Reproductive Health | RHRealityCheck.org - Podcast

Abstinence-Only Sadism

editor@rhrealitycheck.org — Mon, 12 May 2008 09:02:12 -0400

Dana Stone on a recent encroachment on women's rights in Oklahoma, the aftermath of the abstinence-only hearings, and more coverage of the march towards universal health care. Also, why you're a twit if you worry about Rachel Maddow's sexuality.

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Links in this episode:
Ecuadorian sex rights
Ecuadorian sex rights 2
Shelby Knox's testimony
Pam Stenzel
The Global War In Your Pants
Insurance card marriages
Marc Ringel on insurance card marriages
Clinton on universal health care
John Gibson lesbian-baits

Transcript:

This week on Reality Cast, an update on abstinence-only miseducation in light of the recent Congressional hearings, more on universal health care, and an interview with Dr. Dana Stone about a recent bill in Oklahoma. Also, John Gibson can't argue with Rachel Maddow, so he lamely calls her a lesbian. The thinking world responds: so what if she is?

Is something lost in translation with this story reported by Keith Olbermann?

insert sexual happiness

Actually, it seems much of the reason for all the hyperventilating over the bill is not that women might have more orgasms, god forbid. According to the BBC, Vela's aim with the bill is to create the groundwork for women to have healthier, more responsible sex lives. In other words, she's trying to create a right to reproductive justice as much as anything else. Not so silly after all.

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

Recently, as I'm sure you know, my home state's beloved comprehensive sex education activist Shelby Knox testified in front of Congress about what a massive failure abstinence-only education is. It fails our kids on various levels, from failing to protect their health to failing to be honest and kind and decent to them, a failure that's much harder to measure but just as serious.

Well, let's let Shelby talk.

insert Shelby one

Abstinence-only education is based on what is best described as a lie. They get the funding by saying that this is about keeping kids from getting sick and then proceed to try to encourage already sexually active students to get sick! You can't tell me that telling kids not to use condoms isn't directly aimed at getting kids not to use condoms, which is a direct road to pregnancy and disease. I hate to accuse anyone of trying to get kids sick or pregnant to punish them for having sex, but sometimes the evidence is just stacked that high.

As Shelby is about to describe, the contempt that abstinence-only proponents have for people, well women really, who have sex outside of marriage is such that it's easy to believe that they want us to suffer miserably for being so disgusting.

insert Shelby two

How does someone get involved in abstinence-only miseducation? Well, some people just love to lie, I guess. Some people have massive sex-phobias that should be a cause for concern, but instead get all this social acceptance because they have a place in religious dogma. Misanthropy seems to be a common thread. Abstinence-only miseducators seem to get off on humiliating and hurting teenagers in their classrooms. You have the ones who like wagging a dirty toothbrush at a girl and impy she's a dirty slut. And you have the ones who like to rip tape off kids or dangle bricks over their genitals. And then they give them information that will get them pregnant or an STD. All under the guise of caring!

If you want to be chilled to the bone, check out a video of abstinence-only educator Pam Stenzel. Sadistic lying is raised to an art form with this woman, and when she says that she's flown around the world spreading her lies, I felt sick.

insert pam stenzel one

No one has been in a monogamous relationship and not paid. No one has gone on a date and not paid. Even if your date pays for dinner, you probably paid for the nice clothes and make-up you wore. People who believe in the abstinence-only line are being set up to pay a lot. If you believe sex makes you dirty, a normal breaking up and moving on process is probably 100 times worse.

And then she encourages teenage girls to have babies. No, I'm not kidding.

insert pam stenzel two

This is a favorite piece of anti-choice propaganda, that pregnancy isn't a disease. Once again, they replace semantics for meaning. Evolution is a theory, sure, but that doesn't mean it's "just a theory". And unplanned pregnancy isn't a disease, but neither is a broken leg.

She lists off a bunch of STDs, but of course isn't about to tell you that you can avoid most of them through safer sex practices, and that many of them, despite their alarming names, are probably not the stress and misery factor that unplanned pregnancy presents. You know, you're pregnant and you didn't plan to be, you have a soul-searching choice whether or not to abort ahead of you. Most people don't soul search about whether or not to take the penicillin.

She then moves onto lying to girls in order to get them pregnant, by telling them birth control is dangerous, though of course she's pretending that pregnancy is a walk in the park.

But hey, the pro-choice side is getting our narrative into the mainstream media. And "The Daily Show", which covered what they called "The Global War In Your Pants".

insert jon stewart one
insert jon stewart two

I feel better already.

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

insert interview

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

Usually in the intersection of the politics of sexuality and the politics of health care, we like to talk about universal health coverage and access to reproductive health care. Especially when you come from a reproductive justice perspective, as I like to think I do, the question of coverage is central. But there's other places the issues intersect, as a recent story in the L.A. Times demonstrated. According to a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 7% of Americans admitted that someone in their household married last year to obtain health insurance.

It's probably not as severe an issue as it sounds---I'm sure most of the couples marrying for insurance are in love. But still, it's a sign of the times, as this recent podcast by Dr. Marc Ringel gets at.

insert marc ringel

Obviously, it's a problem that people are making decisions about marriage and work based around health care, which is limiting. I do worry that this trend will make conservatives less likely to embrace universal health care, if they think it's a way to strongarm the unwilling into marriage.

