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Women who don’t like sexual aggression from strangers are prudish children. Or childish prudes. Or something.

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I don’t like Psychology Today, part 2:

So Elyse of Skepchick wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago describing an incident that followed a talk on vaccination she gave at Skepticamp in Ohio. You can read the entire thing here, but to put it briefly, a couple she didn’t know aside from a friend request on Facebook approached her after the talk and handed her a card. A business card-like card, which the male half of the couple gave her before the two of them proceeded to vacate the premises. After they’d gone, Elyse turned the card over, noticed a nude picture of the couple on the other side of it along with an invitation to hook up with them and contact information for such, and realized that she had been propositioned for a threesome by strangers out of nowhere while doing her job.

Yeah.

As you might expect, this was a disconcerting experience for Elyse, and in that post she carefully walks through the details of why that is, and why this is not the kind of thing you should do at a conference. Considering that sexual conduct at skepticism conferences is such a big topic right now, I was happy that she did that and didn’t just post an account of what happened accompanied by a scan of the card, saying “See? See this? This is the kind of thing we’re talking about! Don’t do it!” Nope, she articulated what made her feel uncomfortable and why. And she did it, I would note, without any mention of whether it constitutes “harassment.”

Unlike Dr. Marty Klein, who wrote about this incident– yes, I think it’s fair to say that it’s this incident he was writing about– as apparently heard third or fourth hand via a drunken discussion with someone who skimmed the post a couple of weeks ago and might or might not have already decided that Elyse is a hysterical female bent on destroying a conference over a slight, because that is how Klein portrays things. I say I think it’s fair to say he was writing about this incident and not a “composite,” as he claims, for a few reasons. First because the description is quite detailed, and the details of time and place and person align to Elyse’s experience– as she says, “Now, to be fair, he doesn’t name me, so it could be another particular blogger in her mid-30s who was handed a swingers card at a conference. I’m sure there are hundreds of us around.” Second and third because the caveat that the description was a “composite” was apparently added after the fact, and I know for certain that some important wording was changed which made the description align more closely to Elyse’s actual experience, and there’s no reason to do this if it wasn’t intended to describe her in the first place.

That important wording? Klein’s article originally said that the entirely hypothetical couple had “gotten friendly with” the woman prior to handing her the invitation-to-a-threesome card. Now it says they simply “approached” her. More accurate, yes, and it makes Klein’s depiction of her reaction seem much less justified. It also was apparently edited in the Psychology Today article without any acknowledgement of such, after Elyse noticed it and said something. Here’s what she said:

Klein starts off with one tiny change in the details of my experience, one tiny change that alters the entire context of the situation. In Klein’s version of my story, “John” and “Mary” have reason to believe I might be interested in joining them to socialize our genitals. Now, if by “gotten friendly” he means “accepted Facebook friend request” and “stood in front of a room while the couple was present and delivered a talk about how everyone needs to get Tdap”, then yes, I concede, we “got friendly”. But I doubt that’s what he meant. What I think he means is that I was asking for it.I’m not the one with the PhD in psychology, but I’m fairly certain that if this couple thought that my statement that most children catch pertussis from unvaccinated adults was me secretly dropping subliminal messages that I’d like to get tight and shiny under the stairs with them, then the problem with this interaction does not begin or end with me.

“Tight and shiny under the sheets.” I like that.

Anyway, the gist of Klein’s article is he basically to portrays this “woman” as prudish, uptight, and vindictive, and the details he changed in the story to make it differ from Elyse’s actual experience are all in service of that end. Of course it would still be inappropriate to hand a card bearing a sexual proposition to someone who is prudish, uptight, and vindictive, but it makes her less sympathetic and her feelings of discomfort less easy to empathize with.

Klein makes great effort to argue that “the woman” was not harassed; she received unwanted sexual attention. Elyse points out that she was never talking about the legal definition of sexual harassment; she was talking about what made her feel uncomfortable at a conference and why.

Klein suggests that “the woman” could learn a lesson from history when other bearers of two X chromosomes had it much worse off. Elyse points out that just because things were worse then doesn’t mean they’re dandy now. The aggravating thing about this gambit is that someone tries to pull it every single time the topic comes up– “What are you complaining about? Women had/have it worse at time X/place Y!”– and the absurd thing is that this same argument applies just as well to absolutely anything someone is complaining about, unless of course they happen to be complaining about the worst thing that happened, anywhere, ever. I guess people who are burning in Hell are the only ones who can legitimately complain.

