Rush Is Sorry

So Limbaugh apologized for three days of woman-hating vitriol. Like this:

For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week.  In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.

...

My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.

Do you think that is a good apology, now that advertisers are deserting him in droves?

Here are a few of the things he said about Ms. Fluke:

“What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her?” Limbaugh said on his radio show on Wednesday. “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. What does that make us? We’re the pimps.”
The conservative radio host continued on to joke, “OK, so she’s not a slut. She’s ‘round heeled.’”

Just a bad choice of words, eh? He should have called her what instead? A harlot? A whore? There are not very many words you can replace in those sentences without replacing his meaning.

Do a reversal on Rush's statements by substituting Viagra for the birth control.

Why should I pay towards Rush's Viagra in my health insurance premia? He's just using it to screw everything in sight, to become the ueberslut of all sluts. Ugh.

Indeed, why should I pay for his deafness treatments in my premia? It seems they are a consequence of his illegal use of drugs, after all. What does it make me if I pay for them? His drug provider or at least someone who enables his immoral lifestyle.

Well, if Rush's long diatribes against Ms. Fluke were not really intended against her, personally, who was he attacking in this comment:

“So Ms. Fluke and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal: If you are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. And I’ll tell you want it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

All us other Feminazis!

Continuing with that earlier reversal, Rush can keep those videos of him having Viagra-enforced/reinforced sex with the other earth worms. (I always think of him when turning over a new bed in the garden because of those white fat grubs in the soil.)

Speaking about turning over the soil, look what else cropped up?

The Perfect Limbaugh Storm?

Probably not, but suddenly his woman-hatred provokes condemning comments! I can't quite believe this.

To put that into perspective, I have written about that little turd in our societal punch bowl for years* and it has been like shouting into a barrel. I sound good to me and that's about it.

Now that I got that cup of bitterness down (and used up all proper vessel metaphors) let me share my happiness on Mr. Viagra getting into at least a little trouble:

True to form, Limbaugh responded to Fluke’s testimony by calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute.” And a few of his sponsors aren’t happy about it. In the wake of criticism, Sleep Train Mattress Centers is pulling its ads from the radio show. “Thank you for your concern. We are currently pulling all our ads with Rush Limbaugh,” the company tweeted.
Sleep Number beds also announced that it is pulling ads from the program. “Recent comments by Rush Limbaugh do not align w/our values, so we made decision to immediately suspend all advertising on that program,” an employee of the company tweeted. Quicken Loans later on Friday followed suit, pulling ads over Limbaugh’s “inflammatory comments.”

Whether ProFlowers will or not remains to be seen.

President Obama chimed in:

President Obama injected himself Friday into the controversy over Rush Limbaugh's comments about a Georgetown University student who testified on contraceptive coverage -- effectively elevating the issue, with some Democrats even trying to raise money off it. 
The president called the student, Sandra Fluke, on Friday afternoon to express his disappointment in the "personal attacks" against her, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.
Limbaugh, on his radio show earlier this week, had called Fluke a "slut" following her comments in favor of mandatory contraceptive coverage. 

"The fact that our political discourse has become debased in many ways is bad enough. It is worse when it's directed at a private citizen who was simply expressing her views on a matter of public policy," Carney said. 
He said Obama called Fluke to express disappointment about the attacks and "thank her" for exercising her right to speak out. 
The phone call came as lawmakers across Capitol Hill were weighing in, and as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee incorporated Limbaugh's comments into its fundraising campaign.

And the Republican politicians are finally following suit:

House Speaker John Boehner's office earlier in the day scolded Limbaugh. Though Boehner opposes the mandate, spokesman Michael Steel said in a statement that "the speaker obviously believes the use of those words was inappropriate" -- in reference to Limbaugh's remarks.

If you think "inappropriate" is a rather cowardly adjective to choose in this context, what do you think of Saint Ricky's comments?

Of Limbaugh, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum said: “He’s being absurd, but that’s you know, an entertainer can be absurd. He’s in a very different business than I am.”

So Santorum thinks that calling women sluts and demanding to see videotapes of them having sex is just absurd entertainment? This is the Saint Ricky of the late twelfth century who believes that women in the labor force was a serious mistake, who believes that artificial birth control is sinful?

He has sold out there as the moral conscience of us all, the throne he is demanding for himself.

We shall see what happens on this issue. It's pre-elections and women's votes matter. But that alone doesn't explain the sea change. I think that comes from some kind of partial awakening among the American women. I hope so, at least.
----
*Since 2003!

And Now For Something Completely Different: How Presidenting Is Done in Ireland.

Just because the rant of the Irish president is so much fun and because we never get to hear this type of a rant from the powers that be in this country. Via Daily Kos:

But Will The Republicans Do It? Condemn Limbaugh's Misogyny?

By publicly disassociating themselves from Rush Limbaugh's comments on women in general and Sandra Fluke in particular:

More than 75 Democratic lawmakers are calling on House Republican leaders to condemn radio host Rush Limbaugh’s controversial remarks on Sandra Fluke, the law student who was barred from testifying about contraception before a congressional committee.

On his radio show Wednesday, Limbaugh referred to Fluke as a “slut” and “prostitute” and accused her of demanding to be “paid to have sex” because Fluke advocated for easier access to birth control.

Sure, the Democrats are using this for political advantage at a time when some women, at least, seem to be waking up to the new Tealiban (Taliban+Tea Party) threat. Women are the crucial constituency for Obama's re-election, based on recent polls.

Despite this, the question of the Republican Party being in the pocket of Rush Limbaugh really needs airing. The man is a misogynist, racist bully.

And he's not only attacking Sandra Fluke. He's attacking much wider groups of women, as is his wont:

Limbaugh added, “So Ms. Fluke and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal: If you are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. And I’ll tell you want it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

Reverse that and apply it to the story about Limbaugh and his Viagra! On second thoughts, don't.

Today's Shallow Thought

I love new snow, especially when it falls at night and you can see the flakes drifting down against the darkness. It gives me joy.

Blunting the Blunt Amendment

This is good news:

The Senate voted 51-48 Thursday to set aside a measure letting employers omit insurance coverage for health services they find morally objectionable, part of a fiery debate that is reshaping the presidential race and congressional campaigning.
Democrats argued that the amendment, sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) would allow employers to refuse coverage for any service they dislike, including vaccinations, mammograms and drug treatment.

...

Republicans said the issue was religious freedom. The Blunt Amendment, they said, would have carved out a so-called conscience exemption to a new requirement under President Barack Obama's health law that all health plans cover an array of treatments, including contraception, at no additional cost to workers.

What's great about that amendment is that it would have given all employers the legal right to figure out how various treatments might offend them morally and then just not cover them. As I wrote earlier, a Christian Scientist employer could refuse all health insurance which covers conventional medical services! Imagine the savings! Worth becoming a Christian Scientist for that.

But the politicians who supported the Blunt amendment did not see it that way at all. For them it was all about the harlots:

The only Republican to oppose the Blunt Amendment was Olympia Snowe of Maine, who announced her retirement this week. Three socially conservative Democrats supported it: Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.

There's Dignity and Then There's Women's Dignity

The Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, defining the term "dignity" for us:

In November of 2010, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) joined the public outcry against the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) security precautions in airports by describing body scans and mandatory pat downs as crossing “the line” in regard “to people’s concerns about privacy” and “beneath the dignity” of air travelers.

