March 2007 – Feministe

“Pro-Lifers” care about women’s lives so much that:

–They deny confidential pre-natal care to pregnant teenagers. Because scared, pregnant girls should have to choose between telling their parents and getting decent medical care.

“Vast generations have been born without the type of medical care and prenatal care that we have today,” said Rep. Dan Ruby, R-Minot. “It’s great that people get the treatment early, but we don’t need to do something that is going to take away the authority of the parents, who are responsible for paying the bills.”

–They outlaw abortion, which is guaranteed to make the practice much more dangerous, and will jail you for up to a decade for performing an illegal abortion. There is a life exception, but not one for the pregnant woman’s health — so if she was, for example, going to go blind if she gave birth again, she could not terminate the pregnancy. The bill also has a rape exception, but no incest exception. Rape exceptions from “pro-lifers” are always interesting to me, because they’re a pretty accurate reflection of just how much anti-abortion legislation is about punishing women for sex, and not about the fetus at all. Women who get pregnant after rape — that is, women who had no agency or choice in sex — should have access to this medical procedure. But women who have sex because they want to should not. As usual, being “pro-life” is slut-punishing at its finest.

–They instruct doctors and nurses to figure out if rape victims are ovulating or if one of their eggs has been fertilized — and refuse to offer them emergency contraception (Plan B) if they are. Call me crazy, but I think that if you refuse to provide patients standard medical care, you should probably not be in the business of providing medical care.

–They smack down any dissent which would actually affirm the humanity of women, gay men and lesbians. Even more telling, “Last week, the Vatican rebuked a Jesuit priest in El Salvador who is a leading scholar of liberation theology, which emphasizes religious advocacy for the poor.” After all, if there was one thing Jesus hated, it was helping the poor and the downtrodden.

All of this reminds me why I love Eliot Spitzer. And why I’m glad we have an “assholes” tag.

Have an abortion, go to prison

This is what “pro-life” looks like.

Lawmakers with Mexico’s small Green Party have sent a bill to the Senate that seeks to toughen penalties for illegal abortions, a bid to counteract efforts by leftist legislators to legalize abortion, a senator said Friday.

Green Party Sen. Arturo Escobar said the bill, introduced Thursday, proposes increasing prison sentences – currently between six months to one year – to one to three years for women who have an abortion.

Is there anyone out there who honestly still believes anti-choice leaders and politicians when they say they care about women?

Outrage comes cheap these days, and death threats come cheaper

Bill Donohue, head of the watchdog Catholic League, said it was “one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.”

“It’s not just the ugliness of the portrayal, but the timing — to choose Holy Week is astounding,” he said.

My God! What could it be? What could be making the little vein throb in the forehead of anti-Semite and professional pearl-clutcher Bill Donahue now? ONE OF THE WORST ASSAULTS ON CHRISTIAN SENSIBILITIES EVER??? MY GOD, MAN, WHAT CAN IT BE?

Friday Random Ten

The “If I have to write one more massive paper about feminist legal issues, I might just go get a job as an accountant” edition.

Two down, and three to go. One more presentation. Then it’s time for revisions. My ass is significantly flatter from having been sitting on it for 15 hours a day writing papers. I *heart* law school.

1. The Notwist – Neon Golden
2. Tom Waits – Baby Gonna Leave Me
3. Bonny Billy – Sweeter Than Anything
4. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Witness Song
5. Guided by Voices – Learning to Hunt
6. Hi-Tek Feat. Big D and Piakhan – No One Knows Her Name
7. Des Ark – It’s A Hard World Sometimes For Little Things
8. Refused – Liberation Frequency
9. Spoon – Everything Hits At Once
10. Groove Theory – Never Enough

Friday Bonus Videos: Shakira Shakira!

Estoy Aqui:

You have no idea how long I spent singing this song over and over until I could finally get the really fast “fotos y cuadernos” part. And I still know all the words. Thank you Senorita Louden and 11th grade Spanish.

Ojos Asi:

The dancing! The red hair with the two-inch roots! The leather pants!

I will always love her unconditionally, even if I did like her a lot better before she was Veronica Lake. (Don’t tell anyone, but I secretly like this song too).

