Has Obama already renounced his Feminist Superdude status? Because he is allegedly “begging” Henry Waxman to strip extended birth control coverage from the economic stimulus package. Now, I imagine he has reasons for this – because, you know, birth control is a vital health need, especially for poor women, and unplanned pregnancies and children increase poverty, being all expensive and whatnot, and most women who abort pregnancies do so because they feel unable to shoulder the costs of pregnancy and/or motherhood, so reducing the cost of access to contraception, or just plain making it more accessible, would actually help with that “reducing the number of abortions” thing Obama keeps talking about, so it would be totally insane if he didn’t, you know, HAVE REASONS – but I have no idea what they are.
Do you, Phyllis?
… PHYLLIS? Oh, God, Phyllis, why won’t you answer me?
Why are you smiling? Oh, God, you know something, don’t you, Phyllis?
… Oh, God, you’ve done it, haven’t you? You’ve finally done it. You’ve gotten to him somehow, infected him, turned him into… no. No. It’s too horrible. I won’t say it.
It is still totally weird that Obama is President, by the way. We are about a week into it, and I still have these moments where I pause and take a second to realize how weird it is. I think the first of these moments happened when I saw a newspaper refer to “former President George W. Bush,” and I was like, shit, former, as in he’s gone, as in it’s over. I voted for Gore a few months after my eighteenth birthday (and there were people who were mad at me for not voting Nader – in Ohio! – and there were people who were mad at me for voting at all because “the system was broken” – in Ohio!) and I recently read one of my diaries, and it was like, “Gabe says it’s too close to call; Florida is still up in the air,” and I totally laughed and/or was weirded out because this was written at 7:00 p.m. on Election Night, and also I had never gotten beyond third base when I wrote it, so you can see why I have a hard time believing that the Bush Era, which was the historical context in which I lived basically my entire adult life, is over. It is over, though. I keep looking around and being, like, “this is what America looks like while Obama is President” and then it all looks totally the same and totally different, and then I castigate myself for being a sentimental feeb, and then I go back to feeling like I have slipped into an alternate dimension. Then I wonder: where will I get my rage?
So, good news! There is still a place where Phyllis Schlafly is allowed to publish! I always thought she was “media dead,” which is what happens when someone is so irrelevant that when he or she actually dies you are surprised because you thought s/he’d been devoured by sharks or something several decades ago and you just missed it. Nope! Her work is available on a website called HumanEvents.com (“Headquarters of the Conservative Underground!”) which is positively swathed in advertisements for Ann Coulter. Did you know that there is a place where you can sign up to “Get Ann’s scathing commentary every week?” Well, you do now, suckers. In this week’s installment, “Feminists Expect to Cash in With Barack Obama,” Phyllis warns that the no-good meddling feminists are asking the President to advance their vile cause!
The groups that elected Barack Obama are poised to cash in on their investment…
… because they, like, BOUGHT HIM. Get it? They BOUGHT HIM? Because he is A BLACK MAN and they are like SLAVE BUYERS who BUY PEOPLE? HUH?
…and the feminists are muscling to be first in line.
… MUSCLING, get it? Because they are MUSCULAR, like MEN? So they are basically NOT REAL WOMEN? Do you SMELL WHAT THE SCHLAFLY IS COOKING, I guess, is what I am asking?
Read on, friends, to discover the terrifying nightmare world we will enter if the feminists get their way! They will:
— Pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to repeal the statute of limitations and allow women to sue employers for alleged wage discrimination long after bosses are dead and unable to defend their actions.
Suing dead employers for discrimination long after they are unable to come up with stupid rationalizations for said discrimination barring the use of a Ouija board (“T-H-E-Y-M-I-G-H-T-G-E-T-P-R-E-G-S”), and also there is a slight possibility that people will sue discriminatory employers while they are actually alive, and their rationalizations will not matter, because it will be totally illegal! SHRIEK!
— Direct Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to compare pay scales in job categories held mostly by women or mostly by men, and then enforce wage control to equalize wages according to the feminists’ subjective definition of what they call comparable worth.
Eliminating the Pink Collar Ghetto, and making it no longer true that, as more women enter a profession, the wages for said profession tend to get lower, as if by magic! GASP!
— Appropriate $10 billion annually for daycare, early childhood programs, and grants for infant and toddler care so that mothers can be liberated from caring for their own babies.
— Require insurance companies to cover birth control, require pharmacists to fill contraceptive prescriptions, and remove the age restriction on over-the-counter so-called emergency contraception.
