Sorry, it's not just difference, it is danger

And other links for your Sunday

This week, a couples’ therapist wrote in The New York Times about helping a politically divided couple stay together. Her conclusions are trite and her insights are deeply out of touch. She argues,

To protect this brittle and distorted version of reality, we resort to extreme defensiveness. We frame opposing arguments as a threat to our identity and values. In psychoanalytic terms we call this the paranoid-schizoid position. We all tend to drop into this state of mind when we’re under extreme threat. In certain circumstances, it can allow for powerful acts of courage, but it’s also a state in which nuance and complexity are intolerable, and it’s too easy to see difference as danger.

She writes as if the differences between Republicans and Democrats are just silly little intellectual disagreements about the tax code.

But the reality is so much starker. I read that op-ed on Wednesday morning and then later read an article about Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Defense Department opposing women’s roles in active combat. Anti-LGBTQ hate crimes are at an all-time high, and Republicans are waging a harassment campaign against a trans congresswoman.

The home is the most dangerous place for a woman. It’s the place where she is most likely to be attacked or sexually assaulted. And yet, Republicans are passing laws and plan to continue to pass laws that take away a woman’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom and plan to erode access to no-fault divorce.

To say these are differences and not dangers is to openly tell one part of the population that their lives and their freedoms are less important than marriage.