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House Will Take Up-or-Down Vote on Stupak Amendment, Threatening Women's Rights
Posted by RH Reality Check, RH Reality Check on November 7, 2009 at 5:00 PM.
This post is from Jodi Jacobson's blog at RH Reality Check.
House Democratic leaders will allow an up-or-down vote on the Stupak-Pitts amendment, which seeks to block even private insurance plans from funding abortion care.
In other words, this amendment, if passed and included in a final health reform bill, would block you from getting insurance to cover legal procedures in the United States of America, with premiums paid with your personal funds. Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Women's Law Center and other groups are calling for immediate action against the amendment, and you can click here to find your representative and tell them to vote no on Stupak.
The amendment, named for Representatives Bart Stupak, D-Mich, and Joe Pitts, R-Penn. Stupak is a so-called "Democrat for Life;" Pitts has been a dogged supporter of failed abstinence-only policies, domestically and internationally, and was among those who succeeded in adding language forbidding the provision of contraceptive supplies for HIV-positive women in US global AIDS funding.
The agreement to vote on the Stupak-Pitts amendment came after 1:00 am this morning when an effort to adopt compromise language crafted by Rep. Brad Ellsworth apparently was rejected by Stupak and his supporters. We reported on the Ellsworth Amendment here. Rejection of the Ellsworth Amendment makes clear the agenda of Stupak's amendment is to ban abortion care in private insurance plans, because Ellsworth provided numerous protections against the use of federal funds for abortions other than those for rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother, for all of which the law now allows federal funding.
The Hill reports that:
Liberals on the committee threatened to vote against the final healthcare bill if it included Stupak's language, warning that it would be a return to the days of back-alley abortions.
"I forsee a return to the dark ages," Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., told The Hill. "I'm 73, I've seen these dark things, they use these coat hangers and die."
"I used to think that life was black or white, but the older I get the most gray it becomes," liberal Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., told the panelists of the House Rules committee as they debated whether to allow the amendment. "I find this amendment very, very uncomfortable."
Having successfully made birth control "too controversial for health reform," Stupak, working with other "Dems for Life," the now unabashedly ultra-right Republican party and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops threatened to block passage of the health reform bill unless he got his way on the vote. His efforts are backed up by a massive organizing effort undertaken by the Catholic Bishops to mobilize ultra-conservative Catholics throughout the country. More than 85 percent of Catholics in the United States use birth control, and Catholic women have abortions at the same rate as women in the general population.
Women's rights advocates, including the speaker of the House and a majority of the Democratic caucus, support a provision in the health-care bill that would subsidize abortions for poor women who can't afford them, in keeping with current law.
"Rep. Stupak’s proposal to codify the Hyde amendment in health-care reform would force women who want comprehensive reproductive health-care coverage to purchase a separate, single-service rider," said Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In the statement, Richards explains:
Such an "abortion rider," whereby abortion care could only be covered by a single-service plan in the exchange, is discriminatory and illogical. Women do not plan to have unintended pregnancies or medically complicated pregnancies that require ending the pregnancy. In fact, about half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, and abortion is not something that women plan to insure against. As a result, an "abortion rider" policy is unworkable. Women would not choose to purchase it, and would subsequently be unable to obtain the care they need. Proposing a separate ‘abortion rider’ represents exactly the type of government interference in the health care marketplace that conservatives purport to vehemently oppose.
For these and other reasons, "Planned Parenthood strongly opposes the Stupak-Pitts amendment which would result in women losing health benefits they have today," said Richards in a statement released early this morning. The statement continues:
This amendment would violate the spirit of health care reform, which is meant to guarantee quality, affordable health care coverage for all, by [instead] creating a two-tiered system that would punish women, particularly those with low and modest incomes. Women won't stand for legislation that takes away their current benefits and leaves them worse off after health care reform than they are today.
While Rep. Stupak claims that his amendment simply applies the Hyde amendment to health reform, nothing could be farther from the truth
In fact, "the Stupak-Pitts amendment would result in a new restriction on women's access to abortion coverage in the private health insurance market," continued Richards, "undermining the ability of women to purchase private health plans that covers abortion, even if they pay for most of the premium with their own money."
On Friday, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said passing Stupak's legislation could jeopardize passage of the bill, because abortion-rights supporters were likely to vote against a bill that includes it.