Recently, Hillary Clinton submitted to a sit-down interview with Bill O'Reilly, and he tried to claim universal health care would bankrupt the country. I liked her reply, so I thought I'd share it with you.

insert Clinton health care

Working in reproductive rights, it's really clear how universal health care would save money over the long run. I can't see a more straightforward version of how a penny of prevention spent on contraception and condoms prevents a hefty bill of cure for STDs and unplanned pregnancy. Why that kind of common sense is lacking in the debate is beyond me.

***********

And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts. Rachel Maddow has been all over the TV, kicking butt and taking names and gaining fans. It was just a matter of time before desperate wingnuts resorted to irrelevant attacks on her based on sexual orientation. John Gibson of Fox News went there. First he played a clip of Maddow talking, and instead of addressing what she actually said, he did this.

insert gisbon attack
insert Gibson attack 2

I'm sure Gibson thinks that we should all listen to what he has to say by virtue of what he does in bed with who.

Legal Eagles and Post-Pope Review

editor@rhrealitycheck.org — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:46:20 -0400

Amanda interviews the founders of a local branch of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, reviews an interview with sexual educators, and applauds Catholics for a Free Choice. Also: How long will Marc Rudov be on TV?

Subscribe to RealityCast:
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Links in this Episode:
Slutty eyes
Katha Pollitt on the Catholic Church
CFC podcast series
Amy and Dan interviewed
Marc Rudov is delusional

Transcript:

This week on Reality Cast, we'll have an interview with the co-founders of Law Students For Reproductive Justice at Texas, highlights from the Catholics for a Free Choice's new podcast series, and a review of Amy Richards and Dan Savage getting interviewed together about sexual freedom. Also, more on the Marc Rudov firing watch!

Gotta love that Salon has video blogging now. Tracy Clark-Flory had a recent one about an empty "study" that was reported as finding that you can tell who's a slut from her eyes. Turns out the promises of headlines were not kept by the research.

slutty eyes

But what if you could tell someone was open to casual sex and still didn't want to do it with you? Then you'd have to face up to the fact that maybe it's not them, but it's you.

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

One of the reasons that reproductive activists can say with confidence that the anti-choice movement is less about saving babies and more about social control is the central place of religious dogma inside the anti-choice movement, a dogma that comes from a worldview that's more about stratified gender roles than about the issue of when life begins. To quote Katha Pollitt in a recent Nation column:

In the United States the Catholic church has lost some of its moral authority--thank you, pedophile priests--but it has more temporal power than you might think. Along with evangelical Protestants, it is the main force behind every attempt to restrict abortion, defeat prochoice politicians, make contraception and the morning-after pill harder to get, promote false and sexist abstinence-only education and discourage the use of condoms to prevent HIV by spreading unfounded doubts about their effectiveness.

It's weird that pro-choicers are supposed to assume the issue of abortion is separate from opposition to contraception, sex ed, and STD prevention when the Bible-thumping anti-choicers don't separate the issues themselves.

Obviously, the impetus behind mentioning the Catholic Church especially is the Pope's recent visit to the U.S., which was initially met with a deplorable silence from people who damn well don't agree that prayer is better than condoms for combating AIDS. Luckily, people like my fine colleagues here at RH Reality Check stepped in and started issuing stern reminders to the rest of the country that the Catholic Church's medieval attitudes on women's liberation and sexuality are the source of much suffering in the world. Protestants don't get off, either, but that's a bit different in that you can always start a splinter church if yours starts to go south in these areas. American Catholics are stuck with disobedience, which many of them are perfectly willing to embrace.

Some embrace open disobedience and that is who I'm applauding in this segment, particularly the wonderful organization Catholics for Free Choice. While some people dance around the idea that criticizing church dogma is somehow verboten, CFC is putting out a podcast series that addresses all the damage that the 40 year church ban on contraception has done.

The first one featured an interview with noted theologian Anthony Padovano.

insert cfc 1

To outsiders, the contraception ban really does create the sense that the church doesn't hold with dissent or even discussion of the issues, which I think is something of a shame. Sure, on issues like this, there's defensive posturing from the Vatican, but it's not actually true that Catholics are generally discouraged from being thinking people who ask questions. They haven't started huge education systems because they're anti-free thought. The only explanation that I can think of as to why contraception is an issue where people have to disobey instead of hash it out in debate is because the powers that be in the church know deep down inside that they're wrong, and are afraid of a discussion that would expose that.

The second podcast that's up is an interview with feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether.

insert cfc 2

Super interesting. Knowing the history behind all this doesn't make the ban on contraception better, but it does make it more understandable. I know that one reason periods were built into the original birth control pill was that the researchers hoped it would make it more palatable for the Catholic Church. Obviously, that not only didn't work out, the church got more determined about the ban.