Requiring insurance to cover a recurring health cost for many women, then requiring pharmacists to actually make the medication in question available to people with prescriptions, in spite of the fact that this will totally allow women to avoid getting pregnant and having six children which they would, of course, be morally obliged to stay at home with instead of working! AIEEEEE!
— Ratify the long-dead Equal Rights Amendment with no time limitation on the process. Ratify the United Nations Treaty on Women (CEDAW), which would make our laws, customs and textbooks subject to supervision and control by a U.N. committee of feminists designated as “experts.”
“Ahhhh, my old nemesis, we meet again,” you can imagine Schlafly whisper-growling to herself as she types this paragraph. Legislating non-discriminatory treatment of women: it’s back, and this time, it’s not content with destroying America… it wants THE WORLD.
— Enact Hate Crimes legislation to cover acts of violence based on the victim’s real or perceived gender, sexual orientation or gender identity. Fully fund, expand and aggressively enforce the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and enact the International VAWA (IVAWA).
So, Phyllis Schlafly has a gay son. Did you know that?Es verdad. Don’t be expecting any Heathers-style declarations of love for him in the near future, however. Not even when legislation to punish hate crimes against him (and her daughters, and her!) is passed into law, oh my God, LAWS AGAINST GAY BASHING BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA.
— Appoint feminists to key positions in all the federal departments and strive for gender balance (i.e., 50 percent feminists) throughout the government. Establish a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender liaison position in the White House.
Oh, calm down, Phyllis. They’ve only got to be feminists. Nobody said they had to be girls.
Yet, as we all cover the article, we often forget to ask the vital question: WHO WILL COVER THE COVERAGE OF THE ARTICLE? The answer is “me!” Because I am “bored!”
Yes, this article raises a lot of questions, such as: what difference, if any, exists between physical arousal and conscious desire? Can research subjects be relied upon to even report said conscious desire if it conflicts with cultural norms? Are women turned on by images of other women because our culture sexualizes female bodies more than male bodies? What about those dudes who experienced physical arousal at the sight of female children – what level of conscious desire did they report, and why didn’t reporter Daniel Bergner, who obviously knew about those studies well before he wrote this article because they are in his book, include data about their potential mind/body conflict? (Would it have messed up his thesis about women having this totally weird sexuality totally unlike the straightforward and understandable sexuality of dudes, for example?) What, precisely, is the role of socialization in any or all of these scenarios? These are questions: questions that matter!
Now, here are the questions raised by Slate’s “Human Nature” blogger, William Saletan, in his sensitively titled post, “Rape, Fantasies, and Female Arousal.”
Do some women fantasize about rape? Do some become aroused during rape? If so, what does it mean?
…If [some of the sources interviewed in the article are correct about] what these fantasies are—one person drawing her will from the will of another—what does it say about us? If derivativeness of will is, as some of these researchers posit, a fundamental difference between male and female arousal, what does it say about equality between the sexes? Are women, in this sense, inherently less autonomous?
AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
— AND NOW, A SPECIAL BONUS QUOTE FROM THE ARTICLE OF THE YEAR —
Hey, did you ever read that totally weird and kind of clueless article in the New York Times about female sexuality, and think to yourself, “gee, I wish someone would pay Daniel Bergner to write – weirdly and somewhat cluelessly – about the difficult intersection of cultural representations of sex and human sexual response at even greater length?” Did you furthermore add, while thinking to yourself, “I hope that, once Daniel Bergner has been paid to write at great length about these issues, his resulting book is assigned to an apparently terrifying reviewer who manages to simultaneously glorify male sexuality and imply that it is perfectly natural for men to have sexual fantasies about female children?” Well, that is because you are a woman, and your desires are necessarily receptive and formed in reaction to the desires of others, namely those of Daniel Bergner and Slate contributor Steven D. Kramer. For behold! So it has come to pass:
[In his book about “paraphilias,” which includes a lengthy profile of a pedophile named “Roy,” oh goody] Bergner does not ignore the contrast between pedophilia and perversions that lead to consensual sex; he sees molested children as victims. But in the context Bergner offers, the quality of Roy’s obsession cannot seem especially strange. Judging by measures of penile engorgement, Bergner reports, normal heterosexual men are significantly “aroused by female pubescents and, less so but markedly, female children.” Though Roy’s actions are heinous where [an amputee fetishist named] Ron’s are harmless, Roy’s desires are more mainstream than Ron’s.
So, let’s do a quick charting of the logic here.
