Q: When is terrorism not considered terrorism?
A: When it's by the American right wing and directed against women.
As Zuzu writes on Feministe:
Why is it that the media and the government never calls the "pro-life" groups who plant bombs at women's clinics what they are: terrorists?
From the AP article, entitled "Explosive found at Austin women's clinic":
AUSTIN -- A package left at a women's clinic that performs abortions contained an explosive device capable of inflicting serious injury or death, investigators said today.It was in fact an explosive device, said David Carter, assistant chief of the Austin Police Department. it was configured in such a way to cause serious bodily injury or death.
The package was found Wednesday in a parking lot outside the Austin Women's Health Center, south of downtown Austin.
Nearby Interstate 35 was briefly closed, and a nearby apartment complex was evacuated while a bomb squad detonated the device.
Actually, I shouldn't say "from" the AP article. Because that was the whole thing.
Had that bomb been found outside a post office or a school, the headlines would have been hysterically running on about ZOMG TERRORISM TERRORISM IS AL QAEDA INVOLVED? And the right-wing warbloggers would be pissing their pants and hyperventilating about profiling Arabs and banning Muslims from public life and dhimmitude and how if they had been there, theyd have stopped it with their concealed carry and their extra-super special powers of righteousness, just like they saw in a movie once and BOMB IRAN! and 9/11 CHANGED EVERYTHING!!! but they still have better things to do than join the military, but theyâll be happy to go into the woods and hunt Russians and shout WOLVERINES!!
But it's an abortion clinic, so. Ho-hum.
For some reason, terrorism doesn't count if itâs directed against women and their health care providers. It's just not news, and the fact that it goes unremarked in the national media â and hell, even in the local media, as in the case of the Austin bomb -- contributes to the idea that women are not important and that violence directed at women is not only to be expected, but to be dismissed.
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