Klein says that “the woman” responded to the incident by trashing the conference at which it happened and discouraging other women from attending it in the future. Elyse points out that this is simply bollocks. As are a lot of other things in his article, but you really should go ahead and read Elyse’s full reply for more on that.

Klein’s profile on Psychology Today reads:

Marty Klein has been a certified sex therapist and licensed marriage and family therapist in Palo Alto, California for 30 years, working with men, women, and couples on issues of anger, guilt, shame, and power, as well as orgasm, erection, fantasies, desire, S-&-M, pornography, and sexual orientation. Klein has written seven books and over 200 articles on sexuality. He is frequently quoted by the popular press, most recently in The New York Times and on ABC-TV’s 20/20, Nightline, and Penn & Teller. He is outspoken about many popular and clinical ideas about sexuality, decrying psychology’s gender stereotypes, sex-negativity, and what he calls “the Oprah-ization of therapy.” He is one of America’s best-known voices opposing the dangerous concept of “sex addiction.” 

“Penn & Teller” actually refers to Penn and Teller’s HBO show Bullshit (if we’re really not repressed, let’s go ahead and say the word), on which Klein appeared in an episode on discussing pornography. As a supportive talking head, he quite rightly pointed out that there is no evidence that watching porn disposes people to sexual violence. Great. Promoting sexual happiness and decrying gender stereotypes and sex-negativity? Great. Making women out to be nun-like ice statues if they register disapproval about being sexually propositioned by strangers? Not so great.

I’ve written before about how women have this peculiar thing about them– they like to feel safe. Imagine that. They’re no less sexual than men; it’s just that women who are openly sexual face a double whammy of danger. They face the real, physical danger of someone attacking them (and the attack being dismissed because hey, she was asking for it), but they also face the social danger of being stigmatized as dirty, stupid, or generally worth less than women who are chaste and modest. It is, of course, possible for women to be overly aggressive with their sexuality– as was the case with the female half of this couple that propositioned Elyse– but if they object to other people being overly aggressive with their sexuality, the problem is not with the woman objecting.

There’s a sort of “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” aspect to that. You can browbeat a woman into being sexual when she doesn’t want to, but it will be feeding on her insecurity rather than an authentic enjoyment of such on her part. On the other hand if she is authentically being sexual for her own sake, there is always someone waiting around to call her a slut for it. You would think that as a sex therapist Klein would know all of this, but instead he has opted for browbeating, and on extremely specious grounds no less. Propositioning a woman you don’t know in an entirely non-sexual context does not make her feel safe. Don’t do it. It’s really that easy. That was the message of Elyse’s original post, which bypassed Klein entirely– assuming he ever actually read the thing, which is in doubt.

ETA: While I was writing this a number of edits to Klein’s article have come to light, and are noted at the bottom of Elyse’s reply.

ETA 2: Six words from Klein’s article are now sticking in my craw: “A couple at last year’s conference.” As mentioned at the beginning of this post, Elyse blogged about her experience a couple of weeks ago. I believe it happened not long before that. This seems like an important discrepancy, and casts some doubt on whether it was really her story that he was focusing on. It would not surprise me in the least to find that there are multiple pairs of swinging couples who proposition people via “business” cards, at conferences and any other social occasion. It’s possible that Klein never did actually read–or hear of– Elyse’s account. In which case, I apologize for accusations to the contrary. However, I think all other points still stand.

ETA 3: And one point that stands which I didn’t really mention is the false equivalence regarding “unwanted attention.” No, not all unwanted attention is created equal. If a sexual proposition from strangers merely counts as “unwanted attention” in the same manner as a visit from Mormon missionaries, then I suppose cat calls fall into that group as well. So a request to buy Girl Scout cookies when you’re in a hurry is exactly the same as some guy in a car yelling that he wants to wear your vagina as a hat. No, I fundamentally reject that. Sexually propositioning someone out of nowhere is not a sign of openness and freedom; it’s a signal that you are not concerned with that person’s feelings of safety and might possibly be deranged. It’s also quite commonly, I might note, a means of insulting them. Not all unwanted attention is equal, and I hate to sound like a broken record but it’s hard to imagine someone other than a straight male suggesting it is.

Savage U

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Long-time sex columnist, author, podcaster, advocate, and public educator Dan Savage now has a TV show. And it looks good.

