But true feminism, with the understanding of equal rights and equal dignity, did not come until the 1960s, until women were well and truly able to control when and if they would have children.
Reproductive rights are the foundation of women’s rights. Any attack on reproductive freedom is an attack on the rights and dignity of women. Period. You cannot deny access to birth control without denying women’s rights. You cannot mandate ultrasounds without attacking women’s dignity. The only way our daughters and granddaughters can have real choices about the lives they want to lead and the sort of women they want to become is for reproductive rights to move forward, never back.
Like most Catholics, I was stunned this morning by the news that Benedict XVI has announced his resignation and will soon retire to the medieval woodcut from whence he came….
All kidding aside, I applaud Benedict for having the courage to take this step. As modern medicine prolongs our lives far past our vigor, anyone in a lifetime appointment should be open to retirement; still, power is hard to walk away from. God bless Benedict for making this difficult choice, and may he have a long and peaceful life in which to read and pray and relax.
That out of the way, what on earth is the Church going to do? (FAIR WARNING: I’m departing from my usual political bent here and speaking purely as a Catholic who struggles everyday with the tension between my faith and my abhorrence for the institution.) The cardinals are being given another chance to do this right, to move the church decisively towards either obsolescence or vitality. My gut tells me that political power-games and fear of the unknown will drive the church further right, towards a zealous fundamentalist nihilism… but maybe not. I don’t believe God can simply change the minds of men who don’t want to hear Him – but I do believe that these Cardinals will be praying, a LOT, and that if they are truly open to listening, we might just get a daring charismatic modern pope who can lead a vibrant church in our shared faith. I hope I hope I hope.
It won’t be an easy task. The Catholic Church is mangled on the racks of two very different, very sick sets of twisted ideas. The first is the deluded belief that admitting mistakes would end the church’s authority. There are many many people high up in this institution who feel that acknowledging sins and errors would weaken the church. As result, horrific abuses have been buried, ignored, painted over, in the name of preserving the church. Whether it’s altar boys in Boston or unwed mothers in Ireland, entirely too many innocent people have suffered at the hands of the clergy. If the church were willing to be transparent, to denounce these abuses quickly, to work with civil authorities, it would be so much more credible than it is in its “La-La-La I-Can’t-HEAR-You!” stance.
Admitting mistakes shouldn’t end with the abuses done in the church’s name (though it should start there). The church desperately needs to fundamentally rethink its stance on pretty much everything to do with sex. How can an institution that refuses to hear from women – or even from married men – possibly get these issues right?
You can leave your hat on – the Bishop is a FREAK for vagina-hats….
This is the second massive stumbling block that has to be addressed before the church can be relevant or credible again. The church’s attitude toward sexuality is the product of two thousand years of perverted understanding of human nature (thanks St. Paul! And thanks, every single church leader who came later and didn’t set this straight!). How can we hope the church will ever recognize the validity – even sanctity – of homosexual love, when it can’t even comprehend the role of sex within heterosexual marriage? By pretending that human sexuality is only for procreation, the church twists what it means that we are made in God’s “image and likeness.” Sexuality is inherent in each one of us, and expresses itself differently in each one of us throughout our lives. It’s part of our identity, how we relate to one another and the greater world. It gives us shelter from the storm, and allows us to communicate far beyond mere words. It is essential to what makes us human, to what makes us children of God. And yet the church has suggested, time and again, that sexuality is at best a necessary evil, at worst, a sign of our depravity.
Really, the slippery slope DOESN’T necessarily lead here. I promise.