BACKGROUND on STUPAK-PITTS AMENDMENT:
The Stupak-Pitts amendment would:
The current compromise in the bill, the Capps Amendment, already strikes the right balance between pro-choice and anti-choice interests.
It stipulates that health plans cannot be mandated to cover abortion, but they can choose to.
The following is a list of editorials in major newspapers that have opposed Stupak-Pitts and similar proposals:
An editorial in USA Today (11/2/09): “[The Stupak amendment] goes too far. It would mark a broad new expansion in the effort to restrict access to abortion. Nearly 90% of private health insurance policies now offer abortion coverage, and almost half of women with private insurance have it. But women covered under the new system would have to find supplemental insurance or pay out of pocket for an unanticipated procedure that can cost from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on complexity. For anyone unable to afford it, this would amount to a de facto ban.”
An editorial in the New York Times said (10/1/09):
“Conservative critics of pending reform bills want to prohibit the use of tax subsidies to buy any health insurance policy that covers abortion. Some want to require women to buy an extra insurance “rider” if they want abortion coverage, an unworkable approach given that almost no one expects to need an abortion, few women would buy the rider and, therefore, few insurance companies would even offer it.”
An editorial in the LA Times said (11/6/09):
“The real goal of abortion opponents isn't to maintain the status quo. It's to extend federal prohibitions into private pocketbooks. By restricting coverage offered through the exchange, they hope to make abortion coverage so unattractive that insurers eventually stop offering it in the market for individual and small-group policies.”
An editorial in The St. Petersburg Times said (11/5/09):
"Contrary to the claims of Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who has been leading the antiabortion effort, the Capps amendment would not expand federal funding for abortion. Instead it would establish some basic principles to reflect the current health insurance landscape in which nearly 90 percent of private plans offer abortion coverage."
Anti-Rape Activist Gabrielle Union Speaks Out About Her Own Rape and the Richmond, CA Gang Rape
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on November 5, 2009 at 4:00 AM.
Actress and anti-rape activist Gabrielle Union, blogging about her reaction to commentary about the Richmond rape case and about her own rape (ellipses original):
I'm sad more than anything. After googling the gang rape story in Richmond and reading comments on blogs, it just leaves me sickened and really sad. The fact that race and socio-economics have been used to explain away a brutal gang rape...just sad...maybe I just have seen every kind of rapist and survivor...every race, color, religion, socio-economic status group...it's all the same...a lack of regard for violence against women. Tolerated, and in this case encouraged by the mob surrounding the perps...laughing, joking and taking pics.
When I was 19 years old, I was raped. I was working at a shoe store in California, and the store was robbed. The person robbing the store ended up putting a gun to my head and raping me. As he was raping me, I felt as though I was floating over myself, thinking, 'This isn't happening.' I blanked out and had an out-of-body experience, like I was hovering above seeing this horrible thing happen to someone else...not me. I was fortunate enough to go the UCLA rape crisis center after this horrific ordeal. It gave me my life back. My dignity and self-esteem were gone and they helped me find them again.
That's why I now lobby for state legislatures across the country and the federal government to help raise funds and awareness for rape crisis centers, and I speak to all different kinds of people across the country about what happened to me. My goal is to never hear the words 'me too' from someone after I say 'I was raped.'
Blub.
Meet the 28 (Male) Anti-Choice Dems Who Are Stalling Health Reform
Posted by mcjoan, Daily Kos on November 3, 2009 at 3:00 PM.
WaPo reports today that a number of anti-choice holdouts among Democrats are "threatening to oppose the measure over the issue of abortion to create a question about its passage."
"I will continue whipping my colleagues to oppose bringing the bill to the floor for a vote until a clean vote against public funding for abortion is allowed," Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said Monday in a statement. He said last week that 40 Democrats could vote with him to oppose the legislation -- enough to derail the bill.
To be clear, Stupak and his colleagues are joining with Republicans in trying to prevent the bill from coming to the floor at all if their extreme anti-choice amendment is not allowed. Stupak wants to prohibit abortion coverage completely in the exchange, meaning that if a woman wanted reproductive health coverage that included abortion servcies, she'd have to purchase an additional insurance rider. That would mean that a young woman covered by her parent's plan would have to negotiate with her parents for the coverage. Or a woman in an abusive relationship would have to negotiate that with her partner. Women would have to plan in advance, think ahead to whether any circumstance in their future life might lead them to have an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy and buy that extra insurance, just in case.
