A Follow-Up Note (Sexual Redistribution)

#TheWomeAreSpeaking | #PayAttention

Meanwhile, there is this:

It’s really something the way Douthat can barely hold his nose to mention the monstrous “left leaning and feminist” among us, but it’s outstanding that he can then go on to leap from “the overweight and disabled” to internet trolls.

You want to have a conversation about sexual agency for marginalized groups, I am there for it. Surrogacy, self-pleasure, community: awesome. We are all entitled to healthy, safe, consensual sexual expression. But (grudgingly hoists megaphone): YEAH, THESE GUYS DON’T WANT THAT.

This isn’t rocket science. Men who idolize mass murderers do so because they hate women. They feel they have a right to their bodies. It enrages them when women do not behave in a sexually conciliatory way toward them. It enrages them that other men can obtain what they cannot, because they don’t see sex as a mutually pleasurable experience but as a reward they have been deprived of. They see themselves apart from the “Chads and Stacies” and “normies”—their version of the popular kids—and take comfort in posting memes about evil females and their precious man spaces. Oh, no, you’ve got us all wrong, they argue, I just want a nice girlfriend, and why can’t these ungrateful bitches understand that?

Douthat’s willful ignorance is telling. He hilariously believes that “The sexual revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration.” Because nobody wanted to screw good-looking people before disco and the Pill were invented. He sees the sexual economy in blanket terms, ignoring that the perpetrators of mass violence are generally not, say, women in wheelchairs. He visualizes “commerce and technology . . . harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels.” My dude, these guys don’t want to BUY sex. They want to be GIVEN sex. A big part of the incel mindset is a revulsion of women who are sexually independent. As Jennifer Wright noted recently in Harper’s Bazaar, “There’s a lot of slut-shaming.” No hypothetical robot is going to cure that.

(Marcotte)

The Year in Review (Banner Sexism)

Catherine Pearson recalls for HuffPo twenty-four high-profile sexist moments over the course of the last year, and we might offer only two criticisms.

To the one, the year isn’t over, yet, and a bunch of Republicans are running for president.

To the other, we would humbly recall the occasion Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) explained that his faith governs his use of intrauterine devices and emergency contraception.

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Pearson, Catherine. “24 Times Sexism Was Very, Very Real In 2015”. The Huffington Post. 9 December 2015.

Called “Family Values”, for Some Strange Reason

Something about Republicans and values and bigotry goes here.

Socially conservative Republicans gathered in Washington this week have their eye on Senator Ted Cruz of Texas for the party’s presidential nod and former neurosurgeon Ben Carson for the Republican vice presidential nominee.

(Reuters)

Yeah. That’ll do.

Family Research Council Action, a Christian lobbying group, said on Saturday that more attendees polled at the Values Voter Summit said Cruz, a leader with the Republican’s Tea Party wing, should be the party’s presidential nominee for the November 2016 election.

Cruz, who also won the group’s so-called “straw poll” the previous two years, took 35 percent of the support among the nearly 2,700 summit-goers, followed by Carson with 18 percent, the group said in a statement. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee got 14 percent and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida 13 percent.

Business tycoon Donald Trump, who has led public opinion polls, came in fifth place with 5 percent.

Carson led among attendees for the vice presidential nod with 25 percent support among those polled, followed by former business executive Carly Fiorina with 21 percent and Cruz with 14 percent, the group said.

Sounds about right.

Anyway, yeah. Just thought you should know. After all, when it comes to family values, this is what Republicans are actually talking about.

You know. Bigotry as a family value, that sort of thing. And it probably isn’t fair to recall the conservative pitch about bigotry as a virtue of citizenship, since that was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who dropped out. But was the previous family-values frontrunner. And, you know, it’s pretty clear it’s not the bigotry wrecking these candidates; in this crowd, they give awards for it.

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Washington Newsroom. “Republican ‘Values’ voters back Cruz-Carson presidential ticket”. Reuters. 26 September 2015.

The John Kasich Show (What Counts)

“I’m willing to fight all day long, but you’ve got to have a good prospect of being able to be successful. Because if you’re not successful, you shut the government down, you open it up and you haven’t achieved anything. You’re just going to have people shake their head and wonder what your thinking was.”