I was a little concerned before watching the trailer that the show would be watered down, homogenized, and generally weaker than the typical frank, funny, pointed commentary we tend to get from Savage. And I’m still a little concerned, but not nearly as much. Savage has been doing Q&A presentations at universities and occasionally the odd appearance at stage venues in various parts of the country for years now, and it looks like the show is going to pretty much just show those appearances…along with some candid conversations with specific students about their particular concerns. But it’s MTV, so there’s still the potential for unexpected ruin. Nevertheless I’m keeping my hopes up and planning to watch. Hopefully a lot of non-collegiate teenagers will watch as well– the kind of people Savage needs to speak to directly even more, but can’t. And maybe, maybe, they will even watch with……their parents!

Yeah, probably not. But one can dream. The show premieres Tuesday, April 3.

Conservative group to gather, bemoan 40 year old advance in sexual freedom

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No, I’m not kidding. And no, this is not from The Onion, though it sounds like it. The Family Research Council is holding a symposium on Wednesday, March 21st, to get together and talk about a terrible moment in history. The title is 40 Years Since Eisenstadt v. Baird: A Look at the High Court’s Legal Attack on Marriage. Eisenstadt v. Baird, whose ruling was actually delivered on March 22, 1972, was when SCOTUS decided that unmarried people should have the same access to contraceptives that married people do, invalidating state laws to the contrary. Here is the FRC’s statement on the purpose of their event:

On March 22nd, 1972, the Supreme Court undermined the boundaries and benefits of marriage. In the decision Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Court struck down a Massachusetts law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people, and implicitly sanctioned unmarried non-procreative sexual intimacy. While the decision may seem archaic and insignificant by modern sexual standards, Eisenstadt v. Baird dealt a decisive blow to the legal and cultural norm that marriage was the institution for the full expression of the sexual relationship between man and woman. The decision and its legal consequences affect us today. Forty years ago, the Court ruled that unmarried couples could not be denied their birth control. Today, the Federal government is forcing us to share the cost, for said contraception and some states are giving marital status to homosexual relationships. Join us on March 21st, as legal and social science experts Helen Alvaré and Pat Fagan explain why the Court’s decision matters and how anyone who cares about the family should understand the legal landscape and the social consequences of this momentous decision.

It’s telling that the final paragraph refers to “the family,” and not “families.” This is for the same reason that the organization is called the Family Research Council in the first place– to seize hold of the notion of “family” and fight with tooth and nail against it referring to any other arrangement than one biological mother and one biological father who are married and have sex only after marriage. I would say “for the purpose of procreation,” but apparently the FRC is a-okay with sanctioning married non-procreative intimacy, just not the unmarried kind.

And of course, they likewise want to grab onto the word “marriage” and insist that only one meaning of the word is appropriate– theirs. That’s the only way to describe the SCOTUS ruling as an “attack on marriage” with a straight face, when it did absolutely nothing to actually prevent people from getting married (just as, when it eventually acknowledges the right of gays to marry, it will do nothing to prevent anyone from getting married but conservatives will likewise again complain about being “attacked”). Presumably the FRC wants all children to be born to married parents, so their opposition to Eisenstadt here amounts to an objection to unmarried people being able to have sex, period. Thinking about this, bear in mind that not only did 95% of Americans have premarital sex in 2002, but that (evenly balanced as to sex) 70% had it in the 1930’s.

The people going to the FRC gathering on Wednesday should consider that their great-grandparents might well have had sex outside of marriage, and used contraceptives in the process to prevent pregnancy. Yes, I know it’s not fun to think about your ancestors having sex, period. But just for the sake of this thought experiment, it’s important. It’s important for the sake of remembering that no matter how much you want children to be born to parents joined in marriage, the solution is not to try and force unmarried people into marriage by preventing them from being able to have sex without risk of conception. For one thing, it should be obvious by now that that doesn’t work. For another, people make their own sex lives, both before and after marriage (or totally outside of it, for those of us who are not keen on marriage to begin with). It’s possible that if Eisenstadt had not turned out in the way it did, there might still be states with laws on the books preventing unmarried couples from having access to birth control. In which case we could expect to see the number of married couples skyrocket, but the demand for birth control remain the same if it doesn’t escalate. Because people who want to have sex without procreating will do so. And they are the majority, all of the time.

Misconceptions on contraception

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Do you know how this stuff works?