(1) We live in a culture wherein youth is fetishized and being attracted to women over, say, thirty-five, is considered so weird and unseemly that it is itself relegated to the realm of fetish (see “MILF” and/or “cougar”).
(2) We therefore attach signifiers of youth, or even childhood, to the construct “hot woman” by, say, fetishizing schoolgirl outfits or virginity or sexual inexperience or hairless vaginas (because, let’s get real: you say it looks “clean” and you say it looks “more explicit,” but what it really looks like is a body that hasn’t hit puberty yet but somehow, miraculously, grew breasts).
(3) We extend this by directing sexual attention to actual minors, fetishizing bodies that are childlike (see the small breasts, narrow hips, and – OBVS – hairless genitals of “Barely Legal” porn stars, and the similarly small breasts and narrow hips of most models, many of whom start their careers while below the age of consent), and sexualizing little girls themselves by, for example, giving them toy stripper poles for Christmas.
(3a) Because little girls are helpless. Because little girls are easily dominated by people who are bigger and stronger than they are. Because little girls are taught to be obedient to their elders. Because in a society which hates and fears women, and is founded on male domination of women, female sexuality – a drive which, when accessed and expressed, leads women to pursue their own pleasure, to want things and ask for them, to provide men with constant proof that they are autonomous beings and that their needs may not, in fact, correspond with what men want from them in every single point or at all – will of course be hated and feared. And little girls are not sexual. Little girls do not experience this scary, threatening, adult desire. In a misogynist society, of course, of course, we will fetishize young women and find older women unattractive. Because little girls are helpless.
(4) So, it is totally “mainstream” for “normal” straight men to get turned on by pictures of extremely young women and even little girls, and the reason for that is… biology? Give me a fucking break.
So, what keeps men from being pedophiles, which Kramer (via Bergner, and how do I know, honestly, what Bergner thinks? This is just a review) would like to stress is totally a bad thing even though it is so very normal? Well, let’s check in with Kramer:
Men’s desires are more focused. Male homosexuality has a strong genetic component. (Less is known about female homosexuality, but the genetic contribution may be weaker.) …In general, the penis and the mind are in reasonable agreement; men recognize when they’ve been turned on. Part of what saves men from pedophilia is the very vigor of their sexuality; most men are strongly drawn to adult women, albeit in a promiscuous way. When asked what they visualize when they climax, few men say it’s the partner they’re with.
Yes, what keeps men from being pedophiles is their manly masculine manful desire to fuck every adult woman in existence, and they have that desire not due to the fact that they constantly receive messages that men who don’t want to fuck every adult woman in existence are pussies and homos, but due to NATURE and SCIENCE. So, men don’t refrain from raping helpless children because they recognize that to be a monstrous act. Men don’t refrain because they can differentiate sex from rape. Men don’t refrain because they view sex as an act that should always be founded on reciprocal pleasure and respect, whether that sex takes place within a twenty-year marriage or the bathroom at a sleazy bar. Men don’t refrain for any reason but that they are built not to because their sexual desire is somehow more real and powerful than women’s, and they are amoral, unthinking beings whose behavior is due solely to the dictates of that desire.
If I were a guy, I’d be insulted; yet, I guess, I would have no reason to be. After all, it’s science.
Hey, ladies! It’s ten in the morning on a Monday! This means that, as you are all drinking your coffees and checking your e-mails and cursing the Lord God Almighty for the eight-hour work day and its wicked helpmeet, the five-day work week, it’s time to talk about… YOUR VAGINA!
Yes, I know, this is totally appetizing, and exactly what you wanted to be thinking about right now. You can thank me later. Did you know, ladies, that your vaginas are all turned on by pornography? All types of pornography can do this to your vagina, says certified vagina scientist Meredith Chivers in the New York Times: straight people pornography, lesbian lady pornography, gay man pornography, even bonobo pornography! She knows this because there is some kind of terrifying vagina monitor that she stuck up a bunch of lady research subjects (“But I was here for the Xanax trials!”) and observed that the vaginas in question got all lubed up after exposure to said porns. Yet the ladies, in clear defiance of the dictates imposed by their vaginas, only reported arousal when watching the pornography that corresponded to their preferred form of humping. This means that either (a) lubrication and feeling turned on are two different things, or (b) your brain is LYING because it doesn’t want anyone to know your vagina is such a perv.