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

insert interview

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Hat tip to Feministing for this link to an interview with Amy Richards and Dan Savage on Fora TV. Listening to them talk about abortion and adoption is great, but also made me really sad, because it seems like feminists, sexuality educators, and pro-choicers in general spend so much of our time trying to clear up misconceptions.

insert amy and dan 1

I'll admit; I have my own take on this phenomenon that she's describing. I'm not sure that it's so much that abortion just happens to overshadow other reproductive rights issues, but that abortion overshadows them by design. Not to say that there's an open conspiracy, but more that the anti-feminist interest in abortion is opportunistic. Basically, there's a lot of people who oppose women's right to equality, and they want to demonize feminism. But they can't just say, "Oh, they're bad because they want women to have rights," because Americans are about fairness and democracy and will reject open arguments for inequality. So they latch onto abortion and make it an issue because there's a way, however dishonest, to spin abortion rights as a bad thing because of the babies. To make a long story short, abortion is the most attacked right because feminism itself is under attack, and that's just the most convenient weapon.

insert amy and dan 2

There's two things here. To give feminists who are hostile to adoption some benefit of the doubt, it's worth remembering that far more adoptions are coerced than abortion, especially when you talk about historically speaking. Dan, I'm sure, knows this since he joked a lot in his book about how everyone in his adoption group was holding out for the healthy white newborn, which is such a rare thing on the adoption market precisely because few women, if given a completely free choice, will bring a baby to term just to hand it over to someone else. We aren't wrong to say that when right wingers talk about adoption, they're talking about a return to maternity homes, where unwed mothers were strapped to the delivery table and had their babies taken away from them against their will. Literally, that's the only way to restore the adoption market to the way it was before Roe v. Wade.

But I know that Dan gets that, which is why he talks up open adoption, which adheres to the principles of choice and consent in a way that closed adoption doesn't. The other thing I want to say about everything else he says is that this is why a lot of activists prefer to talk about reproductive justice instead of choice or even rights. There is no doubt that a lot of women have abortions who would rather not, but they can't afford to have babies. In order to help them make free choices, we need a society that embraces economic justice as well as civil rights. I'm pleased to see that this analysis is reaching even the levels of federal legislation more and more often.

And now why I love Dan Savage, who totally has my ass beat in terms of phrasing things in a straight to the point manner. Here he is, talking about abstinence-only sex education.

insert amy and dan 3

That story doesn't surprise me one bit. More than anything, these anti-sex political agendas get steam from people's shame about sexuality that both makes them fear speaking up for the side of right, and makes it really easy to bash others. All it would take to take out a well-meaning teacher giving good information in a Texas school would be for one uptight fundie student to make some scandalous accusations that the teacher was teaching them how to masturbate or something. No wonder people are scared.

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

Now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, which is quickly becoming Marc Rudov Firing Watch. He went on Fox News' Your World and spewed his woman-hating nonsense all over the place. He started off by claiming black is white and up is down.

* insert rudov 1

Someone that out of touch with reality needs to take a break, perhaps seek psychiatric care for his hallucinations. Only in America do we put him on TV like he's got some authority to speak about anything.

And then he called a major Presidential candidate a bitch, something that was basically impossible to do in the past because that's a frigging gendered term.

insert rudov 2

But there's no such thing as misogyny!

Larry Craig, Purity Balls and More

editor@rhrealitycheck.org — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:04:14 -0400

In this week's edition of Reality Cast, Amanda Marcotte shoots straight on the Larry Craig debacle, takes on purity balls and covers the rise of the religious right in Texas. Also: The universal nature of shyness.

Links in this episode of Reality Cast:
ABC News story on Larry Craig's children
Joel Connelly article
Larry Craig 1982
Laura MacDonald article
Al Jazeera English
Hollywood Purity Ball

Transcript:

On this week’s edition of Reality Cast, we’ll have an interview with former opposition researcher Scott Henson about the rise of the religious right and a question from a reader about getting out and socializing when you’re open to both making friends and scoring dates.
But first, I’d like to plug the Sex Ed: Know And Tell contest. RH Reality Check is holding the contest in conjunction with SIECUS and Advocates For Youth. To enter, you have to be between ages 13 and 24 and capable of making a short video, no longer than 3 minutes, about sex education by December 1st, which is World AIDS Day. Everything else is up to you. Want to mock abstinence-only education? Show examples of good sex education? Do an expose of your community’s lack of sex education? Go for it. Just upload your video on YouTube and send the link to editor@rhrealitycheck.org with the subject line Sex Ed: Know and Tell. First prize is $1,000, second is $750 and 3rd prize is $500.
Larry Craig is the gift that keeps on giving, at least for those of us out there trying to expose both the hypocrisy of the right and the injustice of socially conservative views. In sum, Craig can’t live by his own rules and that says worlds about why he can’t ask the rest of us to do so.
The attempts to deny the reality of this situation are verging on so pathetic that they’re almost not funny anymore. Almost. Sending Craig’s children Shea Howell and Michael Craig onto “Good Morning America” was both cringe-inducing and amusing. What is the point of trotting out his children? To prove that he has them? Maybe there’s some homophobes out there who think that if you can prove you’ve had sex with a woman in the past, you can’t be gay, but the reality-based community knows better. People who live in the closet will often go to great lengths to conceal their true desires, and if that means occasionally closing your eyes and thinking of men while you’re with your wife, so be it.
It almost seems cruel to mention that Craig’s children are his wife’s from a former marriage and that he adopted them when he married her in 1983. In fact, it is cruel. But what’s more cruel is pressuring your children to take a bullet for you on TV like this. I don’t doubt that he was good to these kids, but he crosses my line by making his indiscretions their problem and not his own.

