Related Links

New HPV vaccination study and the SOTU GOP response

Equal pay is a “special handout”

O’Reilly’s Obama interview

Anti-masturbation video

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking to Rachel Jones from the Guttmacher Institute about a new study showing abortion rates are down again. The 2014 election season is gearing up and the “war on women” is a big part of it. Also, clinic escorts talk about their work and I ask what it means for the abortion clinic buffer zone case.

New study about the HPV vaccine shows something anyone with a passing knowledge of human nature could have told you.

• hpv vaccine *

I don’t buy people who argue that a vaccine against a virus most kids don’t understand that well will be a bigger factor than things like sexual desire, social reasons, and fears about the bigger emotional issues around sex. They have to know that kids don’t think about it much one way or another. They’re just looking for any reason to stigmatize the vaccine because it’s related to sex, full stop.

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2014 is an election year. Granted, it’s not a presidential election year, but it’s of course important all the same. It’s widely accepted in the news media that January of a midterm election is a time when the big themes of the election get rolled out, and I’m here to tell you that the “war on women” is not going away just because Republicans got hammered in the last election cycle because of widespread public disapproval both on the existence anti-feminist policies and, especially, the perception that attacks on reproductive rights and women’s opportunities are being elevated above other concerns. What seems to be happening is that Republicans think they’ve got a strategy that will let them have it both ways, so they can both deny they’re waging “war on women” while continuing to support policies that are bad for women. They unveiled that strategy in the response to the State of the Union, which was given by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who talked about her son with Down’s syndrome, and used his story as a way to undermine pro-choicers.

• 2014 1 *

She phrased it in as much upbeat, positive language as she could, but the message was clear: No reason women could come up with to decline giving birth now or ever will ever be good enough. Since you can give birth, you must give birth. Or else you are somehow denying the existence of human potential. Women’s real lives and struggles are flicked away as uninteresting and unimportant. But they put that ugly sentiment in the mouth of a woman, more worried about deflecting conversation than having it. Because it’s really hard to make the anti-choice cause if you have to look individual women in the face and tell them they don’t get to say no to giving birth.

It’s clear that the hope is by bracketing off opposition to reproductive rights and saying it has nothing to do with women, Republicans can shut down this whole “war on women” narrative. Republicans did applaud the president during the State of the Union when he mentioned equal pay, though most of them voted against the legislation to secure it. But Republicans are going up against a formidable enemy if they want to convince the public that just because they oppose abortion rights and easier contraception access doesn’t mean they hate women. And that enemy is conservative pundits. This is how a Fox news anchor responded to Obama’s call for women to be paid the same as men.

• 2014 2 *

That’s just straight-up bullying. If you say you want women to get equal pay for equal work, then suddenly you’re a whiner who doesn’t know how to keep her head down and just do her thing without being a fussypants. Painting basic fairness as asking for special handouts is a way of shaming women for being women. The idea is to shame women by making them feel like they’re weak people if they demand fair treatment instead of stoically bear under unfair treatment. I’m sure that works on plenty of women, sadly, but it also makes it harder to deny that this isn’t about a war on women.

But the knee-jerk desire to blame everything on women really came roaring out during Bill O’Reilly’s interview with President Obama, where O’Reilly straight up decided to pin the entire problem of poverty on women’s sexual and reproductive decision-making.

• 2014 3*

Obama pointed out that he does address it all the time, but in a sense, that’s beside the point. This claim that poverty is pretty much strictly a result of unmarried mothers has been playing on constant repeat on Fox News, for one simple reason: They don’t want anyone to do anything substantive on poverty. If they can convince people poverty is just the result of people making bad or supposedly immoral decisions, then it’s easy to convince people the only real solution is to throw their hands in the air and say, well nothing can be done. No need to address unemployment, low wages, income inequality. Just a few lectures about your sexual choices and giving up. But this whole notion that unemployment and poverty is a result of quote-unquote out-of-wedlock childbearing is really silly if you think about it. We’re in the midst of an economic crisis that is similar to the Great Depression, and, as with the Great Depression, there is chronic unemployment and poverty. But was the Great Depression caused by a sudden upswing in children being born out of wedlock? No, most children were born to married parents then. And the rate of single motherhood has been high for decades now, with economic upswings and downturns. The two things just really aren’t that related.

But it also shows why the “war on women” isn’t really going anywhere, even though making everything about judging women’s personal choices keeps coming back to haunt Republicans. As this example shows, talking about women’s choices is a great tool for deflecting discussion about real issues, like poverty. Don’t want to talk about income inequality? Mention women’s personal choices and now the debate is about something else. Republicans have created a cage that they can’t really escape from with this one.

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Insert interview

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Freethought Blogs is one of my favorite places on the Internet, and late in January they really demonstrated a good reason why, by holding a conference online that covered a variety of issues that are interesting to people interested in skepticism, secularism and religious freedom, and science. Not only is it cool that they are trying to diversify the conference experience and make it more accessible by putting the panels online through Google Hangout, but they also really had a great diversity of topics covered at the conference. That included a lot of issues that are really important to the listeners of this podcast, such as reproductive rights, sex education, feminism, gay rights, and things like that. I was tickled specifically to see a panel on clinic escorting and what it’s like, because this is a topic that really needs to be better understood. That’s especially true now that an abortion clinic buffer zone case is in front of the Supreme Court. One of the clinic escorts on the panel talked about how hard it is, emotionally, to deal with people who spend hours taunting you.

• escort 1 *

Clinic escorts have a non-engagement policy in most, probably all programs. When I’ve talked to people about this, a lot of them find that puzzling, because, I think, there’s this lingering hope that arguing back when people pick on you and bully you is an effective tactic. And it might be in some situations, but this is not one of them. The reason is pretty simple: Anti-choice bullies are there to shame and bully. They claim they’re there to change women’s minds, but let’s just say that if that was actually happening, abortion clinics would notice women not showing up for appointments. If you engage them and especially if you fight with them, they feel vindicated. Honestly, a lot of them are kind of wacky and are just desperate for attention. So it’s very important not to give it. To be blunt, anti-choice protesters are trolls, and feeding trolls is a very bad idea when doing so just encourages them. One of the panelists, Katie Klabusich, gave a good example of the kind of trollery they’re up against.

• escort 2 *

I think that story is quite telling, because the “but they’re old people, be nice” argument is basically the argument that the anti-choicers brought in front of the Supreme Court when arguing against the 35-foot buffer zone in Massachusetts. They brought an elderly woman forward as the plaintiff and both insinuated that her age makes her harmless and that her age means she’s owed an audience. But as this anecdote shows, that’s ridiculous. Old people can be mean bullies. Old people are not entitled just by the year they were born to boss you around and tell you who you can hang out with and what you can do with your body. This is about entitled bullies who think they get to treat women however they want. That’s nonsense. Being polite means not bothering people who are going to the doctor. Since they can’t do that, they don’t really deserve basic politeness in return. They definitely aren’t entitled to the “right” to yell in people’s faces.

Clinic escort Niki M, who is African American, explained her frustration with protesters who white-splain at her or stereotype her.

• escort 3 *

There’s the racism, and then there’s other stereotypes that they bring to clinic escorts.

• escort 4 *

I find it incredibly telling how often I get this from anti-choicers online, too. They really do tend to think I’m more than a decade younger than I actually am, that I’m single and I have sex with a lot of men, and of course, that I’m just greedily gobbling up all the birth control pills in between my monthly abortions. It’s all very strange, but it’s telling, too. It’s really a projection of their anxieties about women, sex, and power. There’s a lot of resentment there for young women for being part of a generation that has been given a lot of freedom to have sex on their own terms, to make their own choices about education and career, and to get married when they want to instead of being forced into it at a young age out of social pressure and guilt. Along with the racism, the sexism really drives home how much this is about social control. I mean, that should be obvious, since duh, they’re bullies. But the lie that anti-choicers are somehow just super fetus lovers is so ingrained that it might actually be used as the disingenuous pretext to take away even basic protections for women against these bullies. And that would be a shame. Anyway, if you want to see this panel and others, check out ftbcon.wordpress.com.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, evading masturbation is like fighting off an enemy like the Nazis during a war [edition]. Yes, that’s the overwrought metaphor being used in this video trying to convince young men that masturbation will destroy them.

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They recommend, and I’m not kidding, that young men team up to fight their urge to masturbate together, seeing themselves as allies in a war on, well, I guess themselves. It’s really a confused metaphor. It’s both funny and really sad, because teaching young men to hate their very normal desire to masturbate is about teaching them, on a deep level, to hate themselves for no good reason.

The post Why Abortion Rates Are Down, and the ‘War on Women’ in 2014 Elections appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

Dee Dee Bridgewater

Tim Armstrong apologizes

Is Obamacare to blame for the AOL situation? No.

The truth about Obamacare and business

Phil Roe is fixed, so now it’s wrong to cover baby related expenses

Obama appoints openly gay athletes to Olympic delegation

Billie Jean King on the Olympics

Limbaugh gets even more incoherent

Micromanaging your clothes

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking to a representative from Media Matters about their study of gender balance on cable news. Pregnant women’s right to medical care is under attack, and it looks like February will be the month people really started talking about sports and gay rights.

Dee Dee Bridgewater, jazz singer and NPR host, offered her voice to the Draw the Line campaign by talking about her illegal abortion she had in 1968. Her testimony is very brave.

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This is a nice reminder that the abortion debate isn’t about whether or not abortion is good or moral so much as it’s a debate over whether or not women should get the abortions that they will definitely be having in safe, supportive environments or whether or not they should be forced to humiliate themselves and put themselves in danger. That’s all there is to it.

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We love to idealize pregnant women and new mothers in our society, from sentimental Facebook updates to push presents to soft music in commercials about family that are supposed to make you cry. It’s this idealization that allows anti-choicers to float the idea that pregnancy is so wonderful no one should be able to get to say no to it. But all that idealization tends to evaporate the second that anyone starts demanding that pregnant women actually get the real support and care they need to have healthy pregnancies with good outcomes for mother and child. The recent debates over health care have really driven home how true this is. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong came under fire recently for deciding to sneer at women who had complicated pregnancies. Armstrong, who made over $12 million in 2012, stepped in it big time.

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Since it could only be a couple of women he was talking about, the big angle was that he invaded their right to privacy and made a spectacle out of their sufferings. He immediately apologized, though it was also unearthed that he had been sued in 2005 by a woman who accused him of basically punishing her at work and even kind of harassing her for daring to be pregnant with quadruplets. She lost all but one of the fetuses during that high stress period. But regardless of Armstrong’s sincerity here, this entire episode points to a larger trend: We Americans claim we love babies, some of us so much so that we think women should be forced to have them. But the second we’re asked to demonstrate that love one teeny weeny bit, then everyone starts squalling about how it’s unfair and mothers should be completely on their own and how dare you ask anyone to do anything supportive for anyone else. On Fox News, host Martha MacCallum denounced Armstrong for his remarks but then tried to blame the whole thing on Obamacare.

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They claim they aren’t blaming the babies, of course, but c’mon. They’re trying to claim, as is Armstrong, that Obamacare is somehow forcing AOL to shell out more for insurance benefits, but as the LA Times business reporter Michael Hiltzik pointed out, “As a large employer, AOL doesn’t face any new healthcare mandates under the Affordable Care Act, except to allow employees to keep children on their health plans up to age 26.” Fox News, therefore, is using these babies in exactly the same way that Armstrong was, in an attempt to scare the audience into thinking that all our health-care costs are going to skyrocket specifically because pregnant women are supposedly greedy gobblers of all the health care. Never mind that health insurance plans generally had maternity coverage before, and, at best, Obamacare just shores it up and makes it more secure.  For some reason, women using the health-care system to have babies is second only to women using the health-care system to cover contraception in terms of conservatives griping about how unfair it is that people can use their insurance plans. The right-wing media is not generally trying to scream and yell at how unfair it is that you got cancer and got to use more of the insurance than I did by not getting cancer. But when it comes to women and the management of their reproductive systems, we’re apparently supposed to pay cash for everything or else we’re supposedly getting away with something. Take Rep. Phil Roe’s messed up remarks at a Heritage Foundation summit.

• pregnancy 3 *

He and his wife’s, uh, fixing was, I guarantee it, covered by insurance. In fact, sterilization is now mandatory in all insurance plans under the contraception mandate. His children no doubt got all that pediatric care he is now denouncing. Since he’s a congressman, should he get prostate cancer or testicular cancer, something his female colleagues can’t get, that will also be covered, despite his insistence that insurance companies should only cover the care that every single person in the plan could anticipate needing. This is a very confusing health-care policy, and from someone who claims to oppose confusing health-care policy! Okay, so it was good for health-care plans to cover obstetricians and pediatrics when he and his wife had kids, and it was good for health-care plans to cover contraception when he and his wife got “fixed,” but now that they have no more need for that, your health-care plan should not cover any of that and you should pay cash. I’m not sure a health-care system that only covers what Phil Roe and his wife currently need is really the best idea. It certainly doesn’t seem fair. It seems narcissistic, in fact.

Here’s the thing: The claim that health-care plans should only cover what the person speaking currently needs right this minute and no more and no less is clearly nonsense. That’s why it’s inevitably tied to maternity care, pediatric care, or contraception care. The hope of the speaker is that cultural misogyny will do the work, that people will get so caught up in being mad at women that they had sex that they’ll say of course maternity care, pediatric care, and contraception care, because they all go back to a woman’s, uh, sinful decision to have sex, should be treated like luxuries instead of standard care. You know, like the kind men get. But what he’s really arguing for here is ending the insurance system altogether and replacing it with a pay-as-you-go system. That argument will never fly, so instead you get this misogynist drivel to distract you instead.

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insert interview

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Gay rights and acceptance have gained a lot of ground in recent years, at least in the United States. Gay marriage is being legalized one state at a time, the federal government is recognizing gay marriages, gays can serve in the military and polling data shows that the youngest generations don’t even get why this was ever really an issue in the first place. But there’s one area where things seem often just as backwards as they ever were: sports. Out gay athletes are few and far between, especially in men’s sports. A lot of people justify this by simply saying that there’s no reason to bring sexual orientation into sports, but gay rights supporters will point out, correctly, that this is just another way of telling people to stay in the closet. But in the past couple of weeks, the standstill on this issue shows real sign of movement and the refusal to talk about it and the attempts to just keep it in the closet in the sports world are beginning to crumble under immense amounts of pressure. The big issue, of course, is the Sochi Olympics. Seeing as they are in Russia and seeing how Russia is currently in the process of persecuting gay citizens under its ridiculous ban on gay “propaganda” that is so vague that being out is in and of itself propaganda, simply not acknowledging the issue ends up being straight up complicit with homophobia and persecution. So yes, people are talking. And it’s fascinating. President Obama made a bold move to make his views known.

• gay 1 *

A third delegate, Brian Boitano, came out shortly after being appointed. Billie Jean King had to cancel her trip at the last minute because of her mother’s illness, but she gave an interview where she recommended a way for the media to help get pro-gay opinions out into the coverage of the Sochi Olympics.

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Overall, the Sochi situation has meant that the issue of gay rights and being out as an athlete is being talked about, a lot. The fact that there aren’t very many out athletes is beginning to look kind of strange, because it can only mean that a lot of people are living in the closet for years at a time while pursuing an athletic career. The fact that the Olympics employ rainbows in their branding has been a big boon to this, because you can’t turn on any Olympic coverage without being subtly reminded of the discourse. Retired ice skater Johnny Weir, who is openly out, is one of the most prominent commentators for NBC for the Olympics. He has used this platform to get even more attention by wearing the outrageous but always stylish clothes that he favors, which ends up operating as a visual argument for why the ugly, hateful conformist attitude behind the gay propaganda law is so sadistic and dehumanizing. It’s all very interesting.

During it all, the focus on gay visibility shifted abruptly over to the question of football as college player Michael Sam, who was generally expected to do well in the NFL draft, announced that he is gay. If he gets drafted, he’ll be the first NFL player to be out while playing. He gave an interview to ESPN when he came out to the public at large.

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That’s if he gets drafted, however. Unfortunately, there’s very real fears he won’t be and that his sexual orientation will be the reason. Sam is the SEC Co-Defensive Player of the Year, and the NFL tweeted out their support for him, but immediately the media was flooded by anonymous NFL executives giving worrying comments about how this could hurt Sam’s prospects. The concern trolling in the mainstream media was irritating enough, but then, of course, you had the ugliness in the right-wing media.

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No real need to argue against this rant, as it’s nonsensical rambling, an attempt to come right out and say that he thinks gay people should be discriminated against without saying that. The notion that it’s somehow standing up for gay people by barring them, on the basis of homosexuality, from sports, is farcical on its face, and may even be dumber, if that’s possible, than claiming straights are under attack because gay people want to be included in mainstream America. But this is the kind of incoherent response that homophobes are coughing up, which is why this discussion about gay athletes and coming out is long overdue. It’s not like the opposition has anything intelligent to say on this, after all.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, micromanaging how women clothe themselves edition. HeartCry Missionary Society founder Paul Washer put a sermon on YouTube where he goes on and on and on about how women need to dress themselves.

• washer *patto

You’ll notice that, as usual with these things, the rules are vague and always available for being changed on a moment’s notice. He is so broad here about clothes outlining your body being wrong, you can’t help but wonder if he thinks that belts and fitted blazers are the devil’s work. Maybe? Who knows with these guys. The one thing you learn quickly about modesty is it’s a competition. You bully women into wearing longer skirts, then they have to get even longer to be more modest. Then the clothes have to get baggier. Then you have to cover your hair. And so on. It’s an ever moving target, on purpose. I recommend that people practice minding their own business, which is easier and has the advantage of being the same standard, every time.

The post Pregnancy Discrimination, Gender Parity in the Media, and Being Out in Sports appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

Dr. Byron Calhoun’s claims contradicted

Pat Robertson’s lies

Ugliness to a Girl Scout

Limbaugh’s latest anti-sex rant

Disney demons, sure

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be reviewing the abortion storyline in House of Cards and examining if anti-choice rhetoric is getting even more outrageous these days. Also, Kiera Feldman will be on to talk about the problem of sexual assault at Patrick Henry College.

RH Reality Check has a new podcast, a monthly legal podcast called RJ Court Watch. Our regular legal correspondents Jessica Mason Pieklo and Imani Gandy will discuss the legal ins and outs of various reproductive justice issues. So check it out, under our audio tab at RH Reality Check, which also houses this podcast!

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Abortion is nearly always a fraught topic for television. Not only is it inherently a complex topic that often resists the tendency of TV shows to oversimplify things, but there’s also a lot of pressure from conservatives in the audience on TV writers and networks to make the process seem more fraught and shameful than it is for most women. In some, more egregious cases, the choice to abort is portrayed as dangerous or shameful. Even when it’s not and is portrayed more positively, it’s still often shown as more fraught than it is or women who have abortions are shown as more conflicted than they often are in real life. But there have been some good signs in recent years. Both Friday Night Lights and Grey’s Anatomy had refreshingly realistic abortion storylines featuring characters who reacted as research shows us most women do, with relief and certainty that they made the right call. And now we have an even more intriguing abortion storyline, on the Netflix original series House of Cards. More intriguing because the woman in question is Claire Underwood, and because she’s the vice president’s wife, she’s basically asked to pretend to be ashamed of her choice. And she refuses to do it. The topic of shame is taken head on, and the show strongly suggests that shame is not something women should feel if they have abortions.

