"Ma'am, this is a jail."

October 26, 2015 11:10 AM

"GetYourCare.org was created to show that women have real choices when it comes to health care," the site says. "All across America, thousands of low-cost health centers offer women and their families high-quality health care." A press release from the Alliance Defending Freedom claimed that the facilities listed on the map "typically offer the full range of women's health services without all the scandal of Planned Parenthood." But in an investigation into the facilities, RH Reality Check has found that these "real choices" include hundreds of elementary, middle, and high schools; clinics that provide care for homeless people; nursing homes; pediatrics centers; and even the D.C. jail.

Related: "States are increasingly passing measures that force doctors to give patients incomplete or wrong information. Here's how that happens."

posted by divined by radio (47 comments total)

Horrifying. Infuriating. Cruel.
posted by ShawnStruck at 11:13 AM on October 26, 2015

Ugh, this is just awful.
posted by Fizz at 11:14 AM on October 26, 2015

This is infuriating. Completely infuriating.

The groups backing GetYourCare.org are no small-bit players. The Alliance Defending Freedom is a key architect behind legal strategies to frame anti-LGBTQ laws as protections for religious liberty. It had $35.5 million in assets, according to its 2014 public tax filings. The Family Research Council has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its homophobic vitriol. It reported assets of more than $4 million and revenue of $13.7 million in the fiscal year ending in 2014. Concerned Women for America and the Susan B. Anthony List both clock in with around $4 million in revenue according to their most recent tax filings. Each of these groups actively campaign to end access to safe and legal abortion in the United States, as well as to restrict access to contraception. Another sponsor, Americans United for Life, generates hundreds of the model laws that have been used by state and federal legislators to further the same goal.

Denying women access to healthcare and/or forcing them to have babies is Big Business.
posted by zarq at 11:18 AM on October 26, 2015 [14 favorites]

Why are there schools included on the map?

The more than 600 schools included on the GetYourCare.org map have reported/been identified as providing girls’ and women’s health care services at “school-based health centers” on location. Thus, the school serves as a very real option for girls and young women in the area who need healthcare.

Questions: first how are "girls’ and women’s health care services" classified, and second how many of these are private schools, or on the flip side, how many are open to any girl or woman who needs service? (Oh, none? Why are you including them on the map then? Right, to make this horrid picture look a little less appalling.)


"States are increasingly passing measures that force doctors to give patients incomplete or wrong information. Here's how that happens."

I look forward to the passage of the Cite Your Sources Act, wherein doctors are required to tell their patients why they are telling them various messages. Sure, your doctors will spend half their time providing verbal footnotes to their messages, but at least patients will be informed about the sources of the information.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:18 AM on October 26, 2015 [11 favorites]

From the link, "States are increasingly passing measures that force doctors to give patients incomplete or wrong information. Here's how that happens."

It would be unfair to say that the lobbyists pushing for these laws actually want Americans to receive inaccurate information from their health-care providers. The proponents of each of these types of laws are acting in their own interests.

I guess it would be more "fair" to say that the lobbyists don't give a flying fuck what kind of information Americans receive as long as they get their steak dinners.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 11:22 AM on October 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

he more than 600 schools included on the GetYourCare.org map have reported/been identified as providing girls’ and women’s health care services at “school-based health centers” on location. Thus, the school serves as a very real option for girls and young women in the area who need healthcare.

And I'm sure 90% of the time, these "school-based health centers" are just another name for "school nurse".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:23 AM on October 26, 2015 [22 favorites]

The actual document for the Texas subpoena of Planned Parenthood last week under the pretext of investigating Medicare fraud, including but not limited to: client records including all physician/nurse notes, procedures, graphs, charts, and lab tests; all employee records including home address, phone, salary; and all business records including appointment books, patient sign-in sheets, and scheduling.
posted by barchan at 11:24 AM on October 26, 2015

These same people would be outraged if the school nurse actually did offer a full range of women's health services.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 11:25 AM on October 26, 2015 [51 favorites]

... the Susan B. Anthony List ...

Who? "The Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization that seeks to reduce and ultimately end abortion in the U.S."