It’s also worth noting that around the same time, according to Seattle columnist Joel Connelly, Craig spent a lot of time denying rumors that he was gay. In fact, in 1982, Craig denied having anything to do with a congressional page sex scandal, even though no one accused him of anything. From a 1982 ABC News report:
*clip of Craig denial*
He obviously corrected the unmarried problem within a year.
The kids repeated the unbelievable denials that Craig is issuing.
*audio of Craig children*
I’m the first to say that setting up vice cops in public bathrooms is a waste of taxpayer money, but that doesn’t mean that the cop didn’t know *exactly* what was going on here. The New York Times ran an excellent article by Laura MacDonald about the nature of bathroom pick-ups, based on research by social scientist Laud Humphreys in 1970. There’s two important points that MacDonald makes that need to be kept in mind during the coverage of this Craig debacle. First, the bathroom pick-up routine is pretty elaborate, and there’s little chance that Craig would have gotten as far as the swiping and toe-nudging part if he hadn’t gotten some encouragement from the officer.

From the article:
Mr. Humphreys’s aim was not just academic: he was trying to illustrate to the public and the police that straight men would not be harassed in these bathrooms. His findings would seem to suggest the implausibility not only of Senator Craig’s denial — that it was all a misunderstanding — but also of the policeman’s assertion that he was a passive participant. If the code was being followed, it is likely that both men would have to have been acting consciously for the signals to continue.
Second of all, the elaborate bathroom dance is the direct result of the closet. These bathroom cruising situations are all about secretive sex on the run, and the men seeking it definitely don’t want to be outed, so they have an elaborate ritual to make sure that they’ve eliminated any chance that they’ll come onto a straight man who might out them, or worse, attack them.
This story isn’t just about hypocrisy but why the closet itself has to go. Sneaking around having sex in bathrooms behind your wife’s back is irresponsible, doubly so if you’re not using protection. Craig probably thought he was maintaining his dignity all these years hiding in the closet, but now he knows that his dignity was precarious. It’s a far better thing to live with the dignity of being out, a dignity that no one can take away from you.

*interview with Scott Henson*
If you haven’t heard about the right wing trend of “purity balls”, please make sure you’ve got a seat under your butt before you continue listening to this podcast. Purity balls take the abstinence-only concept of a virginity pledge to its logical and hyper-sexist conclusion. Communities throw these dances for young women, most of whom are still in the “sex is icky” phase of their lives from about 8-14, and the girls attend with their fathers and pledge to their fathers that they’ll keep their hymens intact until marriage. There’s usually a ring placed on the wedding finger by the father in an exchange of vows that echoes the wedding ceremony, except the vows are about staying a virgin until the real wedding to a non-blood relative. When the pledger does marry, her husband is supposed to give the virginity ring back to the father. It’s not quite the same idea as giving dear ol’ dad a bloody sheet to prove that a virginity was taken on the honeymoon, but it’s in the same ballpark.
The overtones to this entire ritual are creepy, to say the least. Al Jazeera English had a program on the trend back in May and the father’s rather possessive view of his daughters crosses quickly into the creepy zone.
*purity clip one*
The video shows the date, with the girls dressed in pretty standard looking prom dresses. In fact, it looks basically like a prom, with the dancing and the picture-taking, except that the girls are mostly younger than prom-goers and of course the men are much, much older. Sending your husband off on a prom date with your daughter seems like it should bother a lot of women, but the wife in this clip doesn’t seem to care.

*purity clip two*

It seems like purity balls are almost beyond parody, but I should have had more faith in the creative impulse out there. Reader Javier alerted me to this performance art group called the Hollywood Youth Group that seems dedicated mainly to sending up the right wing movement. They are throwing a Hollywood Purity Ball on September 8th and 15th at the Bulgarian Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Tickets are $30 a piece, and for that you get some dinner, dancing and some serious mockery of the religious right.
The website alone is a hoot. You can check it out at hollywoodpurityball.com, where the motto is “Because once you pop, you can’t stop.” The pledges they’ve written are indistinguishable from the real-life pledges, and they swear that these testimonials they’ve collected are real quotes from girls that have been pushed into pledging their virginities to their fathers.

"I am committed to purity because I don't want to give my future husband a used gift."

"I took my virginity pledge because I want to be clean and don’t want to bring garbage into my marriage."

"There is no better way to say 'I love you' to your spouse on your wedding night than by saying 'Here, I saved this for you'."

I really like the last one, because I can’t help but picture someone polishing her hymen up like an apple before, well not handing it over, but you get the idea.
Hello!
I'm a 31 year old just-post-op transgirl / lesbian. I have never in my
life dated; all of my relationships have been formed online, including
my marriage.
I'm in an open, poly relationship and my partner is encouraging me to
get out more and meet people, which I would really like to do. The
problem is, I don't know how. I'm not attractive, and I struggle in
crowded places as my hearing gets overwhelmed.
I'd really like to work on raising my self esteem, in part by getting
out and proving that I /can/ meet people and find interest, but I just
don't know where to start. I don't drink, either, which also seems to
be a hindrance as most people recommend places like nightclubs and
bars; neither of which holds much appeal (Bars because of drinking,
nightclubs because they are so crowded and noisy).
So... Help! :)
Thanks!
The how-to-meet-people advice is pretty standard for everyone, whether they are vanilla and straight as an arrow or transgendered and polyamorous or anywhere on the scale---follow your interests and the friends will follow. That said, I don’t want to give you the same boring advice that everyone gives in this situation. I think we can get a little more specific.