But let’s backtrack a little to how it comes up. On the show, Claire is being interviewed as the VP’s wife and the journalist, Ashleigh Banfield, doggedly insists on asking her over and over why she doesn’t have kids. Finally, Claire cracks in frustration and admits outright that she has had an abortion. Obviously, this constitutes a three-alarm political emergency and so she’s rushed off to discuss what this means with her communications advisor.

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While Claire Underwood is often depicted as a scheming, often immoral person, she comes across as incredibly sympathetic here. She is not in the wrong, but people who would judge her definitely are. Wanting to live her life as she sees fit and not feeling like having a baby now or ever is a perfectly legitimate reason to have an abortion, but she and her advisor know that won’t fly with the public. It really drives home how much the abortion debate is about micromanaging women’s lives and imposing restrictive gender expectations on them, especially the expectation that they be chaste or the expectation that all women should be eager to have kids, especially with a husband. That Claire doesn’t want to, believe me, makes perfect sense in the context of the show. But that people would pass unfair judgment on her is a reality. So she makes a decision.

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Obviously, she’s lying. And yet she is also kind of not lying. She was, in fact, raped in college. It just didn’t result in a pregnancy. What I loved about this, however, is that it her choice to fudge the truth comes across as entirely sympathetic. It allows her to kickstart an anti-rape campaign and get her assailant put in jail. More importantly, it shows how much attitudes about abortion are wrapped up in attitudes about female sexuality. By claiming her abortion was the result of rape and not her own choice to have sex, Claire evades a lot of negative judgment. Which makes it clear that the issue here is controlling her choices and her sexuality. And she largely avoids getting much negative judgment until a rumor gets out accusing her of adultery. Again, the rumor is kind of true and kind of not; it is true that she slept with a man who isn’t her husband, but she did it with his full understanding and permission. But those kinds of complexities aren’t translatable to the larger public, and suddenly the public judgment starts coming down hard on her head. So much so that she becomes a target for terrorism. A shadowy figure shows up at their home, and the Secret Service explains to Claire and her husband what happened.

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insert interview

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Lately, I can’t help but think that conservatives, who were already completely out of their minds on the issue of reproductive rights, are just getting weirder and more outrageous by the minute. I have my weekly “wisdom of wingnuts” item on this podcast, but it really fails to convey the way that things are just getting meaner, weirder, and more hectic in right-wing land when it comes to attacking abortion rights. For one thing, conservatives have always been willing to lie when it came to the issue of reproductive rights, but the dishonesty is getting more egregious and obvious lately, or that’s how it seems to me. For instance, Dr. Byron Calhoun of West Virginia, as was reported here at RH Reality Check, was recently caught in a whopper. Public News Service has the audio report.

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What struck me as interesting about this was how flagrant Calhoun was being about this. He could have been a little bit more subtle and therefore believable, saying something like “monthly” or “periodically.” Pro-choicers probably still would have investigated his claims, since we know for a fact that abortion is generally pretty safe, but there is always an outside possibility that there’s a rogue abortion provider in the area who is flouting general safety regulations that apply to all clinics, regardless of the services they provide. Since we oppose that—RH Reality Check has frequently outed shady providers, in fact—then that would be of interest to us. But the claim that he’s seeing weekly E.R. visits is so beyond the realm of possibility that it pretty much made it inevitable that he’d be outed and quickly for his dishonesty. But he’s not the only anti-choicer making claims lately that are so ridiculous they are pretty obviously lies. You also have Pat Robertson.

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Most of the lies he tells during this segment, including the lie that Planned Parenthood was trying to be genocidal and the lie that they primarily do abortion when, in reality, it’s a small part of what they do, are things that we expect right wingers to believe. The first because the right has always been at the forefront of claiming, incorrectly, that poor people are wrong or irresponsible when they have children, and so it’s easy for conservatives to project that point of view onto liberals. Second, because they just have crazy fantasies about how some people are having sex all the time and therefore must be having like weekly abortions, something I’ll return to. But the lie that individual chapters are sitting on a billion dollars each? That’s so ridiculous as to be transparent. How would a Planned Parenthood get a billion dollars? From charging $10,000 a piece for each condom and $100,000 for each abortion? Conservatives hate Planned Parenthood because it makes reproductive health care affordable, and they want to convince their followers than this nonprofit is rolling in cash. Those two beliefs contradict each other, and this is just a blatantly obvious example of how.

Then there’s just the escalation of extremism, usually based on lies. Right wingers have been trying to stoke hatred of the Girl Scouts for years now, based on a bunch of straight-up lies. Frankly, I think they oppose the organization because it teaches girls skills and self-esteem, and, with increasing misogyny in the Christian right, those things are offensive. So they make up a bunch of lies accusing the organization of being pro-abortion when it has no stance on the issue. And the result of all these lies was predictable.

• conservatives 3 *

He also called her a “hooker,” because, let’s be blunt, all this right wing propaganda against the Girl Scouts is sex panic misogyny. This is literally the most unsurprising thing ever. You have a relentless stream of right-wing propaganda against Girl Scouts and eventually some true believer is going to crack.

And of course, you have the fact that many on the right have utterly abandoned the pretense that their objections to reproductive rights stem from a love of embryonic life. Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood released a video where she dared suggest that women need access to safe abortion, which is a fact and not an opinion, and Rush Limbaugh went on an anti-sex meltdown in response.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, Disney demons edition. The Christian right is yet again calling for a boycott of Disney, this time because a show on the Disney channel shows a same-sex couple as normal. On his radio show, Gordon Klingenschmitt got a little excited about it, suggesting that watching a same-sex couple be normal on a sitcom could open your children up to demonic possession.

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Boy, the Christian right spends a lot of time convincing their followers to end their relationships to the outside world. You can’t even join the Girl Scouts or watch Disney anymore. You’d start to think that they’re kind of like a cult that is worried about outside influence drawing their people back to reality, wouldn’t you?

The post Abortion on ‘House of Cards,’ and Sexual Assault at Patrick Henry College appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

The new back-alley abortions

Kansas anti-gay bill

Arizona anti-gay bill

Arizona law explained

Baseless attacks on Girl Scouts

Bill O’Reilly attacks Girl Scout employee

No, you can’t spend food stamps at a strip club

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll have Martha Kempner on to talk about this new switch from the phrase “unprotected sex” to “condomless sex.” The anti-gay bills cropping up around the country are a continuation of the same principle that justifies the attacks on the contraception mandate, and why does Fox News keep misrepresenting the Girl Scouts?

Rachel Maddow had an extremely important report on what appears to be the rise in illegal abortions.

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As you can imagine, the mother is being charged with illegal abortion. Here’s the thing to keep in mind: Most of the illegal abortions done with drugs bought online go off without any problems. For those that result in an E.R. visit, most of the time, the doctors won’t even know because it looks like a miscarriage. So for every case that happens like this, dozens and maybe hundreds are happening with no one noticing. For all we know, that could soon turn into thousands.

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For months now, I’ve been warning, on this podcast and elsewhere, that the claim that the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act was a violation of religious freedom was never going to stay restricted to the issue of contraception coverage in your insurance plan. Once it became common wisdom in right-wing circles that you should be able to discriminate against your employees by slashing their benefits according to your religious beliefs, then it’s going to open up a flood of attempts to make discrimination and other forms of oppression legal by citing religious reasons for the behavior. Unsurprisingly, the next target is gay people. In a handful of states across the country, legislators are passing laws that are similar to the Jim Crow laws targeting Black people in the 60s, except gay people are now the target. And the excuse is religion.

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This is and should be understood as the least surprising thing ever. After spending a couple of years claiming and even winning court battles with the argument that religious freedom gives employers a right to opt out of federal regulations regarding what kind of benefits they have to offer employees, this is the next logical step. The idea is to create these giant loopholes in laws that conservatives don’t like, laws that make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender or sexual orientation or perhaps even race, by claiming that you have religious reasons to do so. I want to make special note of the employee benefits provision. As with demanding an exemption from having to fully cover their female employee’s health care because they oppose non-procreative sex, employers are hoping to get out of laws that say that if you offer spousal insurance for some employees, you have to offer it for all. And it’s not just Kansas.

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Again, this is not different from the argument that conservatives floated, and some still float, to attack the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The claim is that a business person’s “right” to discriminate and to pay employees what they want or how they want and to refuse to serve people based on their bigoted beliefs supersedes the state’s interest in preventing discrimination. The religion component was just added to make it seem like one set of civil rights is pitted against another, but that’s simply not true. In a sense, this bill is a form of religious discrimination, because it allows business owners to deny employees and customers their right to believe what they want to believe without fear of being punished or targeted for it.

Part of the right-wing talking points defending these laws is to claim that these laws are only about things like not baking cakes for same-sex weddings, and that these laws won’t be able to be widely interpreted to deny people housing, employment, and banking opportunities because some right-wing Christian doesn’t like the look of them. Kenji Yoshino, a law professor at NYU, explained that’s nonsense.

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Yoshino also explained why the Arizona law is much more stringent than the federal law that says you can’t burden an individual’s religious beliefs.

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This is all a direct result of conservatives using the supposed religious freedom arguments to justify their attacks on the contraception mandate, attacks that constitute a form of gender and religious discrimination against employees. It’s laying the groundwork to basically overturn decades of laws protecting people from being fired or penalized at work or being refused service based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or other private choices, all by saying that a person’s claim to have a religious belief gives them wide breadth to ignore the law and treat other people like crap. Anyone who thought they’d stop at denying women their earned insurance benefits was just being naïve.

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I’ve reported on this show before about how the anti-choice movement’s choice to target the Girl Scouts has gained some traction in recent years, even though I first started seeing anti-choice bloggers attack the organization for perceived support for abortion rights as far back as 2007. But I had no idea how serious it had gotten with the mainstreaming of the claim that the Girl Scouts is some kind of subversive radical feminist organization. Media Matters did a round-up of various myths that right-wing media is promoting regarding the Girl Scouts, and what really stood out to me is how big time the people propagating the myths are. Like Bill O’Reilly, for instance.

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Even though the claim is clearly a lie, he kept hammering at her, characterizing the tweet as an endorsement of Wendy Davis. The tweet did not mention Wendy Davis. The tweet reads, in total, “Is there anyone you’d add to this list? Incredible Ladies Who Should Be Women of the Year for 2013.” The link goes to a Huffington Post video chat where Wendy Davis is one of many, many women mentioned. But she is not singled out. Basically, Bill O’Reilly and other conservatives are trying to game the situation so that pro-choicers are functionally shunned and treated like social pariahs, by falsely claiming that anything but shunning pro-choice women is tantamount to an endorsement. But that’s nonsense, as they would never agree that simply linking a list of names that had, say, a conservative woman on it constituted an endorsement of everything that woman stood for and therefore it shouldn’t have happened.

Elisabeth Hasselback, on her show, brought a representative on to make an even broader accusation.

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Even though they claim they want an “apolitical” Girl Scouts, that is clearly a lie. Running every liberal who is involved with Girl Scouts off and having a political test requiring you to be a conservative in order to be a leader in Girl Scouts is not, as they are pretending, an apolitical stance. It’s a deeply political stance. Requiring girls to believe in God or have a specific religious affiliation is not apolitical. It’s a strong political position. This is about demanding that the Girl Scouts adhere to an anti-choice, conservative position by throwing a fit every time they engage with people from all parts of the political spectrum, instead of limiting it just to conservatives, which is closer to what the Boy Scouts have done. Needless to say, Media Matters linked a Daily Beast article detailing the extensive support and participation that Girl Scouts has gotten from both Democrats and Republicans. The fact that their supposed evidence for this left-leaning stance is a tweet that linked an article that mentioned a pro-choice politician in a long list of women is enough to tell you they don’t actually have any evidence of these lurid claims.

It’s not just that Fox News is demanding that Girl Scouts shun involvement from any known feminists or liberals. Bill O’Reilly also demanded that Girl Scouts shun anyone who has, outside of their work in Girl Scouts, done things like be a known gay person or play in a rock band. Or at least if you did both at the same time.

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Here is the thing. There are two ways to be truly apolitical, as an organization. You can demand that none of your employees ever have a political opinion, or ever volunteer for a political cause, or ever vote. But that is not only untenable but guaranteed to get you people who are lazy and apathetic and irresponsible. Or you can simply not take political affiliation into account when hiring and just ask your employees to leave it at home. This is what the Girl Scouts has done. What Fox News clearly wants them to do, which is to shun people who lean left and only hire people who lean right, is definitely not apolitical. That is demanding that they create a right-wing organization.

While O’Reilly declined to name the band in question, it was easy enough to find who it was. They seem fun, and it’s not unknown for musicians to have day jobs. So, to counterbalance the irrational hate, here’s a little clip from this band, named the Dead Betties.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, strip club edition. Most sexualized conservative fear-mongering about social spending is geared towards women, raising fears that women are getting away with having sex on the public dime. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t willing to target men with a bunch of sexualized fear-mongering. Fox News tried to use strip clubs to argue against food stamps. Yes, food stamps.

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I can safely say I don’t spend a lot of time in strip clubs, but I suspect very strongly that they, like liquor stores or pot dispensaries, do not accept food stamps instead of cash as payment. If they did, you wouldn’t get very far. The average monthly benefit for an individual on SNAP [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] is $133 a month. To be blunt, that’s probably less than a customer in a strip club spends in a night. This kind of nonsense is just another example of Fox using sexual fears to shut down critical thinking.

The post Right-Wing Myths About Girl Scouts, and Condomless Sex appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

Good-bye, anti-gay bills

Maddow’s Rio Grande Valley report

O’Reilly tries to come up with the “downside” to a female president

Hannity lashes out at single mothers

Bill O’Reilly mansplains to Valerie Jarrett

Yep, a lesbian works at Girl Scouts. So?

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be interviewing Brian Beutler about the conservative waiver mania. Things are getting really bad for women in the Rio Grande Valley, and the absurd and routine conservative attacks on women continue.

My interview with Brian was conducted before the anti-gay bill in Arizona died. Indeed, right now it seems like the whole push for these kinds of bills is stalling out, as Rachel Maddow reported.

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Rachel Maddow had an excellent report on her show looking at the Rio Grande Valley, which is probably more damaged by the war on women than anywhere else in the country. The Valley is one of the most geographically isolated, impoverished parts of the United States, and subsequently they’ve been most negatively affected loss of their legal abortion clinics because of the draconian anti-abortion bill that passed over the summer. But, as Maddow explains, their problems started long before the abortion clinics started shutting down. Things really got bad long before that, when in an anti-contraception frenzy, the state stopped funding family planning at many clinics. It created a massive surge in unwanted child-bearing and abortion, so they reinstated the funds, but for women in the Rio Grande Valley, the damage may be irreversible.

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They interviewed an old Planned Parenthood employee named Paula Saldana, who explained why she thinks this topic is so damn loaded in Texas.

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She pointed out that you used to be able to go to Mexico to get inexpensive, over the counter birth control, but the drug war and violence are making people afraid to do that. So Saldana has switched strategies. She and other women in the area who have been long-standing advocates for reproductive health have instead created a sort of family planning club thing, where they get women together to educate them, at least, even if they can’t provide the help and services that Planned Parenthood used to provide. But even though they aren’t getting paid and they have little to offer in terms of affordable condoms and birth control pills, or for that matter, cancer screenings and check-ups, they have added another component: political organizing.

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I want to be optimistic about this, and in many ways I am. Just a few short years ago, the discourse about reproductive rights was basically stalled out. Most Americans were pro-choice, but they also tended to think of anti-choicers as well-meaning people who just had very strict ideas about when life begins and what obligations women have regarding that. Every discussion you would have would get derailed by this tedious debate about when life begins, a debate that was disingenuous to its core, since people who claim to believe life begins at conception don’t actually do things like celebrate your conception day instead of your birthday. But attacks like these have made it clear, as Saldana said, that this is about sex and not about life. And it’s about women and their families. So yes, there’s good reason to hope that people are getting politically organized and motivated in a way they weren’t before. So that’s great. But I worry that even if the tide is turned, making up lost ground may be impossible. Anti-choicers did a lot of damage in a few short years, and even if we can start fixing the damage, at best it will take years, maybe decades to rebuild the infrastructure. It’s not just that Planned Parenthood in Brownsville that closed, either. Dr. Lester Minto, who ran the only abortion clinic in Harlingen, hasn’t been able to perform abortions because of the new law since November. But as we detailed on this show in an interview with Lindsay Beyerstein, he has been helping women who self-abort get safe aftercare. But that is over now, too.

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I don’t often get choked up watching cable news shows, but that did it to me. Dr. Minto has been an outspoken, aggressive advocate for women, but now he is going away and probably won’t ever be coming back.

Periodically for the past few months, I’ve been tracking how right-wing media is increasingly obsessed with gender-baiting, bringing every possible issue that they can back to the idea that women are just getting too big for their britches and need to be taken down a notch. And yes, this is another one of these segments, because frankly, I think it’s a fascinating trend that bears careful watch. Consider the media arm of the war on women, a widespread effort by conservative leaders to convince their followers that one of the biggest problems in America today is that women have too many rights and are getting too close to equality, and that is the source of much, if not most of the country’s pain. Just the random and frequent attacks on women, then, ends up creating the sense of moral justification for the continued legal attacks on women’s rights.

But above all, what amazes me about this nonsense is how blatant it is. Like Bill O’Reilly on a recent show freaking out about what else, the possibility that Hillary Clinton or some other woman will become president.

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He tried to play it off like he thought there must also be male-specific downsides, but that is obviously just straight nonsense. After all, no one ever actually holds “being a man” against a candidate for president. That’s why his hand-waving about how there’s “differences” with the implication that different can still be equal is so utterly dishonest. When people say women are “different” than men, they mean inferior, but just don’t want to be held accountable for that opinion. O’Reilly’s female guests, a Republican and a Democrat, both balked at his generalizing about the sexes, pointing out that individuals differ more from each other than the sexes ever could. Which again suggests that the very premise of the segment—that women are some kind of separate, special variety of human that needs to be judged against the male norm for any supposed deficiencies—is utterly offensive.

Of course, Sean Hannity managed to make controlling and policing women a centerpiece in yet another attack on Obamacare. He was angry about Joe Biden selling the job flexibility that Obamacare provides women.

