America’s Underclass and Healthcare September 8, 2009

So I’ve been thinking a lot about healthcare reform. Listening to the arguments made by Republicans, I am led back over and over again to the “you work for it, you pay for it” and “be an adult and buy your own healthcare” statements- and it makes me think.

I have repeatedly argued that there are some jobs (i.e., most unskilled labor- retail, waitressing) that will never, ever pay enough for someone to take care of themselves and their families. Many of these types of jobs have it offered to their employees, but anyone who has ever tried to take advantage of it knows of the many loopholes companies use to prevent their employees from using it- long “trial periods” before benefits kick in, hiring enough employees so no one has enough hours to qualify as full-time, having yearly raises of 25 cents (I personally worked for a company that did this). And yet, while these people are involved in the discussion of success, they are told to get a second job or go back to school. (They are also told to “keep their legs closed” but that’s another post.) Leaving aside the issues of childcare and the impossibility of getting a schedule that doesn’t change long enough to know one’s availability for another job or school, there is another, deeper problem that no one seems to probe.

These jobs need to be filled. They exist. And since people like their coffee, their clothing on racks, their McDonald’s hamburgers, there must be people to fill them. Even if one person in any of these jobs manages to “make it” to school or a better job, there’s a hole that needs to be filled by some other person who will have dirt kicked in their face for “not working hard enough to succeed”. The problem is not the person, it is the job. And what I mean by that is this:

The retail economy of the United States has created a need for a perpetual underclass.

Since we want these services, there is a necessity that these positions be filled, and they cannot all be filled by teenagers on summer break with no dependents or expenses. Minimum wage isn’t doing anyone any good except the employer who will “move his company overseas or close down” if forced to pay his employees higher wages or god forbid, provide them healthcare. This isn’t true.

I know my ideas are far from original, but it is a growing concern now that this has become one of the largest bones of contention about healthcare. (Legitimate ones, unlike, you know, death panels.) The evidence needs to be published over and over again that the cost of doing business needs to include letting the workers we take for granted have lives and families. We require their services; we treat them like people. Not an underclass we can ignore, step on, and let live and die in poverty because “big business can’t afford it”.

-BFF

Dad Feels “Cheated” on Father’s Day June 18, 2009

CNN.com decided to post a fluff piece in light of the coming Hallmark holiday this Sunday, and managed to choose an author that could not have been more sexist and heavy-handed.

The father in this piece states that his “worst nightmare” is his wife being laid up after surgery and (gasp!) he must take care of his two young daughters for a few days: basically, being a “mom”, and taking a traditionally female role. He pats himself on the back for doing the bare minimum to rise just above what would be considered neglect and even states that he calls in reinforcements because of the difficulty involved. (He never, however, seems to come to the conclusion that his wife could use more of his help once in a while.) For me, the best part is that the reinforcements he calls are other women, specifically other mothers, to come in and do the work of a parent when his wife is unable, as if women are naturally mothers and therefore interchangeable and merely having a vagina can make one more nurturing than a father.

His argument runs thus: because he is male, and men don’t take care of kids, by virtue of the fact that he didn’t light the house on fire or poison the children (he even admits the bar is so low that a chipmunk could do better) he deserves a plasma-screen TV with surround sound. His attitude seems to state that men are “above” women’s work and therefore must be given a reward as both an incentive and self-serving recognition for doing the “lower” work of raising children. He manages to acknowledge and give credit to the hard parenting work that falls disproportionally on mothers and in the same 500 words complain that he only gets a tie for doing far less: “Yeah, Mom deserves the weeping cherry tree for Mother’s Day, but for doing a quarter of the work I want a plasma TV.” This level of cognitive dissonance is astounding, and sexism at its most basic. He seems to believe that there are things only women should do and only men should do, and one of those categories is classified as “higher” or “better” than the other, as shown by his statement that being “mom” was his worst nightmare. Nobody views being in a position higher than their own a bad thing.

