Month: October 2006

You Make Me Feel So Young

jfpbookworm
[Crossposted to my Vox blog.]

Just when I was starting to feel like I was getting old, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services comes through and treats me like a kid again:

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

Up to 29? Heck, even if we don’t take the usual tactic here of focusing on the endpoint, the average age of the cohort they’re including is 24. Most unmarried 24-year-olds are going to be either in the workforce or higher education – presumably at that point they’ve merited a little autonomy?

For twenty-somethings, it’s not really an abstinence only program any more, because as far as I’m aware there’s no centralized, government-funded source of sex education for us. There is not as yet any law against turning on my TV and watching Sue Johansson on cable, or going to the library and checking out books on the subject, or going online and (unless I’m on Buffalo’s heavily filtered municipal wireless, where I can’t read half my usual blogs because they’re afraid someone’s going to lure a kid into an unmarked van with promises of Pandagon posts) reading about any imaginable variation.

In addition, many of the abstinence arguments for teenagers simply don’t apply in the same way. Telling a 15-year-old that he or she should wait to have sex is very different from telling a 25-year-old to wait. The message to the kid is more “wait until you’re older” than “wait until you’re married,” although the assumption is that they will follow the approved life script and marry in their late teens or twenties. For the adult, it’s all about marriage – nobody has a problem with his or her married peers being sexually active – and an adult has a better idea of the likelihood of their getting married at some point than a teenager does.

So I suspect “abstinence only” isn’t really aimed at gutting sex ed like it is for the kids; it’s about funding a propaganda campaign.

But Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the revision is aimed at 19- to 29-year-olds because more unmarried women in that age group are having children.

Wait, I thought that women were supposed to have children in their twenties. Isn’t that what the panic about career women who wait until later in life to have kids is about? Oh, right, we’re talking about unmarried women here. (I suspect we’re also talking about women of color here when we mention “identifying groups” at risk.)

“The message is ‘It’s better to wait until you’re married to bear or father children,’ ” Horn said. “The only 100% effective way of getting there is abstinence.”

This is flatly untrue. Given that (as of now) abortion and contraception are both legal, for folks with access to them (which sadly isn’t universal), that’s pretty much a 100% effective way of not bearing children you don’t want. Ironically, the statement is a lot more true for men, given that they have to abide by their partner’s decision. So why does “abstinence only” ignore contraception for does every form of abstinence only treat men’s behavior as an afterthought?

Furthermore, I’m not sure how my marrying someone would make either them or me a better parent. The only thing I can think of is that they could get the benefit of my health insurance. It’s not going to make us better off financially or make me want children.

I think this shows what the “abstinence only” movement is really about: it’s less about helping people than social control. (I suppose that when enough arguments get leveled at the pregnancy rationale, they’ll switch over to STDs as the reason.) Abstinence-only education, the ire over gay marriage, it all boils down to the idea that we should all be good little Christians and adhere to the script; if we’re not good little Christians, we should at least have the decency to hide it.

More at Pandagon.

I <3 NY

jfpbookworm
[Crossposted to my Vox blog.]

It’s been a while since I’ve heard good news on the reproductive rights front – it’s been abortion bans and “conscience clauses” for so long.

Yesterday the New York Court of Appeals issued a decision in Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany v. Serio upholding a provision of the Women’s Health and Wellness Act which requires all but a narrowly defined category of religious institutions to provide insurance coverage for contraception if they provide prescription drug coverage.

It should be noted that some religious entities can exempt themselves from this requirement, if they meet the following criteria:

(a) The inculcation of religious values is the purpose of the entity.
(b) The entity primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the entity.
(c) The entity serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity.
(d) The entity is a nonprofit organization as described in Section 6033 (a) (2) (A) i or iii, of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.

(That last provision means that the entity qualifies as a church or religious order under the federal tax code.)

What the WHWA does not exempt are religious organizations engaging in fundamentally non-religious activities that wish to use their clout to deny contraception to nonreligious employees:

It is also important, in our view, that many of plaintiffs’ employees do not share their religious beliefs. (Most of the plaintiffs allege that they hire many people of other faiths; no plaintiff has presented evidence that it does not do so.) The employment relationship is a frequent subject of legislation, and when a religious organization chooses to hire non-believers it must, at least to some degree, be prepared to accept neutral regulations imposed to protect those employees’ legitimate interests in doing what their own beliefs permit.

They actually recognize that everyone has beliefs, not just the anti-choicers!

Finally, we must weigh against plaintiffs’ interest in adhering to the tenets of their faith the State’s substantial interest in fostering equality between the sexes, and in providing women with better health care. The Legislature had extensive evidence before it that the absence of contraceptive coverage for many women was seriously interfering with both of these important goals. The Legislature decided that to grant the broad religious exemption that plaintiffs seek would leave too many women outside the statute, a decision entitled to deference from the courts.

Finally, this shouldn’t need pointing out, but even if you take the idea of “judicial activism” as a bad thing seriously, this is not a case of “judicial activism,” but of enforcement of legislation. It is the religious organizations who wish to deny contraception coverage to their employees who are petitioning for a duly enacted law to be overturned.

I'm on break, go read other posts

tekanji

I’m officially going on blogging break.

I need to focus on school for the time being and I have a lot of other stuff that has piled up. I dunno when I’ll be back — it all depends on how long it takes for something to get to me enough to post about it — but please enjoy other posts while I’m away.

Speaking of other posts, please read blackamazon’s post on Feminism which, among many other awesome things, has this line:

Feminism would rather do the right thing than be right.

Those are words to live by. Seriously.