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That is not what Biden said at all. He was highlighting how the availability and affordability of health insurance under Obamacare makes it easier to scale back at work or even quit for a few years, but in most of these cases, we’re not talking about people who have no money of their own. Look, the amount of government assistance you can get is not and will never be enough to raise a child on, full stop. Health insurance isn’t going to be the make it or break it issue here. But boy, it’s sure funny how conservatives think that being a housewife or even scaling back at work to spend time with your kid’s is a woman’s highest calling, right until such woman is single, a woman of color, or working class, and then suddenly you’re a horrible mooch. Raising children is, if you’re a middle class married woman, sold to you like it’s a full-time job and supposedly the most important job in the world, but it’s treated like a waste of time if you’re not in that privileged class. This kind of gross hypocrisy about women has been going on so long that it barely registers as hypocrisy. But it is. More to the point, Hannity is trying to kick up dust about the usual slate of right-wing resentments that women are making choices without getting conservative permission first. It’s just a weapon being used against health care, not a real argument at all.

The conservative media ability to make anything, really anything, about their anger at women for making independent choices really reached a new level when Valerie Jarrett went on The O’Reilly Factor to talk up the president’s new “Brothers’ Keeper” initiative. As one might guess from the name, the initiative is not about women at all, but about men, specifically young men of color. The program is about investing in young men of color, helping them get an education and a job, things like that. But somehow O’Reilly managed to make it about how he wants girls to stop having sex.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, no seriously, what is it about the Girl Scouts edition? Rush Limbaugh has joined in the right-wing hate-a-thon aimed at the Girl Scouts, which may be the most innocent organization to have ever existed.

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He just keeps sputtering about this, as if it’s self-evident that a lesbian should be permanently barred from working for Girl Scouts because. No reasons given why. This is the sort of bigotry that historians will drag out decades from now so that modern people can gawk at how open and ridiculous the bigots were. In fact, it’s so silly to think a lesbian can’t do a perfectly fine job working for Girl Scouts, I like to think we’re already halfway there.

The post Conservative Waiver Mania, and Tragedy in the Rio Grande Valley appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

The end of safe, legal abortion in the Rio Grande Valley

Ann Coulter insists that more lectures will work

Elroy Sailor claims abortion is worse than the slave trade

Alabama abortions

Mary Sue McClurkin’s outrageous lie

Nebraska sign dispute

Two more clinics close in Texas

Limbaugh stokes anti-vaccination paranoia

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, Jessica Arons of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project will be on to discuss generic emergency contraception access. CPAC is, yet again, a wonder of misogyny and sex-phobia. Also, the pressure intensifies on the state level to end legal access to abortion.

I’ll be covering this more later in the show, but our own Andrea Grimes has been doing a series of videos covering the end of rural access to legal abortion in Texas, and this one covered a candlelight vigil to mark the loss of the last two rural clinics in the state.

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Never forget that it is the poorest and most isolated women in the country that are being targeted the hardest by laws like this. The wealthy and well-connected people who pass these laws know how to keep safe abortion available to themselves while grand-standing using the rights of others.

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Ah, the Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC. I get nearly as excited for it as the conservatives it panders to, because I know that in all that pandering, how the right really thinks about a whole bunch of issues will come spilling out. The feigned concern for embryonic life, the hypocritical poses about how contraception is supposedly an assault on religious freedom? All set aside for some red meat for the crowd, some blatant misogyny and sex-phobia of the sort they tend to refrain from uttering in more mainstream circles for fear of the backlash. And this year’s, as most year’s, did not disappoint. Sarah Palin was a big hit with her bashing liberals for being meanies and criticizing awful things that bigots say, because Palin is rock certain that criticizing bigots is the same thing as depriving them of their freedom of speech. She heavily employed misogyny in riling the crowd up, using imagery of women’s clothes to make it clear that liberals are feminine and therefore objects of mockery, with all their girly ways.

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Panties, check. Is there another female-identified piece of clothing she could invoke to show that liberals are like ladies, which is insulting because being a woman is the worst thing you could be? Of course there was!

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Setting aside her blatant dishonesty, since Palin is the queen and master of taking offensive at the most minor things. She has never sucked it up in her life, seriously. But she basically pretends liberals were mad at the Duck Dynasty guy since he mentioned Jesus. In reality, what he did was basically deny that segregation caused any real harm. Palin claims he was just expressing his faith with his anti-gay comments, to which I will quote what he said directly: “It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus.” She claims his comments were perfectly defensible, but for some reason, she refrained from repeating them. It’s cowardly, for sure, but her audience is too busy yukking it up at her repeated claims that liberals are just a bunch of stupid girly girls with their stupid girl clothes like panties and skirts and aren’t girls just awful and forget that she never quoted the comments she’s defending. She then went on, no big surprise, to deny that there’s any reason to believe that there’s a war on women. Apparently only stupid girls in their stupid girl skirts would think a stupid girl thing like that.

Of course, most conservative leaders are smart about hinting at certain narratives while maintaining plausible deniability, such as making snotty jokes about how sex is naughty without coming right out and directly stating a belief that people who have sex are bad people who need to be punished. But Ann Coulter is always on hand for the dumber members of the crowd, who may not understand all this hinting around and need someone to spell it out for them.

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Of course, the funny thing is that rich conservatives like Ann Coulter actually spend tons and tons and tons of time lecturing people not to have sex and shaming people, especially poor people, for having it. Indeed, they probably spend more time on the task of trying to spread sexual shame, especially the message that sex is okay for rich people but not for poor people, than any other message. But it doesn’t work. That’s because, despite what Coulter implies here, poor people are not just stupid ciphers who sit around waiting for instructions from rich people. They are individual human beings who can see quite clearly that the Ann Coulters of the world who are telling us that sex for fun is a luxury that belongs only to the rich are terrible people and you should not listen to them and their elitist, terrible, sex-negative, misogynist ways.

There was a minority outreach panel at CPAC, which was unsurprisingly sparsely attended. Which is too bad, since the panelists were smart about pandering to the racists who want to minimize the evils of things like slavery and Jim Crow and instead pretend that basic human rights are the real problem.

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That was a man named Elroy Sailor, and he definitely knows how to pander to a mostly white, extremely misogynist audience. But, as usual with these attempts to make racial hay out of abortion rights, the implication here is utterly and completely insulting to Black women, as what Sailor and people like him are saying is that Black women making personal reproductive health-care choices are a problem. That excludes Black women who have abortions from the category “Black people,” to be blunt, and is deeply offensive. The reason, incidentally, why the abortion rate is higher amongst Black women [compared to white women in the United States] is that the unintended pregnancy rate is higher amongst Black women. The solution for that is to make health care more accessible to all people, but clearly not a solution that the people at CPAC want to hear.

Sadly, things continue to look grim on the anti-abortion front. Alabama passed a series of laws last year that, like the ones in Texas, were a bunch of medically unnecessary regulations on abortion clinics that had no other purpose but to shut clinics down. However, unlike in Texas, the courts in Alabama correctly recognized that passing medically unnecessary regulations that only serve to shut down safe, legal clinics constitutes an “undue burden” on abortion. Undeterred, Alabama lawmakers decided to give up, for now, on regulations aimed at clinics and start passing more bills that are aimed more at women seeking abortions, and finding ways to shame them and deny them their rights directly.

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It’s worth remembering that what anti-choicers call a “heartbeat” really shouldn’t be understood by reality-based people as a heartbeat. There’s a primitive circulatory system that creates a beating sound at 6 weeks, but the muscle development we think of as a “heart” is not there until 20 weeks. Just another example of how anti-choicers like to pretend there’s more there than there is in order to agitate people. Indeed, the woman behind this bill, Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin, is a big fan of insinuating that a tiny embryo that’s removed in a first-trimester abortion is the same size and development of a full-term baby.

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Basically, anti-choicers want you to imagine women having fully-formed babies removed right before birth, which just doesn’t happen. At 6 weeks, which is when this bill would ban abortion, it’s not even really considered a fetus so much as an embryo, and it’s about the size of an uncooked lentil. If the biggest, uh, organ in a woman’s body is no bigger than a lentil, then how would a woman eat a lentil? Mysteries abound.

This Alabama law would also require that teenagers who want abortions procure their birth certificates and permission from parents that is notarized, all of which is basically a way to ban abortions for nearly all teenagers. And to humiliate those who are lucky enough to have these resources by involving a third party. The notion that abortion is somehow worse for teenagers doesn’t make sense if you believe that it’s about “life,” but it makes perfect sense if your main objective is to control female sexuality and you find it doubly infuriating that teenage girls choose sex.

Indeed, the most remarkable thing about the ongoing state-level assaults on abortion clinics is how, at every turn, the justification for the new laws is always, without fail, a lie. Like this new bill in Nebraska.

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Basically, the lie that is underpinning this law is the widespread anti-choice claim that women don’t ever really want abortions, and that they get them because they’re being forced or because they’re too stupid to know their own minds. Are there women who end up in abortion clinics when they don’t want to be there because they have people pressuring them? Absolutely, though it’s far less common than anti-choicers claim. But clinics have counselors who are there to talk it out with women and discover any coercion. The signs, then, serve no other purpose but to imply, falsely, that clinics themselves are coercing women and to make women in the waiting rooms feel more anxiety and dread. It’s punishing women just to punish them.

But most of these challenges to abortion rights are getting tied up in court or will eventually be tied up in court. Because of the conservative-controlled Fifth Circuit Court, a draconian abortion law in Texas was permitted to be enforced while the lawsuits go through. The result is now the end of all rural access to abortion in Texas.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, the logical next step in the conservative “war on health care” edition. After stoking lies about abortion, contraception, and health-care reform, is it any surprise that right-wing media is trying to drum up paranoia about vaccination? Rush Limbaugh spoke at length with an anti-vaccination nut.

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Rush Limbaugh screens very heavily, and so his show did not need to let a woman who was spreading lies about vaccinations that would discourage vaccination onto his show. That he let her speak at length and spread the lie that the vaccination schedule is some kind of government oppression for the purposes of I don’t know, evil? The point is to make people paranoid, and sacrificing the public health for that is apparently no big deal.

The post Generic Emergency Contraception, CPAC, and Abortion in the States appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

Abortion for conservatives

100+ companies fighting the contraception mandate

Uncle Sugar

The Affordable Care Act doesn’t mandate abortion coverage

Whiners

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking with Adam Sonfield of the Guttmacher about an under-covered aspect of the contraception mandate case. Arguments for that case start in front of the Supreme Court this week, and a new HBO documentary covers what life is like for a single mother living on the edge.

Jezebel posted a comedy video purporting to be an ad for a fake abortion pill that conservatives could take to prevent the possibility of having, gasp, a liberal child. Some pretty funny stuff.

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It’s kind of silly, but I do think circles around a very important point, which is that the attacks on legal access to abortion are structured in such a way that poor people are the ones who lose access while wealthy people retain access. It’s awfully convenient for powerful conservatives to get rid of abortion access for other people while making sure they can keep it for themselves, isn’t it?

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It’s here, folks: Arguments start this week in front of the Supreme Court regarding the Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius case regarding the contraception mandate and all the employers that are trying to get out of paying the full benefits package to their employees if their employees use it for contraception. Hobby Lobby is the most famous employer in the lawsuit, but far from the only one.

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There’s a reason it’s become so popular for employers to press their point on this, and it has nothing to do with religious freedom. The reason is simple: This is a major opportunity for employers to gain some serious leverage over their employees. This is about the return to the “company store” model of paying people, where employers make your compensation contingent on how you spend it. In the company store model, employers will pay you, but you can’t spend your money anywhere but in a store they own, one that conveniently has all the prices jacked up so they make a major profit. In this case, employers are paying you for your work with health insurance, but they are trying to make that pay contingent on you spending it in a way that comports with their beliefs about sex and sexuality. This is about dramatically expanding your boss’ power to meddle with your private life and should be resisted.

Since arguments before the court start this week, there’s going to be a lot of debate back and forth about this. With that in mind, I’ve decided to put together a list of some of the most common arguments against the contraception mandate, and how to debunk them. The first is the myth of who is “paying” for contraception.

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And nor do we now have that law, because the contraception mandate does not require that your boss buy your birth control. Or anyone else, for that matter. This is critical. You are the one buying your birth control and you are using your insurance coverage that belongs to you to do it. Yes, your employer writes a check to your insurance company to pay for part or all of your insurance, depending on your plan. But after he writes that check and puts it in the mail, the plan is yours, not his. The health insurance companies offer to employees is part of the employee’s compensation package, and it is no different than your paycheck. He is not giving it to you. You earned it and it is yours. This is no different than a boss refusing to pay your full wages because he fears you will spend it on condoms. In addition, the federal government gives employers a tax break if they pay part of their employee’s compensation in health benefits. That means an employer who wants to deny you contraception coverage is trying to tell you how to spend your money and wants the government to give him a tax break to do it.

The second myth is that the contraception mandate is just a gimme to bribe female voters into supporting the Democrats. Mike Huckabee expressed this most famously.

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Let’s be clear: The government is not writing prescriptions for women or giving them “free” birth control with this mandate. It is simply mandating that the insurance coverage you earn by working covers your contraception, should you choose to use it. So what “Uncle Sugar” gave women was, uh, the opportunity to buy their own contraception with their own insurance. Which most of us had, but this regulation just made the coverage more comprehensive. But what really makes this myth offensive is that Huckabee and everyone who repeats it assumes that if you support contraception access, then you must just be a sex machine who has nothing else going on in your life. That is roughly as dumb as saying that because a politician, say, promotes easier access to guns, he is telling the voters he has no other agenda items. That makes no kind of sense. In addition, unlike a lot of other policies that are pandering to voters and nothing else, the contraception mandate was created after the Institute of Medicine recommended it, on the grounds that copay-free contraception has been shown to reduce unintended pregnancy and all the attendant health care costs. Since we all like saving money, we should all be for it.

Now for myth number three: Birth control is abortion.

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This is easy enough to debunk by simply going to the HHS website and showing that the mandate does not, in fact, cover abortion but just contraception. In fact, by law the exchanges have to have plans in them that don’t cover abortion. When you point this out, inevitably your right wing nut will claim that female-controlled hormonal contraception is “abortion”. This is a lie, unless you think suppressing ovulation, which is how the pill and emergency contraception work, is abortion. At this point, feel free to point out that if they have to lie to demonize contraception, then that only says they hate contraception so much that they’re willing to do immoral things to attack it. Very few people really want to admit to being anti-contraception, so that should be entertaining.

Maria Shriver’s project, the Shriver Report, just released a documentary on HBO called Paycheck to Paycheck about a single mother of three raising children in a mobile home. The woman is 30-year-old Katrina Gilbert and she lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and she works for a little over $9 an hour as a nursing home assistant. The movie is a wonderful counterpoint to conservative propaganda blaming single mothers living in poverty for their problems. To hear the pundits on Fox News tell it, women end up as single mothers in poverty because they’re throwing a feminist-inspired temper tantrum against living with men and are grifting off the government to fund their lifestyle. The reality is that life happens and no matter how many plans you make, they can get derailed. Katrina’s story shows this.

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Most conservative discourse about single mothers pointedly ignores that many of them are divorced and most of the rest of them were in relationships with the fathers of their children when they had kids. Most of them, in other words, did not think of themselves as “single” when they had kids, and so dumping endless lectures on women about the supposed evils of single motherhood is not only mean-spirited and misleading, it’s useless. You can’t tell people not to be something they don’t think they’re trying to be. Most women end up as single mothers after their relationship falls apart. By then, it’s not like they have a choice. Not a real one. Inevitably, as Katrina’s story shows, if you start to ask why a relationship fell apart, you discover that it was for a very good reason. This documentary also shows how it’s a lie to call these children “fatherless.” Their father got clean and sober and now they see him regularly. He wants to live closer, but he can’t get work closer. Katrina also worries that he would move back in if he lived closer, and since she’s already supporting three children, she doesn’t know where she’d find the money to support him, too. It’s impossible to claim, in the light of things, that she didn’t do what she was “supposed” to do, and it still didn’t work out.

But what really is important here is the money. And how she doesn’t have enough of it.

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This really should be obvious and simple here, but with all the smoke that is blown in right wing media, the point gets lost. Single mothers living in poverty are poor because they don’t have enough money. Katrina is not rejecting the idea of having a husband or a boyfriend. She had a husband and then a boyfriend and both kind of failed, because that’s life. But her real, ongoing problem is that her job only pays $9.49 an hour and no matter how hard she works, she doesn’t have enough money. This documentary really shows how much right wing attempts to blame women’s financial problems on anything but lack of money are nothing but distractions from the real issue. The demagoguery about single motherhood is misogynist to boot, of course, because it assumes that women deserve to suffer and live in misery if they have lives, whether they chose them or not, that fall out of conservative prescriptions to be married and to find your identity and livelihood through marriage. Obviously, this attitude is unfair to women, and your heart goes out to Katrina because she no matter how hard she tries, stuff just isn’t working out for her.

But it’s also unfair to children.  One of the scenes that got me all teared up was a scene when Katrina had to get rid of a puppy that she had living with her family. First of all, this puppy is adorable. Second of all, while the kids tried to be brave, they really did not want to lose their puppy.

• paycheck 3 *

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, advocating for yourself is “whining” edition. The Minnesota legislature is looking over a package of bills that would raise the minimum wage, secure family and sick leave time, and make it harder to discriminate against women. Republican lawmaker Andrea Kieffer responded with this.

• whiners *

So wanting basic labor protections and equality in the workplace makes you look like “whiners,” huh? I suspect strongly that Kieffer doesn’t think it’s whining when powerful business groups lobby in their own self-interest, but women are supposed to just lay down and take whatever is dished out lest they look like “whiners.” You won’t be surprised, I bet, to learn that Kieffer is anti-abortion. She is happy to force women to have babies against their will, but if those women want better jobs and better leave policies to actually raise those children, she’ll fight them tooth and nail.

The post Myths About Contraception Insurance Coverage, and a New ‘Paycheck to Paycheck’ Documentary appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

Comments read out loud

Texas law upheld

Damage is already severe

Amy Hagstrom Miller on the Maddow show

The Daily Show covers Hobby Lobby

Hobby Lobby myths clarified

Sean Hannity wants to micromanage your contraception use

Girls don’t like tag?

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking to a young activist [Lenzi Sheible of Fund Texas Women] who is trying to help Texas women who need to travel for abortion get to where they’re going. Clinics in Texas lose another round in the battle to stay open, and I’ll review some of the post-argument coverage of the Hobby Lobby case before the Supreme Court.

YouTube comments, especially under videos about feminism, is where hope goes to die. But it does make for some hilarious dramatic reading by YouTube video blogger healthyaddict and friends, as they perform out loud some of the anti-feminist comments she has received.

• comments *

If this guy would just agree to read all internet comments out loud for me, I might actually be bothered to start reading them again.

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The Hobby Lobby contraception case overshadowed this news in the reproductive rights coverage in the mainstream media, but this is still a huge deal.