If you go to NYU…

Tune into NYU-TV today at 4. They’re doing a piece on the recent hike in birth control prices, and I was interviewed for it.

I don’t live in NYU housing, and I don’t even have a TV, so I’ll be missing the broadcast. Someone tell me how it is — they scheduled the interview with me about two hours before conducting it, so I wasn’t prepared at all, and I probably look like I got hit by a truck (the one morning I forgo drying my hair is the one morning I get videotaped. Oh, vanity). But that aside, I think the interview went relatively well, and hopefully it’ll be a good piece. And if anyone has the skills to record it and either send it to me or put it on YouTube, I’d be interested in seeing it.

With this ring, I thee own

At least, that’s what Phyllis Schlafly told an audience at Bates College. Get married, and you turn over ownership of your pussy to your husband, who can do whatever he wants with it. After all, you said “I do!”

At one point, Schlafly also contended that married women cannot be sexually assaulted by their husbands.

“By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape,” she said.

Phyllis must be feeling her oats now that the revival of the ERA has made her suddenly relevant again. Too bad most of her opinions are stuck in the 70s:

For nearly two hours, she belittled the feminist movement as “teaching women to be victims,” decried intellectual men as “liberal slobs” and argued that feminism “is incompatible with marriage and motherhood.”

Disappointing none – especially the gaggle of women students who showed up sporting T-shirts reading “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” – the presentation brought several moments of high agitation.

One came when Schlafly asserted women should not be permitted to do jobs traditionally held by men, such as firefighter, soldier or construction worker, because of their “inherent physical inferiority.”

“Women in combat are a hazard to other people around them,” she said. “They aren’t tall enough to see out of the trucks, they’re not strong enough to carry their buddy off the battlefield if he’s wounded, and they can’t bark out orders loudly enough for everyone to hear.”

Why does Phyllis Schlafly hate our troops?

Hate to break this to you, Phyl — but women have been serving as firefighters, construction workers and soldiers for quite a long time now. They’re even serving in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan — though of course it’s all unofficial, and they don’t get combat pay. But in a war where there is no front line, distinctions such as that are meaningless.

It’ll be interesting to see if she’s just a relic from another era (NPI) or if she’s actually got some new arguments these days. Interestingly, it seems like she was ahead of the curve on hating the homos:

“The ERA was a fraud,” she said, comparing it to the absurdities of the political correctness trend of the 1990s, which also preached gender neutrality. “(The ERA) pretended to benefit women, but it didn’t. It was just the nuttiness of feminists who were promoting an androgynous society. They didn’t put ‘women’ in the Constitution, they put ‘sex’ in the Constitution.”

She’s referring to the text of the ERA, which forbade discrimination on the basis of sex and did not specifically apply to women. Ol’ Phyllis, while an odious troll, is no dummy. She knew way back when that eliminating discrimination based on sex meant that the ERA could be used to eliminate discrimination against homosexuals — because of course telling someone that they can marry a man but not a woman is a distinction based on sex, and the ERA would provide a constitutional basis for challenging DOMA and state laws that forbade same-sex marriage. She even predicted back in the day that it would be used for that — but of course, nobody could imagine in those days that Teh Gays would want to get married!

One thing, though: can we PLEASE stop pretending that she’s just a li’l ol’ housewife? She’s a full-time wingnut activist, and she has been one for decades. She’s no more a housewife than I am.

Announcement

I just had to clear out over 200 spam messages from the filter and from various threads where they’d gotten through.

And, of course, added a whole new list of fairly common words to the spam list.

So do me a favor, before you write a comment complaining that your post is stuck in moderation, and why do your posts always get stuck in moderation, do you have something against me, huh, or can you just not handle disagreement:

DON’T.

Just don’t. If you ever want ANY of your posts to show up here again, DO NOT ask us why your post is in moderation.

Thank you.

P.S. Lauren, I know you had something to do with it.