And they're named for the attempt to make Anthony out to be anti-choice based on specific readings of select quotes.

The actual document for the Texas subpoena of Planned Parenthood last week under the pretext of investigating Medicare fraud, including but not limited to .... Fffffuuuuu .... war on women in full. "Oh no, it's just for informing the decision makers, not intended to be a tour guide for violent anti-choice extremists."
posted by filthy light thief at 11:26 AM on October 26, 2015 [6 favorites]

How do people do this to one another? It just hurts my soul.
posted by Talez at 11:26 AM on October 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

Concerned Women for America and the Susan B. Anthony List

Oh hey, I wonder what their structure is?

looks like they are a c3/c4 parallel and a straight-up 501c4.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:27 AM on October 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, made that argument in court filings over his state’s efforts to strip Planned Parenthood of state reimbursements for services it provides to some 5,200 patients. When the federal judge hearing the case questioned why Jindal and his lawyers had included dentists and ophthalmologists in their list of facilities that could pick up the slack, Jindal’s administration had to back down and acknowledge that a dentist’s office is probably not the right place to go if you’re in need of a Pap smear or other reproductive health service.

"...the two health centers that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast currently operates in Louisiana — in New Orleans and Baton Rouge — have never provided abortion services in their 30-plus years of existence, according to a spokeswoman. So defunding them would not reduce the number of abortions."

Judge John deGravelles' ruling against Jindal's attempt to defund Planned Parenthood is here.
posted by zarq at 11:31 AM on October 26, 2015 [13 favorites]

These same people would be outraged if the school nurse actually did offer a full range of women's health services.

See Bristol Palin's recent ghostwritten blog freakout about the program at Chief Sealth that provides birth control to students. Hoooooo boy.
posted by palomar at 11:33 AM on October 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

Endless. The fucking attack on women's health and power and access to care is just endless. This is enraging.
posted by aka burlap at 11:35 AM on October 26, 2015 [14 favorites]

These same people would be outraged if the school nurse actually did offer a full range of women's health services.

I've told this story a couple times; the town meeting in question was one that the town organized about whether or not to open such a student health center. And yes, there was enough opposition that the school board had to hold a town meeting just to give everyone their say.

People sometimes wonder why I moved away from my small town, and why I don't ever want to go back to living in a small town. This is why.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:37 AM on October 26, 2015 [6 favorites]

The DC Dept. of Health's STI clinic is less than a block from the DC Jail at 1900 Massachusetts Ave., SE. I have no doubt that the people behind GetYourCare.org are ghouls, but confusing the two might explain how it ended up on the list.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:37 AM on October 26, 2015

See Bristol Palin's recent ghostwritten blog freakout about the program at Chief Sealth that provides birth control to students. Hoooooo boy.

Not a direct response to Palin's idiocy (it was written in 2013) but this essay from Skepchick is a good read with links to authoritative resources debunking some of the more common lies about IUD's. The IUD Option: Stigma, Falsehoods, and Shaming
posted by zarq at 11:39 AM on October 26, 2015

Jesus. Were the already-slimy "crisis pregnancy centers" not awful enough for them?
posted by zombieflanders at 11:40 AM on October 26, 2015 [8 favorites]

"Questions: first how are "girls’ and women’s health care services" classified, and second how many of these are private schools, or on the flip side, how many are open to any girl or woman who needs service? (Oh, none? Why are you including them on the map then? Right, to make this horrid picture look a little less appalling.) "

ACTUALLY ... my sons elementary school is on the map and I helped open the clinic there. It is a relatively full-service nurse-practitioner clinic that provides fairly comprehensive pediatric care AND, because it is a "community school" model (these are virtually all in high-poverty public schools), health care services to student's families, ranging from breastfeeding support to routine pre-natal checkups to heart health care for elderly grandparents. It does provide several forms of free birth control, which students over 14 may receive without parental permission or disclosure as per state law. It also provides pregnancy and STD testing under the same rules. It is a hospital-affiliated clinic run by nurse practitioners who are employees of the hospital and have admitting privileges there. It has three actual exam rooms; the school nurse's office is separate. Doctors can come to the school site for higher-level care or, more frequently, the clinic makes appointments at the hospital or its various outpatient service centers for patients and assists with transit when higher-level care is needed. There are five or six of them in my district, located in our highest-poverty schools, and cost around $100,000 a year each, via a combination of poverty grants, public health funds, and charitable support. They have very successfully reduced our once-highest-in-the-state gonorrhea rate and drastically improved pre- and post-natal care for infants of teen and 20something mothers.

