Subscribe to RealityCast:
RealityCast iTunes subscription
RealityCast RSS feed

Links in this episode:

Reality Cast videos

Charlie Gibson interviews Sarah Palin

McCain on "The View"

Obama radio ad

McCain stem cell ad

Fight over personhood amendment

Birth control pills are not abortion

South Dakota abortion ban is anti-life

Sell your virginity!

Interview with Hanne Blank

Tim Graham hates on Rachel Maddow

 

This week on Reality Cast, an interview with skeptic and feminist Rebecca Watson.  Also, a giant election round-up segment and questions about selling your virginity and whether or not lesbians can have telegenic opinions.

Oh yeah, baby, I’m plugging myself on this podcast.  For the video series that Marc Faletti and I have been doing for Rewire.  In the videos, it’s me against an actor going through common right wing arguments against reproductive rights, education, and access and how to answer them.

• insert reality check *

To find this video and others, go to rh reality check dot org slash blog slash reality dash check dash video.  We conceived the idea as an educational tool.  I know  a lot of you out there find yourself arguing these ideas with family, friends, or online.  With these videos, the idea is to get down the basic points so you can be more efficient when having these interactions.

**********

For better or worse, reproductive rights have become central to the discourse during this election season.  I’ve got a huge backlog of examples of how abortion, at least, has surfaced in the discussion, so consider this an information-gathering clip dump.

Sarah Palin, who has been mostly avoiding the media, did sit down for an interview with Charlie Gibson.  And he asked her about Roe v. Wade.  

• palin roe *

That’s an evasive comment, I have to say.  "Pro-life" is a meaningless term, because it’s too vague.  I’m pro-waking up every morning so I’m pro-life.  I don’t want people dying in wars or car accidents.  Isn’t that pro-life?  When you support a ban on abortion, that’s anti-choice, a much better descriptor.  And no, I don’t think that people can really unite under the banner of reducing abortion.  I’m interested in reducing unwanted pregnancy.  That’s incompatible with a lot of anti-choicers, who view unwanted pregnancy as the just punishment for having sex.

If you haven’t seen the video of McCain on "The View", I highly recommend it.  They wouldn’t let him use evasive politician language.  

• insert mccain roe *

I don’t think anyone really believes that Presidents are just unaware of justices’ opinions when they appoint them.  Bush claims not to have used a litmus test, but somehow his justices have all miraculously been consistently anti-choice.

What was surprising to me, since both parties tend to soft pedal this controversial issue, is that the Obama campaign was so blunt in using the word abortion in a radio ad, without trying to dance around the issue with talk of reducing abortion rates.

• obama radio ad *

The common wisdom is that people shy away from the word "abortion", so you should couch the discussion in euphemisms or talk about reduction.  I think there’s a place for that, but I also think it’s valuable to speak bluntly about what the anti-choice agenda means, which is prison, disability, or even death for the huge numbers of women that will be forced to break the law to exercise their basic right to autonomy if Roe is overturned.  The Obama campaign is gambling here with the straight talk about this, but I think the voters can handle it.

The McCain campaign is aware that the traditional opposition to stem cell research that accompanies opposition to abortion rights is not good for them, because the people like the idea of stem cell research that could benefit them, health-wise.  So they’ve released ads explaining how McCain isn’t taking this anti-choice thing that far.  

• mccain stem cell *

He’s breaking with Bush on this.  It’s not surprising, considering the fact that McCain has personally felt the pain of being disabled for so much of his life, and if this kind of research can help people like him, I’m sure he supports it.

Of course, there’s more than the presidential election going on.  Colorado is having a battle over this ridiculous personhood beginning at conception amendment.  Forces are gathering to oppose it.  

• personhood amendment *

Part of the problem is that some people hold the erroneous belief that birth control pills kill fertilized eggs.  I have a new video up at Rewire explaining why this isn’t so.  It’s an attempt both to attack contraception and redefine reality.  And seriously, anti-choice nuts behind this are so unbent I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s hope for mandatory menstruation examinations.

But don’t let the insanity of Colorado distract you from South Dakota, where misogynist forces are once again trying to ban abortion.  The South Dakota Campaign For Healthy Families has an ad asking people to read the fine print of the new attempt to ban abortion, called measure 11.

• south Dakota ban *

Basically, the hope is to confuse people so much that if it does pass, doctors won’t be able to perform even medically necessary abortions because they don’t understand what’s legal and what’s not.

The ad details out a medically necessary abortion that measure 11 wouldn’t allow.

• south Dakota ban 2 *

That’s why it’s wrong to call opponents to abortion "pro-life".  If they had their way, this woman would have no sons.  Thanks to legal abortion, she has one.

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

I agree with Samhita . The funniest thing about this news story about a woman named Natalie Dylan, who claims to be selling her virginity off to pay for grad school, is that Dylan is playing the media for utter suckers.  Of course it’s getting play, because people just love to fantasize about supposedly "pure" women and despoiling them.  But it’s all nonsense. Dylan got to go on CNN, which I think probably helped her just fine in getting attention for this stunt and driving up the bidding price.

• virgin sale 1 *

I personally fail to see how it’s empowering to women to have our worth reduced to virginity, which is at best a hazy concept and mostly a fantasy and not a physical reality.  It’s empowering her personal bank account, but that doesn’t do much for women in general.  But that aside, I’m hoping she’s laughing up her sleeve at all the suckers lining up to buy the chance to sleep with a virgin. That’s like selling someone a bag of air.  

I interviewed author Hanne Blank months ago on the show, because she wrote a book about the concept of virginity, and she explained why there’s no such thing as virginity.

• insert hanne blank *

Let’s face it—the so-called lucky guy who pays through the nose to take the virginity that’s being claimed here isn’t going to have an experience different in any realistic way from sex for purchase with someone not claiming to be a virgin.  He’ll probably rationalize that something somehow felt different or else he’ll feel like a fool.  But she could easily be lying, and there’s no way to know.  If you read Hanne’s book, you’ll see that the supposed foolproof hymen test is faulty, for instance.

What’s also interesting is people’s reactions to this.

• insert virgin sale 2 *

The first woman is interesting, because the idea that you "give" your virginity as a gift of love to a man who "takes" it is problematic.  It implies that women who have had sex are different.  Soiled, ruined, used goods.  In fact, abstinence-only pretend educators often tell young women just this, that after they lose their virginity, they’re used goods like a toothbrush or a piece of chewing gum. Women are not goods to be used, and if someone finds a non-virgin unloveable, then he’s such a jerk you’re best rid of him.

The guy’s reaction was along the same lines, thinking he could tell what a virgin looks like.  Again, the fallacy is thinking that anything about you really changes after the fact, like there’s some scarlet letter on the non-virgin, some dead giveaway that can be spotted or measured.

Now for some last words from the alleged virgin, which incline me to think she’s winking at us.

• virgin sale 3 *

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

And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts.  Tim Graham of the misnamed Media Research Center came on Fox News to join the whining about other news channels that don’t devote themselves 24/7 to right wing propaganda, but allow a diversity of voices on air.  

• insert lesbian hater *

So, I guess Tim Graham thinks lesbians are categorically unqualified to be pundits.  If I said the same thing about straight men, then there would be no end of the whining, don’t you think?  So why the double standard?