―Gov. John Kasich (R-OH)

Remember, though, this is John Kasich we’re talking about, here. The takeaway from Jennifer Bendery’s report for Huffington Post is that Mr. Kasich is giving his colleagues sound strategic advice. That is to say, we should not let this or his recent sound bite about Kim Davis suggest he is any sort of moderate.

A Potsherd Wrapped in Tinfoil Wrapped in Whatnow?

“They entice these ladies into their facility knowing that once they get there, it’s a very lucrative experience. Because they’re going to give her medicines and birth control shots and pills and things that will expose her to breast cancer. Then she’ll go to Susan Komen, because Susan Komen exchanges money with Planned Parenthood, the money goes back and forth between them. And if she gets pregnant, they’re going to give her an abortion and then they’re going to traffic the body parts of the baby. So they make a lot of money off of black women that are underserved, off of all women.”

―Alveda King

This is … uh ....

No, really. This is what it comes to? I mean, holy shit, what does that even mean?

Seriously: How does that even make sense? And here’s an even better question: Is that word salad coherent enough to percolate into the news cycle as a real conspiracy theory?

Alveda King is, after all, a FOX News contributor.

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Arana, Gabriel. “Fox News Signs Alveda King, Niece of Martin Luther King Jr., As Contributor”. The Huffington Post. 6 March 2015.

Blue, Miranda. “Alveda King: Planned Parenthood Gives Women Breast Cancer So They Will Donate To Susan G. Komen”. Right Wing Watch. 27 August 2015.

A Meandering Consideration of Absolutism

“Maybe it’s an unfortunate hallmark of contemporary conservative thought?”

―Steve Benen

Over at Slate, Fred Kaplan offers an interesting consideration:

It’s looking more and more like Benjamin Netanyahu committed a strategic blunder in so ferociously opposing the Iran nuclear deal and in rallying his American allies to spend all their resources on a campaign to kill the deal in Congress.

If current trends hold, the Israeli prime minister and his stateside lobbyists—mainly AIPAC—are set to lose this fight. It’s politically risky for Israel’s head of state to go up against the president of his only big ally and benefactor; it’s catastrophic to do so and come away with nothing. Similarly, it’s a huge defeat for AIPAC, whose power derives from an image of invincibility. American politicians and donors might get the idea that the group isn’t so invincible after all, that they can defy its wishes, now and then, without great risk.

It would have been better for Netanyahu—and for Israel—had he maybe grumbled about the Iran deal but not opposed it outright, let alone so brazenly. He could have pried many more favors from Obama in exchange for his scowl-faced neutrality. Not that Obama, or any other American president, will cut Israel off; but relations will remain more strained, and requests for other favors (for more or bigger weapons, or for certain votes in international forums) will be scrutinized more warily, than they would have been.

There is, of course, much more to Kaplan’s consideration, including the implications of current Congressional momentum and the widening gap between the credibility of favoring and opposing arguments. Toward the latter, he notes, “Most criticisms of the deal actually have nothing to do with the deal”, and that’s about as least unfavorable as his critique of the criticism gets.

The Marco Rubio Show (Mansplanation)

“Obviously, my faith has a teaching that governs me in my personal life on these issues. But I think our laws on those issues are different.”

―Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

There really is a lot going on, but we also just need to get this one out of the way:

Rubio also said that he does not support measures to ban emergency contraceptives and intrauterine devices (IUD), which some anti-abortion groups contend cause abortions.

“I don’t want to ban any contraceptive efforts,” Rubio said. “Obviously, my faith has a teaching that governs me in my personal life on these issues. But I think our laws on those issues are different.”

(Richardson)

Just … okay, work with me, here. Please.

If your religious faith resolved as such to govern your decision in such a fashion that it is acceptable for you to use an IUD, Mr. Rubio, then what, exactly, would you do with it?

The problem with the Florida junior’s sort of evasion is that the maneuver involves digging a hole in very unstable ground. There is no good way out.

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Richardson, Bradford. “Rubio vows to end Iran agreement if elected”. The Hill. 9 August 2015.

Steve Beshear’s Headache

Meanwhile, in the Bluegrass State:

David V. Moore and his fiancé went to the Rowan County Clerk’s office, armed with a copy of that Supreme Court ruling, in addition to Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear’s executive order requiring all county clerks to issue marriage licenses. In the video, employees appear to ignore the legal documents provided, continuing to refuse the couple’s request for a marriage license, while the Clerk Davis hid in the back of the office.