This ongoing battle over the significance of contraception has come as quite a shock to those of us for whom it has been a normal, completely non-controversial part of life for so long. But perhaps it shouldn’t be. Attacks on its importance have come in large part from people who don’t know how contraception works, and that number will surely increase if measures like Utah’s push to ban instruction on birth control, homosexuality, and any kind of extra-marital sex in public schools succeed and proliferate. What’s especially worrisome is not just that Americans are stunningly ignorant of the varieties of contraception, their function, and their effectiveness, but that they aren’t aware of their own ignorance:

Jenna had been living with her boyfriend for several months when he floated his own contraceptive theory. Jenna was taking her birth control pills continuously, meaning that she was skipping the pack’s built-in placebo pills in order to stop her period. At some point, her boyfriend discovered how she had managed to avoid the monthly ritual. “I was thinking you were just magical, like a unicorn,” he told her. “I mean, you hope one exists somewhere, but you never think you’ll get to live with one…a cool chick with no period drama that has sex all month long.” He added, “The guys thought I was making it up.” (Boyfriends could not be reached for comment for this story).
According to a new study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, many young American men exhibit attitudes toward contraception that could best be described as “magical.” The study [PDF] surveyed American singles ages 18–29 about their perceptions about and use of contraception. Twenty-eight percent of young men think that wearing two condoms at a time is more effective than just one. Twenty-five percent think that women can prevent pregnancy by douching after sex. Eighteen percent believe that they can reduce the chance of pregnancy by doing it standing up.
For the most part, men lagged behind women on the pregnancy prevention front. And when the study dipped into the realm of “female” forms of birth control, the gender divide intensified. In the study, 29 percent of men and 32 percent of women reported that they know “little or nothing about condoms.” When asked to rate their knowledge of birth control pills, 78 percent of men reported to be clueless, compared to 45 percent of women.

According to that study, most young people (the American singles in that age group) 
a) are sexually active (78% in the past year),
b) believe (94% male, 86% female) that pregnancy should be planned, and
c) say that it’s important (88% male and 86% female) to avoid pregnancy right now.
Nonetheless, 19% no contraception at all and 24% use it inconsistently. 17% of women and 19% admitted that it is quite likely that they will engage in unprotected sex in the next year. 31% of women said that they had had an unplanned pregnancy. 
Why the discrepancy? A combination of ignorance (lack of information) and false belief (misinformation). Because these men and women did not receive sufficient instruction on contraception, they have relied on “folk” knowledge about how it works, which can make contraception seem unreliable at best and actually suspicious and harmful at worst:

Despite the myths, inflated fears, gaps in knowledge and more, nearly
all unmarried young adults say they have the knowledge they need to
avoid an unplanned pregnancy.  • 90% believe (and 66% strongly believe) they have all the knowledge they
need to avoid an unplanned pregnancy. Moreover, many are fatalistic about fertility and pregnancy… • 38% of men and 44% of women believe “it doesn’t matter whether you use
birth control or not; when it is your time to get pregnant it will happen.”
• Hispanics (49%) and non-Hispanic blacks (50%) are more likely than nonHispanic whites (34%) to believe that birth control doesn’t matter much.  …and many are suspicious of the whole birth control enterprise.  • 31% overall (40% of non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics) agree with the
statement, “the government and public health institutions use poor and
minority people as guinea pigs to try out new birth control methods.”
• 32% overall (44% of non-Hispanic blacks and 46% of Hispanics) agree with
the statement, “the government is trying to limit blacks and other minority
populations by encouraging the use of birth control.”

The study is full of other disturbing statistics, which you should definitely read for yourself. The take-home message, I think, is that young Americans are woefully misinformed about contraception, and even though the study says that only 13% of this group believe it to be morally wrong, misunderstanding how contraception works and how well it works can feed into the creation of beliefs about who needs contraception, and how much, and why. Erroneous beliefs that foster prejudice and, worse, grossly mistaken policy. Like in Arizona, where legislators are trying to make it possible for your employer to know whether you’re using birth control and, if they have a problem with that, fire you for it.

One can’t help but wonder how well they understand birth control. My hunch is: not well at all.  

Pamela Geller is vile

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Previously I knew Pamela Geller as a “creeping Sharia” proponent, the kind of person who makes a living off making Americans as afraid of Muslims as possible to the point of encouraging us to refuse them the rights we would ordinarily recognize as existing for any American; for any human. She is that, but her reaction to the Fluke/Limbaugh matter shows that she is a female misogynist as well, past the ranks of Ann Coulter. There’s a special category of political commentator that should place them beyond consideration by anyone who strives to be rational. This category I called “unhinged,” and Limbaugh and Coulter have dwelt in it for a very long time. Now, Geller makes me wonder if another category is needed for the super extra unhinged, the kind who might need to be institutionalized but instead are treated as a relevant political voice by…well, some. It’s hard to tell how many. 