And the Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, defining the term "dignity of women" for us:

Following a public outcry, McDonnell revised the measure to exempt women from the more invasive procedure, but not before encountering the wit of comedian Jon Stewart, who characterized the bill as “a TSA pat-down inside their vagina.” McDonnell addressed the contradiction between supporting mandatory ultrasounds for women and opposing “invasive” TSA pat downs during a radio interview this morning on WTOP and claimed that there is no comparison between the legislation and the enhanced security procedures:
MCDONNELL: There are things that are required in the interest of public safety, like TSA procedures. There are ways to accomplish the same result without an invasive patdown. [...]
I believe this is something that respects the dignity of women by making sure they have necessary information.

Bolds are mine.

The definition of "dignity" has that odd gendered aspect among social and religious conservatives. I first came across it in the writings of the current pope (when he was still the youthful Cardinal Ratzo). He offered us wimminfolk "dignity" as opposed to rights, fairness or equality.

Given the seriousness of such a trade-off it's crucial to know what conservatives mean by "women's dignity."

Hence my gratitude for McDonnell who tells us that the state of Virginia must subject women who seek abortions to a medically unnecessary ultrasound because those women might not know they are pregnant!

I believe this is something that respects the dignity of women by making sure they have necessary information.

I did suspect that the conservative idea of "women's dignity" had to do with someone having to protect the little ladies from themselves. I've seen glimpses of this in earlier writings but they are disguised as "the essential nature of women" or similar gobbledegook.

Birds Of A Feather Fly Together

This recent poll is representative of almost all political polls I've seen in the large differences that exist between Republicans and Democrats on most any topic:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that climate change is real — the highest level in two years — as the public trusted its own observations of rising temperatures, a poll said Tuesday.

...

The poll showed a sharp gap depending on ideology, with 78 percent of supporters of President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party saying there is solid evidence of climate change compared with 47 percent of supporters of the rival Republican Party saying so.

Duh, you might say. As the title of this post says, similar birds (or people) gather together and isolate themselves from other birds (or people). Hence the differences between Republican and Democratic views.

But that "flying together" now has an extra aspect:

If, for instance, Republicans mostly get their information from Fox News, then what Fox News tells or does not tell becomes crucially important. If Republicans and Democrats now get different reports about that thing called "reality", then any initial value disagreements could become stronger, right? The birds which fly together develop more identical feathers.

That's bad news for political debates. It's one thing to disagree on values. It's a totally different thing to disagree on both values and facts.

Knock, Knock.

"Who's there?"
"A woman guest on a major Sunday political show? Please, let me in!"
"Not unless you are an extreme wingnut lady. Or the Secretary of State."


From Media Matters:

During a month when the issues of birth control and women's access to health care flared up and became major topics of debate on the presidential campaign trail and in Washington, the Sunday morning talk shows once again loaded up their programs by hosting newsmaker interviews with men. Lots and lots of men.
...

And of the four women booked this month, just one, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was associated with the Democratic Party, despite the fact Democrats currently control the White House and the Senate. "We complain about this all the time," a Democratic aide told Media Matters.

But they did have Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann on as guests!

All this is weird considering that the Republicans keep arguing that the mainstream media is biased against them. But perhaps it's their continuous growling and barking that has created a playing field so sloped that only Hillary Clinton managed to get invited from the Democratic side of the aisle.

And yeah, the lack of women in the political media becomes shockingly obvious when the topic is about women but discussed mostly by men.

Meanwhile, in Alabama. The Transvaginal Ultrasound is Baaaack!

From Rheality Check:

The Alabama legislature is considering a mandated vaginal ultrasound bill in an attempt to restrict safe abortion care, or as State Senator Linda Coleman (D - Jefferson) says "a state-sanctioned rape bill."
The bill explicitly includes mandated trans-vaginal ultrasound.

The proposed bill is out of the committee.

I love this:

The chairman of the Alabama Senate Health Committee said he doesn’t see a conflict of interest between his support for a bill that would require physicians to perform ultrasounds on women seeking abortions and his company, which sells the type of equipment the bill would require.
Sen. Greg Reed, R-Jasper, voted to move Senate Bill 12 out of committee last week because he said it’s a good bill that would help “a mother to understand that a live baby is inside her body.”

Both parts are fun. The former is a weird shadow of other Republican values, having to do with money, and the latter tells us what certain conservatives think of women's cognitive abilities.

Senator Reed seems to think that women who seek abortion don't know that they are pregnant! Perhaps that aquarium inside the woman (which really belongs to Senator Reed) could contain something else which gives similar symptoms. A shrimp?

Sigh. I also love the emotional manipulation (the terms "mother" and "live baby").

So what does the proposed bill do? A few snippets:

b) Prior to a woman giving informed consent to having any part of an abortion performed or induced, and prior to the administration of any anesthesia or medication in preparation for the abortion on the woman, the physician who is to perform the abortion or a qualified technician shall:
(1) Perform an obstetric ultrasound on the pregnant woman, using either a vaginal transducer or an abdominal transducer, whichever would display the embryo or fetus more clearly.
(2) Provide a simultaneous verbal explanation of what the ultrasound is depicting, which shall include the presence and location of the unborn child within the uterus and the number of unborn children depicted. If the ultrasound image indicates that fetal demise has occurred, a woman shall be informed of that fact.
(3) Display the ultrasound images so that the pregnant woman may view them.
Page 41 (4) Provide a medical description of the ultrasound 2 images, which shall include the dimensions of the embryo or 3 fetus and the presence of external members and internal 4 organs, if present and viewable.
5 (c) Nothing in this section shall be construed to 6 prevent a pregnant woman from averting her eyes from the 7 ultrasound images required to be provided to and reviewed with 8 her. Neither the physician nor the pregnant woman shall be 9 subject to any penalty if she declines to look at the
10 presented ultrasound images. 11 Section 4. (a) The provisions of Section 3 shall not 12 apply to an abortion provider or facility in the case of a 13 medical emergency.

There's that transvaginal ultrasound again! But this proposed bill would also let all sorts of people sue a medical provider who didn't perform the mandatory ultrasound! For instance:

Section 6. (a) Any person upon whom an abortion has 18 been performed without compliance with this act, the father of 19 the unborn child who was the subject of the abortion, or the 20 grandparent of an unborn child may maintain an action against 21 the person who performed the abortion in knowing or reckless 22 violation of this act for actual and punitive damages.

That aquarium belongs to a whole lot of folks in Alabama! Not sure why siblings of the woman (or the man) can't sue. The more the merrier, right? Could a rapist sue over the lack of an ultrasound in the abortion performed on the woman he raped?

The whole thing sounds very poorly written. Unless all ectopic pregnancies are defined as medical emergencies, the proposed bill would require an ultrasound and a description of the embryo even in that case. And in the cases of partial miscarriages.

On Fashion and Feminism

This was an eagerly discussed topic about a month ago. As is my wont I got all tangled up in the definitions and never wrote about any of it. Once in a while I took the topic out, thought about it, got confused and put it back. Now it's shop-soiled, tattered, the way some clothes in final markdown sales are. And, as usual, I'm way off in my timing.

The gist of the conversation, as I understood it, was whether fashion could be feminist and whether it is OK for feminists to be fashion-conscious. That's where things got tricky for me, because the term "fashion" is one of those terms ("freedom", "dignity", "democracy", "religious freedom") which have many different meanings, some almost opposite to each other. And given the way I am, I had to go on this long thinking trip about what people might mean when they say "fashion."

Defining concepts is a delightful enterprise for me but I get that others find it as appetizing as horse food. Still, if in my mind the word "fashion" is about the annual forced changes to make women buy more and more badly-made but expensive clothes which hurt and if in your mind the word "fashion" is about the human desire to decorate their bodies for the pleasure of others, well, we are going to have a very odd conversation.