• texas 1 *

Sadly, this isn’t a big surprise. The Fifth Circuit Court is highly conservative and their earlier decision to let the law be enforced while it was being battled in court showed there was a willingness to go along with the straight up lies being spouted by the law’s supporters. The supporters claim that this law is about health and safety, but, of course, it is not and is, in fact, about shutting down safe and healthy access to abortion. Outside of the courtroom, there has been little interest in pretending otherwise, in fact. Still, this is a very concerning decision. Texas is far from the only state rapidly shutting down abortion clinics by passing a bunch of medically unnecessary regulations that exist for no other purpose but to shut down safe clinics, but they are the state that has had the most luck in courts getting away with it. They run a very strong chance of taking this case to the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court upholds the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, then, not to put too fine a point on it, that is basically the end of Roe v. Wade. Red states will feel free to pass all sorts of ridiculous regulations, claim they are for health reasons, and know that they can get away with it.

As important as the Hobby Lobby case is, therefore, I can’t help but worry this is worse. There are over a million abortions a year, and already women in red states are having trouble getting access. If Texas wins, red states will basically be able to end all legal abortion clinics through excessive red tape. Already the damage is severe, as indicated from a report from the beginning of March on NPR showed.

• texas 2 *

And that clinic will be gone when the second round of regulations, requiring clinics to meet ambulatory surgical standards, goes into effect. The court was willing to buy into the transparent lie that hospital admitting privileges are medically necessary, despite the strong disagreement of actual doctors and medical organizations, so odds are high they’re going to claim you need to have a surgery level standards to do what is a quick outpatient procedure and, in some cases, nothing more than swallowing a pill. The fact of the matter is they don’t have these same requirements for doctors and other medical professionals doing similar kinds of clinic work. It’s downright grating for me to hear anti-choicers pretend they are doing this for women’s health when the opposite is true: They are trying to hurt women. Unwanted child-bearing or getting black-market abortions are both much more dangerous for your health than an abortion is. They are trying to raise the risks and punish women for having sex. That’s all there is to it. The lying about it is just the rotten garnish on top of the pile of crap they’re trying to claim is cake.

Back in October, Amy Hagstrom Miller of Whole Woman’s Health spoke with Rachel Maddow about losing these clinics she has run for years.

texas 3 *

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Insert interview

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The arguments for Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius were presented in front of the Supreme Court in late March, and things are not looking great for the side of science, reason, and human rights. Justice Scalia straight up claimed, against all medical evidence, that Hobby Lobby was suing to avoid providing a health care plan that covered abortion, saying, “You’re talking about, what, three or four birth controls, not all of them, just those that are abortifacient.” This is really frustrating because it is, baldly put, a lie. Hobby Lobby is complaining about contraception, not abortion. Georgetown professor Jill Morrison explained this on Media Matters radio.

• hobby 1 *

This issue is frustrating, because there’s a long-standing tradition of treating abortion like it’s separate from mainstream health care, and it’s clear that Hobby Lobby’s lawyers are hoping that by confusing the issue, they can do the same thing to contraception. Indeed, during the arguments, the female justices insisted that Hobby Lobby’s lawyer explain why the religious exemption wouldn’t apply just as well to employers who would deny vaccinations or blood transfusions, and his argument, paraphrased, was that he believed that those were necessary enough to trump religious objections, but that contraception was not necessary enough. In other words, Hobby Lobby’s argument rests on convincing the justices that contraception isn’t necessary health care, but should be treated like a luxury like plastic surgery. And to bolster that argument, they’re leaning on the stigma surrounding abortion by suggesting that, as abortion is frequently excluded from all sorts of health insurance coverage, adding contraception to the list is no thing. And to create that alliance, they’re happy to lie and equate contraception with abortion.  Luckily, there’s a lot of resistance out there to this conflation.

• hobby 2 *

What frustrates about this entire lie about contraception and abortion is that conservatives win either way. By denying that contraception is abortion, you end up subtly reinforcing the notion that there is something legitimate about our current system of marginalizing abortion care and treating it like it’s not necessary, when it is necessary. But it’s not good ignoring the lie, either, because that is clearly going to be used to stigmatize contraception and make it harder to get. Lying, as usual, is remarkably good politics, if you’re morally bankrupt enough to do it, which anti-choicers are.

Scalia also floated the notion that using contraception is not very expensive, which is the equivalent of saying that it’s okay for your employer to dock your pay to punish your private behavior if they don’t dock it by very much. Also, if it’s so cheap, then it is really obnoxious for employers to complain about having to cover it. Moreover, it’s super obnoxious to transfer the costs to employees but then happily take the savings that come from the employees using contraception and not charging the insurance company for higher maternity care costs from unintended pregnancy. But this sense that it’s no big deal to force women to scramble for contraception also, it seems to me, is based in not only an unfounded contempt for women, but also this weird sense conservatives seem to have that sex is so infrequent that regular access to contraception is not necessary. Like Sean Hannity here, who repeatedly lied and said that birth control is only $9 a month—mine, I can tell you, is closer to $75 a month—and then said this:

• hobby 3 *

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, creationists are trying to explain nature to feminists again edition. Seriously, old school creationist Phyllis Schlafly may reject the field of biology, but she is going to pretend that it supports her contention of female inferiority.

• Phyllis *

Look, the claim that “the feminists” banned tag is an urban legend started by fundamentally dishonest people. But I like the uber-lie that she’s also promoting here, that girls don’t like tag. Where on earth did this idea crop up? I mean, Schlafly is a highly ambitious woman who denies that women feel ambition, so I guess she can walk by any group of girls playing tag and, because of her misogyny, say it’s just her lying eyes deceiving her. But it is rich to claim anyone else is at war with Mother Nature when you believe such outrageous lies like girls don’t like games or playing tag.

The post Texas Wins Round Against Legal Abortion, and Hobby Lobby’s Anti-Contraception Argument appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

VD Is for Everybody

Rep. Vance McAllister (R-LA) loves to talk about his faith

The kiss

Adultery, unlike abortion or homosexuality, is not a victimless behavior

Texas clinic closures

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking to two activists trying to raise the word that secular anti-choicers aren’t as rational and evidence-based as they pretend to be. Another cheating congressman and another reminder of what hypocrites these conservative men in office are. Also, more on the impending doom in Texas.

I thought y’all would appreciate this amazing 1969 Ad Council ad trying to remind viewers that STIs, which were then called VD, were something that anyone could have.

• vd everyone *

Meet Rep. Vance McAllister, a Republican from Louisiana. Vance McAllister is a godly man of God and he really wants you to know how much he disapproves of your sex life. He is aggressively anti-choice, routinely supporting bills to restrict women’s access to abortion. He also made a big show out of aligning himself with the guys from “Duck Dynasty,” who have been in the headlines quite a bit lately spewing homophobic garbage and hiding behind the Bible when called out on it. Indeed, an endorsement from Willie Robertson from “Duck Dynasty” appears to have gone a long way towards pushing McAllister into the lead over his Tea Party-aligned opponent.

• mcallister 1 *

Shortly after this interview, the Robertson family made headlines by saying vicious and cruel things about gay people, at what point McAllister responded by bringing Willie Robertson to the State of the Union, in case there was any doubt that he disagreed with them. All this anti-sex, anti-gay stuff if because of God and God and God and boy, Vance McAllister wants you to know how godly he is and how much God loves him and how God loves him so much that he helped McAllister defeat his equally conservative opponent in the primary in Louisiana.

• mcallister 2 *

I suppose if you haven’t already heard what’s coming, you can guess.

• mcallister 3 *

Look, Vance McAllister is a human being and human beings, being human beings, make mistakes. That’s why none of this is surprising, except apparently to the husband of the staffer he was kissing. The problem here is that McAllister doesn’t want to extend that level of understanding to you. Worse, he wants to punish you for having sexual desires and behaviors that don’t hurt anyone, by stripping women of reproductive rights and stripping gay people of other basic rights like marriage. Your sex life may be above board and honorable. You may be the kind of person who has never cheated on anyone and would never consider it. You may be kind and generous to your sex partners and communicate openly and never would consider betraying a friend. But even though you’re so much more moral and upstanding than Vance McAllister in your sexual dealings, if you’re gay or female, too bad. You don’t deserve your basic human rights.

You won’t be surprised, therefore, to find out that the woman he was kissing, Melissa Hixon Peacock, was fired from her job, even as McAllister himself has signaled that he has no intention of stepping down. That, at least, is consistent with the women are meant to suffer but men get to be forgiven mentality that is normal with the Christian right. You won’t be surprised, I’m sure by the content of his public statement.

• mcallister 4 *

Awwwwww, he wants privacy for himself and his family! I bet he does! Of course, he doesn’t want privacy for you and your family. McAllister was a co-sponsor on the misleadingly named No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. The bill not only would codify the Hyde Amendment, but it’s basically an intrusive attack on your right to privacy, putting all these federal restrictions on what kind of insurance coverage you can get when it comes to abortion. McAllister’s snoot is all up in your vagina, trying to micromanage the care you can get, and especially to make you jump through a bunch of unnecessary hoops if you need to terminate a pregnancy. He also wants to invade your privacy when it comes to contraception, backing the Health Care Conscience Rights Act, which would allow your boss to take away your insurance coverage for contraception. McAllister works for the taxpayers, but he wants us to give him his privacy. But if you work for Hobby Lobby, no privacy for you! He wants your boss to have a vote in your contraception choices.

McAllister tossed out a “sorry” and asked for forgiveness, and he’s not leaving office and will probably be re-elected because this kind of hypocrisy is as much a fault of the voters as the politicians. But of course, that doesn’t mean that this is a victimless situation.

• mcallister 5 *

He gets to keep his job, but she gets fired. That’s right in line with conservative sexual mores, where they believe abortion should be banned and contraception restricted, but there’s no discussion whatsoever of controlling or punishing straight male sexuality. Note, too, the pain the husband of the cheating wife is feeling. Unlike abortion, contraception, and homosexuality, adultery creates actual victims and hurts real people. And somehow adultery is easier for the right to forgive than all these victimless behaviors that don’t involve them at all.

Karen Finney on MSNBC had Heather Busby from Texas NARAL on her show to talk about what’s happening in the state, in terms of access to reproductive health care disappearing so fast it’s dizzying. Really, if you live in rural Texas, things are looking very dire right now. There just aren’t any abortion clinics and family planning clinics are also disappearing quietly as well.

• texas 1 *

In addition, she counted over 70 family planning clinics that have shuttered due to budget cuts and other messing around with the budget. So you can’t prevent pregnancy if you’re low income and living in isolated areas. But you can’t terminate either. Sounds like mandatory childbirth to me, as punishment for being poor no less. But this round of clinic closures is only the beginning, and that’s why people should be really afraid. The law is coming in two waves, probably in part so that access to abortion disappears in bits and pieces and so it’s gone before most Texans even realize there’s an emergency. Round one was a regulation requiring that doctors have admitting privileges at local hospitals, which most can’t get because in order to get admitting privileges, you have to admit patients regularly. Abortion providers don’t do that because abortion is a safe outpatient procedure. Round two is requiring clinics to be up to ambulatory surgical center standards, which is not only not medically necessary but also means that you have to have a full surgery room in some cases just to give women a pill to swallow. Just so you can see how ridiculous this is. That regulation is going to nearly decimate abortion access in Texas.

• texas 2 *

Six clinics in the entire state. In 2011, there were 73,000 women in the state who needed an abortion. That demand will likely stay level or even go up, because fewer women have access to contraception, due to the loss of family planning clinics. That means, even if all these women who need abortions somehow manage to get to a city with a clinic to do it, each clinic will need to provide 12,000 abortions a piece to keep up. That means that, even if these clinics were open 365 days a year, each clinic would have to 33 abortions a day to keep up with demand. That is, needless to say, an impossible task and no one could even hope to start to accomplish it.

However, Planned Parenthood is looking to provide some relief.

• texas 3 *

By no means would one extra clinic solve the problem, but it will mean that many more women will be able to get abortions, so that will help. But I have concerns beyond just the inability of the few remaining clinics to handle the massive amount of demand there is for abortion, as bad as that immediate problem is. As I noted last week, the Fifth Circuit Court upheld the law requiring doctors to have admitting privileges. Using the same dishonest logic, I expect they’ll do the same when the law requiring clinics to be ambulatory surgical centers is litigated. Within a couple of years, we are almost surely going to be seeing this in front of the Supreme Court, especially since other circuit courts have correctly struck down similar laws in other states for being unconstitutional. It may be that we’re facing down a Supreme Court that will decide that while abortion is technically legal, states have broad rights to pass laws restricting access regardless of whether or not they’re medically necessary or make safe abortion provision impossible to do. If that happens, even if Texas doesn’t immediately pass a nuisance law to shut down the last six or seven clinics, a bunch of other states are going to immediately enact the same laws, shutting down most or all of their clinics. So this is beyond the 73,000 women in Texas who need abortions every year, but will swiftly start to affect hundreds of thousands of women every year.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, women are just worth less edition. Last week we had Equal Pay Day, a day set every year to mark how much longer into the current year women had to work to make what a man made in the previous year. The right spent most of the day trying to make excuses for why women are paid less. Rush Limbaugh, as usual, was the most flamboyant.

• Limbaugh *

Limbaugh calls a duly-elected president, one who was elected in a landslide, honestly, a “regime.” So of course he thinks he can dismiss concerns about pay inequity as “old hat.” Yes, feminists are still on about it. That’s because we’ve been talking about it for 40 years and it’s still a problem. We’ll probably have to talk about it for 40 more before it’s fixed.

The post Is Secular Anti-Choice a Thing? And How Big a Hypocrite Is Rep. Vance McAllister? appeared first on RH Reality Check.

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Premium channels like HBO have long been a place where TV writers and producers can be a little edgier than they can on network TV. They can curse and show nudity and have more violence than other networks, mainly. But recently, and probably because of competition from basic cable and other providers like Netflix, I feel like HBO is beginning to realize another way to get an edge is to be more politically blunt than network TV. Nudity is easy enough to cue up with your Xbox or Internet browser these days. But being willing to do something like make fun of political cowardice on the subject of abortion? That’s something you won’t see on ABC any time soon.

I think that’s why HBO decided to go ahead and let the show Veep tackle the subject of abortion. The show is a hard-hitting political satire starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus playing the vice president [of the United States] who, of course, has an eye towards the White House. The show often shows them running around trying to craft these kind of middling, people-pleasing, toothless statements about policy designed to appeal to the broadest swath of Americans while saying nothing. It’s a particularly potent source of satire. So it was awesome to see them tackle the hypocritical, self-serving way abortion rights are often talked about by politicians, and let’s be clear, they did not hold back just because the topic is touchy. The episode starts with the president pulling a Bill Clinton and trying to find some middle ground between pro-choice and anti-choice. Except, instead a phrase like “safe, legal, and rare,” POTUS caves into anti-choice pressure and endorses banning abortion at 20 weeks.

• veep 1 *

This understandably spins the VP, named Selina Meyer, into a tailspin, because she and the president have always been pro-choice but now he’s trying to hedge his bets and seem “moderate” by endorsing an arbitrary term limit. As any regular listeners to the show understand, that’s exactly why various states have been passing 20 week bans, to bait people into thinking that’s a reasonable compromise, when in fact it creates all these health problems since many to most abortions after that cut-off are done because something has gone wrong with the pregnancy. But these actual policy considerations are immediately abandoned by Selina and her team for what they consider the most important task at hand, which is coming up with a position that has broad appeal to folks who probably don’t know much about the issue anyway. So there’s some comedy with that.

• veep 2 *

Just in case you didn’t get that this kind of political gum-smacking is disingenuous hooey, they make sure to give Selina a private moment to explain how she actually feels on the issue of abortion rights.

• veep 3 *

At first, the VP’s advisors feel that she should simply state that she’s pro-choice or “pro-life” and leave it at that. But eventually, they start to take the bait like the president did, thinking that they can just settle on a number of weeks into a pregnancy that they would ban abortion at and hope that is the sort of thing that pleases everyone enough that she can escape the inevitable controversy. Selina keeps drifting back to the idea that this is a complex issue and that she shouldn’t abandon a woman’s right to basic health care to score political points, and eventually one of her aides cracks.

• veep 4 *

I was, to be frank, falling on the floor laughing at this, even as dark as it is, because the writers correctly grasped that the 20-week cutoff—or whatever number is being tossed out there—is an entirely arbitrary number that is not informed by medical expertise regarding women’s health or even, to be frank, any genuine assessment of fetal development. It’s all pure politics, about choosing a number that seems far enough along as to not seem like a real infringement on rights without sounding so far along that it’s practically a baby, an attempt to find some kind of “middle ground” between pro-choice and anti-choice that doesn’t exist. The utter lack of interest in policy is driven home by the fact that a representative of Planned Parenthood never gets a meeting with Selina to discuss the actual ramifications of the policy.

Selina’s advisors also recommend that, no matter what she picks, she wield her gender as a cudgel to avoid criticism. She blanches.

• veep 5 *

Unsurprisingly, she eventually caves and her public statement starts with “as a woman.” We never do find out what number of weeks she picks, which is brilliant and reaffirms the point of this episode, which is that all these decisions are being made for base political reasons and not based on any scientific or medical understanding. It wasn’t just unapologetically pro-choice. It was ruthless satire of the whole terrible debate and I highly recommend watching the whole thing.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, the far right pushes the life begins before conception line. We already know that conservatives are slowly trying to redefine pregnancy prevention as abortion in order to stigmatize it, so it’s inevitable that Christian right talk show host Gordon Klingenschmitt would try to come up with a theological reason to claim that pregnancy begins even before it begins.

• klingenschmitt *

Recent years have shown an upswing in the effective use of contraception by a number of women, especially college-educated women and teenagers. No wonder, then, that right-wing attacks on reproductive rights are shifting towards attacks on contraception, since taking it away would help derail the careers of ambitious women and would punish sexually active teenage girls, two of the major if unspoken goals of the anti-choice movement.

The post Abortion Restrictions in Missouri, and Ohio and ‘Veep’ Tackle Abortion appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

Fattitude

Tennessee about to criminalize pregnancy

Pregnancy discrimination on the job

Chelsea Clinton is pregnant

Perhaps the dumbest question possible to be asked about this

Clinton conspiracy theorists start coming out

Really, Fox?!

Cardinal Dolan will make your birth control decisions for you from afar

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking with David Futrelle about the myth of the “friend zone” and the male entitlement issues that go into it. Also, why are people politicizing Chelsea Clinton’s pregnancy and how hard is it to be a woman who chooses to have a baby in 21st-century America? Hint: It’s not easy.

There’s an interesting new Kickstarter raising money for a documentary called Fattitude.

• fattitude *

You can find out more about the documentary at fattitudethemovie.com.

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Much of the discourse around reproductive rights centers around attempts to keep you from being able to say no to pregnancy, with attempted bans on abortion and restrictions on contraception access. But lately, there’s also a growing trend of attacks on women who want to go forward with their pregnancies and actually have babies. Women in this country are increasingly put in a no-win situation, facing laws that make it harder for them to decline child-bearing, but also facing more abuse and discrimination if they do have babies. Look, for instance, at Tennessee, where lawmakers are looking to pass a law that would criminalize having a baby while struggling with drug addiction.