Writing on his Facebook wall, Moore says, “We were denied a marriage license on Monday, July 6 at the Rowan County Clerk’s office. Kim Davis is at the end of the video, but we turned it off at her request.”

The recording shows the men entering the clerk’s office and waiting patiently while other residents — including people who came in after the couple — are served. Staff at the counter refuse the men’s request and tell them that Clerk Davis is “busy right now.” Then employees called the police, insisting that the couple’s supporters stop filming the anticipated rejection.

A police officer arrives at the office toward the end of the video and speaks with employees. When Clerk Davis finally emerges from her office (around the 11 minute mark), she tells the supporter to “Put your phone away.” The two continue to bicker for a moment before the video ends.

Kentucky law does not forbid filming any interactions with public officials in a public place.

(Browning)

Oh, and you know there’s more.

Spiritual Warfare, Among Other Things

We may or may not have mentioned before something about bigots, victimhood, and insurrection.^α

If I told you we could add the Southern Baptist Convention to the list, would you really be surprised?

Or, as Craig Schneider of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution explains:

Declaring “spiritual warfare” on gay marriage, thousands gathered here Tuesday for the annual Southern Baptist Convention and vowed that, no matter what the Supreme Court rules this month, they will never yield on the issue.

The Baptists acknowledged that the court seems likely to legalize same-sex marriage when it rules in the next two weeks, but leaders urged the faithful to stand fast and, indeed, lead the nation in opposition.

“We are in spiritual warfare,” said convention president Rev. Ronnie Floyd. “This is not a time for Southern Baptists to stand back.”

Floyd echoed a generally defiant tone among attendees, many of them pastors, who have faced increasing criticism for their belief that the Bible declares homosexuality a sin and limits marriage to a man and a woman. At a time when society is increasingly tolerant of same-sex unions, he said, Southern Baptists must stand by their views.

“This is not the time to retreat,” said Floyd, who leads Cross Church in Arkansas. “The alarm clock is going off around the world. Now is not the time to hit the snooze button.”

And it goes on. Fuel to the “wildfire of sexual revolution” that would “move it beyond all control”. At least Dr. Floyd is honest about the connection between sexuality and control. But this is also an attempt by Southern Baptists to paint themselves as victims of gross injustice:

Many of their congregants, sensing the shifting cultural climate on gay marriage, feel defensive and afraid to publicly state their views, wary of being cast as bigots or hate-mongers.

“We understand how fully unpopular our view is, and where the culture is on this issue,” said the Rev. Bryant Wright of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in East Cobb and a former convention president. “But we must stay true to God’s word.”

Wright acknowledged the difficulty of communicating that church members are not hateful or discriminatory against gays and lesbians, though Baptists do believe they are sinners. He noted that he preaches to teens who have sex outside of marriage, people who divorce, and those who commit adultery. He loves them and hopes they find their way, he said.

Let us be clear: When you are calling for warfare of any kind, spiritual or otherwise, in response to the fact that other people have human rights, there is not really any useful way to slip the question of bigotry; nor do people believe the claim that you are not hateful or discriminatory.

Really, that part seems pretty self-evident.

An Important Difference

Sometimes it really does make a difference.

With Gov. Kate Brown’s signature Thursday, Oregon women will be the first in the nation who can get a year’s supply of birth control with one prescription.

When the change takes effect Jan. 1, women will no longer have to renew their prescriptions every 30 to 90 days. After an initial three-month supply, refills of the same prescription can be obtained for one year.

“We knew that the medical research was very clear that filling a yearlong prescription all at once is a significant contributor to improving the effectiveness of birth control,” Mary Nolan, interim executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon, told the Associated Press before the signing.

(Winter)

Many are the occasions on which we might hear a neighbor bitterly proclaim that politicians are all the same, that it doesn’t matter who you vote for because it doesn’t make a difference. This argument is intended to help one of the parties. As Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) reminds yet again, there really is a difference, and some days it can be really, really important.

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Image note: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) signs new legislation allowing one-year prescriptions for birth control, 11 June 2015, in Salem. (AP Photo)

Winter, Michael. “Oregon women first to get yearlong birth control”. USA Today. 11 June 2015.