What if you threw a protest and nobody came? Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry did just that in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the first stop on a planned 13-city tour in which Terry intends to inform people that the senate healthcare reform bill "will essentially fund abortions." According to the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, "A few reporters and photographers, Terry and two passersby were the whole rally. Terry's target, U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh and Bayh's entire staff inside the E. Ross Adair Federal Building, were no-shows." "
I'm really not qualified to speculate about what goes on in the minds of anti-choice protesters, but here are a few possible reasons why folks didn't show up for Terry's rally:
1) He's full of crap. As Tracy Clark-Flory wrote in Broadsheet last week, "The key details of the Senate bill are as follows: Both public and private plans are allowed to offer abortion coverage. It empowers consumers to use government subsidies to purchase insurance that covers abortion, but requires that their premiums (and not federal funds) pay for the actual procedures. The Health and Human Services Secretary is charged with evaluating plans to ensure that taxpayers do not pay for abortions."
2) "Taxpayers shouldn't have to fund things they find morally repugnant" is always a weak argument, but it's especially weak right now. I mean, I could give you a list of a dozen things I'm appalled to fund indirectly with my taxes, but these days, do I really need to enumerate any beyond "war" and "other war"? Oh, hell, let's throw in executions, too. Because if you really want anyone to take your "taxes shouldn't fund murder" complaint seriously, we've got a whole lot of dead autonomous human beings to account for at both the federal and state levels before we even begin discussing fetal personhood.
3) Most disturbingly, he's threatening violence, and not even trying to be subtle about it.
"If the U.S. Senate passes this bill and they try and force Americans to pay for child-killing by abortion, they are sowing the seeds of violence in this country," Terry said from the sidewalk in front of the Federal Building.
"We fought a war over slavery, we fought a war over a tea tax. What do people think will happen if they try to force us to pay for murder?"
Um, those most fiercely opposed to murder will start... murdering? Even more than they already have? That sure seems to be what you're saying, there, buddy. And despite a revolting amount of support for the monsters who assassinate abortion providers, most mainstream anti-choicers are not on board with that. At least, not openly.
But please, Randall Terry, do carry on with your campaign to raise awareness about made-up issues. We at Broadsheet wish you every bit as much success as you've already had.
Women have a simple plan for responding to the unpopular new guidelines on breast cancer screenings: ignore them. A Gallup poll shows that 76 percent of women disagree with the recommendation that women hold off on mammograms until age 50, and a whopping 84 percent of those between age 35 and 49 intend to reject the advice entirely. Women are going to get their mammograms when they damn well please.
The telephone poll of 1,136 women suggests that the objection to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's guidelines arises from a mistrust of the panel's motivations. Seventy-six percent of women believe the decision was based on cost, not science. That's no surprise considering that the results were released amid a contentious debate about healthcare reform and that the recommendations have been poorly communicated to the public. As Cristine Russell writes in the Atlantic, the panel's intent may have been to deliver the message "that individualized, informed decision making should replace blanket guidelines for universal, routine mammography screening of women in their 40s" -- but it failed spectacularly on that front.
No matter your personal take on the new mammogram guidelines, one thing is certain: There is a critical lack of information on the topic. The Gallup poll found that 40 percent of women believe that a 40-year-old woman has a 20 to 50 percent chance of developing cancer over the next decade, when her actual risk is only 1.4 percent. Clearly, we need to strike a better balance between effective awareness-raising -- like pink ribbon campaigns -- and communicating nuanced medical fact.
On the issue of whether Lady Gaga's left boob was visible for a nanosecond during her performance on Leno last night, Rachel Sklar at Mediaite concludes, "After careful review here's my unscientific analysis: Yes." Oh, Rachel, don't sell yourself short. Yours is the most astoundingly scientific analysis of a possible celebrity nip slip I ever did see. Consider: "At 3:26, a backup dancer lifted her (by the crotch no less!) and then, switching her position 90 degrees and lowering her, staggered just a touch. Gaga did not miss a beat but as he lowered her, she quickly adjusted her left breast and continued the song." Also, after she finished performing, Gaga "froze in place, with her microphone arm hugged tightly to her side. When Leno came over to greet her she extended the arm -- and that is when I am 99% positive the faintest, quickest glimpse of aureola [sic] was visible."
If all that isn't persuasive enough, a fuzzy screenshot of the moment is included so the Internet can weigh in on the question of the hour: Shadow or nipple? Says Sklar, "My last-night TV rewind told me nipple, but here's why I will argue for it based on a small, unclear still: Note the difference in how one side of the jumpsuit is cut to the other side. The 'V' of the decolletage is not symmetrical." Lawyered! Also, seriously?
I'm still not convinced there was visible nip, nor am I convinced I should care. If you'd like to investigate for yourself, Mediaite has clips. Personally, now I just want to watch the "Bad Romance" video all day instead of working. Perhaps you'd care to join me.