Anti-Feminist News Coverage Is Bad For Your Health

Funny thing about reporting and editorial decisionmaking: the goal is to sell ad space. And what sells ad space? Stories about how feminism is failing women. Not so much, I think, because advertisers want to support a retrograde 50s fantasy of America, but because trying to stuff the little ladies back in the kitchen causes a sensation: the Guys Like Us, We Had It Made crowd loves to wave those stories around like a bloody shirt, saying, ah-HAH! Proof, PROOF that men are naturally meant to be on top and women were meant to serve! Whereas, the You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby crowd tends to take umbrage at the effort by the dominant culture to hold us back, and picks apart the story until it’s exposed for the crap it is.

And all the while, page views go up, newspapers fly off the shelves, people talk about the influence of your magazine, and both ad rates and ad buys go up.

Take, for instance, much of the content of the Style section in the New York Times and its support apparatus on the op-ed page, which has pushed everything from the ill-supported idea that women are “opting out” of careers early on and in droves; that pole-dancing parties are the new Tupperware parties; that Mommy is making you a slut; treat women like cyborgs while men are real people; laugh off emotional abuse as “cute”. And do we even want to start thinking about some of the stuff they run in the “Modern Love” column?

But one of the areas where this kind of thing can be rather blatant is in science and health reporting. Take, for instance, the recent scare-mongering about a study which may or may not have concluded that equality was harmful to women’s health. If that’s all you had ever heard about the issue — and it’s likely it was — you might think that the study actually had some merit. Certainly, the right-wing media seized on it, and loudmouths like Rush Limbaugh waved the bloody shirt.

Echidne, however, has heard more about the issue. Including earlier studies with better methodology that arrived at the opposite conclusion — yet somehow never got the kind of publicity that the Feminism Is Bad For You! Back To The Kitchen! study got:

Do you remember the big fuss the media made over the 1999 study by Kawachi and others which found that greater gender equality appeared to be correlated with better health for both sexes in the United States? How about the even bigger media fuss caused by the 2005 study by Chen and others which found that gender equality appeared to be correlated with better mental health for women? And surely you remember the excitement in the media last year when we all learned about the Swedish study which showed that both men and women have better health when roles are shared more equally at home?

You don’t recall? Neither do I, because there was no such fuss at all. Studies with those findings are not mentioned in the popular media at all or only fleetingly. But when a Swedish study in 2007 suggests that greater gender equality leads to less health for both sexes, what happens? You guessed it. The media is on the study right away:

Warning: feminism is bad for your health
By Roger Dobson
Published: 25 March 2007

Since before Germaine Greer published The Female Eunuch in 1970, and even before Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, campaigners have fought for sexual equality, convinced it is the key to a better society. Now researchers have discovered that gender equality may make people unwell.

It is most interesting, is it not? Consider this: Hundreds of studies are published each month in the social science literature, and only a very few of these are ever publicized extensively. How do those lucky studies get picked? Some of them are obviously important in their findings, but many are selected because they might sell more newspapers or get more television watchers glued to their sets. And I’m beginning to suspect (heh) that there is an ideological point to deciding which studies are to be given more advertising. It will not be studies which suggest that feminism is a good thing.

This has two important consequences. The first one is that the general audience obtains a biased understanding of what the studies show in general. The second one is that people like me have to spend an awful lot of time criticizing and analyzing the mispopularization of studies. It doesn’t matter how well I do that, because it LOOKS like all the studies out there are proving points for the anti-feminist side. What is urgently needed is some sort of a way of getting a more representative sample of studies into the popular debate. But this is not something the anti-feminists want to do.

Sigh. I am bitter, bitter.

Things weren’t always like this. Feminism gained astonishing ground in the 70s, until Phillys Schlafly got so offended that other women might be guaranteed the kinds of advantages she enjoyed that she put a stake through the heart of the Equal Rights Amendment, which had been overwhelmingly popular. And then the backlash started, and part of that was the rise of right-wing talk radio, which tapped into the lizard brain of the country. And after a while, editors figured out that anti-feminist stories got publicity. But not *too* anti-feminist, please — the trick is to stir up controversy without being so radical that the advertisers get turned off.

Perhaps, soon, newspapers and magazines will figure out that positive stories about feminism also get talked about, also create buzz, and also can sell ad space. Some advertisers may drop out, but others will take their place.