Now, there is a perfectly sensical explanation for this finding, and it is as follows: rape (or “unwanted vaginal penetration,” as the Times and/or certified vagina scientist Meredith Chivers cheerfully call it) is a violent act that causes physical injury; if your vagina automatically lubes up in the presence of sexual signifiers, your chances for severe internal injury are somewhat diminished. (Though not in a huge way! And this should in no way be interpreted as a signal from your body not to fight back! The body, it has defense mechanisms; this is maybe one. That is all.) This theory has already been put forth, most notably by Natalie Angier in her (TEN-YEAR-OLD) book Woman: An Intimate Geography, so there’s no chance the Times would devote this much space to such an interesting and relatively non-newsy finding unless they could find some way to attach a ridonkulous, out-of-date, totally sexist generalization to it, so the whole time you are reading this article you are just waiting for it to land and… oh, here it is!
When she peers into the giant forest [that is your vagina – ED.], Chivers told me, she considers the possibility that along with what she called a “rudderless” system of reflexive physiological arousal, women’s system of desire, the cognitive domain of lust, is more receptive than aggressive. “One of the things I think about,” she said, “is the dyad formed by men and women. Certainly women are very sexual and have the capacity to be even more sexual than men, but one possibility is that instead of it being a go-out-there-and-get-it kind of sexuality, it’s more of a reactive process. If you have this dyad, and one part is pumped full of testosterone, is more interested in risk taking, is probably more aggressive, you’ve got a very strong motivational force. It wouldn’t make sense to have another similar force. You need something complementary. And I’ve often thought that there is something really powerful for women’s sexuality about being desired. That receptivity element. At some point I’d love to do a study that would look at that.”
Oh, yes! Women are all turned on by being wanted, having a sexuality that is essentially passive, reflexive, and performative, rather than a biological drive which causes us to pursue sex like The Dudes (but not The Dude; he was too laid-back)! Oh, and this in no way makes sense when applied to lesbian ladies, because basically no girls would ever have sex with any other girls if this were true, because they would all sort of sit around and stare at each other and wait for someone to get turned on so they could reciprocate, and it would never happen! Oh, and women didn’t actually report being consciously turned on by all types of pornography, so this makes less sense than ever! Oh, and porn-watching is not sex and fantasy is not reality so it makes no sense to use someone’s response to a fantasy scenario to explain their behavior or desires in the real live world! Awesome! Thank you, Science!
Yes, there are many legitimate criticisms to be made of this theory. However, I am choosing to believe it with the full strength of my conviction. This is because, prior to reading this article, I was convinced (through sad experience) that it was possible to get turned on by a dude who did not only not desire me, but actually wanted nothing to do with me. Now I know this is untrue! They were simply hiding their overwhelming passion and/or boners, due to society’s harsh constraints. Since I am not a creep, I will not press the issue: however, it’s good to know they were all so totally into me all along. Here, I present a photo gallery of Men Who Have Wanted Me through the years.
RAHM EMANUEL: Seems psychotically intense in a way that makes him kind of sexy; wants me.
CRISPIN GLOVER: Seems just plain psychotic in a way that would make dating him a wonderland of Quirks and Issues; wants me.
RIVERS CUOMO: Delicate man-flower (Quirks! Issues!) who makes crappy music; would probably not perform said crappy music while we were making out; therefore, wants me.
PAUL RUDD: Wants me and every single woman I have ever spoken to; posed for this picture.
SPECIAL AGENT FOX MULDER: Fictional; has wanted me since I hit puberty. Perv.
So: done and… well, almost-but-not-quite-but-nearly-as-good-as-done. Yay! Good job! Keep it up! And so on and so forth!
Now. Why, pray tell, did Obama sign the executive order lifting the global gag rule today, rather than yesterday, a date that would have had far more weight and resonance, and which was also the date he initially planned the signing? Well, the Wall Street Journal has a theory that will piss you off: he did this precisely to deny it that weight and resonance, and to make all our Abortioning Day parties a little less awesome. This is consistent with his (weirdly pander-y and undermining and gross) statements about abortion being so sensitive and divisive and sad and bad and undesirable, and the fact that he has always been a little nebulous and unwilling to fully, openly commit to a progressive stance on issues related to gender and sexuality. It is also consistent with his history of “[supporting] liberal policies he believes in while trying to defuse emotional political debates.”
Which, to be honest, does make me cynical and cranky. Barack Obama respects my rights! Barack Obama respects the people who seek to deny me my rights! Which is inconsistent with respecting my rights! So what in heck does he believe? I DON’T KNOW! I automatically distrust people-pleasers, since I figure that you cannot smile at every single one of the people you meet each day without faking it at least some of the time: in the absence of concrete proof as to where your loyalties lie, I will be forced to assume they don’t lie with me, because that’s a lot safer than misplacing my trust. Give me honest assholes over insincere charmers any day of the week, say I. So, though Obama is most certainly a charmer, I insist (and will continue to insist) on good, solid, action-based proof of his sincerity.