In my experience, going to bars and nightclubs is a really lousy way to meet friends anyway, unless you are going for some other reason than just to go. I’ve never made a friend just sitting in a bar, really, even if I’ve talked to people. But if I go to hear a band? Well, then I have something in common with people to talk about, which is music. So really, it’s no different than meeting people doing any other fun activity.

Your shyness and hearing issues might have been much more of an issue in the days pre-internet, but I think you’ve got a golden opportunity to get out more. Meeting people through the internet used to be stigmatized, but now that more people are online and it seems more like real life, that stigma is really falling away. Get on some local message boards that cater to your hobbies and get to know people a little onscreen before you arrange to meet them in real life. Most online groups that have some sort of local presence eventually get together for face-to-face meetings eventually, especially if they share a hobby that you can do together. I can’t tell you how many feminists I know have created knitting groups through online meetings. Facebook is a good tool, since it has a lot of hobby groups and it organizes people by geography so you can see how many people live nearby at a glance.
If you’re meeting people for dating or sex online, you have a big advantage, too. You can take your time and feel out their personality before meeting in person. If sex is on the agenda, you can negotiate safe sex issues and expectations long before you sit down for some coffee. Internet dating has a reputation, of course. You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you meet a couple princes, but I’ve found that kissing frogs is a good way to overcome some of your shyness as well. Just make it clear to anyone you date online that you’re partnered so that they don’t go in with the wrong expectations.
Please send mailbag questions to amanda at rhrealitycheck dot org. We do not dispense medical advice at the mailbag, so please direct medical questions to your health practioner.

Primary Question: When Life Begins

editor@rhrealitycheck.org — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:00:41 -0400

Why voting matters for women, where the Democratic candidates stand on reproductive rights going into the primary, and how Marc Rudov is trolling to be fired. Also: men need translation?

Subscribe to RealityCast:
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Links in this Episode:
Sex Is Fun
Obama at Compassion Forum
Clinton at Compassion Forum
The "man translator"
Marc Rudov is a homophobe

Transcript:

This week on Reality Cast, I'll be interviewing Martha Burke on her new book on women voters, looking at the Pennsylvania primary through the reproductive rights lens, and giving the Today Show more beef over their relentless promotion of tired gender stereotypes. Also, Wisdom of Wingnuts starts a Marc Rudov firing watch.

On the haphazard shout outs to other podcasts thing I've got going here, I thought I'd plug another favorite: Sex Is Fun. Most of their show is sex and dating advice, but they got political recently with a program on abstinence-only sex education.

insert sex is fun

So, check ‘em out.

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With the Pennsylvania primary happening tomorrow, and the two Democratic candidates being neck in neck, every single issue could be a dealbreaker, even if there's only slight to nearly invisible differences between the candidates. The issue of reproductive rights is one where there's been a lot of fussing, even though a sober assessment of the candidates shows that they're basically the same on the issues. There was a recent "Compassion Forum" that appeared to be all about religion, which irritated me, because I'm not religious and I have compassion to spare, and many religious people I can think of don't. Still, the issue of abortion was bound to come up, so here's a review of the media traps and political answers that resulted.

First off, Barack Obama gets presented with the pointless question.

insert barack obama abortion

He does pretty good with it, but I think a pro-choice politician would be better off saying, "I can't know that," like he does here and then starts in by saying, "But what's really at stake is not so much when life begins, but whether or not a woman has a right to control her body." As long as you let the anti-choicers determine the frame of the argument, you're needlessly giving them ground they don't deserve.

And this is about a woman's right to control her own body more than it could ever be about when life begins. After all, most of us don't think life begins before you put the condom on, so why are anti-choicers hostile to the use of condoms?

Then some really creepy dude gets up and talks up an abstinence-only program as some sort of magic bullet that improved things in Uganda, in terms of HIV. That's something of a sleazy thing to say, because he neglects to mention that while it did have some effect, it wasn't as good as a more comprehensive approach. Obama's answer:

insert barack obama aids

Sorry to quote at length, but he made some really great points about how useless abstinence-only is. I think everyone agrees that behavioral education that puts the emphasis on safer sex practices, which include some monogamy and abstaining, is good. But refusing to teach about condoms doesn't do anything but keep people from using them when they do have sex.

Okay, now onto Hillary Clinton having to deal with the red herring question.

insert Clinton abortion

Again, it's about as good an answer as you can give outside of calling out the question for being a red herring, and pointing out that the real issue is whether women have a basic right to autonomy. But she doesn't compromise on this issue much, which I appreciate.

She then makes me really really happy and points out that there's a link between forcing childbirth and forcing abortion. Again, this isn't about life or respecting it, but about controlling women's bodies and fertility, and who gets that right----women? The state? Their families? Clinton draws this line to clarify that it's about women's rights.

Clinton abortion 2

It's important to make these links. I highly recommend a politician just replying, "When life begins is a matter of personal belief, but a woman's right to control her body belongs in the realm of public policy."

