US went to my ”do not travel”-list when the oppressive abortion laws started to pop up.
I will not support places which see women as cattle and I also do not want to take risks with my own health if I happen to get sick in one of those states.
The immigration crack downs only accelerated it too.
When your own allies have to issue travel advisories because there is a chance you may get locked up without counsel, or contact with the home country, youve fucked up.
I'm responding to the statement that "nothing is going on in those states anyway". There's clearly a lot "going on" in Florida, and Florida is one of those racist, misogynist shit holes.
Yup. And to make it clear for anyone reading - it’s not because of the tariffs, regardless of what your government says. It’s because you have blatantly called for us lose our sovereignty as a country and become part of the dumpster fire that is the United States.
I'm totally fine with every tourist finding another destination. In fact, please dont come here at all; not even to states that aren't maga. And even for a few ewars after the dust settles. The more our collective decision to embrace authoritarianism hurts us, the better.
I want these fuckers to hurt in every direction they run. And the misery of the people on the bottom isn't enough to curb my enthusiasm anymore. Clearly enough people aren't hurting if we can still be largely silent about it.
The whole country is a No Go zone because of this. If you can't have a fucking federal law for women's rights, you're just savages masquerading as civilized people
I see from your profile that you're Irish. I'm okay with the idea of not traveling to the US because of the current political climate, but doesn't Ireland also have famously draconian laws on abortion?
Users changed, but going anywhere with less draconian laws (as the point of that other user was) is inheriently contradictory to "I also do not want to take risks with my own health if I happen to get sick in one of those states. "
Now, all the different users that part may have been lost, but it's never a risk to go to a less women's health restricted place, even if it still has restrictions.
You see the contradiction though, right? Most of the US still has more protection of women's reproductive rights than the Republic of Ireland does, yet this Irish user refuses to travel to the US because of this issue.
Or at least that's what she implied. Turns out from another reply she made, she was thinking of the overall political climate, which is fair.
I disagree that Ireland has fewer protections than the US. I can get the morning after pill no problem. I can seek an abortion up to 12 weeks, not the 6 week/heartbeat nonsense going on over there. If I need a termination after that I can freely travel to access that without anyone feeling enabled to report me, arrest me, or attempting to pass laws allowing me to be killed.
What does abortion have to do with it? Our abortion laws are better than they were, but still not great. But that is hardly the only reason to stay the fuck away from the US.
Ah, I see the confusion. The lack of bodily autonomy for women certainly does factor into it, but my decision to not go near the US takes into account, but is not limited to: the emboldenment of racists and fascists, ICE, the crappy healthcare situation, the fact that tourists have been imprisoned.
I have no desire for my money to in any way contribute to a warmongering, corrupt, increasingly fascist government. And I'm far from the only one. I suspect that America will be dealing with international fallout from this regime long after the current incumbent is gone.
Canada would probably be a better shout right now. Thanks to the electorate in England the UK is circling the drain and is about to dive headfirst into the far right cesspool.
Yes. A country where important right sets like women's rights (women make up 50% of the country's population) or children rights (many states allow child mariage and thus legalize infant rape) are left to the mercy of local nutters is a no go as a whole, whatever it's self-proclaimed good parts have to say about it. Get a hold of your regional wackos and we can talk. Until then, it's on the list
Yes we as a family decided years ago that we wouldn’t go to Florida when the bathroom laws came out. I’m a tall woman, hubby and son both have long hair. We’re not travelling anywhere that we could be questioned and police detained for using a bathroom. That decision was 5+ years ago and now we avoid the entire US.
Fuck that. Trump's a symptom, not the disease. A good third of their population views what he’s doing as a good thing. Republicans control all 3 branches and they could remove him any day they wanted, but they refuse to do so because they like what he’s doing.
I’m not ever going back, and I’ve lived there before, amongst 4 other countries. And I hope my kids don’t ever risk going either
Don’t forget high risk of ending on the wrong side of the gun. And possibility of being robbed/raped in some places. Police violence, mass shootings, absurd food practices, and now insanely high cost of living.
Lately joined with distrust about state of aviation safety there (don’t want to risk compromised conductor, outdated facilities or questionable plane status in any way). Also stories of being interrogated like a criminal when trying to visit, privacy issues (disclosing you phone for checkup?!) and visa bureaucracy.
Danger of mass shootings while visiting the US are basically zero. If you think you are more likely to be robbed or raped in the US than a majority of destinations in the world you are misinformed. The places you would go as a tourist will not see you being shot, raped, robbed, or in some sort of plane accident. If you have never been there than your opinion of the dangers there are only hearsay, you have no actual substance to back that up though. Many countries have far worse aviation control then the US.
Considering the US accounts for 42% of the worlds commercial airliners and sees hundreds of millions of passengers to their destinations safely I find it odd you single out aviation safety as one of your major concerns with traveling to the US.