Exhibit A:

A 30-year-old poses as a 23-year-old, chooses a Catholic University to attend at $65,000 per year, and cannot afford ALL the birth control pills she needs… so she wants the US taxpayers to pay for her rampant sexual activity. By all accounts she is banging it five times a day. She sounds more like a prostitute to me. She must have an gyno bill to choke a horse (pun intended). Calling this whore a slut was a softball.

Exhibit B:

I have had it up to here with Fluke’s vagina. Seriously. Clearly she’s a plant. I don’t have to exalt or honor women who debase and lower themselves to meat status. I will not honor this pig. I will not teach children to debase themselves. I will not teach children that this is “empowerment.” I explain it to young girls this way. Go into any Wal-Mart or Target. There are hundreds of black handbags for sale in bins, hung on display walls, all cheap or moderately priced, and they can’t give them away. Now  go into Hermes. There is one black, gorgeous, impossible to get, crocodile Birkin bag. There are waiting lists for this bag. No one can get that bag. It costs a fortune and still everyone wants that bag.
Be that bag. I despise the women’s movement. I despise what they have done to women (and men). Just look at Fluke. She is a full-fledged activist and an embarrasment [sic] to decent young women. 

Note: Sandra Fluke is not the one who made this about her sex life. Sandra Fluke did not make any mention of her sexual activity, and it wouldn’t matter if she had. In no way did Fluke pretend to be anything other than what she is, and it’s not her fault if conservative commentators made assumptions which proven to be erroneous. And Sandra Fluke is not the one comparing women to merchandise.

Women aren’t an ideological group. We are a biological/cultural one, so there’s no sense in which the behavior of one woman should be considered an embarrassment to the rest of us. But if one should be considered such, it doesn’t seem like Fluke is that woman.

What Rush hath wrought

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On the Daily Show clip in my previous post, Jon Stewart begins (after introducing the show) by noting that Rush Limbaugh’s profession is to be a loathsome human being. It’s just a matter of fact– he’s good at it, and has done it for over two decades with considerable success. But it’s easy to forget that there are people who think otherwise. People who actually take him seriously. People who think that he has things of value to say. People who pass such messages on to their children. Who then pass them on to other children.

A Daily Kos member going by the name “beantown mom” posted an account entitled “I’ve spent the past two days trying to convince my 16 y/o she is not a slut.” Long story short: her daughter had to go on hormonal birth control due to menorrhagia and secondary dysmenorrhea. Her daughter then went to a five day camp for band members, during which any prescription medicine had to be kept by supervisors and distributed at the beginning of each day to those who required it. Pretty standard procedure, right? Here’s what happened next:

Thursday, my daughter came home from school and seemed to be a little out of sorts. I chalked it up to being tired and trying to get caught up on homework and such; however, I did ask her if everything was alright and she said yes, she thought so- it was just that at lunch there were some girls whispering and pointing at her in lunch and then they would break out into little fits of laughter. She couldn’t figure out why they were singling her out but admitted that a couple of the girls were ones she had once had a problem with. They were the “popular” girls, 2 of whom were cheerleaders, and last year they had singled her out calling her names and such when they got bored and, in my daughter’s words, “ran out of girls to harass and make fun of in lunch”. I gave it no further consideration- we went on about our business of getting homework done, etc. Friday morning, I took my kids to school and headed off to my mother’s to do some errands and such for my family. With the impending storms and bad weather bearing down on us, I sent my daughter a text that I would pick her up from school. My son had baseball so I only had to worry about her getting home. I pulled into the parking lot and saw that she was standing inside the doors at school, her head down and shoulders shaking- I thought she was laughing at something someone said or was looking at her phone reading something funny. I honked and waived [sic] to motion her out, not sure if she saw me. She never looked up, just pushed open the door and practically ran to the car. She flung open the door and I started to say something about the wind and rain, but stopped mid sentence because of the look on my child’s face! She was sobbing, face streaked with tears, cheeks red and eyes so swollen I could hardly see her beautiful brown eyes- I slammed the car into park right in the middle of the parking lot and asked her what was wrong.

Apparently I’m a slut- a whore- a bitch who is screwing every guy in school! 

She was speaking but it wasn’t making sense- who said this? What are you talking about? For a minute we were talking over each other and finally I said just get in the car and tell me what is going on! She handed me a wrinkled piece of paper. I could tell it had been opened and closed, folded and unfolded wadded up and straightened out so many times it almost looked like it was going to fall apart in my hands. 