I frequent a number of feminist blogs, which is where I first heard about this piece, and to paraphrase the best response: “It’s like watching Scrooge say, ‘Man, that was an emotionally exhausting night. Let me call Cratchett in on Christmas so I can take a mental health day.’”

-BFF

Proper and Improper Uses of the Word Rape- A Review. May 3, 2009

So I’m finally blogging about something that has been bugging me for months, and that has been discussed constantly all over the web- the casual use of the word rape, as in “I totally raped that test” or “I got raped on that speeding ticket”. In both cases, no, no you didn’t. I will almost guarantee you that anyone saying these words has never experienced the horror of being raped or sexually assaulted or does not know someone who has been. (And if they have? …That’s… insensitive at best.)

I’ve seen two arguments that I’d like to explain in greater detail when I was reading the comments section over at Feministe:

1. That when you make these comments, your privilege is showing. You are walking around making these horrible comments completely unaware of how terrifying such an experience really is and you have no concept of what it’s like to walk around all day every day being aware that this can, in fact, happen to you.

2. That many of the men (and I have heard a few women use this language, but very, very few so I will say men) are the same men that have a problem with girls and women using the word correctly to describe what happened to them.

As to the first point. There is no way to explain to a man the fear and scrutiny that is built into being a woman day in and day out, to the point that when someone commits a crime against us, the first reaction is not How awful, let me call the police, but rather What did you do. We teach our girls to Prevent Rape, and we do not teach our boys to Not Rape. And to me- this is where the problem comes in using language this way. To women it has been presented as an ingrained facet of our lives, and in fact it is! Everyone’s familiar with the 1 in 4 statistic by now, so I say that with some evidence to back me up. Men are in fact raped and assaulted every day, but there is still not the intense, building-one’s-life-around-that-fear that there is for women. Women choose where to live, where to work, what parties to go to, what friends to make, what clothes to wear and when they can and cannot leave their homes based on this fear. And to hear some jackass say “I raped that test” completely invalidates the experience of  both the millions of women who have experienced rape and the rest of the female population that is forced to live in fear of it, and this all happens because we still label it as a woman’s problem, and therefore completely OK to joke about.

My second point is a tad more nuanced. While reading this post I noticed that I’ve been observing a particular phenomenon: when a rape case hits the papers, it’s continuously called “Sex with a child” or “Unwanted sex with a Co-Ed”. IT IS NOT SEX. SEX IMPLIES CONSENT. IT WAS RAPE. Call the defendant the “alleged rapist” but do not use the phrase “alleged rape”. The crime happened. The mystery is not the crime, it is who committed it. But what is perhaps most disturbing is the trend that judges are not allowing the use of the word rape in criminal trials because it is unfairly prejudicial to the defendant. (See here, here, and here.) ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! This speaks VOLUMES about how far we have yet to come in terms of believing women’s claims about rape. It is unfairly prejudicial because no one thinks of teh menz! and what happens when there’s a false accusation?! And yet, it’s still totally cool to say your team “got raped” at last night’s game.

I’m going to have high blood pressure if this continues.

-BFF

On Choice- a “Guest Post” April 28, 2009

I am quoting this post from Shakesville (a wonderful feminist blog that even includes daily pictures of cats (!) meaning of course it’s one of my favorite websites) in full because there is absolutely no way I could have said it better.

So, there’s this story today about Sarah Palin telling an antiabortion group in Evansville, Indiana how she momentarily considered aborting her last child when she learned she was pregnant at an oil and gas conference in another state:

“There, just for a fleeting moment, I thought, I knew, nobody knows me here. Nobody would ever know. I thought, wow, it is easy. It could be easy to think maybe of trying to change the circumstances. No one would know. No one would ever know.”

Ultimately, Palin said she realized she had to stay true to what she’d been saying for years — that “life is valuable because it is ordained.”

“I had just enough faith to know that trying to change the circumstances wasn’t any answer,” Palin said.