It seems like an incredibly long shot, but the right leadership could still turn this around. We could start to acknowledge that sexuality is part of the divinity in us. Maybe then the church can move past its fear of women, fear of gays, and fear of the human condition; maybe then it will get past its medieval preoccupation with sex, and focus on the true message of Christ – caring for the poor, the sick, and the least of us, moving into a new millenium with a healthy understanding of our shared humanity. Besides, Pope Simone has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
Ladies and Gentlemen: the single most misogynistic statement of our time:*
You actually don’t need context to understand how appalling that is (though this is a great source if you want it). You don’t need to know that Betsy Andrea is the wife of one of Armstrong’s former teammates, or that she has maintained for years that she heard Armstrong tell a doctor that he used performance enhancing drugs, or that Armstrong retaliated by trying to destroy her credibility and end her husband’s career in cycling. You don’t need to know that she was labeled a bitter, vindictive psycho just because she wouldn’t lie for him. Even without knowing who the hell Lance Armstrong is, that is some pure-grain misogyny right there. It’s textbook:
Yeah, I did call her crazy – Sure, I admit that I suggested she was irrational, unhinged, emotional, not to be trusted. Yeah, I attacked her intelligence and her understanding of the world around her. So? Doesn’t every guy who has conflict with a woman call her out for being psycho? So what if I implied that nothing she says or feels is valid, because it comes from her disordered, fevered imagination? Chicks, man. They’re nuts.
Yes, I called her a bitch – Yeah, I said she was vindictive, cruel, mean, petty, and selfish. I suggested that she’s emotionally deficient, cold, despicable, a castrating shrew, a nag, a scold, an ice-queen. BITCHES, amiright?
But I never called her FAT – So it’s okay! I mean, I know I said she was insane, and a terrible human being, but it’s not like I said she isn’t conventionally attractive! That would be mean, I would never attack her like that! I’m a nice guy!
Betsy Andrea is Not Impressed
Watching that clip, it’s obvious that smirking jerkface Lance Armstrong is being a complete douchebag here, and it would be easy to dismiss this simply as a terrible person being terrible. It goes beyond that, though – “crazy bitch” is far too common in our culture; it’s our favorite way of dismissing inconvenient women. It bears mentioning, too, because Betsy Andrea calmly and rationally asserted that Armstrong doped, for years. Even though it seems transparent now, for years the media happily bought into – and perpetuated – the slander that she was just some “crazy bitch.” (I’m sure it’s no consolation to her that if the media ever said she was fat, well, that didn’t come from Armstrong, who obviously thinks that’s the worst thing he could say about a person woman.)
~
You know who was neither fat nor a crazy bitch? Lennay Kekua.This story has been everywhere; examined from countless angles. Jezebel and Feministing both did a great job pointing out the hypocrisy of the media being all over Manti Te’o's imaginary girlfriend’s imaginary death, while largely ignoring the very real suicide of a very real woman who was raped by a Notre Dame football player. Still, for all the coverage this scandal has generated, I haven’t seen any discussion of how sexist the whole construct of Lennay Kekua was in the first place.
The media bought this story unquestioningly – Lennay was held up as Manti Te’o's inspiration, her death as a heartwarming reminder of the power of love. Lennay Kekua was beautiful. She was devoted. She was so in love with Manti that she didn’t need his comfort, his company, or his time – no, as she lay dying of cancer, all she wanted was for Manti to win football games. Apparently, no one found it odd that he was the love of her life, but she never asked him to be at her side.
Photographs of women are so much less demanding than the real thing…
Fake Lennay fake died in September – months after the fake car wreck which led to the fake discovery of her fake cancer. Their inspirational love and her tragic death were the subject of countless news stories: on ESPN’s College GameDay, Fox Sports, and CBS, in Sports Illustrated and the New York Times, the Associated Press and Los Angeles Times… and yet the truth only came out last week, ten days after Manti’s football season ended. “Te’o's knowledge about the details of his girlfriend’s life was often murky, including her majors in school, occupation and extent of her injuries after an alleged April 28 car accident with a drunk driver.” Why didn’t that set off alarm bells with reporters? All this media around him, all these outlets repeating this heart-warming story, but even while she was “alive” no one needed to talk to her – and after her tragic (fake) death, it seems no news outlet tried to get a fuller picture of this woman.
After all, who cared what she did for a living, or majored in in school? That was all beside the point. Lennay Kekua had been the perfect girlfriend: a beautiful empty vessel whose only concern was that her boyfriend succeed. She was as undemanding in death as she was in life, telling Manti to skip her funeral so that he wouldn’t miss any football games. She didn’t have messy emotional needs, or thorny contradictory ideas, or passionate competing dreams of her own… because Lennay Kekua didn’t exist. Conveniently, not existing made her the feminine ideal. After all, imaginary girlfriends are never fat, crazy bitches.