Yet rescinding the global gag rule is… exactly that. It is awesome. It is great. It will save lives and do a substantial amount to ensure the autonomy, freedom, health, and economic security of women. It is a praiseworthy, feminist act. Regardless of these facts, however, crazy people who hate women don’t seem to be losing 100% their shit! Witness this quote, from anti-abortion advocate Reverend Joel Hunter!
“I really do appreciate their sensitivity to this day and this issue,” he said. “To do it [the policy change] on a day that pro-life people see as a day of grief, and a day of a really hurtful decision, would be, I think, very insensitive. And that’s not who I think President Obama is or would mean to be.”
President Barack Obama, surrounded by the souls of his unborn victims. Oh, no, wait, those are bling graphics.
I know, right? We won! He lost! Yet he is expressing… respect? Gratitude? Gracious acceptance? Never in my life have I heard these things from anti-choice people in response to a pro-choice victory. This seems to mean that, whatever Obama is doing, it is working – and that, to be honest, is blowing my mind.
Progressives are Obama’s base. Our commitment to him has been crucial to his success. We helped him to rise above a well-established Democratic frontrunner, then supported him during a dirty campaign from his Republican opponents, and eventually helped to make him the leader of our country. We owe it to him and to ourselves to keep him (and every one of our representatives) accountable. When he screws up, we are obliged, as citizens who believe in our government enough to care about it, to criticize his actions openly and seriously. Yet these moves of his, slick and occasionally infuriating as they are, are nothing to fuck with. The man knows what he’s doing. Within two days of taking office, he’s made that abundantly clear.
So, yeah, Barack. Listen to those folks. Listen to them all you like. Listen to them for as long as it takes. Just don’t, you know, listen to them. That’s gross.
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And the Almighty Gods of Getting Laid Because You’re a Sensitive Cool Dude, Right, Ladies looked upon John DeVore of The Frisky, and they saw that he had written upon that blog an essay about gender relations in this modern day and age, and they read what he had presented unto them, and they pronounced upon him: FAAAAAAILLLLLLL.
For John DeVore has written an article in the “Mind of Man” section entitled “I Might Be a Sexist,” the point of which is that he is… not? I don’t know. With a title like this, however, how could I look away?
I’m not proud of the fact that I might be sexist, but it seems more honest to say so than declaring that I’m a feminist. Which I’m not. I’m having a tough enough time trying to figure out how to be a righteous dude. I suppose the best contribution I can make to the struggle for gender equality is to try and be a better man. I can’t allow myself to politicize my inner-struggles, to become, as Gandhi said, the change I want to see in the world. So, yeah, I’m not a feminist, and I might be a sexist. But better I be aware of that, than ignorant to the prejudices that make me oh-so human. And that’s the best I can do.
Yep. File under: FAAAAAAILLLLLLL, Epic. Also, under: The Best They Can Do, Dudes Claim This Is Because They’re Lazy.
He is not the first entrant in this category. There is a long history of dudes half-assing their understanding of gender relations and claiming that the fact they are making an effort at all means they deserve to be rewarded, perhaps with your crotch. This is because the task of dismantling male privilege, which has been upheld historically by men (and also by women – I know there are female misogynists out there, I’ve heard a Katy Perry song or two in my time) who, depending upon the precise intersection of race, sexuality, class, and cis or trans status they inhabit, may actually tend to have far more institutional power than many or most women and hence an ideal position from which to effect change, is completely and entirely the responsibility of chicks. Or so dudes of this stripe seem to believe.
Yet this does not mean that they support male dominance or privilege or anything, they add! They care, they really do. It’s just that they can’t change it. They cannnnn’t. It is toooo harrrrd, and anyway, why are you blaming them for what certain men, or men in the past, or maybe every man on the planetwho is not them because they are unique and special little snowflakes who manage to benefit from their privilege every single day of their lives without in any way meaning to or being complicit with it, have done? Then they proceed to tell you that they really are sensitive to these issues, and are doing their best, which just so happens to be nothing. Hey, they’re just being honest! You should thank them! (FACT: If you say something assy, then claim that you only did it because you’re “being honest,” this not only gets you off the hook for being an ass in the first place, it means the people you’ve hurt are obliged to congratulate you on your courage and integrity! Try it sometime!) Then you give them cookies since they are such good boys. That, anyway, is how they tend to envision the end of the conversation.