But the governor said the experience gave her an appreciation for what women and girls facing unwanted pregnancies go through.

“I do understand what these women, what these girls go through in that thought process.”Bullshit.

Fleetingly considering that you could get away with a secret abortion when you’ve got the means to support the resulting child isn’t the same thing as any woman or girl facing an unwanted pregnancy, 73% of whom cite “can’t afford a baby now” as the reason for the termination.

Fleetingly considering that you could get away with a secret abortion when you have government-paid healthcare isn’t the same thing as any woman or girl facing an unwanted pregnancy, about one-fourth of whom cite their own health or possible health problems with the fetus as reasons for the termination, owing to concerns including “a lack of prenatal care.”

Fleetingly considering that you could get away with a secret abortion when you’re a conservative politician with visions of national office who might only end up as Governor of Alaska instead of President of the US if you don’t get an abortion isn’t the same thing as any woman or girl facing an unwanted pregnancy, many of whom might never finish high school, or might not finish college, or might lose their jobs, if they don’t get an abortion.

Just saying that abortion crossed your mind for the briefest instant in an abstract way doesn’t give Palin any kind of insight into the experience of a woman or girl who’s seriously considering an abortion.

It does, however, give her all the expertise she needs (along with conferring a deeply undeserved air of courageousness for her “brutal honesty”) among the retrofuck dunderheads who turn up at anti-choice events to hear her speak. And so when she says to them, “It was a time when I had to ask myself was I gonna walk the walk or I was gonna talk the talk,” they can laud both her bravery and unassailable ethics—the flipside of which is implicitly demonizing as amoral cowards all of the women and girls who didn’t make the same choice, made ever that much easier by Palin’s convenient masking of her fortunate circumstances. What a fucking hero.

One of the greatest ironies of the anti-choice movement is that it is chockablock with people who are rich with choice. The reality is that Palin never had to seriously consider abortion, because she is rich with choice. Her privilege inoculated her against abortion being her only choice—and for that she wants applause, even as her politics cast millions of the women to the opposite fate.

Just…. damn.

Posted originally by Melissa McEwan, reposted with permission.

-BFF

Separation of Church and State? Only Applies When We Don’t Want to Pay Taxes. April 18, 2009

I was informed by a friend of mine on Thursday that the new Archbishop of New York City “will use the prominence of his new job to challenge gay marriage in New York”, an issue that is being brought to the fore in New York by Gov. Patterson.

Now, I have a problem with this, a large part of which is that churches enjoy a tax-exempt status. A quick Google search revealed the following:

Most people are aware that a church or religious organization can lose their tax exempt status for engaging in partisan political activity, like endorsing a political candidate. What many aren’t aware of, though, is that the same can happen for promoting or engaging in things contrary to government policy. Tax exemption is a privilege, not a right. [Emphasis mine]

Now, the 2004 and 2008 Republican party platform includes a ban on gay marriage, also referred to as “preserving traditional marriage” (because, I guess, “overt discrimination” and “homophobia” didn’t play as well with many Republicans, even though, as I have previously explored that I believe that’s the heart of many conservatives’ religious objection) and while it’s one thing I dislike enough that the Republicans have drifted into social/religious conservatism, it’s another when the Churches push right back and financially endorse and even campaign for Prop 8, or directly state they will use their position to oppose gay marriage.

How, HOW, does this not lose them tax-exempt status? It is a privilege, not a right.

The second issue I have today comes out of Iowa, where there have been rumblings about clerks not filing gay marriage licenses. None of the clerks have as of yet refused to do so, but I have some concern that this has the possibility to be codified into law as an extension of the right of conscience laws, which refers to midnight regulations pushed through by Bush II that allows anyone with a moral objection to refuse to perform their job and not suffer disciplinary consequences. These are at the moment pointedly against abortion providers and have been extended to include something far-reaching as a pharmacist refusing to dispense birth control or a janitor refusing to clean an Operating Room for an abortion, but nothing in the law limits it specifically to abortion.

