording...

[moominmuppet]

Apropos of nothing, except a random reminder that I'd meant to post about this:

We get a lot of bizarre chants and insults from the protestors outside the clinics. I mentioned recently that I was amused by "Wicked Witch" -- we also get "Deathscorts", "Evil Vultures", "Mother-of-Death"/"Daughter-of-Death", and "Young Lady" (which I despise more than any other, although they often attempt to use it ingratiatingly). Additionally, they spend an awful lot of time talking about how we could possibly take this "blood money", and suggesting other ways we could earn our income. One once offered to pay me double what I was making to come join them on the other side (yes, the amusement value of all this is that we're volunteers, as you'd think they'd bloody well know by now).

The woman who tries to stealth bless us with holy water over the fence amuses me no end -- she's constantly chasing cars with her little plastic water shaker, dousing whatever she can, and sending little squirts over toward us. I wonder what she thinks will happen if she hits us?

Many of our regulars have their own bizarre little chants: "They want to kill your baby, and they want to kill YOUUUUUUUUUU" is a favorite, for example. Various factual bullshit is common too: "Abortion causes cancer" is a perennial favorite, but sometimes they go the "post-abortion syndrome" route, and sometimes they go the "colostomy bag" route. Some of the least appealing and creepiest descriptions of sex I've ever heard are common too: "When your father went inside your mother..." Insults toward the men accompanying the patients are a common topic, usually starting with "A Real Man Wouldn't...." And, of course, there's the expected "Mommy, Mommy!" "Daddy, Daddy, save me!" "Grandma, Grandma, don't let them do this to me" "I speak for your baby" crap that sounds insanely creepy coming from a chorus of adult male strangers.

Weekend before last, though, one of our extra-crazies spent most of the day screaming the following:

"A Real Man wouldn't let another man anywhere near his woman's privates!"

Even aside the myriad other things wrong with that statement, it's so good to know that our health is of such great concern to this psycho that all of modern gynecology should go out the window, and we should return to describing our ailments from behind screens. *headdesk*

And they wonder why we don't take them seriously.

I wish I could remember the wording on more of the extra-crazy ones, but I think at some point I should just make a phone post to LJ when I'm out there so people can hear for themselves.


And yes, laughing at the protestors is at least in part a way of coping with how incredibly angry they make me when I'm walking intimidated and crying patients past their onslaught of cruelty and bullshit.

Most telling (lack of) reaction? That a patient can turn to them, in tears, and yell to them that she has cancer, and has to have this abortion, and the yelling doesn't even abate.

Best patient reaction I've seen in ages? A woman turned, looked at one of them, and yelled back "Ooh, baby, you're makin' me hot *smoochie noises*" That baffled and befuddled them for a good few minutes.

Comments

[moominmuppet.livejournal.com]

*chuckle* Your secret's safe with me (and the rest of LJ)

I do kind of like it when the patients yell one-offs, but it frustrates me when they get sucked into an ongoing interaction -- that usually happens when the patient thinks there's something vaguely rational going on, and if they explain, the antis will understand their situation. It's doomed to failure, and it just encourages the antis, so I try to dissuade that approach.

The thing that frustrates me the most, though, is regarding patients who decide not to have an abortion. I'm all good with that. I'm glad we've got the counseling that helped them sort that out. Choice, yadda-yadda. But why the hell do so many of them feel a need to respond to the protestors on their way out with some sort of "Don't worry, I decided not to" reaction. Honestly, I understand it on one level. It's a way of deflecting some real nastiness. But I really wish they'd think for a moment about the fact that unless their minds were actually changed because of the antis (in which case it would be fair for them to "give them credit"), or unless they've suddenly become anti-choice for all women (in which case it shouldn't matter to them), all they're doing is encouraging the antis behavior toward the next patient, because the antis see every patient who decides not to abort as a "victory" for them, rather than a normal part of the counseling process.

I just want to say "Hey, remember them? The ones that were screaming horrible shit at you? Why are you encouraging them to do this to the next woman? Why?"

Mostly, I wish we didn't live in a culture where patients and their families felt they owed any explanation or justification at all to those fucks. Or to me, frankly. I get why patients and their families often tell us escorts their stories and seek reassurance. I don't mind that, but it hurts to see them feeling so guilted by our culture that they're seeking that kind of reassurance from an almost total stranger.

[moominmuppet.livejournal.com]

*chuckle*
Well, always interesting at least...

[threetoedcharli.livejournal.com]

Where I work we have a protestor with a giant sign that says "ABORTION TARGETS BLACKS"- it is my personal favorite. I'm so over the photoshopped signs of "aborted" fetuses. I also am amused by the ones that see a woman who may or may not be Latina and start yelling at her in Spanish.

[moominmuppet.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love the racial profiling that goes on in their approach to various patients. Sometimes they're planning loudly enough that we can hear it. Last week we heard "They look Chinese -- let me try to work on them, I wanna talk about what they do to babies in China". The black genocide argument is a pretty common one, and we hear a lot of it (all from white men, which tends to get a lots of eye rolls and expletives from the patients they're addressing).

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that every PP clinic in Cleveland gets protestors except East.

[moominmuppet.livejournal.com]

I find that deeply bizarre myself, although I've had conversations where it's been suggested that some practical issues like lack of sidewalk, lack of parking for protesters, etc, could be major factors.

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

Hm, I wonder.

There is a sidewalk and street parking there. Definitely. There's a sidewalk at our place, but no street parking, and no parking in the adjoining businesses' lots, but we still get protestors.

I wonder! I really do.

[cupcakecomplex.livejournal.com]

Ernie, the "Life Counselor" as I walk down Shaker Blvd, through the side parking lot, and into ours, as I do every Tuesday:

"How many children are you gonna kill today? You were never a glob of tissue in your mother's womb, you were a child in your mother's womb! From the moment your father entered your mother! You have a belly button to verify that! Check your belly button in the shower tonight- your momma plead ya and fed ya for nine months! That child MUST spend nine months in the womb! Abortion is birth control! Abortion is murder!"

I've had it yelled at me at least twice a week for the last 8 months. I mouth it back to him to prove to him that I know exactly what he's going to say, but he says it anyway. I know it perfectly by now. I hope to forget it some day.

[moominmuppet.livejournal.com]

Oh, Ernie drives me nuts -- he's the one usually responsible for the creepiest images of sex, too. *shudder*

At least he's so obviously psycho that he doesn't get much patient attention, for all his screaming. John's much smoother, and so much more of a hassle to deal with.

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

My favorite response to an anti that I've heard of involved the whole, "They're going to kill your baby." "Good, that's why I'm going in," or something like that.

[moominmuppet.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's a wonderfully sensible reaction. I bet it stops 'em in their tracks.

[syrinx-77.livejournal.com]

holy water'll make you melt, you know.