So definitions are necessary. As I followed some of the discussions, I noticed that many people focused on the clothing industry and its exploitative nature. The people making all those fashionable clothes are usually poorly paid women. Others focused on the modelling industry, its message of extreme skinniness and its focus on thin white upper-class women as the most likely market for the final products.

Yet others seemed to speak about independent craftspeople creating wearable art. And many spoke about the way fashions are anti-feminist in promoting clothes which bind, hamper and make walking about difficult. Several comments were about the poor quality of much of women's clothing, even the expensive labels and about the difficulty of finding anything fashionable in larger sizes in general.

The reason I give you that summary is that if the original idea is about making fashion into something feminists can embrace its practicality clearly depends on what we mean by the term "fashion."

From that angle certain things about fashion will have to be dropped into the dustbin before I can embrace the idea as feminist. Well, probably most things about the actual fashion industries and how they work. No more labor exploitation, no more focus on only one body type, ethnic group and income level. Women should demand better quality in the clothes that are available. The average quality of men's clothes is higher than that of women's clothes, while the prices men pay can, in fact, be lower.

So what does that leave me? The idea of clothes as fun, as part of the decoration of the body for both information purposes and so that others get some fun from seeing you slither into the room. That part I can embrace! Indeed, I'm going to embroider some snakes all over the back of my old jeans jacket. Their heads will peak over my shoulders when viewed from the front!

But fashion is not quite that innocent if we expand it to mean "costume", the way human beings have used dress as a way of showing social hierarchies, group membership and other information about a person.

Clothes and accessories are still used for that purpose. A Rolex watch and a well-cut fine wool suit on a man are not just about keeping him practically covered and aware of the time. They also send a message about his wealth. In a similar fashion (heh), a woman wearing Prada or Chanel is telling us about her social class and income.

That social role of clothing has in the past led to laws which dictated how fancy the clothes of the lower classes could be. Only the aristocracy could wear silk and velvet in many European countries.

This is the sinister role of "fashion" (as in "popular clothing"): To keep people in their "proper" places.

It is especially sinister for women. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran require that men veil themselves before going out, for example. But even more generally, the dress of women has traditionally been used to interpret their sexual morals. This has not been the case for men.

I have veered quite far from the initial question of this post, but doing so has clarified my thinking (and bored you). I think fashion could, indeed, be something feminist and exciting, a way of showing to the world what your basic values are. But only some of us have the freedom to do so.

What are your thoughts?

Embroidery by me.

How The Ringwraiths Do Politics. Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

This Nazgûl governor of Wisconsin (Lord of the Rings reference) is facing a recall election. He thinks this is the pits because:

“Well, we’re focused,” Walker responded, “but it’s a huge distraction, not just for me, for the legislature. I mean, it’s $9 million of taxpayers’ money just to run this. Think about the number of kids we could help, think of the number of seniors we could help in our state with $9 million that we didn’t have to waste on this — this frivolous recall election.

Delicious! So very delicious if you have been following what governor Walker has actually done with taxpayers' money during his sinister reign.

Helping the children and the elderly? He probably would sell them if that helped the job-creating corporations.

Well, I may be going too far there. But knowing who funds these Ringwraiths (coughKochbrotherscough) it's pretty obvious that Walker has different priorities for the use of tax receipts than the care of the elderly, say.

He may not lose that recall election. Too many Wisconsinites (Wisconsinians?) have been mesmerized by those burning red eye holes. But he deserves to be recalled.

Women & the Academy Awards (by Suzie)

While many media outlets cover women's fashion at the Oscars, few will note that men dominate, especially in the more prestigious categories, and this reflects the filmmaking industry in general. Read Martha Lauzen at the Women's Media Center:

According to the annual Celluloid Ceiling study released by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, women comprised only 18 percent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films in 2011. This represents an increase of 2 percentage points from 2010 but a decrease of one percentage point from 2001.

By role, women accounted for 5 percent of directors, 14 percent of writers, 18 percent of executive producers, 25 percent of producers, 20 percent of editors, and 4 percent of cinematographers last year. The abysmally low number of women working as directors is especially troubling, as women comprised 9 percent of directors in 1998—so much for creeping incrementalism.

Also, you should read Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood, who put together the video above. Feminists who don't care about Hollywood may still recognize that media from a male perspective shapes our culture.

-----------

ETA: I've been checking on the Oscars at the NYT, and I was shocked by the large ad for Giorgio Armani. The models are frighteningly thin.

Saturday Art Post

Surrealistic Women, via Avedon.

Use the comments to add more links to art and such.

Weird Enough For You Yet? That Would Be Santorum.

Rick Santorum doesn't like higher education. That's not at all surprising if you place him in the twelfth century where he belongs. But it's still fascinating that he is quite open about the reasons for it. Those reasons are very much the same as the reasons the Taliban has for opposing education for girls (to force people live the way a particular group wants them to), but Santorum hides them better:

Texas - Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Thursday that President Obama wants more young adults to go to college so they can undergo "indoctrination" to a secular world view.

In an hour-long interview with conservative television host Glenn Beck, Santorum also defended his record on abortion and his vote in favor of President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind education law.

On the president's efforts to boost college attendance, Santorum said, "I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely ... The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country."

He claimed that "62 percent of kids who go into college with a faith commitment leave without it," but declined to cite a source for the figure. And he floated the idea of requiring universities that receive public funds have "intellectual diversity" on campus.

Hmm. What does he mean by "intellectual diversity?" Affirmative action for conservative thinkers or religious fundamentalist thinkers? Affirmative action for Marxists?

Little Rick is afraid of criticism and analysis, methinks. Because that's what colleges ideally teach to their students.

I can't see how they could be seen as indoctrination mills. Some kind of brainwashing? Caused by the droning on and on by a professor and the very long reading lists? And the need to write term papers?

That's all fun and games. But Santorum's anti-education arguments are pretty bad news in this "new globalized economy" (as the conservative economists celebrate it) where the US has no special edge in low worker costs or large labor forces. Education matters more than it did in the past.

Unless our Ricky wants to make the US competitive as a low-wage country, his approach is extremely odd. Theocratic, I'd say.

Danica Patrick. Racing as Female.

In this video ‪Fox5 San Diego sports anchor ‪Ross Shimabuku‬ seems to be calling the racer Danica Patrick a bitch:






Or some other b-word. Bastard? Probably a bitch, yeah. Shimabuku later sorta apologized.

But he didn't apologize for the gist of his evaluation of Patrick which boils down to "she is sexy and knows it." What he might really means is that Patrick's sexiness is used commercially to her advantage and that this is unfair to male racing drivers. Though of course nothing would stop any racing driver from using his sexiness or good looks in promotions.

Shimabuku is probably a sexist. I'm leaving in that "probably" because I don't know his utterances well enough. It may be that he always calls racing drivers bastards or idiots or bitches and complains about how they use their looks or their personal lives or whatever to get publicity.

Still, it's pretty hilarious for him to make those statements while working for Fox News. Fox is famous for demanding Barbie-doll standards from the women on screen while the guys can look like anything from your worst nightmares and still be acceptable.

This double-standard exists to draw the maximum number of viewers, with the understanding that Republican men want to see tit-and-leg if they have to endure wimmin in their television news.

But that double-standard is pretty bad from a feminist point of view, not only because it means that women will have short careers in television. As the Barbie looks fade so does the career. And not only because requiring exquisite looks (on top of all the other qualifications) from only women is clearly discrimination, but largely because demanding that women are eye-candy so very easily turns into assuming that this is all the women on television are.