I am concerned. I am concerned as a woman who may be denied treatment, a pill, or even information for LEGAL procedures and LEGAL prescriptions. I am concerned as an ally to gays and lesbians who want to exercise their right to love another person and declare that love legally and equally to another person. And I am most concerned about groups that claim to be about love and justice and yet wish to deny both through political channels and continue to be given privileges accorded to specific non-political bodies.

-BFF

The President and the Vatican April 16, 2009

I would have blogged about the Tea Party phenomenon that happened yesterday, but I honestly have no idea what they were protesting- some say deficit spending, some say the Obama stimulus bill, and some say high taxes. So I’ll wait a little longer for the spin to slow and discover what beautiful tye-dye mess the right and the left make of it.

So instead, I want to blog about Caroline Kennedy and Barack Obama. As many may have heard by now, the University of Notre Dame invited Obama to speak at their commencement, and it caused an uproar. Similarly, Caroline Kennedy was asked to be the ambassador to the Vatican and the Pope was not happy. Why? Because the President and Caroline Kennedy are pro-choice.

You’ve got to be kidding.

I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware we only had to deal with people in this life who we agree with. I understand the Notre Dame is a Catholic University, and that the Vatican is the head of the Catholic Church. But to me, there are separate, more troubling issues underlying these two news stories.

Obama is a sitting President. He is the first African-American President that the U.S. has ever had. Yes, he is liberal, and yes, he is pro-choice. Somehow, though, I doubt that having him speak at your University is going to change the fact that your University is Catholic and is anti-choice and has a significant conservative faction on campus. Having him speak is NOT “endorsing his policies and politics”, it just makes you really lucky you’re graduating this year from the University and get to hear the President speak in a small, relatively intimate forum.

Caroline Kennedy is a philanthropist, a lawyer, and *gasp!* a Democrat. We have a sitting Democratic President who can appoint whoever he wants as an ambassador. Apparently the Vatican disagrees, and feels that it MUST have a pro-life ambassador to even consider doing business with the U.S., as the relationship is reportedly strained by the American people voting for a pro-choice, pro-stem cell President. (I wonder if they’d have any opposition to Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity?) This assumes that ANYONE who is pro-choice cannot set aside their own political views long enough to do their jobs, and I feel is patently insulting.

In both cases, we have prominent political actors scorned because of their pro-choice views, as this is apparently the most important adjective anyone could use to describe them, the rest being accorded irrelevant to the point of rejecting even listening to them. I do not expect  Notre Dame or the Vatican to change and become pro-choice, but I would have liked to see even a small measure of respect for the President and his appointees.

One final anecdote- I spent a year at a small, conservative law school. We were lucky enough to have Antonin Scalia come and speak to the students, and even teach Con Law for a day for the 2Ls. I was a first-year who knew enough of Scalia’s conservative politics (he can say he’s apolitical, but that’s another rant for another day) to dislike his ideologies intensely, as many of them are the antithesis to everything I believe. But guess what? I went to the speech. Why?

BECAUSE HE’S ANTONIN SCALIA. A SITTING SUPREME COURT JUSTICE. SPEAKING TO A ROOM WITH NO MORE THAN 100 PEOPLE, AND THIS WAS A ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY.

I realize this probably seems more relevant to the Notre Dame incident, but to expand on this for just a moment- I may very much dislike Scalia, but I respect him. The Vatican and Notre Dame may dislike members of the pro-choice camp, but both of these institutions need to grow up and accept the reality that even those you disagree with deserve enough respect to be heard.

-BFF

Gay Marriage Could Go Before Congress April 8, 2009

First and foremost, GO IOWA! And VERMONT!

According to the Associated Press, the District of Columbia has put a vote regarding gay marriage before the city council regarding whether or not to recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere. This could go before Congress, because Congress has final say over the District’s laws. All of this means that Federal lawmakers could be forced to discuss the issue of gay marriage on a national level, rather than letting it bounce around the states the way it has for the last few years.