Interestingly, and this is completely an unscientific observation, there seems to be a lot more anti-choice material out there lately denouncing Obama for being pro-choice than Clinton. I'm not sure why anti-choicers are focusing their energy on him. Maybe it's because Clinton's views have already been well-publicized, and Obama's less so? I doubt anyone could actually view Obama as anything but pro-choice, but you never know. Maybe the anti-choicers just really hate him because he made a fool out of Jill Stanek when she testified in front of the Illinois legislature years ago.

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

insert interview

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After all the hefty political talk, I figured you the listening audience deserves a laugh. So what better to laugh at than the book world's version of snake oil salespeople, those who write books on sex and relationships? I don't mean actual sex-positive types like yours truly or Dan Savage or Lynn Harris. No, it's not advice I have a problem with, but the whole thing about how men are from Mars and women are from Venus and how we can be judged as groups instead of individuals. It's sexist and it's heterosexist, and it contributes to conservative views that are bad for improving sexual health, and it's fun to mock.

And where better to find this sort of thinking than "The Today Show"? I knew I'd hit gold when they had a woman named Alison Grambs who calls herself the "man translator". If you thought men spoke languages like Spanish, Russian, or English, think again. Apparently, they speak another language called "Man", and Alison has to translate for women.

insert manspeak 1

Ha! Ha! Because god knows no man would actually lower himself to listen to a woman and find what she says interesting. What I never get about these sorts of dating advice books and columns is that they never explain why, if men think women are stupid and silly, women should ever spend our time with them. For sex? I think you can probably get sex without having to get into a relationship with someone who thinks that you have nothing to say worth listening to.

insert manspeak 2

Women are fully capable of being broke and having to rely on their parents, so I don't get why these are only man things to say. Maybe they think it's only important for men to have jobs? Maybe. They need to join the 21^st century, then, because being an underemployed and dependent woman is only considered attractive in Bible-thumping communities.

insert manspeak 3

Dude, that didn't even make sense. Would it have been fast if it were the right breast? It's a non-joke. It's like saying, "Okay, let's marry two stereotypes together, that men are the only gender that likes sex and that men are liars. Sure, it doesn't quite follow that a man would lie to you about his sexual intentions right before pushing for sex, but your problem is you expect jokes to make sense."

insert manspeak 4

Hey ladies, did you know that men who want to buy you drinks in a bar are hitting on you? Um. No? Yeah, no's not the right answer. No one would say no. Carry on.

insert manspeak 5

It breaks my heart because it's so unoriginal. But now I'm feeling guilty, because I've got a new book out that's a similar humorous guide thingie called "It's A Jungle Out There". It's possible I have jokes in there that are this tired. I know writing jokes is really hard, and the temptation to go for the "I'll call you" joke is strong. But I dunno. Since I'm working this new territory where I believe men and women are actually from the same planet and speaking the same language, I like to think that freshens it up a bit.

Also, I have jokes about singing fetuses in my book, which probably permanently pre-empts me from getting a plug on "The Today Show".

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

And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts. Now that Bill O'Reilly has odious woman and gay hater Marc Rudov on his show, I feel that Rudov's going to be a ripe source of wingnut wisdom, at least until he crosses a line and finally gets his ass fired.

insert marc rudov *

I love the logic of these arguments. The problem with treating gays and lesbians as equal is that kids will grow up thinking gays and lesbians deserve equality. Can you imagine making that same argument with race? That bringing kids up in mixed race neighborhoods is bad because it teaches them not to be racist? There's no other way to understand Rudov's comment than to say that he thinks gays and lesbians should be second class citizens because he just thinks so nah nah.

Not that it should matter, but there's no reason to think that having gay parents makes you more or less likely to be gay. Most gay people come from straight parents, of course, so if preventing a new generation of kids from turning gay at the steady rate of 2-10% of the population is Rudov's goal, then he needs to agitate for a ban on the existence of children completely, just to be safe.

Unusual Things, Good And Bad

editor@rhrealitycheck.org — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:40:57 -0400

An interview with health activist Byllye Avery, a defense of the pregnant man, an examination of polygamous cults, and why Limbaugh probably doesn't even hear himself talk.

Subscribe to RealityCast:
RealityCast iTunes subscription
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Links in this Episode:
EC video
Thomas Beatie's story
"The Morning Joe" mocks Beatie
Bill O'Reilly mocks Beatie
Raising Women's Voices
FDLS cult in Texas
Limbaugh condemns abortion, divorce, women who don't hate themselves

Transcript:

This week on Reality Cast, an interview with Byllye Avery, a review of the media coverage of the pregnant man, and some analysis of how polygamous Mormon cults fit into our larger culture.

From Women's Take, I see that Advocates For Youth has put out a great educational video on emergency contraception.

insert emergency contraception

Straight, to the point. Though I don't think a woman should be ashamed or freaked out about abortion, it's always nice to avoid having to be put in the position to choose one.

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

As soon as I saw this story in the Advocate about a pregnant man, I knew that if it ever got into the mainstream media, we'd be seeing heads exploding everywhere. The story is simple and, if you think about it, not all that astounding. Thomas Beatie is a man who used to be a woman. When he transitioned, he kept his reproductive organs so that he could get pregnant, since his wife, who he is legally married to, can't have children.