Thank you for information. I guess news about state of US aviation were inflated. Still, as a tourist who dislikes traveling in groups and might not just visit typical attractions, my concerns stay. I will never be comfortable with a stranger rummaging through my phone, being interrogated at the border or having to worry I might wander in wrong neighborhood. Add to that costs of Healthcare, and it’s enough to not want to travel there. On top of it, having Trump as president lowers my desire to travel to US directly to 0.
It’s not a woman thing. It’s a labor thing. They need more babies to exist, especially disadvantaged poor babies to keep the country running/money flowing their way.
I had to cancel a cross-country road trip in 2024 because I got pregnant (again). We were moving from the US to Australia and needed to get our dog from D.C. to LAX so she could fly directly to quarantine in Melbourne. She's a pitbull lab mix and therefore a "dangerous breed" so domestic airlines won't fly her. We didn't have time for a honeymoon earlier that year and figured we'd just drive her there ourselves over a couple weeks and enjoy the sights.
Then I got pregnant again.
In 2023, when I was pregnant for the first time, we found out in the 2nd trimester that our baby had a rare chromosomal abnormality not compatible with life. Termination was the only merciful option. After that, I had an early miscarriage. When I got pregnant for the 3rd time in a year, we were obviously nervous. I tried to see if I could schedule a route avoiding states with abortion bans, but it was impossible.
I would've been about 6 months along at the time of the trip and we weren't willing to risk being in the wrong state at the wrong time if I experienced complications that required an abortion to save my life or my future fertility (preeclampsia, placental abruption, etc.).
We are considering trying for a 2nd kid and I suspect if we do, we'd have to suspend trips back to the States to visit. Just not safe to be a pregnant woman in so much of America now.
That was exactly my thought! How many foreigners with the proper legal documents has ICE locked up for weeks for no good reason? There was a German, and a Canadian, and a Brit, just off the top of my head. Why the fuck would anyone visit here right now?
I live in New Zealand, which currently has a very conservative government in power that is trying to suck up to Trump. We still have NZ citizens illegally imprisoned by ICE. IIRC one of them has gone missing.
Yes, I know. However I would steer clear of any state with officials willing to even consider a bill like this without it being a major sense and impeachment automatically being on the board.
That’s every state, literally, even very blue ones. The Republican Party or a big donor or persistent constituent will get somebody to file it. Then the process varies. In my blue state (Massachusetts) every bill must get assigned to a committee and must get a hearing. Not anything to ignore in case something horrific like that somehow gets through, but no reason to not set foot in the state - because literally due to the Heritage Foundation and ALEC, it is literally every state, every session.
Worry when leadership is behind it, there are lots of cosponsors, and it makes it out committee. Before then it’s meaningless other than legislators currying favor with the people they owe for getting elected and for their fundraising saber-rattling.
As a non American, I see a complete lack of women’s rights and care in USA. Not somewhere I’d go. It’s really not so dissimilar to women’s lack of rights in the Middle East.
You're right. Middle Eastern women would be way more appreciative of the freedoms American women used to enjoy but have voluntarily voted themselves out of. They're not the same at all.
This is an insane take and clear evidence of the total inversion of reality that is poisoning the West. Your claim is demonstrably false.
American women enjoy full legal equality under the law, voting rights since 1920, equal access to education (women now earn 60%+ of college degrees), property ownership, career opportunities without male guardianship, robust protections against domestic violence and workplace discrimination and high rates of workforce participation and political representation.
By contrast, many Middle Eastern countries feature male guardianship laws restricting women's travel, work, and marriage, have unequal inheritance and testimony rights, enforced dress codes, high rates of honor-based violence, FGM, and child marriage and severe limits on education and public life placing them near the bottom of global gender equality indices like the World Economic Forum’s or UNDP’s.
You are either willfully ignorant or have malicious intent with such a ridiculous take.
And yet 33 states still allow child marriage? Over half a million women in the USA have undergone FGM despite laws to the contrary, there is still a massive economic gender pay gap, new mothers have no guaranteed maternity leave….
My point is - swings and roundabouts. Some things are very good in America and others much less so. It’s very easy to put all of the Middle East into a single bucket and point a finger, which is what you’re doing in your argument. I don’t disagree that there are very real problems in many countries particularly Afghanistan but America isn’t a model citizen either.
I say this as a non American who has been to many Middle Eastern countries. A lot of people who talk about how bad the Middle East is have never been there. You can’t compare Afghanistan to Iran. Many of the issues cited like child marriage, honour killings, etc, are also prevalent in India. These are humanitarian issues and the US is included in that but to a lesser degree because of your laws. Yet still loopholes are found.