It's a backdoor attempt by Stupak and his colleagues to get abortion coverage excluded from private insurance, as well as public--which has been in place since 1976 with the Hyde Amendment, a rider that has been attached to appropriations bills for the past 33 years. The proposed House bill already goes much further in restricting access to abortion services than pro-choice advocates like, and in many ways marks a significant step back for choice. One of the primary issues is that it would codify the Hyde Amendment, making it permanent law.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Do Pregnant Women Have Fewer Rights?
Posted by Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, Blog of Rights on October 30, 2009 at 1:15 PM.
In March, a Florida judge forced a pregnant woman to stay on bed rest and undergo all medical treatments deemed necessary to save her fetus, virtually imprisoning her at a hospital. In June, a federal judge in Maine sentenced a pregnant woman living with HIV to spend the duration of her pregnancy in jail solely because she was HIV-positive and pregnant (her sentence was later vacated). And just last week, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in a case where local probation officers admitted they threw a probationer who failed a drug test into jail because she was pregnant; if she had not been pregnant they would have taken less drastic measures.
In a blog post on Double X, Beth Schwartzapfel does a great job of discussing this unlawful and discriminatory treatment of pregnant women. She writes:
One reason these cases keep coming up, despite their clear illegality, is simple paternalism -- overzealous prosecutors and judges think they know what’s best for a healthy pregnancy, as if that’s separate from what’s good for the pregnant woman. This is particularly troubling when judges assume that the woman must be confined or coerced in order to take good care of her child. . . . And the effect of prosecuting pregnant women who use drugs may be to deter other women with addictions from going to doctors’ offices and social service agencies -- precisely the places they need to be. If going to the emergency room might get you arrested, would you go?
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Are Obama's All-Guy Basketball Games Really a Big Deal?
Posted by Sady Doyle, Comment Is Free on October 30, 2009 at 10:15 AM.
This just in: work isn't fair. It's true. No matter how good you are at your job, how committed you are to the organization, how many extra hours you put it and how many grandparents' funerals or illnesses you've refused to take time off for, your success will still depend, to a large measure, not on these things but on less controllable social factors. Specifically, it will depend on whether or not people like you. And, more specifically, it will depend on whether or not you are liked by your boss.
It would be tempting to whine about these facts, and how they affect the antisocial curmudgeons of the world (hey, we need jobs too), were it not so very pointless. People are more inclined to trust, respect, reward and forgive each other if there is a mutual bond of affection, and not all the lectures on professional detachment in the world can change that. However, when these social factors edge into old, entrenched power dynamics, they cease to be yet another example of the petty unfairness that is built into the world, and become a legitimate concern.
When Barack Obama held an office basketball game and invited only male employees to participate, it sparked anger, simply because it looked so familiar. It's tempting to view Hoopgate as essentially silly – one more example of the supremely trivial non-controversies that have dogged Obama throughout his first year in office. (Was it right for the president to call Kanye West a "jackass"? Should presidents know how to use swear words? Is Obama a secret Taylor Swift fan, and, if so, should we be worried?)
But for women, this situation is anything but trivial. The sight of a male boss bonding with his male employees over a stereotypically male activity – and leaving female employees out – is something that many of us have seen before, at our own places of employment. And it can result in real-world inequalities.
First things first. It's important to acknowledge that Obama has appointed women to positions of power, to an admirable extent. We have our secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. We have US supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor. It's also important to recognise that the Obama administration has largely taken a progressive stance on women's issues and has advocated for women's rights. Clinton alone has done an immense service in that regard.
But this isn't the point here. Hiring women and taking a high-minded approach to gender equality are good things (and, sadly, still not things we can take for granted at this point in history), but they are not enough, on their own, to ensure a workplace that is totally devoid of preferential treatment for men.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
National Women's History Museum Bill Moves to the Senate
Posted by Rachel , Feministe on October 30, 2009 at 5:01 AM.
This is pretty cool. The House of Representatives recently passed a bipartisan bill (HR 1700) that would set the stage for a National Women’s History Museum to be built on the National Mall. It now moves to the Senate. The House passed HR 1700 on a voice vote, and in previous years similar legislation died there, so I dare to be optimistic about this bill’s chances in the Senate.
