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Abortion and health care reform
Senator Franken's anti-rape amendment
On this episode of Reality Cast, I'll be interviewing Shannon Boodram about her new anthology on young people's sexual experiences. Also, the issue of sexual health in the health care reform debates continues to distract, and Dr. Phil does a ludicrous scare story about teenage girls and oral sex.
May I point you to a cute video about abstinence-only put together by the League of Young Voters?
- marshmellow *
Abstinence-only proponents are misrepresenting a study on delayed gratification. The original study showed that kids who could resist eating a marshmellow not for the promise of two later tended to better in life. This doesn't actually mean that waiting for marriage will make you a better person. The point was resisting temptation for a greater reward was evidence that some kids were a bit more rational than others. But there's no evidence whatsoever that resisting premarital sex results in a greater reward. Delaying for no reason at all has not been shown to have any correlation to better life outcomes.
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NARAL's Blog For Choice has a nice little video up detailing how anti-choicers are using the issue of abortion in a cynical way, to obstruct health care reform altogether. It's an interesting little game they're playing, because there are layers upon layers of deception going on here. Anti-choicers are claiming that they merely want to stop government funding for abortion from happening, even though that was never on the table. But if you listen closely, what they're really demanding is that women who currently have abortion coverage get that stripped.
- health care 1 *
That was, in order, David Beriet of 40 Days for Life, and Rep. Bart Stupak. Here's what the explicit exclusion they're demanding would do. All insurance companies in the country would be part of the system, and so all of them would be forced to stop covering abortion. That means that anywhere from half to 87% of women who currently have abortion coverage would lose it. This is about depriving women of currently existing benefits.
But it's really more than that. Here's the thing: Most people making these radical anti-choice demands would not support a health care reform bill that did explicitly exclude abortion coverage for all women. If Democrats give in on this demand, they're immediately going to move on to raising a panic because health care reform will cover contraception and STD tests and treatment. Abortion is only one tool they have to use female sexuality to raise a panic over health care reform. This isn't really about abortion, or sex even. It's about using these things to create noise and shut down health care reform.
There's no reason to try to believe that anti-choice hysteria over health care reform isn't just part of a larger anti-health care reform agenda. In fact, anti-choicers themselves have done us the favor of linking the two explicitly.
- health care 2 *
What was interesting was that the American Life League's signs didn't even bother to conceal that the real agenda is shutting down health care reform. They didn't even reference the abortion smokescreen, and instead referenced the right wing obsession with Ted Kennedy, and celebrated his death. How "pro-life" of them.
But as depressing as all this is, I do have some good news to report. Senator Al Franken introduced an appropriations amendment that would bar defense contractors from government money if they cover up rapes committed by their employees or punish rape victims who press charges or file lawsuits. It was brought forth because of what happened to Jamie Leigh Jones, a woman who worked for Halliburton.
- Franken *
30 male Republican Senators voted against this amendment to cut off defense contractors that do things like this to their employees.
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Insert interview
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Thank you, fine bloggers at Jezebel, for watching the Dr. Phil show so I don't have to. Because Dr. Phil did a panic piece on teenagers having oral sex, and he doesn't even try to hide that this is one of those situations where everyone is going to work up some outrage so they can titillate themselves by talking about teenagers and oral sex. He really gets into setting the stage, putting out some details to make this sound as filthy and perverse as possible.
- teen sex 1 *
Okay, even a libertine like myself has to admit that if your kindergartner is involved in this sort of thing, I'd blanch, particularly if it wasn't just a matter of a couple of kids playing doctor. But in that case, that's child molestation and sexual assault, which is not what Dr. Phil is talking about here. No, he's talking about consensual sexual relations between teenagers.
- teen sex 2 *
Wait, did he just say 15 to 19 years old? 40% of the group he's trying to raise a panic about are legal adults who can vote, and the other 60% are pretty damn close. And he doesn't let you know that the percentages go up dramatically every year in that cohort. So here's what bothers me. Dr. Phil paints a picture of a young woman who both sits in daddy's lap playing with dolls and who has oral sex with her male peers, and then he hits us with the big reveal, which is that she's probably 17 or 18 years old. And we're supposed to find the sex part creepy? I think if a 17-year-old is sitting in daddy's lap playing with dolls, that's the perverted crap that needs to end. Gross, Dr. Phil. Give me an anonymous bathroom encounter over a 17-year-old and her daddy playing like she's 5. What, does he think girls that age should be wearing pinafores and Mary Janes, too?
Or, he could be suggesting that because a woman used to be a little girl, that means it is always gross that she has a sex life, even after she's an adult. Or maybe he means that you should not have sex until everyone alive who remembers you as a little girl is dead. That means most of us can probably start having that sex stuff in our 50s, though some of us might have to wait until our 60s or later. That won't really keep the human race alive, this strategy of waiting until after menopause to have sex to protect your parents.
Of course, Dr. Phil is a firm believer that women don't have sexual desires of their own, so the hook for this episode is that teenage girls are having oral sex because they're all prostitutes doing it in exchange for money. I'm not kidding.
- teen sex 3 *
There's no doubt in my mind that some women have sex they don't enjoy with men because they're doormats. That doesn't stop at adulthood, and in fact, social conservatives of all stripes argue that female sexuality is primarily about using sex to buy commitment from men. But I would argue that women, like men, have sexual desires and primarily have sex because their hormones push them towards it. I base my "women like sex" theory on this thing called "real world evidence". In fact, and I know this might really throw Dr. Phil for a loop, there's strong reasons to believe that women even have orgasms on occasion, and that women enjoy these orgasm things so much that they even have them on their own through a process called masturbation. If women only have sex for male approval, popularity, and new shoes, then there wouldn't be any such thing as female masturbation. And yet, there it is.
The flip side of all this panic about teenage girl having sex is the nudge-nudge, wink-wink amusement at famous teenage impregnator Levi Johnston getting laid without bothering with boring girlie stuff like caring about contraception. Johnston is advertising pistachios for some reason.
- teen sex 4 *
I bring this up, because it really shows how much this teen sex panic is about basic sexism. On one hand, popular culture shows like Dr. Phil are arguing, with a straight face, that young women's sexuality is so disgusting that it's basically impossible that a young woman could enjoy sex. On the other hand, you have ads like this that treat young male sexuality with a warm indulgence, because it's inevitable and if they deem to take even the slightest responsibility, they're treated like heroes. Imagine how much less dysfunctional our society would be without this paranoia and these double standards.
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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, you really think that edition. Rachel Campos-Duffy on "The View" has the most asinine argument against Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize I've heard to date.
- nobel *
Saying there won't be peace until there's no abortion sounds like a threat to me, a threat to keep harassing, threatening, stalking, shooting, and bombing until women stop aborting. Which they'll never do, because women have always, always found ways to end unwanted pregnancies.