• pregnancy 1 *

It’s one of those things that gets all this knee-jerk support, because everyone agrees that using drugs while pregnant is a bad idea. However, actual experts on the issue think that laws like this are a bad idea, because they actually backfire. If you’re trying to bring a pregnancy to term and you’re addicted to drugs, a law like this will encourage you to conceal your addiction from the doctor or even refuse to see a doctor at all, rather than run the risk of being reported and going to jail.

• pregnancy 2 *

What the NPR story fails to note is that these kinds of prosecutions are selectively enforced. Indeed, this proposed law would only apply to illegal drugs, and not to alcohol, even though alcohol abuse is known to cause birth defects, while the science on various illegal drugs is inconclusive. The fact of the matter is that women who are investigated for possible drug use while pregnant are more likely to be poor or women of color, even though drug use during pregnancy is a problem that cuts across all sorts of race and class lines. Laws like this just make it harder for women to get the care they need.

The increased threat of jail isn’t the only thing looming over women who choose to have babies these days. Even if you’re totally clean and sober, choosing to have a baby can often mean running into danger of losing your job. Even though there’s laws protecting pregnant women from discrimination, a lot of women are finding that they’re being run out of work for having babies anyway.

• pregnancy 3 *

She eventually settled out of court, and Walmart has promised to be more reasonable going forward. But it’s hard to say what that means. Pregnancy discrimination is part of a larger and growing problem of workplaces, particularly in the service industry, treating workers in the most degraded fashion possible, such as not allowing basic stuff like access to water or bathroom breaks. These kinds of restrictions are terrible on non-pregnant people at the peak of health, but for women who are pregnant, it’s impossible and punishing. It’s also bad for your baby. It’s illegal, but the only remedy, as this case shows, is to sue under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. For women who can’t afford to sue, then, the choice is an impossible one of giving up your health or losing your job. Because of our high unemployment rate, sadly, employers often feel free to issue ever more impossible and miserable demands, knowing that if their current employees fail to meet them, they can always just hire some more people who are desperate for work. That’s why these kinds of problems plague certain industries.

• pregnancy 4 *

That’s where we are as a country, especially with regards to low-income women: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If you don’t want a baby, well, too bad, the states are slashing funding for family planning and employers like Hobby Lobby are actually suing to avoid covering basic contraception services as part of their health-care plans. That is, if you are even lucky enough to get a health-care plan. And if you do need an abortion, you often need not just the fee for the abortion, but gas to drive hundreds of miles and money for multiple nights at a hotel to cover the state-mandated waiting period. If you do want to have a baby, though, you are opening yourself up to harassment from law enforcement and, even if you’re the most law-abiding citizen ever, you still might find yourself fired for having basic physical needs at your job. If you’re beginning to think the system is rigged so women always lose, then you definitely aren’t wrong.

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Interview

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Of all the news stories out there that are kind of hard to cover, deaths, births, and weddings may be the hardest. Mostly because they aren’t exactly news. I mean, they’re new, for sure, but there’s no real mystery to most of them. People are born, people get married, and people die. Most of the time, barring some great trauma or unusual circumstance, there’s nothing interesting to say about any of these things beyond just noting that they happened. And so it goes with the announcement that Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, is expecting a baby.

• Clinton 1 *

Hurrah for the happy couple and the soon-to-be grandparents, of course, but there’s not much more to say about this. This is basically personal family business and doesn’t have any ramifications for the public. This isn’t a matter of policy or politics. But despite the fact that there’s not much to say about it, there is still an overwhelming amount of public interest in this pregnancy, probably because, as the popularity of tabloids show, there’s an endless desire on the part of the public to hear that famous people do the same things we do, such as have babies and get married and get divorced.

This creates a gulf between the amount of interest in Chelsea Clinton’s pregnancy, which is immense, and the actual meaningful things to say about it, which are close to zero. Which is one reason, I suspect, there was all these attempts on TV to say something, no matter how asinine, about this pregnancy. But really it was more than that, because Chelsea’s mother, Hillary Clinton, is expected to announce a presidential run in early 2015 or late 2014. Since Hillary is, you know, female, the press is forever trying to find ways to suggest that she’s not quite as capable as a man would be at tasks like running for president. And so that inevitably became part of the Chelsea pregnancy coverage, such as this moment on Meet the Press.

• Clinton 2 *

There’s already a long-standing tradition in the media of using motherhood as an excuse to be sexist to women, for instance, by asking if women can “have it all,” by which they mean be both a mother and have an ambitious career. No one asks this of men, because it’s just assumed that men can “have it all.” But since it is true that women are still expected to do most housework and childcare, there was at least a veneer of reasonability in asking if women have enough time in the day to do all these things in an unfair world. But asking it of a grandmother just shows that it’s nothing but concern trolling, a cheap way for the media to suggest women are less capable than men without coming right out and saying so. Mitt Romney had grandchildren born while he was campaigning and no one suggested that his campaign would be compromised because of it. Many male candidates have young children at home, including Rick Santorum, whose daughter is disabled. And they get less concern trolling over it.

Sadly, though, the exploitation of Chelsea’s pregnancy to attack her mother just got worse. The conspiracy theorists that tend to flock whenever a Clinton does anything went a little nuts. Right-wing commentator Steve Malzberg kicked it off.

• Clinton 3 *

There’s a peculiar kind of misogyny at work here, along with Clinton derangement syndrome. There is just a certain stripe of misogyny that imagines that women are always plotting and everything they do, even having babies, is done for dark, nefarious reasons. Like online misogynists who assume women are sperm-stealing to get that sweet, sweet child support cash that covers less than half their new expenses, the possibility that Chelsea got pregnant because she wants a baby is discounted out of hand. Then again, we are talking about anti-choice conservatives. The anti-choice argument often assumes women won’t have babies unless forced, so of course, when confronted with a pro-choice feminist like Chelsea Clinton actively choosing a baby, they have to invent some nefarious reason she must be doing it. After all, Malzberg was hardly the only one. This conspiracy theory made the leap to Fox News.

• Clinton 4 *

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, 7-Eleven edition. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is not only not a woman and not a doctor but is supposed to be a celibate man who has no relationship to women’s sexuality whatsoever, was ‘splaining to women how they’re supposed to use contraception, which he opposes, recently.

• dolan *

Basically, his argument is that it is wrong to deny benefits, unless of course you are an icky woman who has all the icky sex. But he is simply wrong that you can breeze into a 7-Eleven and have a doctor write you a prescription for birth control. He clearly is referring to condoms, of course, and thinks he knows better than you and your doctor what is the best contraception method for you. Imagine if he did this to anyone but sexually active women. Imagine if he said, “You don’t need your allergy shots when you can breeze into 7-Eleven and buy Benadryl.” Or said, “You don’t need your prescription painkillers when you can breeze into 7-Eleven and buy aspirin.” People would rightfully be up in arms. But inject a little misogyny and suddenly folks are making excuses.

The post Being Pregnant in Modern America, and Male Entitlement and the ‘Friend Zone’ appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

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MSNBC panel on Mississippi’s last abortion clinic

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Gag

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be covering the Fifth Circuit court case regarding hospital admitting privileges in Mississippi, both with a segment and an interview with a lawyer from the Center for Reproductive Rights. Also, Bill O’Reilly blames Beyoncé for teen pregnancy, but does that make any sense at all?

Amy Schumer’s show is quietly one of the funniest and most unapologetically feminist shows on TV. Per our discussion of the “friend zone” last week, I thought y’all would appreciate this amusing clip.

• m’lady *

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The Fifth Circuit court, which is located in New Orleans, broke with most other courts that have heard cases regarding targeted regulations of abortion providers. Specifically, most other courts who have heard challenges to laws that require abortion providers to have medically unnecessary hospital admitting privileges have thrown those regulations out, rightfully pointing out that the Supreme Court said there can be no undue burden on abortion access. The Fifth Circuit Court, however, upheld such a law in Texas, arguing that even though a regulation that is clearly meant to shut down clinics is medically unjustifiable, that somehow means it’s not undue. Yeah, it was a sleazy bit of legal dishonesty, but it’s scary, because the Fifth Circuit Court is hearing another case pretty much just like it. Except this time it’s in Mississippi and, if the law goes into effect, that means that the last remaining abortion clinic in the state will likely have to close.

• Mississippi 1 *

The case being argued last week isn’t over the law itself, but over the injunction against it. Either way, however, it’s not looking very good for the women of Mississippi. The same court first overturned an injunction against the Texas law and then upheld the Texas law earlier this year, so the hope that they’ll make a different choice in Mississippi is distressingly low. The only real difference between the two cases is that there are still some clinics left standing in Texas, but this would end the last clinic in Mississippi. Wiping out all the clinics in a state looks a little bit more like an undue burden, but frankly, I’m not holding my breath. The court was clearly indifferent to protecting women’s rights the first time around, so there’s no reason to think they’ll feel different this time around. At the clinic in Mississippi, they’re already trying to get as many women helped before the hammer comes down as possible.

• Mississippi 2 *

Dr. Willie Parker is an amazing person, y’all. He not only flies back and forth between Mississippi and Chicago to provide health care to women in both places, often at threat to his safety, but he cares about this issue so much that he makes himself widely available to media. When he finds time to sleep, I do not know. He went on MSNBC with a larger panel to discuss his first hand experience of abortion and what it means to lose this access in Mississippi. They discussed how the court justified saying that it’s not an undue burden by saying that the burden really isn’t that hard. But Dr. Parker disagreed.

• Mississippi 3 *

He also explained what kind of methods women turn to if they can’t afford the drive. Not all will be forced to have a baby they don’t want. Many will turn to illegal methods, particularly trying to procure drugs, often of unknown origin, over the Internet to do so.

Amanda Allen of the Center for Reproductive Rights was also on the panel, and she explained what is really going on here in terms of legal shenanigans.

• Mississippi 4 *

Here’s the thing: If Mississippi and Texas get away with functionally banning abortion through indirect means, then other states will surely follow. Then it’s not just a matter of driving 150 or 200 or even 300 miles. Now it’s a matter of driving 1,000 miles or trying to fly. It’s not just doubling the cost of an abortion, but tripling it or more. It’s basically a ban, and the fact that Mississippi will have no legal abortion within its borders drives this home. That’s the inherent dishonesty at the center of all this. Anti-choicers have been told, over and over again, that they can’t ban abortion. But they feel entitled to do it anyway, and will use any means necessary, including lying and basically manipulating our medical regulatory system for that nefarious purpose.

Most teen pregnancy is unintended and it tends to be associated with higher rates of negative outcomes for both mothers and children, so it’s understandable that there’s a lot of interest in research in methods to reduce the amount of teen child-bearing in this country. And luckily, that research is starting to pay off, with plenty of evidence to show both that teen pregnancy is on the decline and that it’s because teens are getting better at sexual decision making, particularly with regards to using contraception consistently. So that would suggest that future efforts to reduce teen pregnancy should be focused on more sex education and more access to contraception for teenagers.

That, or if you’re Bill O’Reilly, you’re just going to blame the entire problem on Beyoncé for supposedly teaching kids, apparently single-handedly, that sex sounds like fun.

• Beyoncé 1 *

He then goes on to show clips from some Beyoncé videos, notably “Drunk In Love” and “Partition,” which are sexy videos but are notably sexy videos about Beyoncé’s relationship with her real-life husband Jay-Z. I mean, Beyoncé is obviously not opposed to sex outside of marriage, but the official concern that Bill O’Reilly has with her videos is that she’s supposedly contributing to an anti-marriage culture that he deems dangerous. Remember, conservatives oppose out of wedlock child-bearing but refuse to accept that contraception and abortion are legitimate ways to avoid it, so instead they spin this bonkers conspiracy theory that women are deliberately trying to have babies without men because they’re anti-marriage. So how do Beyoncé’s videos make marriage and sex seem fun contribute to that? Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America came on to explain, but she just seemed to confuse the issue even more.

• Beyoncé 2 *

I loved this quote, because it showed that Fox News and Concerned Women for America are utterly contemptuous of the truth at every turn. The song is, for one thing, called “Drunk in Love” and not “Drunk Love.” It’s a sequel to a prior song called “Crazy in Love” and it’s pretty explicitly about her relationship with her husband. The song is most definitely not about anonymous blackout drunk sex, for god’s sake, and the fact that Nance thinks it is is disturbing since that implies she can’t tell the difference between consensual sex and a man forcing himself on a woman who is too drunk to consent. The lyrics are explicitly about a couple that lives together and has a crazy drunken adventure that yes, involves sex, but also dancing and being silly and all sorts of other things. In other words, it models enthusiastic consent, specifically with lyrics like, “Why can’t I keep my fingers off it, baby?/I want you” and Jay-Z rapping about getting it on again in the morning. This shows that the concern for teen pregnancy is paper-thin and the real issue here is a priggish desire to sit in judgment of how other people spend their time. Honestly, I think O’Reilly and Nance just think that the point of marriage is to be boring and not to have adventures, and the idea that a married couple could actually see themselves as fun-loving partners in crime offends them.

That, and of course there’s more than a little race-baiting going on.

• Beyoncé 3 *

If Bill O’Reilly doesn’t have a problem with adults having sex, then what exactly is his complaint here?  Beyoncé’s songs are about, well, adults having sex. I mean, not all of them, but her sexual songs are about adults. In fact, they’re often very explicitly adult, framing sexual situations in terms that are basically off-limits to teenagers, such as going clubbing or, as I noted at length, in the context of established marriages. I mean, I don’t think sex should be considered off-limits for teenagers, but even if you do, the notion that songs about adult sexuality somehow cause teens to get pregnant is the biggest stretch of all time. I’ll be blunt: O’Reilly is being facetious when he says he doesn’t care about adults having sex. He obviously cares, a lot. And it bothers him even more when it’s African Americans demanding the right to have a private sexual life that’s pleasurable and fun, or else he wouldn’t keep injecting race into this. The teen pregnancy thing is just a paper-thin cover that doesn’t hold up under the slightest scrutiny.

Eboni Williams did try to fight back, but he kept interrupting her. But she got one small shot off.

• Beyoncé 4 *

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, yep, that’s pretty sexist edition. Fox News started a new show called Outnumbered that features four female anchors and one man. If you had any hope that this would mean the show would be any less sexist than their usual fare, well, I hate to disappoint you.

• Outnumbered *

Ha ha the faux “oh golly gee women are so powerful and men are always cringing” act that is supposed to distract from the realities of the world we live in. How original. I imagine the show will probably be nothing but this from here on out.

The post Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic on the Verge, and Bill O’Reilly Takes Another Jab at Beyoncé appeared first on RH Reality Check.

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Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking to a researcher from Guttmacher about why teen pregnancy rates are down. A woman films her abortion and right wing media tries to discredit her with the nutty-and-slutty routine. And once again, Fox News is all upset because women might be making money of their own.

The ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] put out a pro-choice video asking the perennial question of why a bunch of right-wing politicians should be making intimate health-care decisions for women, but unlike some prior riffs on this, they went ahead and highlighted the absurdity of the whole thing.

• aclu *

Check it out, especially if you’re a fan of absurdist humor, which I absolutely am.

***************

Due to abortion stigma, there’s not much discussion out there about what ordinary abortion actually looks like. Anti-choicers have exploited this silence to spread a bunch of myths and dishonest propaganda designed to make it seem terrible and more fraught than it is. Most abortions are done in the first trimester, before the embryo can even be classified as a “fetus,” but they talk about how it’s a “baby” and use pictures of third-trimester abortions to imply more is going on than there is. They have also recently taken to trying to imply that the procedure itself is complicated, dangerous, and painful for women, when it really is a very swift outpatient procedure or even something that can be done with medication. So, it’s understandable that Emily Letts, an abortion counselor who needed an abortion, thought that a good counterpoint was to film her abortion so you can see how not true all that is with your own eyes. I have more on this issue in an article that came out Monday morning at RH Reality Check, so check it out [http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/05/12/anti-choicers-desperately-insist-see-things-clearly/].

Right now, I don’t want to talk about the gap in perceptions of abortion and realities, all of which are handled in the column. Instead I want to talk about abortion stigma. While Letts mostly is setting out to show that abortion is not nearly as bloody or dangerous as people think, part of her mission was also to fight back against stigma and silencing of women’s experiences.

• letts 1 *

So while, as I say in the column, a lot of the right-wing response was to reassert their lies about abortion being terrible and dangerous, another tact they took was trying to shame Letts for this and to imply to their audiences that there’s something wrong with you if you aren’t ashamed of yourself for having an abortion. The right-wing media’s response to Letts was basically to try to tarnish her, knowing nothing about her but what’s in this video, with every ugly misogynist stereotype you can imagine. Of course, there’s the inevitable accusation of being an “attention whore,” since “good” women are supposed to be receding and humble. Greg Gutfeld went there:

• letts 2 *

I can’t even with the claim that she deliberately got pregnant to get an abortion. Do conservatives think abortions are sexually pleasurable? They often talk about them that way. Abortions hurt. I highly doubt it was planned. But really, this is mostly about perpetuating the stereotype of the “attention whore,” who is always female. It’s rich coming from such a half-assed class clown wannabe like Greg Gutfeld, a man who makes a living in the entertainment industry. How dare he accuse someone else of wanting attention, like it’s a bad thing to want to be liked and admired. But, of course, if men want attention, they are just bold and assertive. If women want attention, the word “whore” gets thrown at them so fast it will make you dizzy. Did she want some positive attention for this? Probably, though I doubt that was her primary motive. Is there something wrong with wanting attention? Only if you believe women are a servant class whose job is to be seen and not heard.

Another popular way to dismiss and shame women is to call them “crazy”. And not just as a euphemism, either, but as an out and out accusation that a woman’s choices stem from mental illness instead of rational decision making.

• letts 3 *
• letts 4 *

Their “concern” for her is clearly paper-thin, because people who were actually concerned for someone’s health wouldn’t give over time on a national television show to shaming her and sending people after her they know will abuse her. Really, it’s just about dismissing her by calling her “crazy.” The worst part here is not only are they stigmatizing women who need abortion, but they’re stigmatizing people with mental health problems by insinuating they’re incapable of making decisions and that everything they do is rooted in that mental health problem. Not so, dingbats! Because a woman is suffering depression doesn’t mean that her abortion is a bad decision for her. In fact, some women who are suffering depression choose abortion because their doctors advise them that pregnancy and childbirth can make the symptoms of depression worse. Some women may also feel it’s better not to have a baby until their mental health has stabilized. People who suffer from depression are very often in strong control of their own health care decisions. Not that these fools care about actual mental health, beyond using it as a weapon to bash people.

The fact of the matter is Letts comes across as someone who made the right decision for herself and feels happy about it. These pundits don’t think she should be able to say no to motherhood right now not because of anything specific to her, but because, and Gutfeld particularly was open about this, they think that if you got pregnant you were doing something wrong and need punishment. That’s all they need to know. They don’t know her and they have nothing of value to say about who Letts is as a person. These misogynist stereotypes are being churned out just because Letts is a woman, and this is how the right-wing media discredits women.