They are not full service community health or reproductive clinics that can replace Planned Parenthood, but they are a legitimate site for the provision of non-surgical sexual health care for large portions of our community, and they're a darn site more than a "school nurse's office."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:49 AM on October 26, 2015 [47 favorites]

Watching this shit go on south of the border is making me increasingly tempted to offer a marriage of convenience to any woman who wants to escape this regressive theocratic misogynist garbage.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:52 AM on October 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

On the plus side, no elementary schools are listed in my city (Livonia, Michigan).

On the minus side, nothing is listed in my city. Not even the full-service hospital.
posted by Etrigan at 11:53 AM on October 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

"typically offer the full range of women's health services without all the scandal of Planned Parenthood."

Scandal? Oh, you mean the completely fabricated bullshit scandal?
posted by tonycpsu at 11:53 AM on October 26, 2015 [15 favorites]

How do people do this to one another? It just hurts my soul.
posted by Talez at 11:26 AM on October 26 [+] [!]

We all enjoy seeing other people suffer. It's a fact about human psychology that we can't ignore. Some people have learned to some degree or another to replace the pleasure of watching other people suffer with other pleasures, but nevertheless that aspect of ourselves remains in us all.

One reason why left political movements so often have trouble getting traction is that the left typically doesn't offer as many opportunities to make others suffer as the right does. I'm not sure how we can really fix this problem.

To quote Solzhenitsyn:

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:55 AM on October 26, 2015 [11 favorites]

They are not full service community health or reproductive clinics that can replace Planned Parenthood, but they are a legitimate site for the provision of non-surgical sexual health care for large portions of our community, and they're a darn site more than a "school nurse's office."

(A) That's awesome, but (b) that's not the case for all the schools listed.

In fact, virtually none of the 60 schools RH Reality Check contacted from the list said they provide health care to girls and women in the community.

That includes Wearwood Elementary School, which sits nestled at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains in Wears Valley, Tennessee. Wearwood, which teaches students from kindergarten through eighth grade, is part of a rural farming community—and not the first place you might think to go for an STI screening.

Instead, the clinic is like many other elementary school nurse’s offices, where a full-time school nurse provides limited care to the 190 students in attendance.

The nurse primarily tends to the school’s one diabetic student, the principal, Jon Manning, told RH Reality Check in a phone interview. She can also treat scrapes, fevers, and headaches, although the district has a telemedicine program for more serious ailments.

posted by jaguar at 11:58 AM on October 26, 2015 [9 favorites]

Eyebrows - my comments were in no way meant to slight the schools which do have a more comprehensive health system in place, and I apologize if it sounded thus. That absolutely was not my intent.

However, it is still important to note that schools which do have a more comprehensive health support system are the exception, rather than the rule.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:01 PM on October 26, 2015 [8 favorites]

like if this list were composed by someone who was really really interested in women getting reasonable health care, and if that person composed the list by:

1. calling every single school and asking if they provide community health services for adult women, and
2. only adding those few schools to the list that actually confirmed that they do in fact offer those services,

then maybe talking about how some few schools provide community health services would be a reasonable objection. However, given that the list was composed by someone googling for "health care" or whatever and then including every single result regardless of whether or not that result was relevant, without, in fact, even thinking of checking if any of the results were relevant, it's sort of beside the point to note that those few schools that provide community health services exist.

One can tell from the form of the list that it is not a tool to help women find healthcare, but instead a weapon designed to help prevent women from receiving healthcare. It must, therefore, be discussed in terms that reflect what it actually is. Discussing it as if it were a tool for women instead of a weapon against women is a distraction.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:10 PM on October 26, 2015 [9 favorites]

Discussing it as if it were a tool for women instead of a weapon against women is a distraction.

