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Links in this episode:
Ecuadorian sex rights
Ecuadorian sex rights 2
Shelby Knox's testimony
Pam Stenzel
The Global War In Your Pants
Insurance card marriages
Marc Ringel on insurance card marriages
Clinton on universal health care
John Gibson lesbian-baits
Transcript:
This week on Reality Cast, an update on abstinence-only miseducation in light of the recent Congressional hearings, more on universal health care, and an interview with Dr. Dana Stone about a recent bill in Oklahoma. Also, John Gibson can't argue with Rachel Maddow, so he lamely calls her a lesbian. The thinking world responds: so what if she is?
Is something lost in translation with this story reported by Keith Olbermann?
- insert sexual happiness
Actually, it seems much of the reason for all the hyperventilating over the bill is not that women might have more orgasms, god forbid. According to the BBC, Vela's aim with the bill is to create the groundwork for women to have healthier, more responsible sex lives. In other words, she's trying to create a right to reproductive justice as much as anything else. Not so silly after all.
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Recently, as I'm sure you know, my home state's beloved comprehensive sex education activist Shelby Knox testified in front of Congress about what a massive failure abstinence-only education is. It fails our kids on various levels, from failing to protect their health to failing to be honest and kind and decent to them, a failure that's much harder to measure but just as serious.
Well, let's let Shelby talk.
- insert Shelby one
Abstinence-only education is based on what is best described as a lie. They get the funding by saying that this is about keeping kids from getting sick and then proceed to try to encourage already sexually active students to get sick! You can't tell me that telling kids not to use condoms isn't directly aimed at getting kids not to use condoms, which is a direct road to pregnancy and disease. I hate to accuse anyone of trying to get kids sick or pregnant to punish them for having sex, but sometimes the evidence is just stacked that high.
As Shelby is about to describe, the contempt that abstinence-only proponents have for people, well women really, who have sex outside of marriage is such that it's easy to believe that they want us to suffer miserably for being so disgusting.
- insert Shelby two
How does someone get involved in abstinence-only miseducation? Well, some people just love to lie, I guess. Some people have massive sex-phobias that should be a cause for concern, but instead get all this social acceptance because they have a place in religious dogma. Misanthropy seems to be a common thread. Abstinence-only miseducators seem to get off on humiliating and hurting teenagers in their classrooms. You have the ones who like wagging a dirty toothbrush at a girl and impy she's a dirty slut. And you have the ones who like to rip tape off kids or dangle bricks over their genitals. And then they give them information that will get them pregnant or an STD. All under the guise of caring!
If you want to be chilled to the bone, check out a video of abstinence-only educator Pam Stenzel. Sadistic lying is raised to an art form with this woman, and when she says that she's flown around the world spreading her lies, I felt sick.
- insert pam stenzel one
No one has been in a monogamous relationship and not paid. No one has gone on a date and not paid. Even if your date pays for dinner, you probably paid for the nice clothes and make-up you wore. People who believe in the abstinence-only line are being set up to pay a lot. If you believe sex makes you dirty, a normal breaking up and moving on process is probably 100 times worse.
And then she encourages teenage girls to have babies. No, I'm not kidding.
- insert pam stenzel two
This is a favorite piece of anti-choice propaganda, that pregnancy isn't a disease. Once again, they replace semantics for meaning. Evolution is a theory, sure, but that doesn't mean it's "just a theory". And unplanned pregnancy isn't a disease, but neither is a broken leg.
She lists off a bunch of STDs, but of course isn't about to tell you that you can avoid most of them through safer sex practices, and that many of them, despite their alarming names, are probably not the stress and misery factor that unplanned pregnancy presents. You know, you're pregnant and you didn't plan to be, you have a soul-searching choice whether or not to abort ahead of you. Most people don't soul search about whether or not to take the penicillin.
She then moves onto lying to girls in order to get them pregnant, by telling them birth control is dangerous, though of course she's pretending that pregnancy is a walk in the park.
But hey, the pro-choice side is getting our narrative into the mainstream media. And "The Daily Show", which covered what they called "The Global War In Your Pants".
- insert jon stewart one
- insert jon stewart two
I feel better already.
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- insert interview
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Usually in the intersection of the politics of sexuality and the politics of health care, we like to talk about universal health coverage and access to reproductive health care. Especially when you come from a reproductive justice perspective, as I like to think I do, the question of coverage is central. But there's other places the issues intersect, as a recent story in the L.A. Times demonstrated. According to a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 7% of Americans admitted that someone in their household married last year to obtain health insurance.
It's probably not as severe an issue as it sounds---I'm sure most of the couples marrying for insurance are in love. But still, it's a sign of the times, as this recent podcast by Dr. Marc Ringel gets at.
- insert marc ringel
Obviously, it's a problem that people are making decisions about marriage and work based around health care, which is limiting. I do worry that this trend will make conservatives less likely to embrace universal health care, if they think it's a way to strongarm the unwilling into marriage.
Recently, Hillary Clinton submitted to a sit-down interview with Bill O'Reilly, and he tried to claim universal health care would bankrupt the country. I liked her reply, so I thought I'd share it with you.
- insert Clinton health care
Working in reproductive rights, it's really clear how universal health care would save money over the long run. I can't see a more straightforward version of how a penny of prevention spent on contraception and condoms prevents a hefty bill of cure for STDs and unplanned pregnancy. Why that kind of common sense is lacking in the debate is beyond me.
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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts. Rachel Maddow has been all over the TV, kicking butt and taking names and gaining fans. It was just a matter of time before desperate wingnuts resorted to irrelevant attacks on her based on sexual orientation. John Gibson of Fox News went there. First he played a clip of Maddow talking, and instead of addressing what she actually said, he did this.
- insert gisbon attack
- insert Gibson attack 2
I'm sure Gibson thinks that we should all listen to what he has to say by virtue of what he does in bed with who.