I really, really believe gay marriage is long overdue. I have argued about it with a number of conservatives, and every. time. it comes down to “What Jesus would have wanted” (even though I think Jesus would have been all like “Dude why do you care?”), protect the “sanctity” of marriage, or “two men having sex is gross”. There’s one argument, though, that gets my blood boiling: “I’m not against gay people, I think they should have rights, I just don’t think it should be marriage.” Why?  Because you still need to have that power, that superiority, that one thing that someone else can’t, and so you can push them beneath you?

Giving it any other name just makes it easier to chisel rights away. Oh, well married people can do this, but people in civil unions can’t. It’s back-door discrimination. We’ve codified LGBT rights, but now we can take them away because we’ve swept the ugly words of “gays can’t do this” under the rug, and replaced it with something more palatable because “straight people get civil-unioned too!1!1!!! it’s not just against teh gays!”, completely denying the fact that gay people, if they want to make that commitment, are shut out of any other option.

I hope– I know– the tide has been turning. The outpouring of support after Prop 8, Vermont and Iowa (Iowa! A midwest state and the first to pass it by legislation, not judicial decision!) in the same week, and New York, Maine, and Rhode Island look poised to pass gay marriage as well. I can only pray that with the midterm elections coming up in 2010 (and it will likely take that long) that there are enough Congressmen and Senators willing to step up for what’s right- the rights of all LGBT people to do what I have legally been able to do since I was 18 as long as I fell in love with a member of the opposite sex.

-BFF

Bristol Palin Loses Her Voice and Her Autonomy April 6, 2009

As everyone has probably heard by now, Levi Johnston, Bristol Palin’s ex-fiancee and father of her child, went on the Tyra Banks show to talk about his relationship with Bristol. Almost needless to say, based on what Levi has said during these interviews, Sarah Palin is unhappy with his ” flat-out lies, gross exaggerations, and even distortions of their relationship”. Apparently, unbeknownst to the American people, Bristol can no longer speak for herself, and so my post tonight focuses on the  response put out by the Alaskan governor’s office, specifically these two choice items:

“Bristol’s focus will remain on raising Tripp, completing her education, and advocating abstinence,” the statement says.

The statement ends, saying, “Bristol realizes now that she made a mistake in her relationship and is the one taking responsibility for their actions.”

Wait, what? I was pretty sure Bristol went on a Fox interview stating that a goal of abstinence was pretty unrealistic. And I was also pretty sure that it takes two to tango, and two to “take responsibility for their actions”, as the statement says. Perhaps what we’re actually seeing is delayed anger from Ms. Palin at her daughter for not following more closely the tenets Palin preached in both word and Alaskan policy- funding abstinence-only education.

Bristol Palin was entirely correct when she says abstinence is not reasonable. We need better, comprehensive sex-ed for students, and poll after poll after poll shows that this is what the majority of American parents want taught to their kids, even across political ideologies. (The only evidence refuting these polls can be found on websites promoting abstinence-only education, which of course is completely unbiased.)

But this isn’t even the point- what really gets me angry is that this is coming out in a statement from Palin’s office, in direct contradiction to what Bristol actually said, and in fact goes so far as to intimate both punishment and blame by stating that “she is accepting responsibility”, which is language repeatedly used by both abstinence-only educators and stringent pro-life advocates. I would argue that the main tenet of abstinence-only education is punishment: punishment for having sex and enjoying sex, and most of all, being forced to “realize and accept the consequences” of having sex, even though AO educators focus on lying or distorting the facts surrounding sex, STIs, abortion, and contraception.

Seriously, if that girl is old enough to make the choice to have that baby, raise that baby, and speak out in direct opposition to her mother in the public eye, she’s old enough to speak for herself. And more than old enough to have her own opinion.