*Excluding every single thing Rush Limbaugh has ever said about women, of course.
(I hope that this will be a resumption of regular blogging. Lord knows there’s been enough happening politically to keep me busy writing outraged entries daily, but my post-election crash ran into the holidays which ran into illness which went straight on through to a much busier new year. I think I’ve got it under control, at last.)
I’m trying to put my thoughts together, in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut massacre. For most of the weekend, my feelings were best summed up by this article from The Onion:
“Well, I suppose we have to try to pick up the pieces and make some sort of sense of this tragedy and—you know what? Fuck it, I can’t do this,” said Connecticut resident Michael Zaleski, his remarks understandable given the circumstances, because, holy shit, what else can one say? “I’m sorry, but I can’t fucking do this. Can you? Can anyone?”
Only that bit of satire came close to expressing the horror and helplessness we all felt in the wake of this senseless, senseless tragedy. Looking for solutions beyond memes seemed impossible. And into this void stepped President Obama, doing what only a President can – expressing the feelings of the nation, mourning deeply, but demanding better. His remarks at a memorial yesterday laid the necessary foundation for the discussion we have to have, moving forward. If you haven’t heard his full speech, you owe it to yourself to give it the full 18 minutes; it’s a powerful, moving place to start.
I received a reader request (!) to address the hateful theology of Richard Mourdock. Praisewhore that I am, how could I say no?
Mourdock, of course, is the Republican Congressional Hopeful (and Tea Party Wingnut) who recently explained in a debate why he believes abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape: “And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” The Onion already responded perfectly to the idea of a god so hateful he would will that women be raped to make babies to the Glory of His Name; I can’t do any better at addressing his twisted theology. But I can say this:
I haven’t seen the question Mourdock was asked, but even if he was specifically asked about his faith, this is the wrong answer. The right answer to that question is always, “While I try to live my own life in accordance with my faith, I recognize that the First Amendment specifically prohibits me from making laws to impose my (weird, misogynistic, uncharitable) faith on the people I represent.” (See Biden, Joe, in the Veep Debate). It doesn’t matter how violent or rapey or baby-lovin’ Mourdock’s – or any politician’s – god is; that’s a moot point when you’re talking about policy. Any time a politician talks about what God ordains, the proper response is, “Fascinating – but what does that have to do with the Constitution and laws of the United States?” It’s right there in our Bill of Rights – no one gets to make their own God’s Law the law of the land.
Honestly, I’m stunned that Republicans haven’t realized they need to shut up about rape. The more they talk about rape, or abortion for that matter, the more I realize they simply have no empathy for the women involved. This first hit me during the bizarre conversation over requiring ultrasounds before an abortion. It occurred to me that the whole purpose of requiring an ultrasound was to try to force empathy from the woman – LOOK AT THE BABY! LISTEN TO HER HEARTBEAT! – as if she had no concept of what abortion is. As insulting as that was, it was even more jarring when I realized that the entire debate happened because these lawmakers have absolutely no comprehension of what this debate means to women. NONE. Exceptions for rape are the easy part. Republicans can’t even get this right, and they think we should trust them to handle the larger issue?
So Mr. Mourdock, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Akin, and all the other Republican Mr.’s out there, Right Honorable and otherwise, listen up:
Not everyone believes that a fertilized egg is a person. Not everyone believes that an implanted embryo has any rights, let alone the full rights of a person. Women – and their families – come in all different shades of faith or atheism, agnosticism or narcissism. Your faith and your god do not usurp that, cannot usurp that. But putting that all aside, even if we all agreed that an embryo is a person, that doesn’t end the discussion. Because you know who else is a person?
THE WOMAN.
Every time you open your fool mouths to talk about abortion, you completely fail to recognize this. The woman is a person, whose rights are every damn bit as sacred as the rights you want to grant the fetus. When a woman is raped, it is a fundamental violation of her person beyond anything the Santorums of this world can comprehend. If she gets pregnant as a result of that rape, that pregnancy is a continuation of that violation; her body is being used against her will. Even if we all agree that this will be the cutest, sweetest, most blessedest rape-baby ever, we have no right to ask that of the woman. Whatever rights you ascribe to the fetus, THERE’S A WOMAN, an honest-to-god fully-formed human being, involved too. Making the embryo a person doesn’t make the woman NOT a person, and if you cannot conceive of how wrong it would be to force a rape victim to continue to carry her rapist’s child, then there is something fundamentally broken in you – so broken that it should disqualify you from office.