I don't know enough about Danica Patrick's publicity campaigns in general but I suspect that her looks are used in those campaigns, for the same reasons Fox News does that sort of thing. It would be better if this was not the case, especially in a field where women are still rare.

Because generalizations to the whole gender are most likely to happen in such circumstances. But then, of course, getting any kind of attention in traditionally male sports (or perhaps traditionally male music) may appear to require that selling-of-the-looks approach for women. That's a real Catch-22.

Something Funny Happened in Kansas

Where the Republican governor Sam Brownback and the Republicans in the Kansas House are competing with each other on the honor to tax poor people more while giving everyone else tax breaks:

House GOP leaders' original plan would have given all taxpayers a break, and was an alternative to Republican Gov. Sam Brownback's income tax proposal. But now, under both the amended House GOP plan and the governor's proposal, the only group of taxpayers that would see a collective increase in their income taxes would be those with adjusted gross incomes of $25,000 or less.
The House GOP plan is less aggressive in cutting tax rates and helping businesses than Brownback's plan, and it scales back a tax credit for poor workers, rather than eliminate it, as the governor proposed. Also, the plan keeps other income tax credits and deductions that Brownback said he would eliminate.
House Minority Leader Paul Davis said he hopes O'Neal and GOP leaders will rethink the bill's impact.

It's not a funny-ha-ha story, naturally. But it's funny given the increasing income inequality in this country and the drive towards the United Banana States of America. The rich are doing quite well already, the poor not so much. But the Republicans want to help the rich more!

Good News From Virginia. Or Fighting Back Matters.

First good news:

A bill that would define life as starting at conception is dead for this year in Virginia.
The Senate voted 24-14 Thursday to send the so-called "personhood" bill back to committee and carry it over to 2013.
Senate Republican Leader Tommy Norment of James City County made the motion to shelve the bill, saying more study is needed.

It will be back, of course. But it was not passed this year because of the resistance.

Second good news, from a few days ago about that resistance:

The Virginia House of Delegates again today decided to put off voting on the Senate's version of a bill to require women seeking an abortion to first undergo medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds. They also let the vote "pass by" yesterday, with a more than a thousand demonstrators lined up in a silent protest outside.

And the outcome:

The committee earlier approved a bill requiring pre-abortion external ultrasound exams. It was amended to eliminate ultrasounds requiring an invasive ultrasound probe.

The external ultrasounds are medically unnecessary, too. But this is still a victory and a direct consequence of people fighting back.

Chickens, Chicks. Who Cares? It's All About Who Owns Those Eggs.

Today's hilarious story, via Digby:

Agriculture Committee passes anti-abortion measures

Illinois women who want to get abortions might be required to either view an ultrasound before the procedure or decline to do so in writing, under proposals that passed an Illinois House committee Tuesday.

...

Rep. Deborah Mell, a Chicago Democrat, was one of the two members voting against the bills and criticized the assignment to a committee that generally handles farming issues.
"We're not talking about abortions for cows and pigs, right? We're talking about women?" she said.
The Agriculture Committee is dominated by downstate conservatives, and by assigning the bills there Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan assured the measures would be heard by sympathetic legislators.

And it's in the Agricultural Committee that the sympathetic (hairy?) ears are when it comes to eggs and milk in general, including those some of us believe belong to women.

I think this is bitterly funny. It reveals such a humongous disrespect of women and nobody even bothers to try to disguise it as something else than pure contempt.

Apropos on that cows=women business, Pierce wrote an interesting post about the history of the Catholic policies towards contraception. It's well worth reading but the bit I saved (serendipity!) was this:

That's what produced Rick Santorum — a 20-year effort to develop Roman Catholics who could talk like Southern Baptists, bonded as both groups were now by their twisted views of human sexuality, and by their desire to re-establish control over what American women can do with their bodies. It is an alliance of powerful convenience. It has as much to do with religion as it has to do with agriculture. It has as much to do with the Gospels as it has to do with the Collected Works of Ludwig von Mises. Jesus wept.

Bolds are mine.

Good News From Virginia. And Not So Good News From Georgia.

The transvaginal probe appears to have trouble getting approved in abortion counseling in the state of Virginia. The governor seems to be backing off from signing the bill:

Gov. Bob McDonnell this afternoon said he opposes requiring Virginia women to undergo a mandatory transvaginal ultrasound before having an abortion.
Having reviewed the current proposal: "I believe there is no need to direct by statute that further invasive ultrasound procedures be done," the governor said in a statement.
"Mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state. No person should be directed to undergo an invasive procedure by the state, without their consent, as a precondition to another medical procedure."
McDonnell said he has recommended to the General Assembly a series of amendments to the bill "to explicitly state that no woman in Virginia will have to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound involuntarily."
"I am asking the General Assembly to state in this legislation that only a transabdominal, or external, ultrasound will be required to satisfy the requirements to determine gestational age," McDonnell says in the statement. "Should a doctor determine that another form of ultrasound may be necessary to provide the necessary images and information that will be an issue for the doctor and the patient. The government will have no role in that medical decision," it reads. 
McDonnell has tempered his earlier support for the ultrasound measure.
In late January, he said on a radio show that "to be able to have that information before making what most people would say is a very important, serious, life-changing decision I think is appropriate."

Right opinions now though for the wrong reason. The lesson to be taken home from all this is that speaking out and being active can work when fighting against those who would socialize all wombs in this country.

So take a moment or two to feel pleased before reading the rest of this post.

In Georgia, the moles working on the foundations of women's independence have been busy:

This afternoon, the House Judiciary (Non-Civil) Committee will take up HB 954, a measure that would prohibit abortions on women who are more than 20 weeks pregnant. Current law prohibits abortions after the second trimester, or about 24 weeks.
The bill sponsored by Doug McKillip, R-Athens, asserts that 20 weeks is the point at which a fetus can begin to feel pain. The measure also attempts to tighten “life of the mother” exceptions to abortion:
No such condition shall be deemed to exist if it is based on a diagnosis or claim of a mental or emotional condition of the pregnant woman or that the pregnant woman will purposefully engage in conduct which she intends to result in her death or in substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.

No medical abortion for the mentally ill or the severely depressed! And certainly no medical abortion for any slut who would consider killing herself just to murder the unborn real person inside her!

I get the reason for such amendments by this person called Doug who will never have to face the scenarios he likes to determine, I do. It's to remove any and all "lifestyle convenience" excuses from abortion. But consider the cruelty of this person called Doug. Consider the way he places himself in the role of a god. Consider how he is willing to allow a suicide rather than an abortion, even though the former kills two, in his view. It's about punishing the sluts.

Now for the lovely part:

In response, House Democrats have scheduled a 3 p.m. Wednesday hearing at the state Capitol, to propose a bill that would ban Georgia males from seeking vasectomies. From the press release:
“Thousands of children are deprived of birth in this state every year because of the lack of state regulation over vasectomies,” said Rep. Yasmin Neal, author of the bill. “It is patently unfair that men can avoid unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly, while women’s ability to decide is constantly up for debate throughout the United States.”

Honorary Sons. It Pays.

I was sent a link to this UK rant about women. It's by one of the women whom I call honorary sons in this post.

They annoy me, for obvious reasons. Well, if they are not obvious ones, the major reason is that a woman cannot condemn the whole of her own sex without condemning herself but somehow that doesn't seem to occur to the honorary sons.

The second one is that these women are doing what they do as substitute misogynists, for men who would get told off for hating on women. Women, however, can hate on women in public. This is because the common error in thinking that women can't be misogynists even if the society tells us that misogyny is quite all right, just a way to blow off steam and to crack jokes.