From the National Women’s History Museum website:
This bipartisan bill (H.R. 1700), re-introduced by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), will allow NWHM to purchase – at fair market value – land next to the National Mall and build the first major repository of women’s accomplishments and contributions in Washington, D.C. The Senate companion bill will be re-introduced by Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) shortly.The sale of this land involves federal property and must be approved by Congress.The National Women’s History Museum Act offers a viable opportunity for NWHM to secure a permanent physical space to house the collections that it plans to make public and further its educational services. The new location at 12th Street SW and Independence Avenue SW is across the street from several of the nation’s most iconic museums, such as the National Air and Space Museum, the National American History Museum and the National Gallery of Art. It’s the right place for a comprehensive museum on women’s accomplishments.
House Health Reform Bill Outlaws Treating Domestic Violence As a Pre-Existing Condition
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on October 29, 2009 at 10:31 AM.
This morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) unveiled the re-tooled Affordable Health Care for America Act (HR 3962). The bill will cost $900 billion over 10 years, extending health coverage to 36 million Americans (6-7 million more than the Senate Finance Committee’s version). As Igor Volsky points out, it also “includes a national public option that reimburses physicians at negotiated rates and requires individuals to acquire coverage and large employers to provide it.”
A less-noticed — but still significant — part of the bill would ensure that insurers in the individual market would no longer treat domestic violence as a pre-existing condition:
A health insurance issuer offering health insurance coverage in the individual market may not, on the basis of domestic violence, impose any preexisting condition exclusion (as defined in section 2701(b)(1)(A)) with respect to such coverage.
Eight states currently allow insurers to reject women who have survived domestic abuse for coverage. As the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim has explained:
Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you’re more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.
In human terms, it’s a second punishment for a victim of domestic violence.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Word to the Wise: Never Date a Guy Who Reads Details Magazine
Posted by Jill Filipovic, Feministe on October 28, 2009 at 3:19 PM.
Shorter Details: Tricky bitches will get themselves pregnant and then make you pay for it.
Imagine for a moment this perfectly plausible scenario: You’ve had a steady girlfriend for a year or so and everything’s going great. You still hold hands at the movies. Friends tell you you’re good together. You’re both around 30 years old and making plenty of money, maybe living together, but you’re nowhere near considering fatherhood. And though you occasionally get the feeling that her biological clock is set far ahead of yours, she tells you she’s “safe,” so you don’t worry. Why would you? It’s not as if you’d just picked her up on Dollar Margarita Night at Senor Frog’s. But one morning she tells you something has gone wrong. Unlikely as it sounds, she’s pregnant-and she wants to keep it. What she doesn’t tell you, though, is this: She wasn’t being safe all along. She wanted to have that baby— and the way she saw it, this was the only way to make it happen.
You know where this is going, right?
A few experts discuss the “trend” of women tricking men into impregnating them, without offering any hard information or statistics. A few odd people are interviewed, and they confirm that they’ve heard that other odd people are getting pregant accidently-on-purpose. And then we get to “Roe v. Wade for men”:
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Conservative Doctor Valiantly Keeps Women From Becoming Sluts
Posted by Tana Ganeva, AlterNet on October 26, 2009 at 4:59 PM.
Who says anti-choice extremists don't care about women? A USA Today article on conscience clauses -- legislation that lets health providers deny patients contraception -- quotes a doctor who obviously has only the best interests of women -- stupid, stupid women -- in mind:
Faced with a request to give an unmarried female patient a prescription for birth control pills, Dr. Michele Phillips looked to her conscience for the answer.
“I’m not going to give any kind of medication I see as harmful,” said Phillips of San Antonio. The drugs would not protect her patient from “emotional trauma from multiple partners,” Phillips reasoned, or sexually transmitted diseases. “I could not ethically give that type of medication to a single woman.”
Unwanted babies, of course, do heal STDs and emotional trauma.
Via Feminists for Choice (an Feministing)
Should a Woman Change Her Name When She Marries? 70 Percent of Americans Think So
Posted by Jill Filipovic, Feministe on October 26, 2009 at 10:45 AM.
Apparently 70 percent of Americans believe that a woman should change her name when she marries, and 50 percent believe it should be required by law. While I would expect most Americans to favor name-changing, I didn't expect that it was that high, and I certainly didn't think that so many people believe it should be legally mandated. I was also suprised that only 5-10 percent of women keep their own names.