The words flash on screen: "The height of intensity." Next to the dramatic text is a photo of a young woman in a gown sitting in a limousine; she hugs a basketball like she might her non-existent date. Later, the screen announces: "A passion for commitment." We're shown a shot of another beautiful young lady wearing precious pearl earrings and a shoulder-baring dress, while staring directly into the camera with her smoky eyes. Such are the assets of Florida State University's women's basketball team, according to its spiffy new Web site.
The video introduction does show us several snapshots of the girls with sweat pouring down their faces and posing in their jerseys -- scenarios that are actually relevant to the game -- but the glamour shots are garnering controversy. Each player has a bio paired with a photo of her in a shiny dress lounging in or against a limo. One group shot captures the whole team inside the luxury vehicle, their uncomfortable grinning faces reflected in the metallic ceiling. As a university press release explains, the intended message of the site is: "Women athletes are powerful and beautiful" -- assuming they're gussied up like princesses. There's nothing subversive about the site. It's not like they're shown playing a game in their gowns, makeup smeared by sweat and dresses torn to tatters at their feet, or absurdly attempting to pass a ball between their legs while wearing a floofy floor-length skirt. This isn't a critical commentary on the sad limitations of beauty ideals, it's a desperate attempt to conform to them.
I suspect this isn't merely an attempt at sexing up female athletes in order to improve the team's visibility. Carnal Nation points to "Training Rules," a new documentary about homophobia in women's collegiate sports. The film focuses on the story of Rene Portland, the Penn State University women's basketball coach who was accused of repeatedly discriminating against players she suspected to be a lesbians. Female basketball players have long had to fight against the stereotype that they're gay and, after watching the preview for "Training Rules," it's hard not to wonder whether this straight-gals-going-to-the-prom photo-shoot is evidence that it's still the case.
No one knows the definitive difference between men and women. That may sound like the dubious thesis of a women's studies 101 essay, the result of feminist philosophy carried to its ultimate political extreme, but it's plainly true. For proof, you need only read Ariel Levy's sprawling article in this week's New Yorker about Caster Semenya. Not only does it offer the richest telling yet of the scandal surrounding the 18-year-old runner by grounding it in the history of sports and racism, and the culture of the 18-year-old's hometown in South Africa -- it also puts it in the absurd and unscientific context of sex testing.
We can all easily sketch out the differences between the sexes: Women have breasts, ovaries, a uterus and a vagina; men have testicles and a penis -- end of story, right? For most folks, it is, but then there are the exceptions: A person can be born with one testicle and one ovary, or with a penis, uterus and ovaries. Someone with XY chromosomes can have both a vagina and undescended testes because of a condition that blocks their bodies from responding to testosterone. You can have two X chromosomes, one of which is merged with a region of the Y chromosome. And, and, and ...
I could easily go on, if you had a couple of hours. As Alice Dreger, author of “Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex,” tells Levy, "People always press me: 'Isn't there one marker we can use?' No. We couldn't then and we can't now, and science is making it more difficult and not less, because it ends up showing us how much blending there is and how many nuances, and it becomes impossible to point to one thing, or even a set of things, and say that’s what it means to be male."
The International Association of Athletic Federations, which is investigating Semenya's sex -- still! -- "does not define the criteria that its group of experts must use to reach their determination," Levy reports. Dreger, a professor at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, refers to it as the unscientific "I know it when I see it" approach. Worse still, the organization allows for any athlete to undergo testing if someone, anyone raises a stink about his or her sex. In Semenya's case, all it took was a speculative blog post and the gender hounds were unleashed. The good news is that IAAF is holding a conference at the start of the new year to review its policy -- but it's hard to be too optimistic about the outcome considering that they're asking the wrong question to begin with.
Levy, however, asks the right question: "If sex is not precisely definable, how else might sports be organized?" She considers a couple of different solutions to this foundation-shaking query: There is the possibility of categorizing athletes "by size, as they are in wrestling and boxing" (downside: "women would usually lose to men") or "skill level" (downside: "the strongest elite female athletes would [almost always] compete against the weakest elite male athletes"). A more drastic scientific approach would be "to divide athletes biochemically" since testosterone has an enormous impact on athletic performance. In that case, "the division would be determined not by gender but by actual physical advantages that gender supposedly, yet unreliably, supplies," she concludes.
Of course, international athletic competition isn't about fairness and equality; ultimately, someone is supposed to win. "Different bodies have physical attributes, even abnormalities, that may provide a distinct advantage in one sport or another," she argues. For example: The many N.B.A. players with a condition that causes growth hormones to go into overdrive and the double-jointed Michael Phelps with his primate-like arms and legs. If the speculation about Semenya's biology is true, why is her particular abnormality worth policing? The IAAF attempts to control for potential physical advantages by dividing athletes by sex, as opposed to any other criterion because it's the easiest shorthand we have -- in sports and generally in navigating day-to-day life -- but this case shows just how incredibly fallible it can be. Unfortunately, Semenya is suffering now because it's so much easier to point the finger at her than it is to call into question the way we've organized sports -- and, as Levy puts it, "the way we've organized our entire world."