Little miss innocent, huh? Whatever slut- you take birth control pills so you can f*&# every guy in school! What a joke- u are nothin but a whore! Pretty bad when some guy on the radio who isn’t afraid to tell the truth has to break it down for everybody- if u on the Pill u are nothing but a skank ass ho! My mom said girls on the pill are tramps who just wanna get laid and don’t care about nothin- is that how u are?

I thought I was going to throw up! I was crying- crying for my sweet daughter who was in a puddle on the front seat of my car, crying because I was so angry I didn’t know what to do first! I drove home with one arm around my daughter and one hand on the wheel; I was saying things but for the life of me I can’t remember any of what I said now. I just wanted to take the pain away from my child! I wanted to make her stop crying, wanted to erase all the horrible pain that she was feeling.

I read about this at Pandagon, where Amanda Marcotte has a pointed and optimistic essay about the ridiculous effort to portray the vast majority of American women as somehow shameful because they have or will rely on birth control at some point in their lives. That group which, statistically speaking, almost certainly includes both the bully who wrote the note above and her mother. Amanda describes such shaming as “backsliding” in a culture where hormonal birth control has been a realistic option for three generations:

These kinds of attacks on individual women—in this case, a 16-year-old girl in high school—are only effective in an environment where the bullies can imply that using contraception and/or being sexually active is deviant. The idea is to isolate the victim, make them feel weird and different, and terrify them for it. But when you have the President in the White House talking about contraception as a normal part of health care for pretty much all women, it becomes clear that being sexually active and using contraception is the national norm, as wholesome and American as apple pie. The high levels of support for the HHS mandate suggests that most Americans are already there. This panic reaction is the last gasp of the old order trying to turn back the clock, to a time where it was scandalous for people to live together without being married, to when women who have sex with their boyfriends worry about their reputation, and when contraception was seen as embarrassing, and so some people tried their luck without getting any, and usually failed.  The thing is, as this example above shows, backsliding is possible. (If anyone in my high school was bullied for using contraception, I don’t remember it.) Which is why it’s more important than ever to talk about sex, and specifically how normal it is, how universal it is, what the benefits are, and to shame anyone who would say otherwise. We have the numbers on our side. We just need the courage. Remember, the people who think there’s something bad about women just because they fuck are the weirdoes [sic] here. Don’t be afraid to really believe that and act on it. 

Hear, hear. The word that keeps coming up for me is “irrelevant.” Birth control is normal, uncontroversial, and necessary for men and women, married and unmarried, with children or without, young and old. People who try to pretend otherwise in the name of sexual propriety and are attempting to use this issue as a means to shame American women in general (and specifically) are badly out of touch, have nothing of value to say on this vital topic, and have shown themselves to be truly…irrelevant.

If you still need some levity after the above (I sure do), check out the Mother Jones “Are You A Slut” flow chart. It’s ridiculous in its accuracy and accurate in its ridiculousness.

On what’s relevant if you’re female

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1. At Camels With Hammers today, Daniel Fincke takes an admirable crack at a topic people have danced around quite a lot in discussing Rush Limbaugh’s ridiculous portrayal of why women want birth control: not only does it have nothing to do with promiscuity, but you don’t get to just assume there is something wrong with promiscuity regardless. That’s not something on which we’re all in agreement, okay? Never mind how difficult it is to define what counts as a “promiscuous” sex life as compared to a regular one, the problem with slut-shaming at its foundation is that it assumes there’s something wrong with being (whatever you define as) a slut! So Fincke’s post, No, You Can’t Call People Sluts, bluntly points out that “slut” is to begin with a term meant to cast shame on something not only nebulous but (surprise!) not necessarily shame-worthy:

In no way, shape, or form do I take promiscuity to be, in itself, an immoral thing. So, no, I don’t think there is any word that you can use that I would find morally acceptable. You call that controlling your thought by not allowing you whatever insult you want? Sorry, that’s morality. It controls some things. You don’t want to be subject to my moral standards? Well, I don’t want consensual, responsible, promiscuous people who do not harm anyone to be subject to yours. I have a lot of good moral reasons to think they don’t deserve derision and that such treatment of yours towards them is unfair and worth calling out. So I’m not allowing that any abusive word aimed at men or women over their promiscuity is copacetic. I don’t have to acknowledge your moral right to use insults to bully people who are not doing anything morally wrong. Legally, you may say whatever you want that does not cross the line into actionable harassment, threats, or libel, etc. But morally if I allow you to call people sluts as perfectly acceptable, then I’m approving your value judgment as perfectly acceptable. You’re entitled morally to argue for the wrongness of promiscuity if you like. Your “distaste” is not an argument and nor is it a justification for dictating to others or for denigrating them.