-BFF

Women’s Shelters Could Lose Funding for Lack of “Equality” April 5, 2009

An article from the UK announces that an unintended consequence of new equality laws stating that services cannot be denied based on gender is to deny funding to women’s only domestic violence shelters. Fiona MacTaggart, the former Home Office minister, commented, saying that “There are some stupidnesses developing in the system that nobody intended.”

Let me start by saying I know men are victims of domestic violence as well as women, and that they do need services and there should be services available for them.

I picked up this article from Fark.com, and quickly discovered a league of Men’s Rights Advocates (who may or may not identify themselves as such, but at least one naming Glenn Sacks directly in their comment) patting themselves on the back in the comments section for “ending the sexism against men”.  Some of my personal favorites include the following:

There’s a reason the United States did not ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. People were worried about cases like this. And unisex bathrooms, because separate but equal bathrooms are discriminatory.

And

Men are ALWAYS viewed as the guilty ones in these situations. Of course it’s blatant sexism but because it’s against those evil, evil white males, people laugh it off.

Now let’s break that down. The first comment is patronizing at best. “See what happens when we give women rights? They just make trouble.” The second is just insulting- “No matter what the situation, women are always given priority and men aren’t believed when they’re victims of violence!” While it is likely true that men experience difficulty in reporting domestic abuse by a woman, the way this comment is positioned and phrased is to state that women are arbitrarily trying to screw men over. And for the record, I’m not cherry-picking; see for yourself.

As the comments went on, I felt my blood boiling. Soon I was being inundated with remarks that not only reeked of victim blaming (“Why did you stay past the first time you were hit?” “Yawn. Stopped reading after I saw you didn’t report it to the police.”) but also stated that most divorce lawyers are going past suborning perjury and going so far as to SUGGEST it:

See my above posts, domestic violence is increasingly becoming less about domestic violence and more about positioning yourself for the upcoming divorce. Don’t believe me, just do a google search and read horror story after horror story. Funny thing about the stories too, they all sound exactly alike. Almost as if some organization was advising women on how to go about doing this.

Because that’s what feminism is all about. Encouraging women to lie about domestic violence to get better positioning in a divorce case. Not that that would reduce the number of reports from actual victims, that it would reduce the believability of actual victims (I normally hate the term ‘actual victims’ but when MRAs are saying feminists are encouraging women to lie, then yes, I mean actual victims), or completely alienate men and women from the cause who were disgusted by these tactics or anything. What kills me most is that if I were to respond by saying “What about the rape victim who was written off by the police?” I would receive an avalanche of HAVEN’T YOU BEEN LISTENING?! WOMEN LIE ABOUT THIS STUFF FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT, creating a geometrically correct circle of logic.

Just as a note- the man who mentioned his specific lawyer telling people to do this wasn’t written off with a yawn for not reporting his lawyer for about 3,478 laws and ethics violations.

-BFF

Defeat Masqueraded As “Victory”… April 4, 2009

Recent legislation has been proposed in Oklahoma that would allow a pregnant woman to use deadly force to protect their unborn child. The legislation was brought to the fore because a man punched his girlfriend in the stomach and caused her to miscarry her quadruplets. She killed him and was convicted of manslaughter.

While this legislation sounds awesome, and this guy was definitely a pimple on the upper back of humanity, there are definitely a few problematic elements.

First, there is already legislation on the books that allows people to use deadly force to save another in imminent harm; this legislation’s real purpose is the adding of the phrasing that would give the fetus the legal status of personhood. The reason for this is evident when one considers the fact that the legislation was brought to bear by Americans United for Life, a pro-life organization. It is no secret that the pro-life movement has been desperately maneuvering to make these changes in order to roll back women’s right to choose and ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade.

The other major concern is in and around the blogosphere: while I understand that the plural of anecdote is not data, a number of posters have stated that “Do we really want hormonal women to have this kind of power?” and “Someone’s going to get shot in the face for smoking next to a pregnant woman.” (Sorry, I do not yet possess the skillz to link to a direct comment.) REALLY, though? REALLY? Ugh.

-BFF