On Friday, I speculated there might be a feminist reason to defend the "Twilight" phenomenon (though not necessarily the content of the books or movies): If nothing else, its popularity could teach Hollywood that female audiences matter. In that respect (and several others), "Twilight Saga: New Moon" is off to an even better start than anticipated. According to Entertainment Weekly's Adam B. Vary, the movie shattered a bunch of opening weekend records -- with an 80 percent female audience. Says Vary, "movie theaters have not seen this much business since 'The Dark Knight' thundered into cineplexes in July 2008, and it bears repeating that all those dollar signs this weekend came by far from the purses, pocketbooks, and wallets of women."
All right, I'll officially say that's a good thing. And now Sady Doyle, occasional Broadsheet contributor and blogmistress of the fabulously named Tiger Beatdown, has gone and given me yet another feminist angle on "Twilight" to consider. ("Twilight" is officially the new Sarah Palin: I hate everything it stands for, but since so much of the reaction to it is sexist, I keep feeling compelled to defend it. Sigh.)
Doyle admits to a fondness for Robert Pattinson, who plays vampire Edward Cullen in the series, although she does not admit it's partly because he's hot. Other than that, she covers the reasons why I, too, am fond of the surprisingly candid and self-aware young star -- "Robert Pattinson talks shit about the projects he is in. Robert Pattinson is honest about the fact that he is not the best actor" -- with a bonus articulation of something I'd never considered: "And Robert Pattinson's main source of employment is facilitating his own objectification, which he does, but also complains about all the time. Robert Pattinson is... Megan Fox, basically!
That Fox/Pattz comparison is so apt, Sady's not even the only ladyblogger in my Google reader who made it today. And the difference in our reaction to each of those actors' being subjected to an audience's lustful gaze says a lot about who's meant to be looked at and who's meant to be listened to in this culture. "People outside the superfan matrix don't tend to have strong feelings about The Pattz," she writes, "but they do tend to get all squirmy and giggly and uncomfortable with the way that so many women relate to his filmed image (for example, by screen-printing it on their underpants) and/or his person." All that raw, ridiculous, pointless lust is just so unseemly. And when The Pattz speaks in interviews about how strange and oppressive it is to be the object of a million fangirl fantasies, or how awful his character is ("the more I read the script, the more I hated this guy"), those of us outside the superfan matrix like him more for it. That poor guy! He can't go anywhere! People expect him to be something he's not, just because he's good-looking and plays such a one-dimensional character, desperate people can project whatever they want onto him. Isn't that sad? But that whiny, stupid Fox girl, on the other hand -- where does she get off complaining about getting paid to look hot? "We have no problem with objectifying Megan Fox," says Doyle. "We just have a problem with everything she says, and specifically the things she says wherein she takes issue with being objectified. We just hate her."
Much like we hate those women buying Edward Cullen underpants (among other products) and making Robert Pattinson's life difficult. "Because those women are acting in a way that is typically reserved for men. And they're treating Pattinson like a girl." The objectification of women in pop culture, writes Doyle, is both so common as to go unnoticed and inevitably "tacky as all hell, aesthetically."
[A]nd so criticizing it, in an aesthetic way, seems pointless. Congratulations, you went looking for art in a product intended to provide boners and came up empty. Surprise! But when girls do the exact same thing -- when they prove themselves capable of the exact same sort of objectification, and the exact same goofiness or tackiness or unrealistic fantasy in the name of getting off -- well, it freaks people out. It's weird. Why are they acting like this? Don't they know that Robert Pattinson is a person? Why are they treating him like a big chunk of meat? Why doesn't Edward Cullen act like a real guy would? Etcetera!
Let me be clear: I think those are all perfectly reasonable questions. It's just that I think they're perfectly reasonable questions to ask about the objectification of Megan Fox, and every other Action Movie Girlfriend in history, as well. Treating a man just as poorly as women have long been treated in films made for young male audiences is not the kind of gender equality that gives me hope for the future. But thinking critically about why folks become so offended when they see that happening might, in fact, lead to a bit of progress. Why is it so unsettling to see a young male actor dehumanized, but not his female counterpart? Why do we sympathize with a man saying it's hard to be nothing but a pretty face, but vilify a woman who says it? Whether or not you can answer those questions, if you can at least spot the difference, you are obliged to do one of two things. In Doyle's words: "Be less weirded out by the fact that ladies are getting all freaky about Robert Pattinson. Or be MORE weirded out by the dudes getting all het up about various lady movie stars."
For now, I'd recommend both. Ultimately, I'd love to see more movies made for all audiences that go beyond a cheap appeal to our basest fantasies; recognizing and resisting objectification of anyone in pop culture is a goal dear to my heart. But it would also be nice if, in the meantime, people recognized that women and teenaged girls have our own base fantasies, and quit acting like it's headline news that we have real human libidos, which are sometimes activated by pretty young things who stand around doing very little in blockbuster movies. Just as surely as "New Moon" has proven that catering to a female audience can be as lucrative as catering to young men, it's proven that one-dimensional sex objects can sell to lady audiences as well. So, while it may not get beyond one obnoxious stereotype of female desire -- violent, overprotective dudes get us hot! -- at least it busts the myth that there's no such thing.
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