The third one has to do with the fact that the misogyny of women appears more fact-based than the misogyny of men. After all, they are women so they should know!

But by far the strongest reason why the honorary sons annoy me is that they have chosen the low-cost well-paying option in the war against women! They have almost nothing to lose and much to gain!

They get paid well for their nasty opinions on women, whereas feminists mostly do not. Women, on the whole (despite that audience reaction in the video) don't bombard the honorary sons with death threats for their perfidy, whereas feminists do get death threats and Internet harassment from misogynists of all stripes. It's safe to attack women!

And as I mentioned, the money looks good from this side of the aisle. Each and every topic about women gives one honorary son (at least) a job spouting out there. For some odd reason the almost-invisible feminists must be balanced by a large number of honorary sons in public debates. The debate on women's perfidy is of a completely different type from the debates we have on ethnicity or race, by the way.

Then there's the whole logical inconsistency in the sermons of the honorary sons: If women shouldn't be in the public sector at all, what are they doing there? Who gave them that special dispensation from their flawed genitals? Who raised them up there with the Real Sons? Why should we listen to them when women are not worth listening to?

Finally, they will get to share every benefit feminists have fought to get them, including the right to be on television foaming about the horrible ickiness of their own gender, while never ceasing to fight against those advances.

This is why their occupational choice is such a low-cost high-yield alternative. And so unethical, especially if the honorary son is not a real misogynist but just plays one on television. If she is a real misogynist then I pity her for what must be going on inside her brain.

But in either case, all the honorary sons should voluntarily relinquish everything that feminism has won for them. They should not vote, they should not have well-paid jobs and they should not speak in public. Then they would annoy me less.

Defiant Hair! On Michelle Duggar's Tips For All Subjugated Wives.

Did you know that women can have defiant hair* or obedient hair? Some types of hair just scream feminism and uprisings and rebellions against the godly husband's rule and must be avoided at all cost in Christian fundamentalist patriarchal marriages, such as the one the television stars Duggars have. They also have nineteen children and counting, as the program tells us.

Michelle Duggar has come out with a set of wifely tips for a happy marriage. They are wonderful and equally applicable to living (for a short time) with a hungry tiger or as an indentured servant to a real narcissistic knuckle-head. You can find the original handout at the bottom of this post.

The tips are what one might expect. A wife will destroy her husband's manliness by breathing too loudly because Christian fundamentalist manliness is more fragile than an eggshell.

Maintaining that egg requires that the wife not work outside the home, that she accepts his leadership in all things, that she never argues back, that she never refuses his physical advances and that she doesn't have defiant hair.

I can't get over that defiant hair. I bet I have terrorist hair.
-----
*Braids decorated with the husband's knuckle bones? Medea-like tentacles reaching out to his throat?

The Two Faces of Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum has the most open mind of the late twelfth century. He disapproves of education outside the home because wives are to do that. He disapproves of women working outside the home and he disapproves of contraception because it allows wives to work outside the home. He believes that global climate change is a hoax.

You have all learned that. But what you may not be equally aware of are Rick's Attila-the-Hun values when it comes to Real Politics, not just stomping on women. In that arena anything goes according to our Ricky! Want to exploit the poor? Go ahead! Want to hand over all power to multinational corporations? Great idea!

But want to regulate markets? NEVAH! Rich people should pay more taxes? OVAH Rick's dead corpse! And so on and so on.

Isn't that astonishing? The Bible is pretty explicit on the perfidy of those who would oppress others in the marketplace. But Rick reads his Bible most selectively. It's almost as if it was a book about the taming of the shrew.

Marriage in Trouble. Pay Attention To The Framing.

A few days ago the New York Times published an article on the demise of marriage. It was to be expected, given Charles Murray's recent book, never mind that Murray is the go-to-guy on the inherent stupidity of the minorities, women and now all poor people.

The NYT article uses Murray's framing albeit in a nicer dress and with a better makeup. This is how it begins:

It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.
Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.
Among mothers of all ages, a majority — 59 percent in 2009 — are married when they have children. But the surge of births outside marriage among younger women — nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30 — is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change.
One group still largely resists the trend: college graduates, who overwhelmingly marry before having children. That is turning family structure into a new class divide, with the economic and social rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education.

Careful reading pays here. The title of the piece is "For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage." What have we altogether eradicated?

Men and fatherhood. Poof! It's gone! And every person interviewed in the piece is a woman. To write about heterosexual marriage without interviewing one single man should come across as weird. That's leaving out half the people all this should concern.

Once men are left out this way we cannot ask what they think of the issue. They have been erased. They have no say in the question of marriage and their behavior has nothing to do with the rate at which people get married, stay married or have children outside marriage.

I understand that the piece is explicitly written about women. But one should not leap from women to marriage and that is what the piece does. It also implies that the reasons for the increase in births outside marriage are only women's reasons and that ultimately the "blame" for the apparent demise of marriage also belongs to women.

Writing about "marriage in trouble" is not something I can do in a short blog post. What do we mean by "marriage?" What are the expected roles of the partners? When someone writes about "marriage" does that person really mean a traditional patriarchal hierarchical marriage with a male breadwinner-boss and a female helpmeet at home? If "marriage" is the best environment for children to grow up in, what kind of "marriage?" An unhappy one? The traditional arrangement? An egalitarian marriage?

If the partners live together for decades and have children together without getting formally married, is this not marriage in the relevant sense? After all, the article states:

Almost all of the rise in nonmarital births has occurred among couples living together. While in some countries such relationships endure at rates that resemble marriages, in the United States they are more than twice as likely to dissolve than marriages. In a summary of research, Pamela Smock and Fiona Rose Greenland, both of the University of Michigan, reported that two-thirds of couples living together split up by the time their child turned 10.

Would formal marriage stop those couples from separating? In other words, in what direction does the causality run in the United States?

Such difficulties crop up when we try to analyze the reasons why the contractual arrangement "marriage" might be in trouble. What is it that makes it less common than in the past? The article hints at the idea that women in the past "had to" get married because of few alternatives to surviving without it. Is this what we should bring back? What is the role of men in "marriage?" Just a source of income? The manager of the whole enterprise? An active participant in child-rearing?

As I said, all this requires many more pages than a blog allows. But certain hints can be dug out from that NYT piece:

Among mothers of all ages, a majority — 59 percent in 2009 — are married when they have children. But the surge of births outside marriage among younger women — nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30 — is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change.
One group still largely resists the trend: college graduates, who overwhelmingly marry before having children. That is turning family structure into a new class divide, with the economic and social rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education.
“Marriage has become a luxury good,” said Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

...

Money helps explain why well-educated Americans still marry at high rates: they can offer each other more financial support, and hire others to do chores that prompt conflict. But some researchers argue that educated men have also been quicker than their blue-collar peers to give women equal authority. “They are more willing to play the partner role,” said Sara McLanahan, a Princeton sociologist.

Yes, money does help. It protects people against external shocks and greases the wheels of life. I once read that the top two reasons given for divorce are arguments about money and arguments about the division of household chores, both of which make me think about the patriarchal marriage arrangement and so on.

But if money was the only difference between marriage rates and the prevalence of unhappy marriages across social classes, then wouldn't we expect to see single parenthood higher among the more educated people? This is the group which can more easily afford to have a child without a partner, the group which can afford to hire help if needed, the group which can afford high child maintenance payments.

Something else must be going on.

McLanahan's theory might be worth pursuing. My own guess is that it is the traditional patriarchal marriage which is in particular trouble when combined with reduced real incomes for men, after years of outsourcing of jobs and the increased income inequality in this country.