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Interview

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Fox News has been turning up the volume on the sexism lately, and even though they’ve been getting a lot of pushback for it, they haven’t laid off one bit. On the contrary, it really seems they’ve been turning it up. It’s not just the existence of the show Outnumbered, either, which exists apparently for the sole purpose of maximizing gender stereotypes. Beyond just the usual sex negative baiting and anti-choice trolling, they’ve also started to make hay out of women who work for a living, particularly if those women have the nerve to be, gasp, successful. On Fox & Friends, the panel of pundits talked about a study that showed that the number of households where women make more than their husbands is on the rise, even though it’s still a small percentage. This is apparently something we’re supposed to be worried about. Though the first guest to talk, Kmele Foster, was unwilling to play along.

• fox 1 *

Hell, I’d go a step further and say that whether or not you can make more money than your husband and he doesn’t throw a major fit of it is a good test of how strong your marriage is, or at least how strong he is. I have never gotten the idea that the baseline for how strong and powerful a man is just happens to be his wife. How irrational is that?! Why is her paycheck more emasculating than some other woman’s paycheck, just because she sleeps with you? Measuring yourself against your spouse like this all the time and seeing your marriage as a competition that you have to “win” is unhealthy no matter what the topic is. I mean, my cooking skills aren’t automatically better because my partner can’t cook as well. I’m still not Anthony Bourdain, you know. This whole “at least I make more money than the person I sleep with” bit is just pathetic.

The host Clayton Morris immediately dismissed this discussion of maturity and other such things as nonsense, and went straight for painting men as irrational brutes who, for some reason, need to be coddled to and pandered to in all their silliness.

• fox 2 *

There is no, repeat no, evidence whatsoever that men have a biological need to provide for women. For one thing, all the anthropological evidence shows that our “caveman” ancestors both contributed to bringing food home, because it would be utterly stupid for women to sit on their duffs all day doing nothing while men were out hunting and gathering. Second of all, even if men had some genetically inscribed need to bring vittles home and present them to his wife, like a cat giving you a mouse does, it doesn’t follow that this would translate into wanting a bigger paycheck. That’s not how instinct works. If men had a visceral need to feed women, they’d want to do all the grocery shopping and cooking, instead of the other way around. The brutal fact of the matter is that this is a cultural thing, and it is strictly about keeping women dependent on men so they feel they have less power in their relationships.

But they managed to dredge up some woman named Kris Schoels to defend the notion that even if it is just cultural, then men’s irrationality on this still needs coddling.

• fox 3 *

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, Outnumbered continues to outdo itself edition. The new Fox News show Outnumbered is about putting four female hosts with one male host, and, as you can imagine, it’s just an opportunity to generate sexist content while pushing the myth that men are so oppressed by harpy women. To that end, Tucker Carlson was on it claiming that women are stupid and don’t get it if we don’t appreciate grown women harassing underage boys, such as when a female teacher got in trouble giving a student a lapdance.

• outnumbered *

Goodness, and if a teenage boy did feel violated and assaulted and humiliated by this, I guess he can’t actually say anything about it or men like Tucker Carlson will accuse him of not being a real man, because real men would love that. The myth that all men are sexually uncontrolled is popular because it allows men to misbehave without getting in trouble for it. But it also is used, as you can see here, to minimize sexual abuse of young men by claiming that they are in a constant state of consent because of their gender. And that is simply not the case.

The post Stereotypes of Women Who Have Abortions, and Concern Trolling Women Who Make Money appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Editor’s note: We apologize for the audio issues during the Madeline Burrows interview. It was due to an unforeseen technology glitch. Burrows is an excellent interviewee, and we promise you’ll still find the segment highly enjoyable. 

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Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking to a playwright who went undercover in the anti-choice movement. Conservatives continue to audition new attacks on contraception access, and the Donald Sterling drama reminds us that HIV stigma is still a very real problem.

Nicole Stewart is a storyteller. She told a story of her pregnancy turning tragic the same week as Wendy Davis filibustered to protect abortions like hers, that turn out very wrong after 20 weeks.

• Nicole Stewart *

Sadly, she ended up having to abort the pregnancy, since the fetus had so many abnormalities. Since then, abortions like hers have become illegal in Texas. Warning if you watch the video: It’s one that will definitely make you cry.

The anti-choice movement dearly, dearly wants to attack contraception, but they have a problem. Unlike abortion, which most women don’t talk about and isn’t really a day to day issue, contraception is everywhere. You probably know the stats: More than 99 percent of women who’ve ever had sexual intercourse have used it. Sixty-two percent of women of reproductive age are currently using it. Nearly 90 percent of women who don’t want to get pregnant right now are using contraception. It’s advertised on TV. Condoms are given away by charities and governments. Contraception is mainstream. Most anti-contraception conservatives probably use contraception themselves!

So, the key to attacking contraception is to do it in such a way that your audiences think that you’re trying to take it away from other people but not from them. That’s the strategy that Tony Perkins, the Family Research Council president, seemed to be taking on the program “Washington Watch.” He blamed the problem of sexual assault on the proliferation of condoms on campus.

• contraception 1 *

You heard right. Perkins is arguing that giving away condoms on campus is to blame for rape. He literally is arguing that young men see, say, a bowlful of condoms and think, “Gosh, what to do with these things? I guess I need to go out there and violently force myself on an unwilling woman!” It’s incredibly disturbing to me, every time I hear a conservative say that the social acceptance of consensual sex somehow leads to rape. It suggests an inability to tell the difference. It’s hard not to conclude that Perkins thinks the problem with rape on campus is not that women are being violently assaulted, but that penis in vagina contact is happening. And what if you’re in a situation where even Perkins has to admit you have “permission” to have sex, say because you’re married and not using contraception? Does that somehow mean it’s no big deal for a man to force himself on a woman?

It gets worse, if such a thing is possible.

• contraception 2 *

So let’s follow the logic: The claim is by making condoms available, campuses are basically prompting male students to rape. And then there’s “tyranny” because if they do rape someone, they might get in legal trouble for it. It would seem that they’ve floated the idea that it’s more tyrannical to hold rapists accountable for rape, which is an actual crime, than to accept that grown adults in college have consensual sex with each other and that’s okay.

I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they didn’t mean to imply that consensual sex is worse than rape. Not that what they’re setting out to do is much better. Basically, they saw there’s a bunch of rape on campus and started looking for a way to use that fact to demonize contraception. The point here is to demonize contraception, and by doing so, they tied themselves into a knot where they’re basically implying consensual sex is a bigger issue than rapists running free.

Of course, Perkins is a little bit more out there than a lot of right wingers, though not so much so that he’s not always on Fox News. But the attacks on contraception are coming from more mainstream conservative sources now. Like Sean Hannity. After he went on a rant where he implied that anyone who has had sex should be ashamed and that it should be a luxury only for women who have enough money to raise a child, he went off like this.

• contraception 3 *

This is a classic example of how conservatives are now demonizing contraception. They can’t claim outright to be against it, because they are using it and many of their followers are. So instead they cast aspersions on it, associating it with “too much” sex or implying that it’s too easy for supposedly bad people to get. Or, in this case, Hannity also is trying to argue that it’s a minor issue compared to sex trafficking, and therefore anyone who cares about it is morally bankrupt. As if it’s impossible to care about both things at the same time, or as if women who are being sex trafficked have no need for contraception. The implication, especially if you pair it up with his insinuation that women who use contraception have too much sex, is that “feminists” are a bunch of sluts who are so busy slutting it up we don’t care about quote-unquote real issues. It’s a way to marginalize contraception and imply that it’s only something for “bad girls” without coming right out and saying it. And this sort of rhetoric is escalating on the right. Make no mistake: No matter what Sean Hannity says, these attacks are about conservatives like him coming for your birth control.

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I should have known that somehow, some way, this crazy Donald Sterling story would get wide-ranging enough to require some attention from my little old podcast. Now that day has come. After Sterling, who is a slum lord and the owner of the L.A. Clippers, was exposed on tape for a racist rant scolding his mistress for being seen in public with Black people like Magic Johnson, Sterling went on Anderson Cooper’s show to try to somehow fix his public image. Not surprisingly, he failed miserably, coming across as even  more mean and hateful, if such a thing was even possible. He was particularly aggressive to Magic Johnson, who I must reiterate has done nothing wrong and, as far as I know, hasn’t really had anything to do with Sterling before this.

• hiv 1 *

Where to begin? First of all, it’s really rich having Sterling judge anyone else’s sex life, when the reason this mess all started is because he has a mistress he literally has given millions of dollars in gifts to in order to get her to have sex with him. Second of all, Johnson has done a ton for all sorts of people, and is well-known for investing in businesses specifically to revitalize Black-majority neighborhoods. But all that, I think, is so obvious that it hardly bears mention. What is more troubling is that Sterling is perpetuating an attitude that sadly hasn’t gone away, even though it really should: the belief that people with HIV should be ashamed of themselves. Luckily, Johnson has done a lot of work raising awareness of HIV and destigmatizing it, and he was unafraid to hit right back, going on Anderson Cooper’s show to do so.

• hiv 2 *

Look, famous athletes, rock musicians, and all sorts of people who aren’t famous at all might have a lot of sex partners. Or not many at all. Obviously, it’s better if it’s protected sex, but it’s also not like people were as aware of that issue when Johnson got sick as they are now. Ever since Johnson contracted the virus, he’s been a stalwart advocate for the rights of HIV-positive people. He has also done something else that’s just as important: He’s signaled that just because you make what some people consider a mistake, such as having unprotected sex, doesn’t mean that you are a bad person or that your life should be over.

Josh Barro of MSNBC also pushed back against HIV stigma and explained how nonsense of the sort that Sterling was spouting is actually killing people.

• hiv 3 *

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts. Man, y’all, that new Fox News show Outnumbered is just a gold mine of misogynist, sex-phoic nuttery. Keith Ablow was on, and he’s always good for some completely off the hook weirdness. They were talking about a book called It’s Perfectly Normal, a very basic sex ed book that offends a lot of conservatives because it a) admits genitals are a thing people have and b) tells kids that having sex is a thing adults do. That’s it, and yet, here’s Ablow’s reaction.

• ablow *

The book is not education in the various ways you have sex, but about the basic biology, and the fact that it’s normal to feel desire. But he blows right through that to imply, utterly falsely, that it’s like a chap book for sexual fantasies. The myth that you can keep kids from ever feeling sexual desire by simply pretending sex doesn’t exist was dumb in the era before the Internet, but this nonsense sounds even stupider when every kid in a classroom can conjure an entire world of pornography up on their phones. Kids can see threesomes anytime they want. What they need is education in how to play safe and to distinguish between the fantasies you see in porn and what to expect, realistically, from their own sex lives as adults.

The post Attacks on Contraception, HIV Stigma, and Undercover With the Antis appeared first on RH Reality Check.

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Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, author Jen Doll will walk us through her adventures in the wedding-industrial complex, just in time for wedding season. I also have a segment on the backlog of untested rape kits and another one on the increasing weirdness of conservative fear-mongering.

Speaking of wedding season, BuzzFeed’s got a cute video called “Things You Do at a Wedding That’d Be Creepy Anywhere Else.” Funny stuff.

• wedding *

A little harmless fun with our usually unexamined traditions.

Research shows that most rapes are committed by serial rapists, men who rape one woman after another, usually without much fear of ever meeting justice for it. There are a lot of reasons for this. For one thing, reporting rates are low. And even if you report, the cops often can’t or won’t put together a case. It’s really hard to prosecute a lot of rapes, in part because juries often blame the victim. No wonder rape reporting rates are so low! And then there’s another problem: Even if the victim does everything she’s told to do, even if she goes to the hospital and undergoes an invasive rape kit and cooperates with law enforcement in getting DNA and other physical evidence, that rape kit may just sit on a shelf never getting tested. The damage that does is serious. USA Today interviewed one victim, Natasha Alexancho, about what happened after she got a rape kit done after a stranger attacked her at gunpoint as she was trying to enter her house.

• rape 1 *

Yes, nine years this man was free to roam the streets, raping women at will, in no small part because no one got it together to test this rape kit. The backlog of untested rape kits is an incredibly serious, nationwide problem. When NPR did a report on it, they found it was not uncommon for detectives to close a case as unsolved long before rape kits could be tested. The Urban Institute is trying to bring more attention to this problem with a new report showing how screwed up the funding stream for dealing with rape kits is. In order to prevent states from charging rape victims for rape kits, the federal government requires states to cover the forensic costs of testing a rape kit. But states have figured out a way to force victims to pay for it anyway, by poaching the money to pay for them from victim services, funds set up to provide counseling, lost wages, and medical care for victims. But rape kits are not a victim’s service! Rape kits are primarily about forensics. It’s about the victim being helpful and providing evidence, often at great personal cost to herself. This NPR report should really drive that home.

• rape 2 *

This is an ongoing problem, where sexual assault is treated as somehow different from other crimes, treated like more of a personal matter than a crime. Police would never consider it the job of victim services to, say, comb over a robbery scene for fingerprints or do an autopsy on a murder victim. But when it comes to rape kits, which are also a form of evidence collection, it’s suddenly seen as a social service issue instead of a forensics issue. Perhaps this is why rape kits are so frequently treated by law enforcement as not being a budget priority, leaving so many of them to languish on the shelves. One victim got so frustrated when her rape kit kept not being processed that she finally offered to pay for it herself.

• rape 3 *

It’s good that there’s a ban on forcing victims to pay for it themselves. However, it’s not much better to simply not do the testing. Again, and I cannot reiterate this enough, most rapists rape over and over again. Every day you delay testing is a day that the rapist could be out there, raping someone else.

While, in this victim’s case, the rape kit didn’t produce enough evidence to lock anyone away, that doesn’t mean that it’s not extremely valuable to go through these backlogged rape kits and start testing them. Cleveland, Ohio did that, making a project of taking that backlog and forcefully going through it. The results have been outstanding.

• rape 4 *

That’s right. They’ve been able to indict 100 separate men for rape, just by carefully going through the cold case files and testing the rape kits. Many of these men are murderers. Thirty percent of them were indicted in more than one rape. Testing rape kits is expensive, yes. But it’s clearly more expensive, in terms of continued human suffering and straight up financial loss, to let rapists roam free.

It’s a hard thing to measure, but it seems lately to me that conservative lies about things like sexuality and gender are getting bolder and more outrageous lately. Sen. Marco Rubio was on Sean Hannity’s radio program recently, and they were congratulating each other for being climate change denialists, which is, realistically speaking, like patting each other on the back for claiming that the earth is flat and gravity is an illusion. But not just content to lie about the evidence that has amassed demonstrating that man-made global warming is real, Rubio decided to double-down and lie about the science regarding when “life” supposedly begins.

• conservatives 1 *

This is a lie. In fact, the scientific consensus is the opposite of what he says. Contrary to his implication, there is no evidence that conception turns non-living things into living things. It turns two living things—a sperm and an egg—into another living thing. Incidentally, that happens to be true every time a cell divides. The scientific consensus is not that life “begins” but that life is a continuous stream, and that far from starting at conception, life began over three billion years ago. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the astrophysicist and the host of the science documentary Cosmos on the issue of when life begins.

• conservatives 2 *

Nor is it true that science says that a unique human person is created upon conception. On the contrary. For instance, science has shown that some times, after conception, a zygote splits into two while reproducing and they drift apart in the womb. If both grow into full-term babies and are born, we call them identical twins. If science actually said that “life” begins upon conception, then those twins would be considered one person. But they are not. The reality is that science understands a fertilized egg for what it is: a fertilized egg. Science has taught us that up to half of them die on their own without ever starting a pregnancy, also showing that a fertilized egg cannot be mistaken for a person. But the claim that a fertilized egg is a person is a religious claim. All the available science we have actually counters that claim, which is no doubt why the medical establishment is largely pro-choice. In other words, Rubio was dressing up religion and calling it science. All while looking at actual science, regarding global warming, and denying its validity.

Meanwhile, when it comes to just pulling something out of your ass and pretending it’s factual, it’s hard to beat state Rep. Charles Van Zant of Florida, who was on about one of the right wing’s latest conspiracy theories, this bizarre paranoia about Common Core in public schools. He was attacking a group called American Institutes for Research, which was hired to create standardized tests in schools. Somehow, Van Zant got it into his head that standardized tests would turn kids gay.

• conservatives 3 *

Look, I get it. There’s a lot of legitimate criticisms of Common Core, which is a set of national standards for what schools should be teaching kids. But it’s clear that the conservative movement is only against it because President Obama endorsed it. And this is just evidence, like Rubio’s attempts to tie climate change to anti-choice idiocy, of conservatives trying to tie every subject they’re on about to their sexual paranoias and bigotries. Because they know that hating other people for their personal sexual choices is what really wakes their audiences up. Worried they’re starting to drift into accepting the truth about global warming? Scream about abortion. Afraid they might start to ask what’s wrong with having standards for what kids should be learning in math class? Tell them those standards are a secret plot to turn kids gay. It’s shameless.

But few things are more dishonest and self-serving than people who oppress women and pretend they’re fighting the Nazis by doing so. Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, interviewed California megachurch pastor James L. Garlow for the Daily Caller, and he had this to say about abortion clinics.

• conservatives 4 *

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, Keith Ablow is the source of all sorts of nuttiness edition. Last week, I addressed Keith Ablow of Fox News dogging on sex education. Now listen to him burrow in and literally say that wearing leggings in front of a boy is the same thing as hitting him.

• ablow *

I cannot convey to you how smug he was when he said this, no less surrounded by four women wearing skirts above the knees that would have been considered immodest when he was a kid, thereby neatly destroying his argument that men cannot handle seeing skin they’re not used to seeing. But yes, school is a place for learning, particularly how to be in the real world. In the real world, in places like Fox News studios, men have to be around women who are looking sexy without acting like lust monsters who can’t control themselves. And so school is as good a place as any to teach that lesson. They need to learn before they’re adults and can lose jobs, dates, and friends by acting like they can’t control themselves around women.

The post Surviving Wedding Season, Testing Rape Kits, and Conservative Fear-Mongering appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

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Awful Glenn Beck segment on rape

Glenn Beck wants you to deliberately ignore misogyny

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be focusing on the Elliot Rodger shooting in California, an act of misogynist violence that was specifically compelled by the killer’s belief that women owed him sex and weren’t giving it up. I want to look at the role online misogyny played, of course, but also the role that other media sources play in sending the message to men that they are entitled to own and control women’s bodies, or that women are the ones who are actually oppressing men. It’s dark stuff, but I believe it’s important.

Before I begin, however, a little reminder that while Rodger’s crime was unusual for being a mass shooting, male entitlement to control women that boils into violence is a daily problem in our society.

• remy *

A few minutes before the stabbing, the victim, Jennifer Martel, changed her relationship status on Facebook to “It’s complicated.”