All warfare is based on deception.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 12:12 PM on October 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

We all enjoy seeing other people suffer. It's a fact about human psychology that we can't ignore.

Speak for yourself, please. Many of us emphatically do not enjoy seeing others suffer.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:17 PM on October 26, 2015 [22 favorites]

"GetYourCare.org was created to show that women have real choices when it comes to health care"

Having lots of bad or imaginary choices is not a substitute for a guarantee of access to good health care. Republicans have so cynically appropriated this kind of language for Orwellian purposes that they can't even be internally consistent; women having real decision-making power over their own health and bodies is exactly what this plethora of shitty/non-existent choices is intended to forestall.
posted by clockzero at 12:23 PM on October 26, 2015 [9 favorites]

Republicans have so cynically appropriated this kind of language for Orwellian purposes that they can't even be internally consistent; women having real decision-making power over their own health and bodies is exactly what this plethora of shitty/non-existent choices is intended to forestall.

Absolutely — though one problem I have with Orwell is that he tended to divide the uses of language into 1) clear and straightforward language used by good people, and 2) tricky serpentine language used by malefactors.

In reality, language is a battlefield, and the ultimate purpose of any statement is the force it exerts in the world, rather than some abstract "meaning" inherent in the words used.

I think it's interesting seeing this thread so relatively hot-on-the-heels of a thread about how teen and preteen girls are incredible at inventing secret languages. If you're relatively powerless, the only people you really trust are the people who speak your secret language, because that's the only language that can't be turned against you.

If you want real health care, it's a bad idea to call the Republican Party or consult their public lists. It's probably a better idea to call Jane instead.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:46 PM on October 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

EmpressCallipygos: "However, it is still important to note that schools which do have a more comprehensive health support system are the exception, rather than the rule."

Absolutely true, and you're only going to find it at "community schools" or "birth to college centers" or things with similar names.

However, in high-poverty urban areas they provide increasing quantities of sexual health services, they can bypass parents to reach teenagers directly, they cut out a lot of transportation and accessibility problems for teenagers, and they have to be part of our conversation if we talk about getting sexual health services to younger women.

I also just think it's kinda funny that this group is all about keeping women away from sexual health services, and they managed to pinpoint and neatly list all the easiest places in my town for teenagers to get free pills and condoms and STD testing, in private and with accurate information and no abstinence-only stuff. I think most people think these are just glorified nurses' offices that also do immunizations ... they don't realize they're quite sophisticated health clinics with a strong focus on the sexual health of teenagers. Thanks for the advertising, putzes!

I also note that, leaving aside the school clinics, every clinic that "GetYourCare" highlighted in my area either provides abortions or does direct referrals to Planned Parenthood, but they failed to highlight a) the gigantic billion-dollar Catholic hospital that officially does not provide referrals to Planned Parenthood (but on the down low totally provides referrals to Planned Parenthood) or b) the super-Christian anti-abortion "pregnancy crisis center" that is literally across the street from the main Planned Parenthood branch. These guys are AWESOME at web-scraping! They also managed to miss like all the ob-gyn resources, all the breast-cancer resources, and all the post-natal care resources (for-profit and non-profit and free clinics alike). I mean basically they successfully discovered a handful of school health clinics and the small number of outpatient clinics providing abortions that aren't Planned Parenthood. The physical rain-soaked yellow pages that sat on my doorstep for six day before I recycled it could do a better job after being through the pulper.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:46 PM on October 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

"choices in health care" in all fields is a death trap for many. Both times I had my worst health crises I was extremely fortunate to have a GP who knew and could refer me to some of the BEST practitioners in their field, which make it possible for me to be here griping today. I worry about the lack of real standards in health care in America (not to mention the unlicensed "experts"), and personally about my Medicare HMO's use of local "Catholic Hospitals"; the influence of Religious Doctrine on their quality of care goes beyond women's health, especially now that California has passed a "Right to Die" law - it appears that my Advanced Directive may be declared sinful and I might be kept painfully 'alive' for a long time.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:53 PM on October 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

You Can't Tip a Buick: We all enjoy seeing other people suffer.