Which means that any attempt to actually confront them on their sexism or change the dynamic goes exactly like this:
So, what has inspired John DeVore of The Frisky to announce his sexism? Well, like everyone else in the whole entire United States of America, he heard about that plane what landed in the Hudson. Did you know that some people shouted “women and children first” on that flight? Did you know that this is totally sexist? John DeVore has the incredibly controversial and sexist (and HONEST, of course) opinion that women and children should be helped when they are in trouble! So, really, his sexism is all for your own good, you know? Because he would totally not trample you to death, if he had the chance. Also, by sheer coincidence, the Line To Give John DeVore a Beej for Saving You From Hypothetical Trampling Death is forming right now outside his bedroom, so you’d better reserve your space!
Let’s read more of John DeVore’s sensitive dudely prose, shall we?
Not to bring feminism back into it, seeing as the term seems misinterpreted, misunderstood, and wholly divisive,
Ha ha, “misinterpreted” and “misunderstood” by whom? I cannot think of a single person who has done this in recent memory!
but gender equality, if it’s ever to be achieved fully, seems dependent on knowing what the sexes have in common, and what makes us different. Special. Unique.
Like weiners! Or raging senses of entitlement! Or a tendency to patronize one’s intended audience because, heck, they’re just a bunch of girls!
That might be patriarchal, hetero-normative claptrap, but I’m being honest here.
OF COURSE YOU ARE, John. Bless your little heart.
Life isn’t theory after all, the map isn’t the territory. As a purely speculative, fantastical situation, I want to be a man who ushers those people who need help.
So, for the record, if John DeVore is ever in a plane, and it goes down, and it manages to make a safe water landing, and everyone on board survives – an event which is about as likely as a unicorn galloping through John DeVore’s bedroom window on a rainbow, carrying a brand-new XBox 360 around its neck and President Obama on its back, so that John DeVore may commence fulfilling his duties as the new Chairman of Playing Guitar Hero In His Underpants – then, on that day, John DeVore will help women. The chances of John DeVore actually helping women with problems that they face in their day-to-day lives, like, say, sexism? Not so much.
It is Blog for Choice day, hurrah! So all the Internet ladies get to write posts today about their shmushmortion hopes and dreams. This year’s topic: What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?
My post is right here, duh. It is mostly about how I hope Obama will actually be (non-reluctantly, unapologetically) pro-choice. I dream small and/or big; honestly, when it comes to this topic, I can’t even tell the difference any more.
Shark-Fu at Angry Black Bitch writes about if Roe were magic. It is not, sadly, and therefore does not fix everything, as she makes clear.
Cara at Feministe blows your mind with a post linking abortion rights to rape to “sexual rights” (my two favorite words, denoting my one favorite concept) in general. (Also, if you go alllll the way down to the bottom of this post, you will see that Obama has already granted one of my wishes! I take it back, you guys, he is totally going to drive us all to Chuck E. Cheese and give us an unlimited number of tokens with which to play skee-ball. He is the best.)
Melissa McEwan at Shakesville supports choice because she trusts women. Melissa McEwan is adorably optimistical and full of faith in the world, and makes me feel crusty and bitter on a more or less regular basis. I love that about her.
Ann Bartow at Feminist Law Professors uses her platform to broadcast Nancy Northrup’s serious, well-thought-out, and totally plausible suggestions for promoting the cause of choice. This is why Ann Bartow is totally brilliant and people who quote her out of context in order to level unfounded accusations of P.U.M.A.-ism at her (ahem) need to actually, you know, read her blog.
Finally, Amanda Hess of The Sexist has spent the entire day covering the enormous anti-choice protest in Washington. So, to sum up: we are representing ourselves and making our presence felt and educating people as to our beliefs, using TECHNOLOGY and WORDS while INDOORS. They are wandering around D.C. freezing their asses off and screaming about how abortion is “Vietnam for women” or something. We have now conclusively proven which side is smarter. You know, in case you wondered.
If I insist that he give all future press conferences whilst wearing this exact shirt no matter how smelly it gets or how many times the White House Puppy throws up on it, does that make me a single-issue voter? Or does it make me A CITIZEN WHO GETS INVOLVED?
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Roe vs. Wade is thirty-six years old today! This means that, if it were a person, its friends and relatives would already be talking to it about how it totally should have had a baby by now, don’t you think? Because, you know, time is running out for it and they don’t want it to give birth to a hideous mutant child (which is what happens if you do it after thirty-five, modern medical science wants you to know!) and, you know, they don’t want Roe vs. Wade to miss out or anything. Unless Roe vs. Wade were a dude, in which case people would leave it alone, respect whatever decisions it made, and (in most cases) not even frame its childlessness as a conscious decision, let alone some kind of failure or tragedy.