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Over Memorial Day weekend, there was a terrible tragedy in the town of Isla Vista, California, where the University of California Santa Barbara is located. A young student there, Elliot Rodger, went on a murder rampage, killing three young men in his apartment, two young women in front of a sorority house, and one young man walking into a convenience store. Sometimes when this happens, it’s hard to really figure out the killer’s motivations, really. But Rodger made sure the entire world knew, leaving behind a YouTube video chronicling his reasons and sending a 141-page manifesto to various news organizations. His argument was that women—specifically conventionally attractive, white women—owed him sex, and because he didn’t get any, he was getting his revenge. Some news media has reported that he was rejected by women, but even that isn’t quite right. By his own account, he never even talked to them. He appears to have believed that young women were obliged to offer him sex without even talking to him, and believed that they failed him by not doing so.

The whole thing stuck a major chord with many women because, for better or worse, Rodger’s various claims that feminism was evil, men are victimized by women’s rejection, and other such misogynist drivel is being aimed like a firehose at any woman who dare speak up online about women’s rights. I have to ban and block people every single day because they say belligerent and disturbing and delusional things about women to me. Most feminist writers were sadly unsurprised by this crime. That many men hating so much all the time, and one was bound to go off, it seemed. NPR had British writer Laurie Penny on to talk about this.

• ucsb 1 *

I think it’s a lot for people to absorb, in no small part because a lot of feminist writers have grown accustomed to these guys being just a buzz of relentless abuse that simply exists and few, if any people, seem to care. But this kind of thing matters, and during the interview segment, this podcast will take a deeper look at how the constant stream of hatred toward women is radicalizing men who might otherwise have gone a different direction with their lives. It’s also critical, as Penny points out, to remember that it’s not just MRAs. The anger and entitlement that Rodger was spewing is everywhere online. His belief that women owe men sex and are oppressing men by not giving it to them is an attitude that is all over any male-dominated space online. Obviously, not all men think this way, but having to repeat that caveat over and over again is getting really tiresome.

• ucsb 2 *

Here’s the thing I’ve noticed: The men who are quickest to rush in and claim that “not all men” are sexist pigs are, in fact, usually sexist pigs. I made a joke about “not all men” on Twitter and literally 100 percent of the responses were from men who have hostile attitudes toward women and their female allies, who also have ugly, hostile attitudes to women not themselves. Men who aren’t sexist, unsurprisingly, don’t get all bunched up and defensive every time someone dares suggest sexism is a bad thing. “Not all men” can safely be seen as the calling card of men who are, in fact, sexist, but are trying to throw up obstacles to prevent discussion of the negative impact of attitudes they personally perpetuate.

Jessica Valenti was on Chris Hayes’ All In to talk about the online misogyny that this killing shines a light on, and how it’s just a miserable, relentless stream of abuse that women have to endure.

• ucsb 3 *

This is a critical point: It’s not just feminist writers. It’s not just online. The #YesAllWomen hashtag was really useful in helping focus on this. The belief that many men have that they are entitled to the attention, affection, and sexuality of any woman they choose plays out in ways big and small for all women. I don’t know a woman alive who hasn’t been followed by a man down the street, called a “bitch” for refusing a man’s advances, or subject to sexual harassment from a man who felt the need to punish her for being unavailable. Women lie to men in bars and give them fake numbers or make up boyfriends because they fear direct rejection could lead to violence. A huge percentage of women are raped or sexually assaulted. Women die every day in this country from domestic violence at the hands of controlling men. The role that the online community plays is that it is a safe zone for men who have these feelings of entitlement, where they can gather and tell each other that women are awful, terrible people who owe men sex, and justify their harassment and abuse of women to each other. And, of course, they can use it harass women. I think I blocked three people on Twitter for harassing me just as I was writing this.

Valenti continued in this vein, explaining how people who wallow in misogyny get the idea that their views are okay.

• ucsb 4 *

And then there’s right-wing media, which, as I point out over and over again on this show, puts out an endless stream of content arguing that women do not own their own bodies and aren’t full people deserving of respect. If Elliot Rodger got it into his head that he was entitled to women’s adoration and submission, it’s because in little ways every day, there are an endless number of people willing to tell men exactly that.

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Interview

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So where do all these seething misogynists online get the idea that men are entitled to own and control women’s bodies, and that men are being oppressed by women? The sources are too many to count, honestly, from movies that portray women as trophies to be won instead of people to those who insist that women should give men their time and attention just to be “polite.” But I want to talk about right wing media and the role it has played in stoking the ridiculous claim that men are oppressed as a class by some kind of evil matriarchy. Indeed, in the days after the shooting, throwing a fit and claiming women are out to get men was the order of the day in many right wing outlets. Before the bodies of the six people murdered by a misogynist were cold, Fox News was having a whine session about the real problem is all the supposed oppression of men by women. Keith Ablow, as usual, was at the center of this.

• reaction 1 *

Ablow is lying here. Lorena Bobbitt did not dismember John Bobbitt for cheating. She argued in court that she snapped after he raped her that night, after enduring years of abuse at his hands. Both the prosecution and defense agreed that he was abusive, though there was some quibbling over how abusive. Either way, the jury was convinced by the evidence. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity because the jury believed that reacting with violence against someone has driven you mad by repeated raping and beating counts as not guilty by reason of insanity. According to Crime Library, even John’s friends testified in court about how he bragged about beating and raping her. A story about a woman who is beaten and raped on the regular and snaps and acts out violently isn’t very good evidence for the claim that women are oppressing men. It is pretty good evidence, however, that men get away with these kinds of horrific crimes on the regular. I’m not saying what she did was right, of course, but the larger context is a story of a man directly and violently oppressing a woman.

Ablow cast around for another way that evil women are oppressing men.

• reaction 2 *

It’s a little garbled, grammar-wise, which can happen in a live setting. But basically he’s saying a man is oppressed because he cannot legally force a woman to bear a child for him. Granted, he’s not saying that a man has a right to grab any random woman and force her to bear a child, but the argument is that a man should have control over your body because he ejaculated in you. This notion, that women’s bodies belong to men and that men should have some veto power over how a woman uses it is being broadcast on the most popular cable news channel in the country. No wonder men like Elliot Rodger felt comfortable expounding on that idea and saying that they, too, are the owners of female bodies. The major difference here is that Ablow is saying a man should be able to legally compel a woman to give birth and Rodger and his online buddies are more worried about being able to compel a woman to have sex, but the basic argument is the same, that men should have final say over how women’s bodies are to be used, and not women.

Glenn Beck isn’t on Fox News anymore, but his website The Blaze and the videos he puts out on it are wildly popular on the right. He spent the days after the shooting accusing anyone and everyone he could of oppressing men. They replayed an old segment accusing the Obama White House of inflating rape statistics, apparently in a bid to rebut people who suggested that misogyny is less than awesome because of the six people that are dead from it. The segment was beyond stupid.

• reaction 3 *

Yes, people have consensual sex under the influence. That’s why, by his own admission, they ask specifically about situations where you were “unable to consent.” The shamelessness here is breathtaking. For people who really are that dumb, let me give you a similar example. Yes, it’s true that people who are drinking often give each other gifts, often by buying each other drinks. But that doesn’t mean that it’s okay if someone sees a person passed out from drunkenness and decides to steal his wallet. Consent is not actually confusing. The only people who say it is are people who want you to believe that so that it’s easier for rapists to get away with crimes. Anyway, this is just a small sampling of how right-wing media decided to act in the days after a horrible misogynist killed six people. You know, by doubling down on their own misogyny.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, yes, please, make misogynist violence all about the hurt feelings of men edition. Glenn Beck continued to hammer at the men-are-the-real-victims narrative on his show, complaining about a hashtag called #YesAllWomen, where women shared their stories of being harassed and abused. Warning, he is extremely sarcastic and angry at women who share their stories.

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It’s only “man-bashing” if you believe all men rape, harass, and abuse women. That’s why the hashtag was about all women, not all men. All women have been affected by this, but not all men are perpetrators. Duh. When someone like Glenn Beck tries to guilt trip women into lying and covering up for men who do these things to us, I have to ask a very serious question: What are they trying to accomplish? How do they benefit if women sit in silence, being abused but afraid to speak out about it? I think it’s an important question that needs to be asked every time we are told to shut up about things that actually happen in the world to women, every day.

The post UCSB Shooting and Misogyny Online and in Media appeared first on RH Reality Check.

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Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be interviewing Jill Filipovic about the potential end of most abortion access in the South. It’s been five years since Dr. George Tiller was murdered, and things have grown worse in many ways since then. Also, it’s summertime, which means freaking out about sex education season is here!

Some good news, however, for the top of the show. One beach in South Virginia has decided to take the problem of sexual harassment of women seriously.

• creeper *

So often people throw their hands up and say nothing can be done about sexual harassment, so it’s nice to see that not everyone gives up that easily.

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Last week, I devoted an entire episode to the misogyny-inspired shootings around the University of California in Santa Barbara campus. There was a lot of debate over whether or not that kind of act should be understood as an act of terrorism. I fall generally on the side of yes, since, as our interviewee pointed out last week, being radicalized through unofficial communities can be just as serious as being radicalized through more organized forms. Indeed, I would argue that this may be the wave of the future for a lot of terrorist organizations: instead of recruiting people directly, just blanket people with hostile rhetoric that dehumanizes your target and let lone actors figure it out for themselves. Not only is it cost effective, but it shields you from any legal responsibility since you never directly prompted the terrorist to act. This is how the Boston marathon bombing happened. And it is also how a lot of anti-choice terrorism happens. Last week was the fifth anniversary of the most violent anti-choice terrorism the community had experienced in a decade.

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His murderer, a man named Scott Roeder, was apprehended and eventually sentenced to fifty years in prison. Roeder definitely had been in communication with other anti-choice activists, but no one else was ever put on trial for conspiracy. That may very well be because no one actually conspired with Roeder, as hard as it may be to believe. Like the Boston bombers or Elliot Rodger, it might just be a situation where someone radicalized himself simply by exposing himself to hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric and was able to put the pieces together himself.

The frustrating thing about all this is that terrorism, it seems, is surprisingly effective in many cases. Sometimes it creates a backlash, but what has happened in the years after Dr. Tiller’s murder is the conservative movement has decided to double down on the very ugliness and misogyny that led Roeder to act in the first place. The result? All out war on abortion clinics in a blatant attempt to wipe out access in red states in this country. Red states like Kansas, where Dr. Tiller worked.

Melissa Harris-Perry reports:

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She goes on to add that some doctors have tried to get admitting privileges, only to have hospitals turn them down because, and this is one of those things that will make you bananas, hospitals can’t or won’t extend admitting privileges to doctors who don’t use them. Since abortion is incredibly safe, abortion doctors have no cause to admit patients. In addition, some places where hospitals do extend those privileges are getting threatened by anti-choicers. That’s right. Anti-choicers are trying to keep doctors from meeting requirements that they themselves set. No, it’s not a surprise. But that’s because we’re dealing with a radicalized, misogynistic movement that employs legal abuse, harassment, lies, and yes, terrorism to get its way. I’ll have Jill Filipovic on during the interview segment to talk about it more.

But while the Tiller family understandably had to close the clinic in Kansas after Dr. Tiller’s death, another woman has come in and rebuilt another clinic in the same building.

NPR reports:

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Unfortunately for Julie Burkhart, antis are furious that the act of terrorism they claim to have had nothing to do with didn’t work to wipe abortion out of Wichita.

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There’s a lot of reasons that abortion access is disappearing. Lawmakers attack it. People in the press demonize it. But we must remember that these lawmakers and other conservatives who routinely demonize abortion, women who have it, and doctors who provide it, are quietly depending on the harassment campaigns, threats, and outright terrorism of the radicalized people on the ground to help get them to their goal of driving abortion underground, where women have to feel ashamed and even unsafe in getting it.

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Interview

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School’s out, which means it’s the time of year that schools start floating their policies, especially sex education policies, for next year. Which means it’s our annual season for the struggle between those of us who accept that human beings will grow up and develop an interest in sex and those who reject thousands of years of evidence to say that as long as there’s no sex ed in schools, kids will never develop an interest in sex.

This struggle is kicking up in Oregon, where one school district decided to make condoms available to students in high school and middle school. The headlines, of course, focused on the sixth graders at the middle school, to maximize panic, but the administrators at the school defended the decision with wisdom.

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It’s important to understand that they aren’t putting them in gift baskets for kids, but are responding to student demand. There’s zero evidence out there that condoms encourage kids to have sex, but plenty of evidence to suggest that condom access does encourage kids who are having sex already to protect themselves. But what struck me was how the explanations for why the sex ed and condoms should be there are always so articulate and thoughtful and reasonable, whereas the arguments against it range from knee-jerk thoughtlessness to out and out idiocy. Like this woman they dug up to oppose the policy.

• sex ed 2 *

She can’t explain why she’s against it. She just is. Great. Some argument there. I don’t really understand this way of thinking. If you can’t muster a defense of your position, then shouldn’t that tell you that perhaps you should rethink your position? That you could, in fact, be wrong? There’s a lot of subjects where you get this reactionary “nuh-uh!” defense, but I find with sex ed and contraception distribution, it’s often worse than usual with people doing things like waving off the immense amount of research in favor to claim that being the parent of one or more children makes them more of an expert than all those researchers, who themselves are also usually parents.

Of course, not that opponents of sex ed or contraception distribution really come off any better if they do try to make arguments. That much became clear when Marjorie Holsten, a homeschooling Christian right activist, caught the public attention again this week when Right Wing Watch nabbed an interview with Holsten where she tried to argue that sex ed is tied to right wing paranoia about Common Core and just general conspiracy theories regarding the Democrats.

• sex ed 3 *

You hear the word “desensitized” a lot in right-wing circles when trying to argue against sex ed, but it’s really unclear what they mean by it. It seems the fear is that if you think about sex too often, you’re going to want it more, which would actually be the opposite of desensitizing, but whatever. Clearly the fear here is that if you like sex too much, you’re going to be too busy humping a lot of people to be married. The social science shows the opposite, of course, demonstrating that people who date around and marry later in life tend to have more stable marriages. Also, blue states that vote Democratic tend to have lower divorce rates than red states that shun sex education and lean Republican. So if there’s some kind of master plan here to get votes by destroying marriage, they are doing it all wrong, since the policies Holsten hates actually are correlated with stronger, healthier marriages. But also higher rates of voting Democratic, so I have no idea what she’s on about.

But she’s such a strange character that even the Daily Show had to get in on the action.

• sex ed 4 *

Conservative sex ed in a nutshell: Sex ed without any real information, no talk about safety or human relationships at all, and leaving kids far more confused than they were before they started. Sorry if I think there must be a better way.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, Bill O’Reilly knows nothing about human beings and how they operate edition. O’Reilly, using incredibly offensive language to describe transgender people, floated what might be the dumbest speculation I’ve ever been privy to outside of a blog comments section.

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In the real world, around real human beings, you’ll find that one fairly widespread universal is a strong desire not to go to prison. If O’Reilly thinks of prison as some kind of wondrous health-care spa, perhaps he should live there and see how long he lasts. I’m guessing a day, tops. This kind of discourse is about dehumanizing transgender people, making it sound like they don’t have basic human impulses like being free and not living in a cell. Rest assured, transgender people prefer to sleep in their own beds and not be imprisoned, just like everyone else.

The post Five Years After Tiller’s Murder, and Sex Education Freak-Out Season Begins appeared first on RH Reality Check.

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Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, Miriam Yeung will explain why sex selective abortion bans are just so much race-baiting and don’t actually help anyone. So-called “men’s rights” activists get a moment in the sun and fumble it terribly, and I review the movie Obvious Child.

Slam poet Anna Binkovitz does a hilarious piece about people who try to find ways to argue that women who aren’t consenting to sex secretly are.

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Check it out at the link to hear the full poem. Really funny stuff.

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After the Elliott Rodger shooting, there was a ripple of mainstream news interest in the world of online misogyny that pretends to be an equality movement by going under the term “men’s rights.” It’s not a surprise. Rodger clearly had immersed himself in the wooly world of online misogyny and his writings and videos showed someone who was well-versed in the lingo of men who blame women generally and feminism in particular for all their problems. And so there’s been a no doubt short-lived spate of media interviews with self-proclaimed “men’s rights” activists and they are, if anything, even more cringe-worthy than you would have guessed. You want to feel embarrassed for these guys, and then you remember they are misogynists, and so it’s really like watching a particularly hellacious episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

A guy named Dean Esmay from a blog called A Voice For Men was asked on a Detroit Fox affiliate to debate a feminist college professor named Heather Dillaway. A Voice For Men is a sad mess of a site where a bunch of men try to convince themselves men are the people who are really oppressed, and apparently for the purpose of justifying their own misogyny. He did not come off well.

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Yep, the claim that Esmay trots out is a common one amongst online misogynists: That rape and domestic violence are, basically, problems that feminists made up to make cash money. It’s definitely an aggravating lie, especially for women who have endured rape or domestic violence or both. I think it also causes people to be a bit confused when they hear it. Why would you try to lie about the realities of rape or domestic violence, when covering up those problems only serves to make it easier for rapists and wife beaters to get away with their crimes? It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that making it harder to prosecute rape and domestic violence is, in fact, the purpose of this so-called men’s rights activism.

Anyway, this silliness continued.

• mra 2 *

Okay, so let’s be clear here. Men, on average, do make more than women. But, according to Esmay, that doesn’t count because there are women out there who make more than he does. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that he’s arguing that as long as any woman ever on the planet makes more than any man ever, then men are oppressed by women. That only makes sense if you think that men are entitled to make more money than women, and not just on average, but all men for all time are entitled to make more money than women. It’s mind-boggling, but it really goes to show how much so-called men’s rights are actually about misogyny. Esmay assumes that if any woman ever makes more than a man, no matter what, it’s because of preferential treatment and not because of her job or education or skills. The only way that theory works is if you assume it’s impossible for woman to ever be smarter or skilled than a man, full stop. It’s a theory based in the assumption that even the least skilled man is smarter than the smartest woman. That is pure misogyny. Luckily, Heather Dillaway was able to come on to explain some of the context for all this silliness.

• mra 3 *

And really, didn’t Dean Esmay just prove that? His entire argument rested on the assumption that all of men’s needs and desires should be met before women’s even start to be considered, that any random woman should not have a high-paid job, for instance, until every single man out there has one first. Dillaway’s metaphor broke down a little due to the constraints of live interviewing, but her point was well-considered. The so-called men’s rights movement is a bunch of guys who see that men get nine pieces of candy but throw a fit about women getting much candy if they get one piece. They are awfully short-sighted and childish, but unfortunately they are dumping a lot of this hateful, entitled rhetoric onto the Internet, where it can get to impressionable young people. Young people like Elliott Rodger, who was so infatuated with the idea that he was owed sex more than women were owed freedom that he ended up killing six people over it. So while I’d love to just ignore these guys and hope they go away, unfortunately the recent shooting shows that’s a hope that just isn’t going to work out.