No, "we all" don't.
posted by zarq at 1:27 PM on October 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

What feels like a million years ago I had to have an abortion. I was 20 years old. I was very catholic at the time, but more afraid of my also very catholic parents finding out. The father of the child was more interested in not marrying me (first words upon learning of my unfortunate state) then he was about making sure I was OK. What I remember was sitting in a tiny little room in the Planned Parenthood in Newark. A young woman sat across from me- there was a pay phone there. She got on the phone to ask who I presume was her partner if he could come get her. He couldn't- he had to work. They had me sit there for several hours with a dilator to get to the place where they could safely do the procedure. The only thing I remember of that day is her face crumpling then stiffening up again because she knew she had to do this alone. If there is a regret in my life, it was that I was too miserable to reach out to her at that time. But at least we had a place to go - a place that changed the course of my life and I am sure the course of hers. How can these people live with themselves knowing they are denying that ? There have been several threads talking about conservative women going to PP for procedures. What exactly are they winning with this? High moral ground? I know these are rhetorical questions, but I am just so very tired of watching this happen for the last 30 years- back and forth, forth and back- we never make any progress because we keep covering the same thing over and over again.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 1:33 PM on October 26, 2015 [21 favorites]

I also just think it's kinda funny that this group is all about keeping women away from sexual health services, and they managed to pinpoint and neatly list all the easiest places in my town for teenagers to get free pills and condoms and STD testing, in private and with accurate information and no abstinence-only stuff. I think most people think these are just glorified nurses' offices that also do immunizations ... they don't realize they're quite sophisticated health clinics with a strong focus on the sexual health of teenagers.

Okay, that's the case in your town, though. Do you know that it's the case in my home town? Or LuckyMonkey's? Or witchen's? Or....

Again, I apologize if my mis-statement slighted the robust health services in your schools, but I'm not certain that taking me to task for mis-speaking is quite the best way to combat the conservatives here.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:44 PM on October 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

You Can't Tip a Buick: We all enjoy seeing other people suffer.

No, "we all" don't.
posted by zarq at 1:27 PM on October 26 [2 favorites +] [!]

I refer back to Solzhenitsyn on how the capacity for evil cuts through us all. Also, I must note the idea of the Abominable fancy, the longstanding belief that one of the pleasures of heaven is getting to watch the torments of the damned in hell.

I suppose there's a good chance that the what-appears-to-me-to-be intuitive truth of the claim that we all enjoy the suffering of others might be a side-effect of me having soaked up enough Christian ethics from the surrounding society to have internalized them, even though I have a cordial dislike for most forms of institutional Christianity and for Christian metaphysics. We may, on the whole or in individual cases, be better than Solzhenitsyn, Augustine, or Aquinas thought. I'm not going to bet the farm on it, though. Apologies for the derail.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:46 PM on October 26, 2015

The physical rain-soaked yellow pages that sat on my doorstep for six day before I recycled it could do a better job after being through the pulper.

Well, I mean, if your whole research technique is to search "women health care -"planned parenthood"" and just share the first page of results, then this is the list you probably get.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:32 PM on October 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

I fear to speak this theory for fear that to name the devil is to give him form...but I hope this is just my paranoia as well. I think I know what the next move is for the Anti-Choice forces, and the underpinning motive of the Planned Parenthood suites.

Winning the litigation is not the strategy. The strategy is deposition and discovery, followed by a wiki-leaks style dump.

They're requesting physician orders, nurse's notes in their discovery requests. That stuff is usually not anonymized, not internally.

All it's going to take is one Kim Davis style clerk activist at the litigant's offices with a small bit of tech savvy, and then the radical anti-choice movement is going to have doxxes. On every abortion doctor and nurse with planned parenthood. On every PP employee. On every woman in the State of Texas who had an abortion, or an IUD, or pregnancy counseling with PP.

I suspect that is the real endgame- gaming legal discovery procedures to dodge around the anonymity of providers and clients. It will make GamerGate look like a mild summer storm.