In my more optimistic moments I regard this era as the transition to a new more egalitarian marriage/cohabitation and the troubles we see as the pains of that transition, the myths of patriarchal marriage hanging on even after they have become obsolete.

But people like Charles Murray of course wish to revive the patriarchal marriage by telling us about the horrors which will occur without it. Hence the need to pay attention to those who use his framing.

Virginia Is For Leavers. Or On Political Activity.

That "Virginia Is For Leavers" is a quip on the old tourist slogan about "Virginia Is For Lovers" and also because I'm too much of a coward to write "Virginia Is For Rapists." So.

But the whole "forced vaginal ultrasound probe for all sluts who seek abortion" debacle has not only turned over that rock under which these kinds of creepy-crawlies wriggle:

The clumsy way in which conservatives have attempted to defend the legislation hasn’t helped. Economics professor Tyler Cowen’s tweet (“All of a sudden requiring consumers to be informed is extremely unpopular on ‘the pro-regulation side.’”) generated richly deserved outrage. And tea party favorite Dana Loesch took the position that once a women loses her virginity, she gives up the right to determine what should penetrate her vagina for the rest of her life.

It has also increased the awareness of the fact that We Are At War and that war is against women. My unscientific forays into the real world suggest that even apolitical people are getting angry at the Talibanish basic drives of the Republican Party. The linked article notes that 55% of Virginians are opposed to the vaginal penetration probe thingy.

Elizabeth Cotten

From Wikipedia:

A self-taught left-handed guitarist, Cotten developed her own original style. Her approach involved using a right-handed guitar (usually in standard tuning), not re-strung for left-handed playing, essentially, holding a right-handed guitar upside down. This position required her to play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as "Cotten picking".

Chicks Can't Play. On the Stereotype Threat in Popular Music.

The background to this post: I have read evo-psychos telling us that the reason most rock, blues and pop musicians are men is because evolution made men compete with each other for female attention, whereas women needed never to compete at all! Never, in all evolution!

This is supposed to be the reason why women don't have much interest in becoming musicians. The world, naturally, doesn't set any extra obstacles in the way of women who want to play the guitar professionally! Of course not. It's the inherited stone-age memes in our brains which make female guitarists, say, rarer than hen's teeth.

Well, not quite. But pretty rare. To highlight those societal differences, let me take you on a tour of YouTube videos of women playing contemporary music. Here's Orianthi:





The second comment when I accessed the song:

she is not that good, she plays equal to an average male guitarist. she is famous because she has boobs. jennifer batten rocks that bitch.

Though most recent comments on that piece are positive, it's hard for me to think of a situation where we would say something similar about a man by comparing his skills to the skills of an average woman.

To continue, here's a video of Ana Popovic playing the guitar. Her outfit is not what a male guitarist would wear and it might matter, given the comments she receives:





Some comments from the first few pages, picked to demonstrate my point:

very bad and boring , no groove, no dynamik but good legs, she should play in bikini, lol
----
So boring...Women and blues guitar...
----
this chick is just for looks no real show no real talent and CHICKS CANT PLAY!
----
playing guitar its not a job for the girls specially with big boobs and busty ass...fucking shit....this lady is destroying the flavor of playing guitar.

what n accident...(:
but shes not bad.... for a womn"
----

I grant you that YouTube comments are the proverbial slime pond. Whatever crawls there is not sightly. Still, the frequency of these kinds of comments attached to videos of women in music or in sports tells me that their sentiments are not completely unshared in the wider world.

Those evo-psycho theories pretend that none of this ever happens, that women aren't perhaps told to show some leg or some tit to be acceptable to those parts of the audience who would otherwise refuse to pay attention to a female musician.

Likewise, if a young musician gets torpedoed with these kinds of assessments of her talents, it will require greater determination to continue than if the assessments acknowledge the fact that she is still young and developing.

For note that the criticisms are really saying that nobody born female can ever learn to play really well. No amount of practice helps! So pack it in already. Note also that a young girl watching those videos would get a very negative message about her own talents.

What I'm talking here is naturally the stereotype threat. If women get told, often enough, that "women" just can't do some particular thing then after a while that little whine has been installed inside your head and gets turned on whenever you do attempt a particular task. The evo-psycho argument ignores this altogether, just as it ignores the much more concrete barriers women in the past had to contend with.

But I think all this is slowly changing. I hope so, at least. This video of Tal Wilkenfeld playing Table for One didn't net me any nasty comments for the first few pages:

Back to the 1950s? But the Republican Party Never Left It.

You must have heard about Foster Freiss now. He's one of the Rich Boyz bankrolling Santorum in the presidential race. He's also firmly stuck in the 1950s locker-room mentality, making this statement concerning the recent contraceptive battle in the war against us wimminfolk:

“This contraception thing, my gosh, it's so inexpensive,” Freiss told host Andrea Mitchell. “You know, back in my days, they'd use Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly.”

My translation:
Don't spread your legs if you don't want to get pregnant, gals, and stop whining. Who cares about these trivial issues anyway.

This man lives in a bubble stinking of expensive after-shave.

Add the above to the now-famous Issa contraception hearings where 80% of those allowed to participate were men and 100% were opposed to insurance coverage for contraceptives, and then these musings on how even the conservative women fail to satisfy the stuffy gender expectations of the conservatives (choose between "frumpy" and "a two-bit whore"), and in a sane universe the Republican Party might get worried about its appeal among women.

But we don't live in a sane universe.

What does and does not heal (by Suzie)

I still remember the cold tile against my face, as I lay crying on the restroom floor. I had gone there to cry hard, force all the tears out, so that I could return to my desk and write about the killing of Todd Smith.

In November 1989, Todd and I sat next to each other at the Tampa Tribune. I had gone to Europe with my boyfriend, while Todd took a different vacation. Because he wanted to be a foreign correspondent, he went at his own expense to Peru to report on drug trafficking and terrorists.

I returned to work to find Todd missing. We learned that he had been tortured and garroted, his body left in the sun with a sign to warn U.S. agents. He wasn’t one. He just looked the part, and he asked questions. He was a tall, athletic 28-year-old blond, an Aryan poster child, as I used to joke, who must have stood out in Uchiza in the Upper Huallaga Valley.

The new boss didn’t seem to think much of me, and I got a lesser assignment, on the Shining Path, as I recall. I went to cry in the restroom by the back shop, where his story would glide out in long strips of paper to be hot-waxed onto 1A. Few women worked in the back shop, making the nearby women’s restroom a good place for privacy.

I had to cover cops that Thanksgiving week, and I was sent to the public hospital to find a family whose child was injured or dying. They angrily told me to get out of the waiting room. I wanted to fall into their arms, tell them that I was grieving, too.

I’ve come to despise the myth of objectivity in journalism – the idea that reporters and editors can lay aside feelings, beliefs and experiences. We can return to our desks, we can do our job, but we can’t stop being who we are.

This all came back to me at a concert Tuesday night, when Sam Baker performed “Broken Fingers.” He explained to the man who requested the song that it was his job to play it. His job to perform, perhaps. His job to remember, definitely.

He almost died in 1986, when the Shining Path blew up a tourist train in Cuzco. Among others, the explosion killed the German couple across from him, and their son at his side. Shrapnel severed Baker's left femoral artery. He had cranial bleeding, gangrene and renal failure. He lost his hearing in one ear, and most in the other. His left hand was mangled. He got brain damage and tinnitus, and he's undergone many surgeries.

