Sex Scandals And Demographic Winters

Kathryn Joyce, who is working on a book about Christian conservative women, talks about the "demographic winter". Amanda offers further commentary on the Spitzer scandal, sets her sights on Sally Kern of Oklahoma, and catches some anti-choicers insulting further the memory of Dr. Seuss.

Kathryn Joyce talks about the "demographic winter". Amanda offers further commentary on the Spitzer scandal, sets her sights on Sally Kern of Oklahoma, and catches some anti-choicers insulting further the memory of Dr. Seuss.

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Links in this episode:
Practical uses of March Madness
Sally Kern on the homosexual agenda
Ellen vs. Sally Kern
Rebecca Traister on Silda Wall Spitzer
Jay Smooth on Spitzer scandal
Morton Hears A Womb

Transcript:

This week on Reality Cast, I'll have an interview with Kathryn Joyce from The Nation, a segment on homophobic Oklahoma state representative Sally Kern, and more analysis, yes, of the Elliot Spitzer scandal. Also: Horton Hears A Womb?

In all the angles of covering this year's March Madness, I have to tip my hat to NPR for finding the funniest. The Oregon Urology Institute is advertising March Madness vasectomies—get sterilized and have the perfect excuse to sit on the couch for four days not moving and watching the game.

  • insert march madness

There's something kind of beautiful about this. Feminist-minded sports fans I know often wonder about how to reclaim sports from the cult of sexism that surrounds it. This is a small step towards that goal. Watch the games in the service of taking on your fair share of the family planning responsibility, guys. This is the dictionary definition of a win-win situation.

If you haven't heard the homophobic rant from Oklahoma state representative Sally Kern that's flying around, well, I highly recommend you listen to it. She was speaking to a group of 50 people and one of them, unbeknownst to her, was not a fellow traveler, and instead taped the rant and exposed her.

  • homosexual agenda 1

I'm stopping here because that's a good place to inject my concerns about the widespread distribution of this tape. I mean, I think it's great that this is getting play. People are seeing the ugliness and the hate behind all the talk of "preserving traditional marriage" and other code words.

But I'm worried that it's going to turn into this thing where Sally Kern is individually blamed, and there's not a larger discussion about how these are commonly held beliefs. That these myths she's spouting are memorized and recited by every Bible-thumping wingnut out there. It's B.S. that there's a long history of cultures "embracing" homosexuality and then collapsing immediately, but all these wingnuts have heard this lie and they believe it.

As I wrote this, I decided to go check Conservapedia's stat page to see what the popular searches are. I did this months ago on Reality Cast, and not much has changed. Besides the main page, 8 of 9 top searches are all about homosexuality. With stuff like "homosexuality and anal cancer"' up there in top searches. These people are frigging obsessed.

Anyway, back to Sally Kern.

  • insert homosexual agenda 2

It's kind of entertaining listening to someone who can't actually speak without lying or being ignorant, isn't it? That Islam is the same thing as terrorism. That pre-schools are like some anal sex orgy. What's really making her mad is that a school kid might be exposed to people that are not exactly like the folks and home and realize, oh my god, that people can be different and that's not only okay, but it makes the world a better, more interesting place.

Well, I won't bore you with the hate any longer. But I will point out that Ellen Degeneres was awesome enough to take this on.

  • insert homosexual agenda 3

It's funny, but again, I caution against focusing too much on Sally Kern and think of the big picture here. She's not one individual nut spouting off into the darkness. Her form of hatred is widely held by a lot of Americans, unfortunately. She's a tree, but there's a forest here.

  • insert interview Kathryn joyce

Okay, I can't let the Eliot Spitzer thing go. While a lot of people just want to look away from sex scandals, I can't help but think that the silver lining in even the tawdriest of sex scandals is the way it exposes people's attitudes about sex, marriage, and yes, even reproductive rights.

In this case, the real source of the scandal was not just the money-laundering, but the prostitution. Prostitution is a crime, and one that Spitzer doggedly enforced in his prosecutor days. So I feel perfectly comfortable with the fact that he's having to face the music on this issue.

But what I really find interesting in the fallout is how little people care to talk about men's behavior, and how everything always without fail goes back to judging and evaluating women's behavior.

Exhibit #1: All the interest in how Silda Wall Spitzer handled the fallout. Rebecca Traister at Salon vlogged this issue.

  • insert Rebecca salon *

That we almost care more about the whys of Silda Spitzer's behavior than Eliot Spitzer's is sad. It says a lot about how it's easier to judge a woman in this society. We're more comfortable judging a woman than a man, even when he's openly hurt her like this.

Then there's the issue of the prostitute. My biggest frustration when talking about prostitution is no matter how hard you try to keep the subject on why men get involved in being johns and pimps, invariably the conversation drifts over to why women are prostitutes. I started not one but two threads at Pandagon.net about the issue of male responsibility for prostitution, and it both cases, the threads devolved into a pissing match on whether or not feminist critiques of prostitution were insulting to women's agency or what. The role of men was completely forgotten. Are we afraid of demanding better, more responsible behavior from men?

One thing is for certain—our society loves to heap shame on women for being sexual. Jay Smooth had a vlog going around that got a lot of fist pumps from the feminists out there about the prostitute in question and her hopes for a recording career, hopes that are getting dashed by a music industry suddenly interested in morals.

  • insert jay smooth

I love the vlog, but I have to notice that once again the question of men in the prostitution business gets set aside. He's right on about how women are mistreated and considered tainted by sex, but let's go a step further. It's not just selling crack and murder that is glamorized by who gets a record contract and who doesn't. It's also pimping. A prostitute is considered an unacceptable person to give a contract to, but someone who brags about being a pimp? Can't hand him money fast enough.

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

Now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts. I was googling around, looking for more information about these ridiculous anti-choicers trying to make the movie "Horton Hears A Who" about their pet issue. And I found that one anti-choicer, unsatisfied with the fact that the original story doesn't actually have talking fetuses, rewrote the story so that it has talking fetuses in it.

  • insert talking fetus

The mother in this story is there because she kind of has to be. She's the container for the all-important fetus. But she doesn't talk, and the story makes sure to make a point of this, because acknowledging that women exist—much less that they can think, talk, and have feelings unlike embryos—screws the story up. Better to pretend they're silent containers.