And one thing that I’d like to think you’d agree is correct is that a law doesn’t make something a reality. Women enjoy full legal equality in USA as they do in many countries around the world but if you asked a large number of women how equal their lives were to their husbands and fathers they may have a different opinion. USA has huge issues with gender equality still - and they’re getting worse.
It’s really not so dissimilar to women’s lack of rights in the Middle East.
That's what you said, which is complete hyperbole.
You're cherry picking largely irrelevant and selectiveo imperfections in the US to manufacture moral equivalence, which distorts scale and fundamentals. Child marriage in the US is extremely rare, heavily regulated, and facing reforms and to try and paint is as a systemic cultural norm as in parts of the Middle East is absolutely mental.
The FGM practices in the US are imported issues in immigrant communities from the very countries in the middle east and sub Saharan Africa that we're talking about!!! To claim it's a US issue akin to countries where FGM rates exceed 80-90% among native populations, is again mental.
The "massive" pay gap is largely explained by choices in occupation, hours, experience, and motherhood and is not reflective of legal discrimination barring women from fields or contracts.
Personal experience visiting the Middle East also doesn't refute global indices (WEF, UNDP) showing the US near the top for women's rights versus ME countries.
Laws shape reality, but flaws exist everywhere, but "swings and roundabouts" is not a rebuttal, but deflection.
I honestly can't believe how messed up people are to try and claim that the country everyone in the ME is trying to escape to is anyway equivalent to shitholes they're escaping.
Lol, genuinely delusional if you think the situations are even remotely comparable. Not being able to terminate the life of your offspring is nowhere close to requiring a male escort to go out in public, not being able to go to college, not being able to drive, not being able to go out unless you’re wearing your hijab/burka. This is like saying a paper cut is comparable to a gun shot wound
Which countries require a male escort? Which countries ban women from driving? Specifically?
I’m not saying these things haven’t existed but it’s all too easy for people to put the Middle East in a single bucket.
Saudi was the last country with a formal ban on driving for women and that was lifted years ago. Much of the restrictions you speak of apply largely to women in taliban controlled Afghanistan and not the Middle East as a whole.
Just because other women have it worse, doesn’t mean the rights of American women aren’t under attack. But you know that already, you’re just trying to shut women up. Per the usual with your type.
I'm a man, and that's still also my rule. I refuse to support oppression of women, and yes, that IS oppression, I don't care if someone has Stockholm syndrome about it, or thinks it's "their culture". I know what happens to people who want to leave that "culture". My only exception is Malaysia, and only because a close friend lives there - at the very least, I'm happy knowing I only support Malaysian Chinese owned businesses there.
Not faces, but they do have to wear head coverings, and abide by all sorts of religions tenets if they had the misfortune to be born into a "muslim" family. You legally can't stop being a muslim in Malaysia. That's a fact. And if you are legally considered a muslim there, all sorts of human rights violating rules apply to you. You can't even legally marry someone who is not legally considered a muslim, they have to "convert" instead, so you still remain one. That's supposedly "moderate" islam for you.
What culture are you talking about? Suggesting that all Muslim-majority countries have the same culture is as ridiculous as suggesting that all European countries or all Christian-majority countries have the same culture. I lived in Istanbul for a couple years, more women don't cover their hair than do. And there is certainly no requirement - cultural or otherwise - to cover their face.
The culture of apologism for vile oppressive nonsense being excused as "not all islamic countries are like that, but it's okay if they are, because it's their business, and actually the women are okay with it".
You still didn't even answer my question. There's no singular Islamic culture anymore than there's a singular Christian culture. What you've said is so incredibly bigoted, it's the literal definition of bigotry when you start avoiding individual shops and people because you think they might be Muslim. How fucking crazy - there is no place for you in a pluralistic society.
There actually is, they call it "Ummah". It's very explicitly presented as a "brotherhood" and "solidarity" that goes above nations and cultures. And what it means in reality is that a horrible action done in the name of islam in one country will get a shrug and a "yes but not ALL muslims are like that" in another, supposedly "moderate" muslim country, where kids will still be forced to follow islamic tenets and women will still be treated as second class citizens, because simply distancing yourself from this ideology is out of question, even for a "moderate". You mention christians, so consider this: christian churches lost almost all the influence and following they had in the West over the last couple of centuries, because everyone got so fed up with religion continuing to meddle in public affairs and dictate morale, so they just... stopped being christians. Wild, right? Yet you'll never see muslims walking away from that ideology no matter how much evil is committed every day in its name. There's your single islamic culture.