2. At her blog, Greta Christina talks about how last when when she was speaking at the University of Chicago on the topic of atheism and sexuality, someone defaced a promotional poster for the event by writing next to a photo of her that she is “the ugliest of all atheists!” Because….somehow, that’s relevant. Note: she admonishes readers not to attempt to reassure her that she’s not ugly (which is true– had to say that) because that undermines the point that it is, actually, not at all relevant. It’s not relevant to how well she writes, how well she speaks, how qualified or educated she is, whether what she has to say is well-reasoned or compelling or humorous or insightful or timely or fun or….anything. But because she’s female, people (both male and female) tend to think otherwise:

I’m reminded of something Tina Fey said in the New Yorker about show business. “I know older men in comedy who can barely feed and clean themselves, and they still work. The women though, they’re all crazy. I have a suspicion — and hear me out, because this is a rough one — that the definition of crazy in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore.” It’s not just show business. The definition of crazy is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore. Or, indeed, a woman who keeps talking even if the person she’s addressing doesn’t want to fuck her. A woman who keeps talking even if the person reading the poster advertising the talk doesn’t want to fuck her.

Here’s Rachel Maddow yesterday…

Here’s Rachel Maddow yesterday… published on No Comments on Here’s Rachel Maddow yesterday…

…demonstrating why dummies are more dangerous than dicks:

You want the blue pill; we’ll pay for it. You want the red pill; Rush Limbaugh owns your sex life.

You want the blue pill; we’ll pay for it. You want the red pill; Rush Limbaugh owns your sex life. published on 4 Comments on You want the blue pill; we’ll pay for it. You want the red pill; Rush Limbaugh owns your sex life.
In Limbaugh Land, consumption of these is
determined not by time but by sluttiness.

I’m a big believer– and try to be a big practioner– of giving people the benefit of the doubt in disagreements. Because it’s a nice thing to do, yes, but also because it’s way too easy to do things like assume the conclusion of a person’s position and then attribute that to them as if it’s what they have in mind and support (“You support legalization of marijuana, I think that legalization of marijuana means that teenagers will get stoned and run over small children at the drive-through,* therefore you must want teenagers running over kids at the drive-through.”) And there’s the additional fact that if you interpret what someone says in the best possible light, they are far less likely to complain that you put words in their mouth. In fact, you might even improve on what they were trying to say.

However….it’s hard to give Rush Limbaugh any benefits for making the following argument:

1. Women who want health insurance to cover birth control are asking to be paid to have sex.
2. Therefore, they are prostitutes, or at least sluts.
3. And if we’re going to pay them to have sex, we should get something out of it.
4. Therefore, they at least owe us video footage. So make with the sex tapes already.

Yes, this is the most charitable possible framing of what Limbaugh said on his radio show regarding the testimony of Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke in Congress on the need for contraception coverage.
First:

LIMBAUGH: What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.

Then:

LIMBAUGH: So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.

First of all, Fluke wasn’t even talking about herself– she was talking about a lesbian friend who stopped taking hormonal birth control because it was too expensive, and not covered by her university on religious grounds. She was on the birth control to stop ovarian cysts from forming, and after going off the pill a cyst formed that required surgery to remove the entire ovary.

But let’s say Fluke was talking about herself. And let’s say she’s heterosexual, and just wants to have sex with a man or men with a drastically reduced likelihood of getting pregnant. That seems like a good idea, right? That sounds like being careful. Responsible. And regardless of how much sex she has, and how many men she has it with, she’s going to require exactly the same amount of birth control as her lesbian friend (who might be having all kinds of sex herself, but presumably not with men): one packet every month. One pill every day. So the “she’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception” slam is blown out of the water, right there.

What about the claim that having insurance pay for birth control equates to taxpayers being made to pay people like Fluke to have sex? Well, again, people take the pill for a lot of reasons that don’t involve preventing pregnancy…like Fluke’s friend, who (again) could be having any amount of sex with any number of people. So maybe instead of telling women not to have sex if it requires using birth control, Limbaugh should tell them to become lesbians. But she wanted the pill to prevent cysts. Some women take it to control their menstrual cycle. Some women take it to minimize the symptoms of endometriosis. It is a multi-purpose medication, used for a number of very important purposes just like lots of other medication already covered by insurance. Like, you know, Viagra, which I’ve never heard of someone taking because he’s afraid of losing a testicle.