Roe vs. Wade would not be a dude, however. Roe vs. Wade would pretty indisputably be a lady. Roe vs. Wade would be the girl who tells you, over drinks, that she had an abortion in high school, and that when her friends found out, they stopped talking to her, and that this is why she’s not good at trusting people. Roe vs. Wade would be the girl who went to the “family planning clinic” that turned out to be a an anti-choice center where people showed Roe vs. Wade gory movies, and called Roe vs. Wade once a month, every month, to tell her how old her “baby” would be if she’d had it. Roe vs. Wade would be the girl who went to the clinic for EC and had a lady doctor deny her treatment because said lady doctor “didn’t believe in abortion,” then heard the lady doctor tell her to her face that she “should have kept her legs together.” Roe vs. Wade would be the girl who knows that, even if she technically has a choice, she might not be able to exercise it freely, safely, and without scary repercussions.
Roe vs. Wade would not have felt the condom break until it was all over. Roe vs. Wade would have realized, too late, that the birth control pills were expired. Roe vs. Wade would have had a doctor who forgot to inform her that the antibiotics he’d prescribed for her would make her birth control ineffective. Roe vs. Wade would have looked up stuff on the Internet about how to bring on a late period – Dong Quai extract, megadoses of Vitamin C, all of that hippie goddess nature business – and Roe vs. Wade would have taken them until it became obvious that the period was not “late,” it was simply not going to happen, and then Roe vs. Wade would have gone to the bathroom and cried a little and wondered how to tell her boyfriend something she didn’t even want to know herself.
Roe vs. Wade would keep track of the news. Roe vs. Wade would watch the presidential debates. Roe vs. Wade would wonder how in tarnation Sarah Palin could call herself a “feminist” and then spout nonsensical slogans like “choose life” when the point is that “life,” in Sarah Palin’s fantasy world of the future, would be the only option, and hence not a choice. Roe vs. Wade would watch a man who wants to run her country, the population of which is a little over 50% female, use derisive air quotes around the phrase “women’s health.” Roe vs. Wade would definitely not vote for that dude. Roe vs. Wade doesn’t hate herself that much.
Roe vs. Wade would wonder, however, why even the dude that she did vote for speaks out in favor of limiting her choice and making sure that she exercises her right to choose for the “right reasons,” when, as far as Roe vs. Wade can see, that dude does not possess her biological equipment, and will therefore never need to exercise that option himself for any reason, and will therefore never be in a position to judge or even fully understand the reasons of those who do. Roe vs. Wade would wonder why that dude, whose name is Barack Obama, persists in carrying on the liberal tradition of prefacing his pro-choice statements with statements to the effect that abortion is always no good and very bad and a bummer and should happen less often. Roe vs. Wade would feel obscurely shamed by these statements, and uncomfortable with hearing them from the mouth of a man who wants to represent her, and Roe vs. Wade would not speak up about that except to a very few people, because Roe vs. Wade would have been told nine million times that Barack Obama is going to fix the world and bring hope to the people and take us all to Chuck E. Cheese on our birthdays, and Roe vs. Wade would have been told eighteen million times that everyone else is way worse than Barack Obama and she’s lucky to have a candidate who supports her choice at all.
Later, after Barack Obama had been inaugurated (in a ceremony which prominently featured a man who compared Roe vs. Wade to a Nazi), Roe vs. Wade would wonder when Barack Obama would get around to rescinding the Global Gag Rule and Bush’s most recent HHS regulation, and would wonder at the significance of the fact that those were, respectively, one of the first things that Bush effected while in office and one of the last. Roe vs. Wade would make the mistake of wishing aloud that there were a president who advocated as fiercely and unequivocally for her rights as the last president advocated against them. When Roe vs. Wade did that, she would be called divisive and an extremist and a single-issue voter. Roe vs. Wade would be pretty much used to that – used to being told that her rights don’t deserve to be made central to progressive platforms, even though she and women like her comprise a pretty vital portion of the progressive base, and their votes, organizing time, and support are always fervently courted (or demanded) when the dudes that are her “allies” have something they want to accomplish.