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Interview

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I was fortunate enough to get to go to a pre-release screening of the movie Obvious Child, which is now enjoying a wider release. It’s a feature-length romantic comedy that is structured around a character’s abortion, and it’s getting a lot of press for being brave enough to show, well, how women actually feel about abortion instead of how male-run Hollywood generally tells women how they should feel about abortion, which is ashamed and fearful. Or really, what most Hollywood movies say that what women should feel about abortion is simple feigned ignorance. I never stop marveling at how many movies and TV shows I see where the topic of abortion is never even mentioned, even though, in real life, it’s an option that’s at least contemplated in the face of an unintended pregnancy, even if a woman opts to have her baby. So the fact that the main character of Obvious Child makes a different decision is remarkable in and of itself. That she does it like women often do in real life, which is quickly and without regret, is particularly refreshing.

• obvious 1 *

But having seen it, I can say what I really loved about the movie was it wasn’t about abortion. I mean, it was, but what it actually was about was the traditional rom-com plot: Girl meets boy, obstacles, boy and girl get together. There’s a lot of talk about the abortion, but it doesn’t define the main character, played by Jenny Slate. Her anxieties about her comedy career, her worries about love, her relationships with her parents, and her friendships are all the real point of the movie. Abortion in this movie reads like it does in real life: It’s a thing that women have to do sometimes, but it doesn’t define them and is merely one experience in a sea of experiences that make up our lives. Better yet, the movie is by far the best romantic comedy I’ve seen in over a decade. It isn’t just the abortion that sets it apart. The movie generally opposes some of the tired clichés of romantic comedies, particularly the sexist nonsense about how men and women are “opposites” and instead tells a very specific story of two people who get together because of who they are and not because gendered rom-com conventions that demand it.

The quality of the movie has led, happily, to some really great press for it. Press that happily focuses on the actual characters instead of trying to make it just about the abortion.

• obvious 2 *

Leaving the movie, I felt very much that if abortion wasn’t nearly so controversial a topic in our society, then the way I would end up describing the movie is as one about a stand-up comedian who ends up falling for a guy who she previously would have never looked at twice. Abortion is a thing that happens in it, and the big romantic climax happens when the male lead shows up at the female lead’s house on the day of her abortion to hold her hand and bring her flowers. But since it is happening in a society where abortion is controversial, the very normalcy of the movie is, in and of itself, a political statement. It’s a political statement about how abortion doesn’t necessarily mean anything but that a woman is not ready right now. It doesn’t mean she is unlovable or abnormal or messed up in any way. Slate’s character is no different than any other rom com character, except she’s more relatable. But since it’s going to be political, no matter how you slice it, the smartest route to go is to make it aggressively normal. This is how abortion is, in fact, experienced by many women.

The director Gillian Robespierre was on Democracy Now! to talk about the choice to make abortion a central concern in this movie. I was impressed in particular at how they were careful to show the abortion experience as realistically as possible.

• obvious 3 *

It’s a shame that it’s considered so revolutionary to show abortion how it really is in the world, instead of drenching it in all this shame and fear that actually isn’t part of a typical abortion experience. But hopefully the skill and humor of this movie, and the sheer normality of it, will encourage other filmmakers to incorporate straightforward depictions of abortion into their plot lines.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, revenge fantasies costumed as concern edition. This is a little old, but worth nothing: Right wing talk show how Matt Barber pretending to be sorry for women who have had abortions, when of course he’s actually just fantasizing out loud about them getting punished for not doing what he wants of them.

• barber *

It’s not “the left” or Planned Parenthood that denies that abortion causes depression. It’s the American Psychological Association: “This research review found no evidence that a single abortion harms a woman’s mental health.” That is a direct quote from the APA. However, childbirth is associated with higher levels of depression, particularly for women with unintended pregnancies. Anyone who actually cared about women’s mental health would want women to have access to abortion. Don’t believe the fake concern.

The post Sex-Selective Abortion, Men’s Rights Foolishness, and ‘Obvious Child’ appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

Are men funny?

Limbaugh claims being female helps politicians

Name It Change It research

More gendered attacks on Clinton

The female agenda?

Dramatic history of American sex ed films

Dance, Little Children

The Story of Menstruation

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking to Sarah Mirk about the history of sex education films, followed up by some of the more entertaining clips I found from them. Also, there’s a good chance Hillary Clinton is going to run for president, which means that sexist attacks on female politicians are starting to be a real problem again. It’s a problem we need to stop, for the good of everyone.

Recently on Comedy Bang Bang, Scott Aukerman, Reggie Watts and Lizzy Caplan debated the hot topic of whether men could be funny.

• funny *

Clearly we need someone to make a list of all the funny men so we can present it to a group of women so they can go down the list, striking anyone they claim is not funny and making excuses for why the rest don’t count somehow.

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Y’all, Hillary Clinton hasn’t even declared that she’s running for president in 2016 and already things are getting completely out of control when it comes to the issue of her gender. In an ideal world, the fact that Clinton is a woman shouldn’t really be an issue. Indeed, in the ideal world, people would look at her record, both pros and cons, and determine how they’re going to vote based on the issues and on their sense of how well she would perform as a leader. At bare minimum, it would be nice if people acknowledged that we have never had a female president before and that the majority of elected leaders in the United States are male and that demonstrates that being a woman actually tends to work against you as a politician. But instead we’re being subjected to right-wing fantasy land rants where pundits pretend that being a woman is somehow a benefit to Clinton. After claiming that Clinton can’t run on her record or promises to continue Obama policies, Rush Limbaugh hit the claim that drawing attention to her gender would help her.

• Clinton 1 *

But is this true? Nope. In reality, as research by the organization Name It Change It has shown, drawing attention to a female candidate’s gender tends to hurt her chances. It’s worse if people say sexist stuff about her, which Clinton tends to get a lot, but the effect holds even if the attention a candidate gets is seemingly positive. This is a bipartisan problem, and not just something that affects Democrats or Republicans. Which means that, regardless of your party affiliation, you should have an interest in defeating these ridiculous attempts to reduce Clinton to her gender. It hurts all women, regardless of party, if women are forever being made to feel like they have to answer for their gender somehow.

And yet, Clinton continues to be subject to attacks that start from the assumption that her gender somehow gives her an unfair advantage or that her gender somehow disqualifies her. Such as with Reality Cast favorite Keith Ablow of Fox News, on the show Outnumbered. The female hosts of the show are all Republicans and were attacking Clinton on foreign policy, but they never suggested that anything about her gender should be held against her. But not Ablow!

• Clinton 2 *

His implication couldn’t be clearer: That there is no such thing as a woman that could be qualified to be president, and therefore we have to shoehorn someone in who has no real qualifications. It’s almost laughably transparent what he’s doing here, because whether or not you like Clinton or agree with her, she does, in fact, have a hefty career as a lawyer, a policy maker, a senator and a cabinet member. By making this about her husband, Ablow is trying to make this all about her gender and try to reduce her by saying she’s just someone’s wife, even though she’s held higher offices than her husband did before he was president . And he clearly, from that statement, finds it implausible that a woman could ever be distinguished enough.

Again, regardless of your party, this kind of sexism should offend you, because it can and will be used to discredit any woman who runs.

In fact, it’s not just right wing pundits anymore who are trying to imply that being a woman gives you an unfair advantage, even though the actual statistics tell a much different story. In a segment about Clinton, CNN’s Chris Cuomo got all whiny at the supposed disadvantages that male candidates face when up against female candidates, particularly when women’s issues are at stake.

• Clinton 3 *

There’s not evidence that anyone is pushing a “female agenda.” There are plenty of female politicians that support policies that are anti-woman and plenty of male politicians that support policies that are pro-woman. There’s no reason to think the voters are confused about this. And that’s why it’s so troubling to see how female politicians, regardless of party, get reduced to their gender. Or the way that it’s implied that only women have a gender, as if men don’t also have one. We need more women in politics, and this sort of thing unfortunately discourages that, as many qualified women are not particularly interested in entering a debate about whether or not their gender somehow makes them less qualified for the job or gives them an unfair advantage, which is another way of implying that they’re less qualified for the job.

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Interview

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After that wonderful interview with Sarah, I thought it would be fun to play some of the clips from some of the sex ed films that she covers in her piece, which are all covered in the upcoming documentary Sex (Ed): The Movie. There were a lot of movies that were clearly intent on preventing people from getting STIs. But sometimes those intentions backfired, because the dramatic music and dialogue often ended up sending the opposite message, which is that these sorts of things are shameful. Here’s a clip from the 1961 sex ed film Dance, Little Children.

• history 1 *

What researchers have learned since then is that shaming people about STIs or otherwise blowing them all out of proportion in this way is one of the surest ways to get them to ignore their own symptoms or live in denial. The movie also had a backfiring message in implying that the only way men could get STIs is to sleep with sexually forward women, who are coded as bad girls. So while trying to convey the message that STIs were everyone’s problem, they ended up sending the message that it’s only a concern for “bad” girls and the men that have sex with them. In reality, of course, STIs tend to be a problem that affects everyone and they don’t check to see if you fit some kind of arbitrary sexual moral standard before infecting you.

That said, as Sarah points out, not all sex education was dour or frightening. Disney, for instance, had a couple of movies that are fairly upbeat for their time and try to actually reduce fear and stigma. For instance, there’s the 1948 animated short called “The Story of Menstruation”. In part, because it was a partnership with Kotex, it was in their best interest to assure girls that a period is not a particularly scary or debilitating thing.

• history 2 *

Granted, they frame a lot of it with this assumption that women and girls are obligated to be especially sweet and accommodating, particularly to men. But by 1948 standards it’s not entirely retrograde, particularly in terms of throwing off so many of the stifling rules and taboos about menstruation that were so frequently used to police women and make them feel like their bodies were this unconquerable burden.

Sex ed films were often aimed mostly or strictly at male audiences, which is why they often were blunt and accepting of human sexuality in ways that may surprise you. Such as in this film from the 60s.

• history 3 *

As Bitch Media’s YouTube video “Babies & Bananas” points out, 30 years later Bill Clinton was pressured to fire Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders for making the exact same point, albeit for both men and women instead of just for men. Even today, another 20 years later, there’s still a number of books and videos out that try to argue that masturbation is wrong and should be avoided as much as possible. Clearly, we’ve endured decades of this struggle between people who have common sense enough to know that masturbation is normal and healthy and people who like to pretend that it’s some kind of horrible sin to be overcome, but hopefully, with each generation, more and more people are beginning to see that it really, truly is not a big deal to masturbate.

I have one more clip to drive home how not-new it is to be frank in sex ed films, at least those aimed at men, about the fact that sex is a thing people do and it’s foolish to expect them to abstain indefinitely. This is from a 1942 sex ed film for the Defense Department.

• history 4 *

See, they even had a sense of humor about it! It’s worth remembering that this filmstrip is 72 years old. Medical experts have known for a long, long time that condoms are, in real world terms, a lot more effective at preventing STI transmission than pointlessly lecturing people on the supposed evils of sex. So why are we still debating it? Why do we still have a problem of people demonizing contraception?

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, what is it about Fox News and statutory rape edition? Tucker Carlson has been on and on lately about how it shouldn’t count as statutory rape if the older person is female and the younger person is male, and now you have Jesse Watters trotting out the same line on the same network.

• watters *

He wasn’t as out of control as Carlson, but it’s still the same idea. And that idea is, to be blunt, that young men are inherently smarter and more capable of handling adult relationships than young women. The only reason to believe this is if you believe men are inherently better than women, full stop. And that’s why you’re seeing this nonsense come out of the mouths of so many men on Fox News these days.

The post Sex Ed Through the Decades, and Sexism Against Female Politicians appeared first on RH Reality Check.

Related Links

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One couple’s story

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Just too many women, you know

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking to a representative from the Center for Reproductive Rights about a report on the Rio Grande Valley. I’ll also be covering the Supreme Court’s decision on clinic buffer zones, and the melee over George Will’s column minimizing the problem of campus rape.

The American Chemical Society has a video out about all the ways that chemistry improves people’s lives, and one of their new ones is all about sex.

• condom *

They also talk about the chemistry of lubrication, warming agents, and of course, hormonal contraception.

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The Supreme Court announced Thursday that they won’t have a decision on the Hobby Lobby case until Monday, which just so happens to be when this podcast comes out. [Editor's note: Read about the Court's ruling for Hobby Lobby here.] But they did have a big decision that was released on Thursday, regarding a Massachusetts law barring anyone from standing 35-feet from an abortion clinic unless they were going in and out of it or just passing through. The law was to keep protesters from crowding a clinic and harassing women right up to the door. It was really helpful in reducing tensions around clinics, but sadly the Court struck it down.

• buffer 1 *

For what it’s worth, the claim that clinic harassers routinely talk women out of abortions is a lie, a lie concocted to cover up their actual purpose in being there, which is, from what I can tell, that they get a rise out of shaming women for having sex without their permission. Indeed, some protesters don’t even bother to go to abortion clinics these days and just protest any family planning center, secure in the knowledge that the women they throw invective at are probably having sex. Sadly, the court bought into the lie that the plaintiff was just some nice little old lady who cared about the patients. Rule of thumb: People who are outraged that you have a private sex life and who think you should be forced to have children you know you can’t take care do not care about you.

CBS Boston interviewed a couple that were quite clear how little the protesters actually care about women.

• buffer 2 *

Imagine how much worse it is without a buffer zone, when protesters, who don’t know you at all, can chase you down while insulting you and making assumptions about how you’re a terrible person and a slut and a killer and all these other cruel things that conservatives say about women who need abortions, for whatever reason. But even the ones who try the “gentle” angle are awful. Like Michelle Dean at Gawker said, passive aggression is still aggression. The “I’ll pray for you” act is just that, an act, and their real purpose is to try to shame and harass you because they have all these unresolved issues about sexuality and they want to force you to have to deal with them.

One thing that immediately became apparent to a lot of liberal commentators is that this is unbelievable hypocrisy from the Supreme Court. The Court determined that free speech basically requires private citizens to entertain a public sidewalk debate about their private medical choices. But the Supreme Court, which is composed of public officials doing work that affects all of us, has its own buffer zone to ward off protesters. Rachel Maddow had some stuff to say about that.

• buffer 3 *

Here’s the thing that I want you to take away from this. The First Amendment was established in order, primarily, to protect political speech. Indeed, the political nature of abortion is one reason that the court justified this. But people getting abortions are private citizens making private medical decisions. They aren’t making a political statement. Many of them may not even be pro-choice, as wacky as that sounds. It’s true! As much as anti-choicers like to think you’re getting abortions at them, in fact, what women choose to do with our bodies is none of their damn business. In contrast, the Supreme Court’s job is to listen to the public—that’s why they accept amicus briefs as well as oral arguments—and consider our arguments and ideas before rendering decisions. They have more obligation to listen to the opinions of strangers before making a decision than a private woman making a private choice about her private life. So why do they think private women have more obligations to entertain the opinions of strangers than they do?

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Interview

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It might be because it’s otherwise the summer and therefore a relatively slow news cycle, but I can safely say I’m a little dumbfounded at how much conservative whining and griping has exploded in the face of the Obama White House starting a task force to address the problem of campus rape. It seems like common sense to me to try to create a consistent set of general standards and to help schools figure out what their rights and obligations are when it comes to setting standards on what counts as sexual abuse or harassment, and to help schools enforce those standards when students are brought in front of university disciplinary committees for breaking the rules. And yet conservatives are in an uproar. Part of it is that everything Obama does creates an uproar on the right. We’re talking about people who griped about what kind of dogs the first couple adopted, after all. But it’s also because it turns out there’s a lot of people who are deeply interested in denying that sexual assault is a real problem and who will go to great lengths to shame rape victims for speaking out.

George Will of the Washington Post kicked off the latest round of highly emotional debate with his contemptuous article that, to be blunt, accused rape victims of making it up to get attention. He refused outright to believe statistics that show how widespread sexual assault is, writing, “that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate.” He declined to explain what these privileges are or how one is supposed to get those privileges by answering the questions on a survey measuring sexual assault, even though the survey is anonymous. The blowback he got was, however, heartening. Zerlina Maxwell went on the Ed Show to talk about it.

• rape 1 *

Zerlina also talked about what a proper response to hearing about these statistics looks like.

• rape 2 *

The thing about Will’s piece is it was a crappy piece of so-called journalism. Will’s argument against the contention that sexual assault is common is basically that he doesn’t want to believe it. His example of what he considered a hysterical woman crying “rape” was, it turns out, a woman who was raped by the most straightforward legal definition: The story has the woman reporting that she said no, and that her rapist just disregarded her no because he didn’t care or perhaps enjoyed having sex with a woman who is telling him to stop. The only person massaging the numbers here is Will, who arrogantly decides to declassify thousands of rapes as non-rape simply on his say so. But, because he’s a contemptuous and arrogant old fart, he went on C-SPAN and acted impatient with all these people who don’t like Papa George’s solution of making rape go away by classifying forced sex as non-rape. After claiming that not going to medical school is basically the equivalent of going to prison, Will whined about how mean all his critics are.

• rape 3 *

This is hilarious coming from George Will, who I literally have never heard speak in a tone other than indignation. Indeed, the entire reason this controversy got started is he is indignant about what he considers an overly broad definition of rape where all sex against someone’s will is considered rape. He doesn’t say what he thinks the narrower definition should be, of course, but he is prepared to be indignant on behalf of all the young men denied their proper spot in medical school just because they hear a woman saying “no” and figure they can stick their penises in her anyway.

Indeed, the issue here isn’t that Will is conservative or anti-feminist. He’s just dishonest, a really bad journalist. He blithely ignores statistics, fronts like he’s interested in justice while denying the legal definition of rape, and, when confronted, simply acts like his critics are nothing more than yapping women best ignored. Which is why it’s understandable that newspapers like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch dropped him, a decision their editor explained to CNN.

• rape 4 *

More to the point, it was a dishonest and incurious column. Will never bothered to argue for what he thought the definition of rape should be, and simply asserted that it wasn’t enough for a woman to refuse sex. He dismissed statistics used by the White House with dishonest tweaking of the numbers and basically accusing victims of lying to get privileges, without spelling out what those privileges are. By basic journalism standards, he failed and he really should be dropped from more papers until he can step up his game and make real arguments instead of engaging in contemptuous hand-waving.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, deep denial edition. The White House had a Working Families Summit to talk about the various ways that the workplace needs to get better in order to help people balance family and work lives, with an eye specifically towards how women fall behind because of their extra caretaker duties. Rush Limbaugh, unsurprisingly, was against it.

• Limbaugh *

Is it true that too many women are bosses these days, or that men don’t go to college anymore? Well, no. Women are a slight majority in colleges, but it turns out that’s because women have to get a college degree to get the same job opportunities as a man with just a high school degree. Women are only 15 percent of executives at Fortune 500 companies. Women only earn 84 cents to a man’s dollar. I would say we still live in the Mad Men era in many ways.

The post Reproductive Health Care in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, Buffer Zones, and Defining Rape appeared first on RH Reality Check.