Forget his eyes, his silhouette?
Of course I don't, of course I don't forget
There are blue eyes, a silhouette
There is a debt, it's a debt I don't forget

These broken fingers, some things don't heal
I can't wake up from a dream, when the dream is real

In the video, watch how he talks while preparing to play in a workmanlike way, as if people were killed every day, as if they were killed every day.

Smart and ambitious, Todd was a Southern gentleman, but not a good ol' boy. He had a dry wit, and his desire to do good had not been dulled by covering county government. He had begun a secret romance with a county commissioner's daughter, and we mused on the nature of love. We had favorite poems by W.H. Auden; mine was “Musee des Beaux Arts.”

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

That was before my own suffering from sarcoma and my messed-up body. Baker's experience is worse than mine, so far. Still, I know what it's like to survive while others die.

I went to the concert to hear the wonderful Audrey Auld. I knew nothing about Baker, but I got to the place early, while people were still milling about. He's friendly and cheerful, with intense eyes. When my eyes met his, I couldn't turn away. It was as if we shared some secret, some secret I didn't yet know.

I know what he means when he calls this a pretty world. In exhaustion, I have lain on park benches, on the sidewalk, in the hospital, watching the world. Blue skies and storms have filled me with joy. And I understand the work of it all, how you have to make your way to your only window, dragging a web of IV tubing, to pull up the blinds.

Those Who Oppose Insurance Coverage For Contraception

Look like the people in the front rows of this picture:

The picture is from the Issa hearings:

This morning, the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is holding a hearing on President Obama's policy ensuring that all women can get contraceptive coverage without a copay.
The hearing will feature 10 witnesses--eight of whom are men; none of them is testifying in support of contraceptive coverage.

Ah! But the hearings are not about women's reproductive rights. They are about the curmudgeony religious guys' (and gals') determination to refuse to cover contraceptives. This is what we are told in a letter Rep. Elijah C. Cummings sent to Issa:

Rather than inviting witnesses on both sides of this issue to engage in a reasoned and balanced discussion, you have constructed one of the most one-sided hearings I have ever seen, stacking it only with witnesses who agree with your position.  Earlier this week, you informed Committee Members that you had invited nine witnesses, including officials from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other religious entities that oppose the accommodation announced last week by the Administration to allow women employees of religiously-affiliated organizations such as hospitals and universities to obtain coverage for contraceptive services directly through their insurance companies.
    You did not invite officials from the Catholic Health Association, Catholic Charities USA, Catholics United, or a host of other Catholic groups that praised the White House for making this accommodation last week.  You also failed to invite any women to testify about the negative impact that restrictive insurance coverage has on them.
    When my staff inquired about requesting minority witnesses for this hearing, we were informed that you would allow only one.  Based on your decision, we requested as our minority witness a third-year Georgetown University Law Center student named Sandra Fluke.  I believed it was critical to have at least one woman at the witness table who could discuss the repercussions that denying coverage for contraceptives has on women across this country.
    In response, your staff relayed that you had decided as follows:
“As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness.”

Bolds are mine. It's not about religion and conscience because only those religious groups which oppose the Obama compromise are invited to come and speak.
-----
Added: And the Democratic women walk out of the hearing. It does look like the Catholic boys' no-girls-allowed tree-house. Except that the topic has to do with those lady parts.




 

Meanwhile, in Virginia, Egg-Americans Are Baaack! And Worse.

But that's not the worst of the wonderful Valentine's Day presents the Commonwealth of Virginia gave to its female citizens. This is worse (because the egg-Americans won't be tax deductible quite yet):

The House of Delegates has passed bills that define life as beginning at conception and that require a pregnant woman to submit to an ultrasound before an abortion, punctuating the first half of a legislative session that has been marked by heated debates over divisive social issues.
The crossfire escalated today as the House debated legislation that would require an ultrasound procedure prior to an abortion. The bill’s Democratic opponents have repeatedly argued that the bill amounts to a government mandate on physicians and patients and will require women to submit to an invasive procedure that may be medically unnecessary.
“This is the first time, if we pass this bill, that we will be dictating a medical procedure to a physician,” said Del. Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria. “You’re saying that it’s OK for the government to force its way into the relationship between doctor and patient.”
Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, fired back at the criticism, asserting that most women who seek abortions are doing so for “lifestyle convenience.”

Gilbert later apologized for getting caught making an insensitive comment.

Nevertheless, this proposal attempts to make those lifestyle choices for slutty women more cumbersome (and more painful, as I have heard) by requiring that ultrasound. In the early stages of pregnancy the only way it can be performed is as transvaginal ultrasound. It looks like this:

So. We have a possibly painful and certainly invasive procedure which is not medically required. Can the women refuse to undergo it and still get an abortion in Virginia?

The answer is not only no, but hell no:

Another bill was advanced requiring a woman undergoing an abortion to have a “transvaginal ultrasound” — i.e., to require a doctor to insert a speculum and then an ultrasound probe into a her vagina against her will and reflect that image onscreen. Not only is a bill like this rather rape-y in its forcefulness — and yes, I realize that is a strong statement, and I mean it strongly — but there is no medically necessary reason to do so. And there are no exceptions. Gov. McDonnell has stated his intention to sign the “transvaginal ultrasound” bill if it lands on his desk.

Does the "no exceptions" rule apply to women who got pregnant from rape?

Today's Echidne Thought

Weirdness. Why is a certain type of weirdness highly remunerated (Rush Limbaugh) while other types of weirdness are all but ignored? Is it just a right-left thing where all things utterly bonkers are regarded as mainstream if they come from the rightmost precipice?

Or is there something more to all this?

I'd love to know because I'm quite weird, in a very satisfying way.

Masturbation Is A Gateway Drug

Vanessa at Feministing has a very funny post on this video:





It truly doesn't seem to be a parody. I'd be willing to bet you anything that the "research" for the video carefully omitted lots of stuff on the Planned Parenthood site. I'd also be willing to bet you anything that avoiding masturbation does not stop people from getting "addicted" to sex.

Any day now I'll figure how to get rid of my food addiction and learn to live on pure air.

Today's Teh Hilarious

Do watch the video where John Stewart and Samantha Bee discuss the right-wing take on women in the military.

But can't the anti-feminists finally make up their minds what feminists really want about women in the military?

On the one hand are the Ladies Against Feminism (as portrayed in the video) who argue that it's the horrible feminazis who are ruining men's war games by insisting that women be included.

On the other hand are the weirder types of Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) who argue that feminists don't want equality because they don't push for women to be given combat roles and such.

So what is it that we do? Destroy the military by insisting on women's participation or destroy the lives of certain types of MRAs by keeping women out of wars?

Probably both. Multi-tasking, you know.

I'm So Pretty, I'm So Witty...

*Dances around the Snakepit Inc., then settles down, in a girly and innocent way, while slowly lowering and raising those eyelashes and making pretty moues with the fanged mouf.*

You know, a real problem with blogging on all this stuff is that one survives only by creating a thick carapace of sarcastic humor. After a while every new insult just becomes yet another joke in the repertoire. So.

Atrios linked to a wonderful such present, an article about The Death Of Pretty. An excerpt:

Pretty, pretty is dying.

People will define pretty differently. For the purposes of this piece, I define pretty as a mutually enriching balanced combination of beauty and projected innocence.

Once upon a time, women wanted to project an innocence. I am not idealizing another age and I have no illusions about the virtues of our grandparents, concupiscence being what it is. But some things were different in the back then. First and foremost, many beautiful women, whatever the state of their souls, still wished to project a public innocence and virtue. And that combination of beauty and innocence is what I define as pretty.

By nature, generally when men see this combination in women it brings out their better qualities, their best in fact. That special combination of beauty and innocence, the pretty inspires men to protect and defend it.