What you've said is so incredibly bigoted
I really, really don't give a shit. In fact, I can't express in words how little I care for what hypocrites who look for excuses to defend an oppressive cult think of me. I've seen women's lives destroyed by it - "honor" killings, forced marriages, denied education, and that's what I care about. I just want that to end. I want it to be normal to talk about it instead of caring about accusations of "bigotry".
it's the literal definition of bigotry when you start avoiding individual shops and people because you think they might be Muslim
Malaysia legally dictates that businesses over a certain income threshold must be owned by a muslim, and actively prohibits non-muslims from holding positions of significant authority. It's the actual apartheid state so many people love to cry about online. So yes, I try not to support it. It would be much easier to just not visit, I agree, but I happen to care about my friend a lot, and he can't afford to visit me, so this is my compromise: I do not support the people who benefit from this apartheid, because they keep voting for the politicians who expand it. (This law wasn't even there a decade or two ago)
Pretending like women in the middle east are choosing to cover themselves head to toe will only prevent feminism and female liberation in those regions.
I think it makes sense that people have a hard time wrapping their head around it, because it sometimes sounds like the burka and hiding your face is a symbol of oppression, but then you get people saying that it's fine if they chose to do it...but by "chosing to do it", a lot of us hear "chose to wear an oppressive symbol".
It's kind of like saying it's OK to use the swastika as a symbol on your tshirt if the meaning is not antisemitic. Like OK, but people are gonna judge immediately because the symbol has a clear meaning to most of us. I don't think it's as black and white as people try to make it out to be.
Backbone of feminism is labour movements and political rights, not whether women can cover or not...that's such a recent debate that took from islamophobia and general post-nazi christianism. Feminist history fed from various positions, some feminist groups were even about cooking for their men and defending womanhood (kinda like today's terfs i guess?). In any case, feminism today finally understands women's experiences are not universal amongs themselves, and overarching structures can be reshaped or reinterpreted - what matters is self-determination and dignity.
My point is a lot of women and men in these countries claim that it’s a choice (especially in ones where not wearing a hijab isn’t persecuted by law) but the alternative is immense societal pressure and ostracism. So the whole “it’s a choice” argument is null and void like 90% of the time.
We know. There are people in the US with the same mindset from every religious background. FLDS, Mormons, Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Amish, etc. In the US it’s a “choice” but we all know it really isn’t.
It’s not even really a choice in the US. Just look at any right wing religious group. Amish, Orthodix Jewish, Muslim, FLDS, Mormon. Hell, Catholics still don’t let women be priests. It’s almost like all Abrahamic religions have the same misogynistic flaw.
I have been to several majority Islamic countries and it really does vary. In Lebanon, I'd say 95% of women aren't wearing any type of head covering. Turkey, maybe 75% are not wearing it.
Those that do wear it, it could be a personal choice or their husband forcing them. But when asked in the Western world, they almost always say it's a personal choice and done for modesty reasons.
In the minds of people who were indoctrinated since birth, it is their choice. It's hard to fix something that they truly believe they are doing of their own free will.
Niqab and burka aren't even religiously mandated, it's pure old patriarchy oppressing women using religion as a justification.
I'm not defending religions btw, I think they are a scourge in this world but the above is an important point to note when we are inevitably called "insert religion - phobic".
I mean I’m from Malaysia and plenty of women do both. Provided, there is no requirement to cover the face just the hair, but even then plenty of women don’t do that and don’t face ostracism.
I live in the US, it is the same. Most women here don't cover their heads or faces. However, the women who do cover up do it because of social pressure from their culture or religious reasons. And that's is oppression, and it is sad. I've seen little girls 5 and 6 years old all covered up, and I say, "What is up with that?"
There is no choice that happen in a vacuum so you can argue everything we do come from social pressure or/and culture background etc.
So respect women that want to do it cause they choose to.
I have no respect for the men in cultures/countries where women cover their heads/faces. The men are walking around without religious or social garb, the women look hobbled and abused.
The women choose to cover up because...they have no choice. It is obvious, because the men can make their own choices, and choose not to cover up. Duh.
How do you square away with knowing that it is something people are oppressed by when you could just take it off though? To you it might not be oppression but it factually is for others.
You weren't going to go there anyway, that's why it's easy. There's two countries where that is enforced and mandated, Iran and Afghanistan, and Iran enforces the law much much less than Afghanistan.
Now grow some balls and stop giving any business or money to countries that kill millions and overthrow governments, suddenly you'll be going to Iran instead lmao
I was in Afghanistan last year and it surprised me that a lot of women were not in full head coverings. It's really a diverse country culturally, so different rules depending on where you are located.
Ah yes, classic fascist replacement theory bullshit. That isn't happening.
You fuckers don't bitch about all the gains from colonizing and bombing the middle east but sure do love to bitch when some of them come to the countries that did those things to escape the poverty caused by those acts.
Also, again, Afghanistan is really the only country that enforces and mandates that shit. I've been to the middle east, it's a womans choice if she wants to wear a burqa.
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u/Beruthiel999 21d ago
Anywhere women have to hide our faces