I'm not married and so I recognize that this is an easier calculus for me to make now, but I have never even considered changing my last name. I don't think I ever would consider it. My mom, like many women of her generation, took my father's name -- it's just what everyone did, and it was easier. My best friend, who was raised in a pretty religious home, took her husband's name when she got married -- I don't know that she really gave a lot of thought to the whole process. It was just what you did.
Where I actually felt the shock of the name-change was seeing a list of female names I didn't recognize on Facebook, then clicking through and realizing, oh, that’s someone I've known since the 5th grade. Except not really, because I always knew Jane Jones and now she’s Jane Brown. Or maybe she’s Jane “Jones” Brown with her former name in quotes -- because, I dunno, it's a joke? I suppose I'm sheltered, but I assumed that the majority of my female friends (and especially college friends and acquaintences) would keep their own names. I was stunned at how many women I knew changed their names when they married.
What throws me off even more is when I see feminist-minded or liberal women take their husband’s name, and then defend it with "Well it's my choice" or "My last name was my father's anyway" or "I don't care about my name." I can understand the name-change part, even if I don't like it -- it can almost be more of a hassle to keep your own name than to take your husband’s once you're married, especially if you have kids. People may criticize you for keeping your own name. In a lot of communities, it is what everyone does. Your husband may even be upset if you don't want to take his name (although I'd say that's a pretty good indicator that he's kind of self-centered and you probably shouldn't marry him).
What confuses me (and gets under my skin) is the justification -- or at least, the justification based on things other than the very real, tangible sexist reactions that married women face when they keep their own names. Things like, "Well, it was my father's name." Well, sure, but what does that mean? That no woman ever has her own name, unless she was born into a culture where naming is matrilineal? Or, "I like his name better." Ok, but do men regularly change their names just because their partner as a "better" name? I’ve come across maybe one man in my whole life who has done that -- I somehow doubt that it just so happens that 99 percent of people with the “better” name are male. Or, "I want our whole family to have the same name." Again, understandable, but how come he didn’t change his name? Or you can both change your names.
I wish we could have a more honest conversation about name-changing. Instead, women like me who find name changing really, really problematic are cast as simply mean and judgmental, and women who do change their names are just exercising their "choice." I'll cop to being judgmental here -- this isn't one of those situations where I think every choice is equally good and it's a simple matter of preference. That said, there are very real reasons why married women may change their names, and I can certainly understand and empathize with making certain compromises and just not having the desire or energy to fight every feminist battle. I don't think it calls your feminist creds into question if you change your name. But I admittedly do wish that more women would keep their names. I wish more women felt like it was a valid and accessible option.
Names and naming matters. It is bigger than just an individual, personal choice. While I certainly respect the rights of people to make their own choices when it comes to their names, and while I can’t fault women who decide that keeping their own name is not a battle they want to fight, let’s not pretend like these choices exist in a vaccum, or like they don’t have a wider impact when it comes to normalizing sexist cultural practices.
I've been to a couple of weddings in the past few months, some where the bride changed her name and some where she didn’t. I'll admit, on a very basic level, that I felt a little gut-punched when the name-changing couples were announced as "Mr. and Mrs. John Smith." The woman was totally erased; she entered into what I would like to think of as a partnership, and instead she was just absorbed into her partner.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Ross Douthat's Gay Marriage Moment of Truth: It's Embarrassing to be a Bigot
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on October 23, 2009 at 11:30 AM.
Self-styled social conservative columnist Ross Douthat admits that he's uncomfortable discussing gay marriage in public because he opposes it for no good reason:
The question came from Christopher Glazek, a fact-checker at The New Yorker, who wanted to know whether Mr. Douthat and Mr. Salam believed that former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, who has apologized on behalf of his party for the Southern Strategy, should also apologize for the Republican party's gay politics.
At first Mr. Douthat seemed unable to get a sentence out without interrupting himself and starting over. Then he explained: "I am someone opposed to gay marriage who is deeply uncomfortable arguing the issue in public."
Mr. Douthat indicated that he opposes gay marriage because of his religious beliefs, but that he does not like debating the issue in those terms. At one point he said that, sometimes, he feels like he should either change his mind, or simply resolve never to address the question in public. [NY Obs]
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Insurance Company Tells Rape Victim Her Assault Would be a Pre-Existing Condition
Posted by RH Reality Check, RH Reality Check on October 21, 2009 at 7:00 PM.