...

As I said, pretty inspires men’s nobler instincts to protect and defend. Pretty is cherished. Hotness, on the other hand, is a commodity. Its value is temporary and must be used. It is a consumable.

Women are all sluts now. Men really want sluts but prefer them unopened. Only then will men protect and defend women. Opened sluts they will use up and won't defend.

What caused this horrendous change?

Most girls don’t want to be pretty anymore even if they understand what it is. It is ironic that 40 years of women’s liberation has succeeded only in turning women into a commodity. Something to be used up and thrown out.

Of course men play a role in this as well, but women should know better and they once did. Once upon a time you would hear girls talk about kind of women men date and the kind they marry. You don’t hear things like that anymore.

I love that quote. It's so innocent and pretty!

Women's open sluttiness is the fault of feminism. Feminists demanded that women be allowed to be treated as sluts! So what do you expect from men? Men, after all, cannot affect their own drives at all. Hence women are responsible for controlling those urges, and the way to do it is modesty in dress and in behavior. Burqas might help, too.

The comments to that post have more on the presumed innate differences of men and women. Somehow only the supposed innate characteristics of men cannot be changed. But the supposed innate characteristics of women MUST be brought back. That all this has a logical flaw (if those characteristics in women are so innate, how come are they not operating?) is a bit worrisome to me.

I'm going to interpret this article generously and assume that the author doesn't mean all that matters in women is beauty and innocence. Both of those are evanescent characteristics and neither will do you much good when you are sixty or seventy. Or in the labor force.

So let's pretend that this is only about women's role in the context of dating and marriage. Then it boils down to the old argument that men want an unopened package of goodies and are willing to protect that package. Against other men, presumably.

But it also boils down to that well-known argument that women, the supposedly frailer and weaker and more stupid sex, is the sex responsible for all control of sexuality. Never mind what one thinks of the basic assertion; it's simply not at all how sexuality works in reality. For instance, the majority of pron entrepreneurs are not women.

The comments are fun reading, more generally, though all points of view are presented. Still, I don't think feminists were working very hard for the objectification of women, and given my recent readings in the sixteenth century, that objectification seems to have been a bigger problem in the past. "Pretty" was just sold in a different marketplace than "slutty." But neither of those concepts were controlled by the commodity herself.

I could write something more meaningful about the premature sexualization of young girls, about the impact of popular culture on the way women are supposed to dress and act and about the impact of pron on that popular culture and how it all slowly seeps down to the private worlds of young girls who don't have the skills yet to read the wider culture.

Yes, there are real concerns in all that. But to pick feminism as the movement to blame for is like arguing that thermometers cause fever.

Happy Valentine's Day

Which it is today. I'm not in the mood for proper analysis of this phenomenon or anything of the sort. But thank you, my erudite and sweet readers, for being you.

E.J. Dionne, Catholics and Contraception. Wherein Echidne Loses Her Cool.

E.J. Dionne:

Those of us who are liberal Catholics have remained in the church for reasons beyond tribal loyalties or a desire to honor the traditions of our parents and grandparents. At the heart of the love many of us have for the church — despite our frustrations over its abysmal handling of the pedophilia scandal and its reluctance to grant women the rights they are due — is a profound respect for the fact on so many questions that count, Catholicism walks its talk and harnesses its faith to the good works the Gospel demands.
When it comes to lifting up the poor, healing the sick, assisting immigrants and refugees, educating the young (especially in inner cities), comforting orphaned and abandoned children, and organizing the needy to act in their own interest, the church has been there with resources and an astoundingly committed band of sisters, priests, brothers and lay people. Organizations such as Catholic Charities, the Catholic Health Association, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and Catholic Relief Services make the words of Jesus come alive every day.

His post has "culture wars" in the title, grrr.

But I really got stuck in that one sentence: "At the heart of the love many of us have for the church — despite our frustrations over its abysmal handling of the pedophilia scandal and its reluctance to grant women the rights they are due — is a profound respect for the fact on so many questions that count, Catholicism walks its talk and harnesses its faith to the good works the Gospel demands."

Do a gender reversal on that. I know it's hard to even imagine something like any major guy religion run by women (in charge, that is) but do try. Would we ever find it perfectly acceptable that such imaginary Mother/Daughter/Holyspirit church refused to let men be priests and insisted that the priestesses and the Popess decide on those men's fertility?

And sure, religions do much good. But are we supposed to close our eyes to the evil they do? Or somehow treat the good they do as a justification for going along with the evil? Why can't they stop the evil and continue with the good? And why can't I have a freedom from other people's religious beliefs?

As an aside, the argument that the contraception debacle is all about the poor Catholic bishops being discriminated against makes me check the color of the sky, to see if I'm still in the same old reality. The one in which religions are the most powerful force in keeping women downtrodden on this earth.

The Subtle Ways "Medical" Turns Into "Moral"

Whitney Houston's death seems to have caused a discussion on the misuse of prescription medications for anxiety and similar disorders. I found this part of it very interesting:

Benzodiazepines, or “benzos” are highly addictive and should never be prescribed to someone with a history of addiction, said said Matt Eaken, director of admissions at the drug and alcohol rehab center Mountainside.

...

“A person struggling with anxiety shouldn’t just be taking an anti-anxiety medication, said Fred Keene, the clinic director at the drug rehabilitation center Mountainside. “They should be learning other skills to help them cope, such as talk or cognitive therapy or meditation.”
For some, it’s a quick escape from what is causing them to feel so deeply stressed about their lives.
“To learn to cope with life and anxiety, you have to put in real work,” said Eaken. “For some people, it’s easier to just take a pill.”

Bolding mine.

As I stated in the title of this post, medical problems turn into moral ones in subtle ways, and this is quite subtle. I have no problem with the message in the above quote, except for that bolded bit. It implies that the people who fail in controlling their addictions are not doing the real work, that they are lazy and simply go the easiest route.

That introduces a moral, non-medical dimension. Once we are comfortable with that dimension it has the tendency to leak into most things. It's most familiar these days in debates about obesity.

I find it very counter-productive in the medical context and especially so in the context of treating emotional and mental disturbances. Adding that moral disapproval is likely to make things worse, because if an addicted person cannot recover then perhaps she or he didn't work hard enough! Just took the easy way out. Deserved to fail, in fact, and should probably feel guilt now.

This is a tricky topic to write about because of course it's true that some people don't work very hard on their problems. It's also true that most of us would prefer a simple pill for all that ails us. Still, moving from those thoughts to a moral disapproval is pretty disturbing.

It reminds me of a story I read about the fish seeing one of them caught by an angler, struggling and squirming and fighting the embedded hook in its mouth. The other fish wonder why that stupid fish just doesn't swim away, wonder what's bothering it, even laugh at its weird behavior.

But that's because they cannot see the hook.

From Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artist.

Just because this is so funny. I'm reading books from the fifteen hundreds right now. Vasari on the Florentine painter Paolo Uccello (1396/7-1475):

Paolo decorated the vaulting of the Peruzzi in fresco with triangular sections in perspective, and in the angles of the corner he painted the four elements, representing each by an appropriate animal: a mole for earth, a fish for water, a salamander for fire, and for air the chameleon, which lives on air and assumes any colour. Since he had never seen a chameleon, Uccello painted instead a camel which is opening its mouth and filling its belly by swallowing air...

The Hunger Games

Have you read the book? It's a young adult novel (part of a series) by Suzanne Collins.

It could be fun to have a book-club-type discussion of the book and its meaning from various standpoints but certainly from a feminist one. Before some watered-down version appears in the movie theaters later this year.