And then Oprah picked it up. He looked nervous on the show, but he did a really good job. And it's smart---better to get ahead of the curve on this and not let someone else out you and make you some tabloid story.

insert pregnant man 1
insert pregnant man 2

As soon as this interview was over, the mean-spirited gender warriors who want to put everyone in a box, no matter how miserable it makes them, jumped into action. As you can guess, the idea of a pregnant man just made all members of the gossipy wingnut tribe go beserk, even if they are supposedly not that conservative. I keep hearing that media is so liberal, but it appears to be very conservative, at least on gender issues.

The hosts of "The Morning Joe" on MSNBC acted like complete children about this, making fun of Beatie and acting like he was going to make them sick.

insert pregnant man 3

All this talk was over footage of Beatie and his wife and it was really a strange juxtaposition. From the way they're reacting, you'd think the footage was of animals getting slaughtered or a video of bestiality or something. But you're looking at the footage and what's most obvious is how normal it really seems. True, you don't see a pregnant man every day, but he seems comfortable with it, and after you look at it for a moment, so long as you don't freak out, it begins to seem perfectly fine. It's nothing to get alarmed over, much less to say that it's sickening. Their disgust is actually more startling than anything.

Bill O'Reilly, as you can imagine, was the paragon of kindness on this.

insert pregnant man 4

Seriously now, given a choice between being born into this family and being born into O'Reilly's family, I'd take the transgender dad in a New York minute.

What I love about all the hubbub is how transparent it all is. Our society is perfectly accepting of creative solutions to having children, so long as you stay faithful to the strict gender roles. In vitro fertilization, adoption, even sperm banks don't cause much of a fuss because they all suit the needs of straight couples looking to have babies. So this isn't about the medical oddity, but about how it's a queer couple getting around oppression.

***********

insert interview

***********

Once in awhile, another polygamous FDLS compound gets outed, and the most recent winners of this sweepstakes are a bunch right here in the state of Texas, in a town called El Dorado. coverage of these events leaves me of two minds. On one hand, it's good that the veil is being ripped back and people see what the end result of male control of women leads to---forced marriage, rape, and very young childbirth. On the other hand, there's this distancing thing where you don't see many people admit that cults like this are the logical result of a larger culture that attacks women's rights.

But that's what this podcast is for, right? We can cover the same story but with a spin that's more mindful of the political pressures involved.

On CNN, a woman named Kathy Jo Nicholson who grew up in a fundamentalist Mormon household explains what it was like.

insert polygamy 1

I think this sort of testimony really draws attention to the point that is critical here. There's a lot of misunderstanding about the difference between heady levels of lust and sexual dominance. It's believed that men rape and control women mainly for sexual reasons, but in fact it's more about power and control and status even. We hear about a cult where men give their daughters over to their friends to be raped, though they call it spiritual marriage, and we think, oh these old guys have a racket to get themselves all the young flesh. That might be part of it, but as her story shows, they also give over girls to men that are basically unable to even perform the sexual functions. It's about male dominance at its core, about signaling a man's power to other men, and about sending the signal to women that they aren't people, but property.

To drive home this point, Nicholson talks about the power trip that Warren Jeffs, the prophet of the cult she escaped, wielded over the children at her school.

insert polygamy 2

In the less severe patriarchy of the larger culture, you don't see this kind of open embrace of child abuse, but you do see the notion that children are property and that minors should be strongly controlled. The sex ed debate is largely about this, because it's fundamentally about the idea that the sexuality of minors should either conform to a standard set by conservatives, or that the kids should suffer STDs or unplanned pregnancy if they don't comply.

polygamy 3

If you're paying attention, you'll notice that it's similar to the other kinds of domestic violence traps in the larger culture. Women have this technical freedom to leave abusive marriages and abusive families, but they don't have real freedom if they have no where to go.

I'll leave you with this comment from reporter Mike Watkiss, an expert who has pursued Warren Jeffs in Arizona, and was on Larry King to talk about this case.

polygamy 4

And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts. There were a lot of clips to choose from this week, but I like this rant from Rush Limbaugh that demonstrates that wingnuts seem to think abortion is castration.

insert Limbaugh rant

Rush himself has been divorced three times, but I guess that's okay if you're a man. He hasn't had any abortions, of course, but I'm sure that if he had, he'd probably excuse himself on that one, too.

This Common Secret

editor@rhrealitycheck.org — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:55:39 -0400

Interview with Susan Wicklund about abortion providers, Today Show nuttery, and a better dialogue about sex education on Reality Cast. Also, Sean Hannity confuses abortion and sex education.

Subscribe to RealityCast:
RealityCast iTunes subscription
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Links in this Episode:
Mob Logic on G-spots
Kate Walsh on abstinence-only
This Common Secret
Dawn Eden on the Today Show
Sean Hannity confuses sex ed and abortion

Transcript:

This week on Reality Cast, an interview with doctor and author Susan Wicklund, a sea change in the dialogue about sex education, and anti-choice nut Dawn Eden flies under the radar on the Today Show. Also, why is Sean Hannity calling comprehensive sex education "abortion"?