This post comes from Jodi Jacobson's blog at RH Reality Check.
There is a serious and deep disconnect on health reform between reality and the debates ongoing in Washington. For one thing, despite continued support by the actual people of the United States for a public option in health reform, some Senators, namely Max Baucus (D-Montana) just want "a bill that can pass." Sounds to me like that's a strong endorsement of giving us the lowest common denominator health bill on one of the most important issues of our time.
Yet another deep, deep disconnect is on the issue of women--the people, their lives, their reproductive needs--being considered either irrelevant a la Senator "Who-Needs-Maternity-Care" Kyl of Arizona (home of the Sheriff who wanted female inmates to pay extra transportation costs to procure abortions) or in the form of Senator "You-Can't-Pay-For-Your-Abortion-With-Your-Private-Insurance-Policy" Hatch (R-Utah), or the insurance companies and the Catholic Bishops for whom women's health is a pre-existing condition or a condition of original sin.
Out of all of this is an increasing string of stories of individual women who've been denied insurance because their wombs, breasts, rapes (pick one) or simply their sex makes them a "pre-existing condition."
Among the most recent examples is a woman who spoke at the launch of NWLC's "Being A Woman Is Not A Pre-Existing Condition" campaign on October 20th, 2009.
Writing at Womenstake.org, Amanda Stone recounts the tale of the speaker, Chris Turner:
"Nope, we won’t take her." This is what insurance companies in Florida said when asked whether they would provide insurance coverage to a hypothetical applicant who had survived rape. Let’s back up a few steps. First, who was asking the question? Second, why was the applicant's history posed as a hypothetical? Third, what can we do to change this dire situation?
In November 2002, [Chris Turner] was drugged and raped while on a business trip. She sought medical help from her physician, who put her on preventative anti-HIV medication, since there was no way of knowing whether the person who raped her used a condom. Following her assault, Chris was afraid to leave her house for some time. About a month after the assault, Chris gathered the courage to seek counseling to deal with her fears-counseling which continued for about a year. She took the steps she needed to take care of herself, and the steps she now encourages other rape survivors to take as a volunteer at a Florida organization called SOAR-Speaking Out About Rape. As a volunteer, she warns rape survivors about a harm which she faced-she tells them, "if you lose your insurance, you might not be able to get it back." This is exactly what happened to Chris.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Women Should Cut Out the "Fat Talk"
Posted by Jill Filipovic, Feministe on October 19, 2009 at 5:36 PM.
Via Kate comes this great website combating “fat talk” — the constant little comments that women make to other women about themselves.
I hate “fat talk.” It makes me uncomfortable when other women do it. I never quite know what to say — I don’t want to issue the knee-jerk response of “You’re not fat!” because that kind of implies that being fat is The Worst Thing Ever. I also don’t want to ignore the comment, because then the commenting friend walks away thinking that I think she’s fat, and for her, that is a Very Bad Thing.
And yet I’m the absolute worst when it comes to fat talk. Like many women I have a whole slew of body issues; my weight is always on my mind, and I feel like I’m in a constant battle with my body. I’ve started to make my peace with how I look, and I’ve started to accept the fact that I love physical activity and exercise, I love to eat (and I like to eat food that feels nourishing, clean and healthy), but my body is just a certain build and shape and I’m never going to be 5′10″ and 110 pounds. I can turn things I love — physical activity and food — into things I resent in order to be thinner, but it’s not worth it. I’ve done it, and it makes me unhappy. Deciding “I would rather be happy” sounds simple, but it’s psychologically challenging when for so long I associated happiness with thinness — as in, “I’ll be happy when I’m 20 pounds thinner.” I’m learning how to allow myself to be happy and not thin. It’s a process, though, and as I go through it I still find myself complaining to my friends about the way I look. I also have a group of friends who are mostly very thin — significantly thinner than I am. It can be very difficult to always feel like the “fattest” in the group. And when I spend time with women who are larger than I am, I also find myself feeling envious — of their curves or of the way clothes fit them or of their confidence or of whatever else they have that I don’t. I feel like I never measure up.
Part of the reason why Fat Talk is so harmful is that it’s a constant reminder that women have an obligation to look good, always. It’s our burden as women to present an attractive face to the world — to be ornamental and to decorate. It’s also about fat-hate and fat-shaming, but even for the not-fat among us, it’s that little whisper of you aren’t doing your job.