New Blog: Anti-Racist Parent

tekanji

Just a quick post to highlight a new-ish blog, Anti-Racist Parent. From their introductory post:

Thank you for visiting us here at Anti-Racist Parent! This is a blog for parents who are committed to raising children with an anti-racist outlook. If you’re a parent who is tired of having your child learn about race and identity through the mixing of neapolitan ice cream 🙂 , playing dress-up with national costumes, and absorbing the same handful of sanitized historical facts every single Black/Latino/Native American/Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, this blog is for you.

Via other blog.

On the Alas Controversy

tekanji

I would just like to inform my readership that, after careful consideration, I have decided to remove the link to Alas, a Blog and remove my postings there from when I guest posted.

Ultimately I have done this because I am against companies such as the one that bought amptoons.com. This is both because it purchased his domain specifically to use his popularity to artificially inflate the rankings of its clientele in search engines as well as because his clientele includes mainstream pornography that is blatantly anti-woman.

I feel that if I leave my material up there and continue to link to him, then I am being complicit in my silence. The company was attracted to amptoons because of its readership — they wanted to use the popularity of his site to their advantage. If the part of the readership who is against companies like these stands by and does nothing, then what message is being sent? That these practices are okay, and even profitable.

I do not think the practices are okay, and I do not want them to be profitable. And so I am doing the only thing I can — removing my content and my support of the site.

Using Wikipedia as a Marketing tool?

tekanji

The recently published How to Make Money Like a Pornstar comic has been the subject of some controversy on the blogsphere. The comic was given to Karen Healey, a well-known feminist comic’s blogger, (I Can’t BELIEVE They Sent This To Me )as well as to Kevin Church, another well known comics blogger (Review: How To Make Money Like A Porn Star). Their reviews are pretty negative, and have recieved some attention from other comic bloggers (see links at bottom of post).

Church followed up his review with one discussing possibly fake Amazon.com reviews (Marketing Conspiracy Theory Machine Go!). His sentiment is echoed by simargl_wings (Pass me the tinhat….), but with added controversy: discussion of the Wikipedia Entry for the comic.

I’ve stuck my nose into Wikipedia’s business exactly one other time. An attempt to make the VAWA article comply with Wikipedia’s NPOV policy. Since the controversy is still going on (check the talk page and the history), I wasn’t the least bit successful. This time I didn’t try to modify the page in question, but rather stuck an NPOV tag on it and addressed the issue in the talk page.

Wikipedia can be a great resource for non-controversial subjects, but the nature of it is that anyone can modify a page for any reason. And that includes advertising — even though it is against the rules.

Continue reading

Sexualizing Powerful Poses

tekanji

In my post Female Villains Can’t Win, one of the things I mentioned was that even in their powerful poses, women were sexualized. Peatbogfaery asked if I had any other examples than what I provided. Initially I was just going to reply on the thread, but it’s taken on a life of its own (when does it not?), so here it is.

For some advice I turned to comic books (thanks to Ragnell for the links!). I’m putting the rest behind a cut because of the pictures.

I. More Example Poses

As strong-willed as ever, PowerGirl (bless her soul) demanded to be first with this pose:

PowerGirl

In it she has a very active stance — rushing at the camera — and her face isn’t a sultry “come hither” look, but rather a, “I’m gonna @^!% you up!” expression. But, yet, the lines of her arm draw the eye to her breasts?

Adam Hughes also has some good examples in his Wonder Woman gallery. I’m going to just pull two of them. First up is this one:

Wonder Woman - Pose 1

It shows WW clutching a fist full of lightning with a clearly “I’m in pain but I will endure as much as I have to!” kind of look. Not to mention that her muscles are bunched with effort. Unquestionably powerful. But if you notice the lighting, it draws attention to the breasts, and her hunched posture is all about the butt-action.

Secondly we have this one:

Wonder Woman - Pose 2

There’s the clear power in her clenched fist, and it’s clearly the focus of the piece, but equally shiny and eye-catching are her two breasts (which I swear given the pose you shouldn’t see both of) and then her hair. In this, she is not even given the dignity of a face. One may argue it gives her an “Everywoman” kind of appearance, but it also reduces her to a fist and a pair of boobs.

Greg Rucka‘s webpage also has many good examples. Again, Wonder Woman is the focus of these pieces and again I’ll take only two. First up:

Wonder Woman - Pose 3

This is one of WW mid battle. Though she is in some ways in the visual disadvantage, being lower than her enemy, she is fighting actively instead of being a passive part of the scene. In addition, her fist is connecting to her opponent’s face. However, her body is contorted (possibly anatomically impossibly so) in order to show both her breast and her butt.

Second and final picture:

Wonder Woman - Pose 4

This picture of WW in the process of using her whip of submission lasso of truth. She is given an artificially wide stance (seriously, would anyone advise unbalancing yourself like that while trying to lasso something?) in order to stick out her butt for the reader. Again, you have the power of the active stance versus the sexualization.

II. Conclusion

Although my original post was on video games, I went for comic books because — being a still medium — it was easier to find examples of deliberate posing. If one were to look through box art and other promotional items that feature video game women, some of the same poses would come up.

I’m not, as everyone and their dog assumes, putting down sexuality. I’m just pointing out that women — whether they be comic or video game characters, or even real life women — can’t escape being sexualized. It doesn’t matter how powerful we are. It doesn’t matter if we’re feminine or not. Or whether or not we want to be sexual. Or whether or not we want to be sexual right now. The lens is forced on us without caring about whether or not we consent to it. And that lens applies to popular culture as well as our real lives.