Hat tip to the online show Mob Logic for cracking me up with their response to recent research indicating that some women have G-spots and some don't, and that you can tell by looking at an ultrasound. Host Lindsay Campbell hit the streets and asked people about their experiences with the G-spot.

insert g spot

There was some feminist fussing over this, but I don't really get why the research is a problem. For a long time, some women have been saying they have one, some women have been saying they don't. All this shows is that both sides of the debate were right. How often do we get a chance to settle a long-standing argument with an elegant solution?

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

When you're working on the issues of reproductive justice, looking around at the political landscape can be soul-destroying sometimes. We haven't gained much ground, and what we have gained has been overwhelmed by major losses. We get the HPV vaccine, but the ability of people to afford it has diminished. We're seeing the right to abortion under assault, and even the right to contraception is being chipped away at, one Bible-thumping pharmacist at a time. It's demoralizing.

But there is one area where we're seeing the political landscape changing rapidly, and that's on the subject of comprehensive sex education. For awhile, the abstinence-only propaganda was gaining, getting all this massive funding from taxpayers who didn't realize that it is all lies, withholding of information, and religious dogma. Now people are waking up and the media is giving a voice to pro-choice activists.

The actress Kate Walsh works for Planned Parenthood on their board and was on CBS News exposing the lie that is abstinence-only.

insert kate walsh 1

I'm playing this clip for you because I think she hits the major arguments that you should use when trying to persuade people who might be fooled by abstinence-only nonsense. First of all, it doesn't work. Americans are pragmatic people, and they don't like something that's defined as a failure.

insert kate walsh 2

I think this is a good tactic to use, comparing it to other subjects. That draws down two points: 1) Telling kids what a condom is isn't going to mean they run out and have sex when they wouldn't have before. 2) This attack on sex education in the schools is part of a larger right wing assault on the idea of education itself. They don't want kids to be given a bevy of ideas and options, and then given the critical thinking skills they need to figure them out. This is about getting kids away from thinking for themselves, and instead making them automans who just do what they're told without questioning it.

We need to go the next step and state that the goal of abstinence-only propaganda, which is to make our kids bad thinkers who can't make their own choices, is in and of itself wrong. Not just that it's ineffective.

And then she rounds it off with an argument that I think is critical for our side. Basically, why is everyone hating on sex?

insert kate walsh 3

I can't hammer this enough. We need to call out anti-choicers for being, well, anti-life. Sex is a huge part of life, and education is part of preparing kids for life. Why do we think it's okay to raise a generation that's afraid of their own sexuality? It's not just about the fact that abstinence-only spreads disease and unplanned pregnancy. It also spreads anti-sex attitudes that can lower people's self esteem and make them neurotic about a normal and pleasurable part of life. Life is hard enough. No need to make it harder with this right wing propaganda.

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

insert interview with Susan Wicklund

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

Bane of feminist bloggers and anti-choice nut Dawn Eden was on the Today Show recently to tout her magic husband-luring plan of keeping your clothes on until you get the wedding band. The fact that Dawn Eden is on mainstream TV spreading her lunatic theories should have been a great moment, because I figured it was only a matter of time before she says something crazy. Unfortunately, they didn't really give her a chance to show the true crazy, though the minor kinds of creepy did come across.

insert dawn eden 1

This is Dawn's whole schtick. Basically, she was having sex and not getting married, so she hypothesizes that it was the sex that prevented the marriage. An intriguing and popular theory that often goes under the name "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" However, it's also a theory that's extremely testable, in the scientific sense. Even setting aside the fact that most women who marry do marry someone they're already having sex with, we have a testable subject in the very person of Dawn Eden. If it was having sex that made her not be married, then surely not having sex would have gotten her married, right? But she's eight years into this experiment and no husband has materialized. A scientist would say that it's time to scrap the hypothesis and look for another cause of the lack of marriage occurring in her life.

dawn eden 2

All I can think when I hear someone talk like this is, "Well, even when you're married, he's got to pull out sometime." And seriously, why wouldn't you want him to? But in a way, I can't blame her for having this idealized notion that you fall in love with someone for real, and somehow you stop being separate people. The notion that love is about giving up your identity is all over the place. In fact, the host of the show says something that made me cringe.

dawn eden 3

It's this idea, that someone "completes" you, that you are less of a person without a romantic partner, that drives so much dysfunction. You're already a complete person. A partner is just a nice addition to your life, and only then if they really are a value add.

dawn eden 4

What is frustrating to me about all this is that Dawn just slipped in some anti-choice dogwhistles and no one called her on it. "Giving myself completely" means that that you abhor contraception, and that you risk pregnancy every time. And that's what makes this whole situation really sad. You buy into this myth that love and sex is about being completed by another person, and that never happens of course. But even though he's got to pull out sometime, if he's constantly knocking you up, well, you're kind of still attached, right? And as long as Dawn stays unmarried, she can keep her romantic notions of what marriage is like.

Meanwhile, I'm once again angry at the Today Show. They had an opportunity to show that the chastity craze is part of a larger anti-choice philosophy. And they dropped the ball.

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

Now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts. This edition: Sean Hannity lies about something Barack Obama said.

insert sean hannity lies

What did Obama actually say?

insert obama truth

Right. He wasn't talking about abortion, but about sex education and contraception.

But it's important to point this out, because it shows that when a wingnut says they're against abortion, that's usually code for being against education, birth control, and healthy women.