What’s especially difficult, I think, is balancing the need for honest conversation and support with the obligation to not do harm to other women. I want to be able to talk, even in feminist spaces, about body issues, but I also don’t want to engage in Fat Talk or trigger women who have have histories of eating disorders. Even more importantly (at least for me), I want to be able to have honest discussions with my closest friends — not in a vent-y “Blah I feel fat today” way, but in the intimate way we discuss everything else in our lives.
All of that said, though, it’s good practice to nix the Fat Talk. So that’s what I’m going to do this week. No Fat Talk starting now. Only positive body talk.
It’ll be a good exercise. Who’s with me?
Schwarzenegger Creates Harvey Milk Day While Rejecting Trans Rights
Posted by Cara, Feministe on October 16, 2009 at 9:30 AM.
You may have heard that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed into law a bill that will create a Harvey Milk Day, honoring the slain gay politician and icon. It’s the first time that any LGBT person has been honored in such a way, so obviously people are excited about the symbolism.
What has been receiving some blog coverage but little mainstream media attention, however, is the fact that at the same time Schwarzenegger signed this bill, he vetoed a couple of others -- one which would have made it easier for transgender people born in California to correct their birth certificates to the proper gender and name, and another which would have helped to combat sexual violence against LGBT prisoners.
With regards to the former, a birth certificate is probably the most important piece of identification that any of us have. While it's not used on a daily basis, it's often the document on which our other pieces of identification are based, though most of us who are cis have the privilege and luxury of not thinking about it. When a trans person's identification does not match their identity, it sets them up for being outed against their will -- and subsequently creates a large risk of them being accused of fraud, harassed, denied basic services and care, and/or violently attacked. The bill would have made the difficult process of correcting the document just a tiny bit easier -- and by the way, wouldn’t have cost taxpayers anything.
The latter piece of vetoed legislation, Schwarzenegger called "unnecessary." But unnecessary to whom? It's really rather well known that LGBT prisoners face hugely disproportionate sexual violence in prisons, a place where rape already runs rampant. This is especially so for cis gay and bisexual men, who are regularly targeted for prison rape, and for trans women, who are often placed wrongly in men's prisons and thus put at extreme risk for sexual violence from cis inmates. The only way the governor does not know this is if he's willfully ignorant on matters over which he's supposed to be governing. And so to say that it's unnecessary for sexual orientation and gender identity to be taken into account when deciding how to safely house prisoners is outrageously callous, and a massive slap across the face to those LGBT inmates who have been or will be sexually assaulted by assailants targeting them for their identities.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
White House Muddying the Waters on Gay Rights
Posted by Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog on October 13, 2009 at 4:24 AM.
John Harwood went on CNBC yesterday and, in the context of a discussion of the gay-rights march, said that "the White House views this opposition as really part of the 'internet left fringe.'" We've since heard from a White House spokesman that that's not really the administration's attitude toward gay-rights activists or lefty bloggers, and Harwood has said that the quote is accurate but was a reference to lefty bloggers rather than gay activists.
I'm seeing this as a very deliberate self-contradiction two-step.
I saw the Bush White House do something like this back in 2004. There was a tough presidential race that year, and days before the Republicans were about to hold a convention in which they were going to fire up the base, very much including the religious-right base, Dick Cheney went out and said he personally supported allowing states to legalize gay marriage. That was clearly an attempt to mollify moderates without alienating fundamentalists -- the president still supported banning gay marriage altogether, as did the party platform, but soccer moms heard a different message.
The deliberate muddying of the message was the message.
That's what's going on now. Obama reached out to the gay community -- and yet he wants to be seen as not being tight with gays or the angrier lefties. So a friendly journalist leaked this remark -- this deniable remark -- which has since been, um, denied. And now the message is muddied. The mixed signals are meant, I think, to confuse supporters of gay rights and wavering but potentially Democratic-voting non-liberal voters (including non-white social conservatives) in, oh, say, New Jersey and Virginia.
Did I say "friendly journalist"? Yeah -- John Harwood seems quite close to the Obama White House. He's interviewed Obama a number of times during the campaign and presidency. I don't believe he'd have messed up his extraordinary access to the president by delivering a message the White House didn't want delivered.
But, as I say, it's a message the White House also wanted to deny. So it was made deniable.
I think most White Houses do things like this. That doesn't make them any less ugly.
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