Roe vs. Wade might like babies. Roe vs. Wade might be indifferent to babies. Roe vs. Wade might want to have babies, when she is in a position to give them the care they need. Roe vs. Wade might have babies already, and know that her ability to care for them will be compromised if she has any more. One thing that is for certain true about Roe vs. Wade is that she would have the ability to differentiate between a baby and a pregnancy, and an unwillingness to make one of her body’s involuntary processes the defining factor in her life. For that, Roe vs. Wade would be attacked pretty much constantly, and on all fronts.
Roe vs. Wade would have a lot to deal with, you guys. Which is why we have her back.
Hey! Do you care about Lily Allen’s (apparently toolish) dad? NO? Well, here he is anyway:
“As a man, I could drink, snort, and fuck to my heart’s content without major detriment to my career,” Keith Allen says. “A girl cannot do that. The tabloids are shameless in trying to create a race to rehab between any girl out there who has a drink. But Lily’s learning what Daddy learned long ago: Fame is a pain in the fucking arse. And I don’t mind saying this, because I’ve told her already: She needs to know when to fucking shut up.”
NOW. Were I in a contemplative mood, I could perhaps expound at length on the obvious double standard at play – when dudes go out and have a wild time, they are just boys being boys (which they will be, obvs) but when girls drink, or smoke, or go to a lot of parties, they are huge trainwreck messes who need to be brought in line.
I could also reflect on the culture of celebrity (which Lily Allen’s Dad touches on here, albeit toolishly) as it relates to misogyny – the way we subject people, and especially women, to round-the-clock intense scrutiny, and then revel in demeaning them whenever they slip up or suffer, and how that often is linked very closely to promoting misogynist stereotypes that may or may not apply to the women in question. You know, Jennifer Aniston is a pathetic spinster who can’t keep a man and will never have a lasting marriage or make babies (oh, noooo) and Angelina is one of those crazy women that you just know has to be good in the sack, huh, right, she’d probably let you stick it in her butt, heh heh, and Madonna is an aging woman who insists that she has a right to be sexual and to exercise power in her personal life and/or career and therefore is an ugly, domineering hag, and pretty much any young woman who is sexual in public is a stupid slut, and when famous women are thin they’re anorexic, and when famous women are not thin they’ve let themselves go, and the best thing a female entertainer can do for her career these days is get all heteronormative and have a pretty pretty princess wedding and knock herself up and sell the baby photos for eighteen bazillion dollars, and the picture, when you put it all together, is (a) really ugly, and (b) insidious, because it is (c) fucking everywhere. I’m not saying I like any of these women – I don’t, as a matter of fact, care about them either way – but tons of people actually do get their views on everything from Rick Warren to Lindsey Lohan’s sexual orientation from Perez Hilton and his ilk, and that is a problem, because on sites like his the lady-hating runs rampant and stereotype is promoted as reportage.
Then, of course, there is the problematic relationship between fathers and daughters, a subject which I am told I should stop talking about! Because it makes me sound like I am about to promote my memoirs on Oprah! But it’s not about personal suffering, it’s about a pattern I have observed in lives other than my own, the lives of certain female friends and now maybe the life of Lily Allen: you’ve got your mom, and you’ve got your dad, and you understandably get large parts of yourself from both of them, but when you hit puberty, there is suddenly this antagonism that develops between you and Dear Old Dad, who is of course complicit in maintaining patriarchy (there’s a reason it’s called that, childrens) but needs to love you even as he demeans or degrades or looks down on other women, and who therefore develops this need to punish you for being a woman, for resembling in any way the other women in the world, and an equally great need to enforce correct gender roles as they relate to your behavior, because the only thing worse than a woman who acts like a woman is a woman who acts like a man, so when you start doing the very same things that your father does, like drinking or smoking or kissing people or speaking your mind unapologetically (and maybe occasionally giving an infelicitous quote or two to the press, MISTER ALLEN) you are punished for it, and it is all very screwed up and gives you Issues and also maybe an inability to tolerate the Oscar-winning film American Beauty, which I walked out of at the precise moment that Kevin Spacey tells his daughter “if you don’t watch out, you’re going to wind up a bitch just like your mother,” and I understand that he comes around in the end and learns to appreciate plastic bags and the finer points of not being an abusive sonofabitch? But at that point he is dead, so Thora Birch really doesn’t get anything out of the deal. Boooo.
I could go into all of this. However, it would be an overshare, which I have been instructed to avoid, and also I don’t know the full context and don’t want to jump to conclusions (which I never do, as you know) so I will simply say this: SPIN Magazine has only strengthened my abiding love for the persona and works of one Lily Allen.
Lily! Mon amour! We will wed in the South of France!