Additionally, of course, there is the fact that paying people to have sex without getting pregnant is cheaper than paying them to get pregnant, carry out the pregnancy, and give birth to a child they didn’t want and can’t care for. Limbaugh considers legal abortion a “holocaust” and women who fight for the right to have abortions “feminazis,” so it sure seems like he should be all in favor of any preventative measures women can take before conception to make sure that it…well, doesn’t happen. Nope. He’s a proponent of Santorum-backer Foster Friess’s method of aspirin-between-the-knees, which it’s hard to believe was funny when the FDA legalized the pill (for menstrual disorders first, note) in 1957. When I’m pretty sure people already knew that it’s possible to have sex with your knees together.

Limbaugh’s argument is fundamentally not financial; it’s moral: birth control is about making it possible for women to have sex without risk of pregnancy, and they shouldn’t want this. If they do, it’s probably because they’re having sex with someone they are not married to and don’t want to marry, which makes them sluts. Message to Limbaugh: most Americans by far either have used or will use birth control to avoid pregnancy. Most Americans by far have had or will have sex outside of marriage. Most Americans by far, I am guessing, do not want to risk creating a pregnancy every time they have sex, whether married or unmarried. Limbaugh himself is almost certainly one of these Americans in all three cases.

So why is he arguing so adamantly against this? Because it offers a chance to make a cheap shot at American women. All Americans benefit by having easy and cheap access to birth control, but Sandra Fluke’s testimony made for an opportunity to say that women who benefit from that access must be sluts.  As Rep. Jackie Speier said today in calling for a boycott of Limbaugh’s sponsors, it’s flat out misogyny:

“Shame on you for calling the women of this country prostitutes,” Speier said. “Ninety-eight percent of the women in this country at some time in their lives used birth control.” “So I say to the women in this country, do something about this,” she continued. “I say to the women of this country, ask Century 21, Quicken Loans, Legal Zoom, and Sleep Number to stop supporting the hate mongering of Rush Limbaugh and if they do not do that, then I ask them to boycott those companies.”

Yes. Yes to this, but I wish she hadn’t appealed specifically to women. It’s an issue that should be of interest to everyone, because it affects everyone, and…everyone should consider Rush Limbaugh a hateful moron for saying crap like this. Charitably, of course.

*The actual plot of a PSA that ran on TV for a while.

Two very bad ideas

Two very bad ideas published on No Comments on Two very bad ideas

1. Inflicting an enormous judicial penalty on someone because what would otherwise be counted as harassment a) resulted in a suicide, and b) might have been based in bigotry:

Dharun Ravi is on trial in New Jersey for spying on his college roommate. Although the Newark Star-Ledger says “Ravi is not charged in connection with [Tyler] Clementi’s death,” it is doubtful that he would have been charged at all if Clementi had not jumped off the George Washington Bridge on September 22, 2010. That was three days after Ravi, monitoring their Rutgers University dorm room via a webcam, watched Clementi kiss a male visitor and two days after Ravi tweeted that he “saw my roommate making out with a dude.” If Clementi had not killed himself (for reasons that remain unclear), Ravi surely would not be facing the prospect of 10 years in prison for “bias intimidation.” 

2. Allowing schools in your state to skip sex education, and prohibiting instruction on contraception in classes that continue to be taught, because you are fundamentally opposed to sex outside of marriage and consider safe sex to be “getting away” with something.

A bill to allow Utah schools to drop sex education classes — and prohibit instruction in the use of contraception in those that keep the courses — moved significantly closer to becoming law Wednesday. The House passed HB363 by a 45-28 vote after a late-afternoon debate that centered largely on lawmakers’ differing definitions of morality. “We’ve been culturally watered down to think we have to teach about sex, about having sex and how to get away with it, which is intellectually dishonest,” said bill sponsor Rep. Bill Wright, R-Holden. “Why don’t we just be honest with them upfront that sex outside marriage is devastating?”

Hmm. That doesn’t sound like honesty to me. Honesty would be refusing to withhold the knowledge that contraception exists, and that it can be very effective when used properly, and here’s how to use it properly. Honesty would be acknowledging that not everyone wants to have a baby at all times, and everyone wants to avoid disease, always, and contraception is very good at preventing both of these. A marriage license, not so much.