I just hope that as it was with my estimation of the XFL, my own cynicism and paranoia is wrong and off target.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 2:57 PM on October 26, 2015 [10 favorites]

That's been pretty much my assumption, and I think someone mentioned it above, too.
posted by jaguar at 3:22 PM on October 26, 2015

I'm going to start calling the GOP the Gilead Original Party because A Handmaid's Tale is looking like a blueprint for these assholes more and more every day that goes by.
posted by mostly vowels at 3:23 PM on October 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

And even if they don't leak patient names, the threat (spoken or unspoken) that they might is likely to keep people from seeking services in the future.
posted by jaguar at 3:25 PM on October 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm not sure if this is so well known that it's everyone's underlying assumption, or not at all well known and therefore confusing some commenters, but the idea that women have "thousands of choices" for healthcare other than Planned Parenthood is a major talking point for groups pushing for the elimination of Planned Parenthood. The inclusion of as many "options" as possible on this list, regardless of what services they do or don't provide, is the entire point; these groups are trying to inflate the numbers as much as possible, in order to convince lawmakers and judges that Planned Parenthood is unnecessary.

It's not about steering women away from Planned Parenthood (though that's a nice bonus), it's about "proving" that Planned Parenthood's services are redundant.
posted by jaguar at 7:25 AM on October 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

Mod note: Couple of comments deleted. We can discuss these points without getting pointedly personal in a weird way, and also please don't bring "I flagged this" meta-discussion into threads. If you need to talk about flagging, come on over to the contact form.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:14 AM on October 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

There was apparently some confusion over terminology; "Community school health clinics" are open to the entire community -- not just students -- although they are obviously most-used by students and their families. They are hospital-run as part of the hospital's network of clinics, and so while located IN schools, they're not part OF the school, but part of the hospital system. Some community schools are retrofitted, which isn't as great and can limit access; the purpose-built ones often have separate entrance areas for things like community clinics. (Community schools in general intend to use the school as a community center, especially in neighborhoods that have been otherwise hollowed out of services and public spaces.) It is a good model for providing (non-surgical) reproductive health care services to underserved and high-poverty communities -- while it is currently common in high-poverty, dense urban areas, our hospital partner is looking at expanding it into rural schools whose service areas often include NO health care services at all, and women can't get birth control because they can't easily access anyone who prescribes it.

At any rate, I only meant to answer questions about how these not-well-known clinics operate, not to defend the idiots running "getyourcare" or to suggest that all schools with nurses should be on the list. They are an exciting newer model of care for underserved communities, and if women in your community have limited access to reproductive health care and you'd like some concrete steps to take to remedy that situation, I strongly recommend looking at community schools health partnerships and seeing if your community can create one. It only attacks part of the problem w/r/t women's access to health care services and it isn't a complete solution by any means, but it is a good PARTIAL solution that reaches some very underserved communities with some (not all) of the services they need. Opening an out-patient surgical clinic (like Planned Parenthood) is hard and requires a lot of expertise; opening a community school health clinic you can swing in 18 months and involves a lot less red tape. (And, we've found locally, takes some of the burden off full-service women's health centers -- like Planned Parenthood -- by making some of the lower-level services -- like STD counseling, testing, and treatment, and birth control access -- available in more places so the full-service centers can focus more resources on the higher-level services requiring more expertise. YMMV by local availability of care.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:27 AM on October 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

People sometimes wonder why I moved away from my small town, and why I don't ever want to go back to living in a small town. This is why.

Nothing personal Empress. But that is why small towns remain fixed in the past.
posted by notreally at 10:13 AM on October 27, 2015

Nothing personal, but that smells a lot like well, how hard did you fight back? It's not the responsibility of the oppressed to suffer in order to fix the broken-ass shit rained down on them, even aside from the fact that it's not like everyone suffering under that crap is able to get out. Plenty of people think that situation is shit and don't have Empress' ability to get away. How are they responsible for the regressive situation?
posted by phearlez at 11:35 AM on October 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

Nothing personal Empress. But that is why small towns remain fixed in the past.

My moving away from one single small town in Connecticut has had a ripple affect on the societal and political state of every small town in the country?

My goodness, I had no idea I had so much power.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:32 PM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]