All of my wildest dreams have come true.

Beyonce and Shakira have done a song together.

The song kind of sucks, and the video kind of sucks even worse, but I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Beyonce. Shakira. Together in one song. It’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven. And, yeah, the “pearly gates” might actually be made of rusty iron, but hey, I’m still in heaven.

I saw the video in the gym this morning, and then walked out of the gym to discover that my favorite espresso place has opened up a store across the street. Previously they were only all the way on Avenue C, which is a 15-minute hike from my apartment in the opposite direction of anywhere I ever go. But now I have a reward for getting my ass to the gym before class. And this is a major motivator. I was pretty close to tears watching them make my cappuccino this morning. They only have one size — and it’s not Starbucks-huge! They don’t offer any flavoring! They have a beautiful stainless steel Italian-made machine! The barista only used the middle of the shot, and removed the cup before the end! The foam was superior!

Beyonce. Shakira. Cappuccino.

The only thing that could possibly ruin my day would be Lauren shutting down Feministe to punish me for writing about Beyonce again.

Hump Day Perversity Blogging

Oooookay.

Back when Little Light wrote that post about sacrificing virgins to Harry Benjamin, or whatever it was, she and I had this exchange in comments to the follow-up, after it fell apart for a long stretch.

I said:

What is a diplomatic way of turning aside the “…And I’ve always wondered something–why is it that you have to transition anyway? Isn’t it really about [misconception]?” It happens over and over again, on the Alas threads especially. I don’t know if it’s conscious, but it makes for some defensive, circular conversations.

And she said:

I’ve been trying and trying to figure that one out, lately. I was kind of hoping you had an answer. It seems like the very first and most lasting derail in every one of these discussions.

Indeed. My post was not about whether or not transpeople should transition, or whether or not it makes any sense for them to identify with any gender other than the one handed to them at birth. Nor was it about the impact that this decision from that community might have on the cohesion of feminist arguments. Little Light’s original post and follow-up, so far as I can tell, weren’t precisely about that either. And yet, my post and hers have become a place for this debate to be resolved:

I’ve been reading… I’ve Netflixed “Transgeneration”… and I still can’t help but feel like we’re going somewhere very dangerous with the assertion that sex is something one can feel.

I don’t want to feel opposed to transpeople. In fact, if someone wants to identify as another gender, I’d never be so rude as to refuse to refer to them in which ever mode they preferred. But I’d be lying if I said that I had reconciled the whole thing with the idea that women should have equal rights because we’re human and indistinguishable from men, with the exception of parts of us that contribute to our ability to reproduce.

If there IS some underlying difference, what does that mean? And is it ever really something that can be bridged? Why is it enough for a biological man to grow breasts, have his penis flipped into an approximation of a vagina, and take some estrogen? Women also menstruate for a good part of their lives: does a man who wants to be a woman feel an urge to cramp and bleed once a month? To feel the flutter of ovulation? Does he feel a need to be pregnant? To give birth? These are all things that only females can do and no amount of surgery can enable a male to, so I can’t help but feel that it’s largely a cosmetic change, in deference to the binary system. Why can’t he be a man in a dress?

(I left a response to it. Now I’m not so sure I want to handle this situation that way.)

I find this discussion kind of obnoxious, since it tends to interfere with discussions that are infinitely more interesting to me and which actually require responses from actual transpeople. I increasingly doubt that this one does. I am also, of course, implicated in it–my right to identify as anything at all is as suspect as that of the transsexuals Kim questions. And, of course, I’m not sure whether or not I can safely process my own thoughts and take questions at the same time.

So I thought maybe I’d turn the tables.

Transpeople! How do you feel about this kind of sidebar to trans-related discussions? Do you enjoy participating in it? Does it piss you off or make you uncomfortable? Does it seem to you to be worthwhile either for the sake of the answers or to clarify your own thoughts on the matter? Would you like to set some limits on it here in future? Would you like, perhaps, to devote this or another thread to it? Do you have any thoughts on how best to resolve it?

Thank you for your time!