I am wearing my awesome purple dress today, both because it is awesome, and because it is purple. Today is Spirit Day, a day of awareness of the effects of bullying. In honor thereof, I’m not going to talk about the presidential race today, because issues that impact the LGBT community are still not accorded their proper due and are being decided piecemeal, state-by-state.
I live in Tennessee, land of “Don’t Say Gay;” home of state lawmakers who try to carve an exception for “faith-based bullying” into anti-bullying measures; and holding pen for lunatic State Rep. Richard Floyd, a man so intensely transphobic he introduced a bill that would make it a crime in Tennessee to use a public restroom or dressing room other than the one designated for the sex on your birth certificate, convinced it is necessary to keep the (heterosexual) public safe. Floyd didn’t’ try to justify his bill with anything OTHER than hate:
“It could happen here,” Floyd said. “I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry. Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk. We cannot continue to let these people dominate how society acts and reacts. Now if somebody thinks he’s a woman and he’s a man and wants to try on women’s clothes, let him take them into the men’s bathroom or dressing room.”
I had heard of Floyd and his unabashed hatred of the LGBT community, back in January when this bill was proposed. In the interim, he had faded from my consciousness. Like “Don’t Say Gay” and “License to Bully,” the “Bathroom Bill” was introduced, made Tennessee a national (international?) laughingstock, and faded away without becoming state law (thank god). But recently I started working for the campaign of a wonderful State Rep, part of the thin blue line that keeps Rachel Maddow from establishing a permanent Nashville bureau, and I started thinking about what would happen if those bills actually had become law. As I meet with her supporters – union members, leaders in the states LGBT rights movement, and honest-to-god Tennessee feminists – it restores so much of my faith in my home state, and motivates me to work harder to fix our broken state house. Personhood is coming up soon, and we only just beat back a disastrous Alabama-copycat immigration bill, and Richard Floyd is still a sitting rep.
Still, nothing prepared me for how I’d feel after talking to Christy.[1] Christy is a transsexual woman. She works overnight shift at a big box store, and is getting her degree part time. She’s on Metro buses two and half hours a day because she can’t afford a car. She has midterms next week. And yet she was desperate to find a way to work for my candidate, because my candidate has worked so hard for her, and people like her. As we tried to find a way that she could help in spite of her crazy schedule, our conversation turned to the horror of some of the bills proposed in our legislature last term. Christy’s voice broke when she spoke of Richard “Stomp ‘em” Floyd, and suddenly I saw all of this in a different light. I’m pretty empathetic, and of course I had been horrified and outraged at Floyd’s hateful words, but I wasn’t hurt by them, as Christie was. Richard Floyd is an elected official of my home state, and he feels it’s okay to threaten violence against people different from him. He feels its okay to ridicule and slander the LGBT community. He uses his position to spew hatred, and his power to try to enshrine bigotry into our laws. His legislation is aimed at humiliating people like Christy, and his words are aimed at negating her right to exist. One of these people is a sick, festering sore on humanity, and it ISN’T the woman riding the bus home at dawn to crash for a couple of hours before going to classes, who only wants to be left in peace.
I am a straight ally, and I stand against state-sponsored bullying. I am a straight ally, and I stand against lawmakers who work to make bigotry and prejudice the law of the land. So today I’m wearing my awesome purple dress for Christy. I am working extra hard at getting my candidate elected. Christy is making phone calls for my candidate when she has a few minutes to spare in her crazy day. I am a straight ally, and I will do whatever I can to make my state a better place for all of its people.
[1] “Christy” is not her real name; I don’t know her personally, and so don’t want to say anything that could come back to hurt her. This is also why I’m not naming my candidate by name here; these are my opinions alone.
I never got around to addressing Romney’s ridiculous, racist, behind-closed-doors “joke” that running for President would be easier if he were Latino; the closest I got was talking about how blind he is to his own privilege. Now I’m glad I didn’t, because I could never have made the point as well as Rosie Perez does in this video:
