Really, Phil Bryant? REALLY?

I might be a little late, but I can't let Phil Bryant's recent comments go without mention. According to the Associated Press,

   "Mississippi's Republican governor had new harsh words for proponents of legalized abortion this week, saying, 'their one mission in life is to abort children, is to kill children in the womb.'"

  I'm so sick of this man ignoring what is right in front of him. We told him in November that we don't want personhood legislation. We voted no. (Somehow we also voted him into office at the same time; this still baffles me.) And we told him, loudly, why we said no. We want the right to abortion, yes, and safe access. We want the right, and access, to birth control. Women want the right to make decisions about our lives and bodies, and men want the women in their lives to have that right. Mississippi couples want to decide what's best for their families by discussing it together, and with a doctor if necessary--without legislation getting in the way.

  Yet good ol' Phil manages to distill this into all of us crazy liberals wanting to kill hundreds and thousands of unborn babies.

Sigh.

  I know it's all a political game. I know that in his position, he has to make the issue sound emotional, visceral and sinful in order to appeal to those moderate voters who may be unsure how they feel about "abortion" but definitely know how they feel about "murder." But this game is so exhausting. How can Mississippi's governor ignore the unintended pregnancy rate, the teen pregnancy rate, and the infant mortality rate in his state?! How can he ignore the studies that have shown that comprehensive sex education (not abstinence only eduation) is the best way to reduce teens having unsafe sex and to reduce unintended teen pregnancies?! How can anyone ignore that abstinence-only has been proven ineffective?!

Well, he can ignore it because it seems that is what so many Republicans are doing across the country. They've started down this extreme path, standing stubbornly against women (and against sex, basically) no matter what. And I don't think it's going to work out for them in this year's election. So, I'll end with a message to Phil Bryant (and all Republicans, since unfortunately we're stuck with Phil for a few years), my favorite quote from one of the many women-led protests this year:

Women will remember in November.

Women will remember in November.

Polite or Honest? The Modern Family Problem

The other day I was watching the most recent episode of Modern Family. (I won't be talking about the whole episode but there will be a couple of spoilers for one storyline.) So Mitchell and Cam are driving around in their car with a PA system they've set up, so they can campaign for Claire (it's voting day and she's running for city council).

At some point, of course, they pull over to the side of the road and have a conversation without knowing that they have left their speakers on. Everyone on the side of the road can hear them as they talk about a woman they know, whom they see on the sidewalk, and how she is engaged to a gay man. Of course, since she hears the whole conversation, they have to talk to her about what they said. She's upset and asking them to be honest with her: do they really think he is gay? They console her, saying "No of course not," and "we were just gossiping." She asks them more than once if they are really sure and they assure her that he's not gay. At the end of the episode, in one of their interview segments, they say to the audience, "Three weeks later, they got married. The wedding was beautiful. He did all the flowers....which is a perfectly normal thing for a straight guy to do." The implication, of course, is that yes, he is gay, and she is still in denial.

Now, yes this is a sitcom, and the situation is funny, but it also left me feeling a little uncomfortable. Why not just tell her the truth? (Again, I realize this is a sitcom and destroying her engagement might not have been a funny ending, but just go with me.) What's really gonna be worse for this woman: to find out/admit to herself that her fiancee is gay, cancel the wedding, and try to move on with her life, or to find out that her husband is gay after months/years of marriage?

This got me thinking about society in general and how it is so often considered better to be polite than honest. Why is that? Yes there are certain situations that call for it. I remember once going to a wedding out of town, and I only brought one dress with me. I asked my sister and friends how I looked, but I didn't want them to be completely honest. After all, I only brought one dress; whether or not it looked good, at this point it was my only option. What good would it do to tell me that it wasn't the best dress for me? None. In this situation, in which I might not look my best for one night but a little lie or extra encouragement would keep me from feeling self-conscious all night, polite trumped honest.

But in the story of Modern Family, we aren't talking about one night of self-consciousness. We are talking about a woman's life. Her marriage. A relationship in which she has invested a lot of time and energy. She deserves to know the truth that she either has been too blind to see or unwilling to admit to herself. And Mitchell and Cam seem to know her pretty well. Maybe they aren't best friends, maybe they wouldn't seek her out to tell her this normally, but after they've blasted it over their campaign speakers, I personally think they owe her the truth. And they could always say, "You know, we've never seen him actually having sex with a man, so these are just suspicions, but we've always thought it, and you can do what you want with the information." I just don't see how it does her any good to lie to her.

I know this picture is from another episode. Deal with it.

Why aren't we more willing to be direct with the people that we know and care about? Why is it that we always want to be polite to others, even in situations when it is potentially more damaging? Most of the time (my dress example excluded), when people ask for an opinion or information, they want your honest answer. Yes, sometimes the truth hurts, and sometimes you might even get angry or upset with the person who told it to you. But in the end, isn't it better to know?

Dan Savage, Rape, and the Gray Area

I was listening to Dan Savage's (sex and relationship advice columnist and star/host of the new MTV show Savage U) most recent podcast and a caller wanted to know if he (the caller) had been raped. His story was of a girl with whom he had a sexual history taking advantage of him and having sex with him when he was blackout drunk and she was sober. And, it should be noted, he had made it clear to her prior to this incident that their sexual relationship was over and that he was no longer interested in seeing her. So in his answer, Dan discusses the gray area that he believes exists and doesn't get talked about in the realm of sexual violation.

Dan's opinion is that people have experiences, negative experiences, that leave them feeling violated but that aren't necessarily rape. And I think, though I've never spoken to him, that he is defining rape in this context as a "you could and should report to the police and pursue an arrest/conviction for the perpetrator" situation. So he's saying that there are situations that lead to feelings of violation, feelings of being taken advantage of, that don't necessarily mean the other person involved is a criminal because of what happened. 

He also said that he doesn't understand what good it does (in some cases, not all) for people to label a situation like this as rape. For example, he told the guy who called that he could label it rape, he was well within the general definition to do so, but he didn't understand what good that would do. For one thing, as a male victim, reporting to the police would most likely not be taking seriously. 

My first reaction to this is, "No, Dan, we just got the FBI to expand the definition of rape; don't try to lessen it for us!" But, at the same time, I understand what he means about experiences that may leave you feeling violated but not leave you feeling like the victim of a crime.

However, I wonder, is this because the gray area exists, or because our society has convinced us to see certain types of sexual experiences as okay, or even just unpleasant, but not to see them as rape. Is it just another symptom of rape culture that we discuss this gray area? Or is it just a more nuanced way of looking at sexual experience (as opposed to consensual, good sex vs. non-consensual rape)?

I know a woman who once got extremely drunk at a friend's house. A guy was there with whom she had had a friends-with-benefits relationship. Drunk, feeling sick, and not interested in anything but sleep, she excused herself from the party and headed into one of the spare bedrooms to pass out. (I think she also went to the bathroom to throw up first.) The last thing she remembers is this guy, with whom she had hooked up previously but with whom she had no interest in hooking up that night, crawling into the bed with her and starting to make out with her. I don't remember what he said to her, but I know her responses were along the lines of, "What? I got sick" and other drunk, sleepy, confused responses. She woke up with her underwear on, so she's pretty sure intercouse didn't happen (she doesn't think she would have put underwear back on after if it had, since she was so incapacitated). But she doesn't remember what did happen. She doesn't know how much happened. She doesn't know if anything happened. And because she never talked to him about it later, she'll never know.

Now, I'm using this example for a reason. I know this woman did not consider herself to have been raped. I also know this woman felt uncomfortable about what had happened. She felt violated. She felt disgusted with this guy, whom she had known so well and for so long, for taking advantage of her drunken state. She felt scared and bothered by the fact that she had some kind of sexual experience with no real consent and no memory of it. At the time, I told her that she had been raped, period the end. But can you really say that when you don't know what happened at all? She'd been taken advantage of, that's for sure, but that's all we really know. (I did advise her to talk to the guy, not in an accusatory way, but just to ask what happened, but I don't think she ever did; honestly, I think she wanted to move and never deal with it again. And if that's what she wanted to do, then who am I to tell her to do differently?) So how can we go about defining this experience?

Recently, the rape definition was expanded by the FBI (thanks to a long campaign by the Feminist Majority Foundation and Ms. Magazine). It now allows for male and child victims, and it defines rape as the forced penetration of any person without their consent (so rape with an object counts; forced oral sex counts). This definition is a huge victory. But it doesn't necessarily solve all rape-definition problems. 

Feminists always talk about consent, and that the lack of "no" doesn't mean "yes." And I agree with that. If you're hooking up with someone, and you move your hand somewhere, and they don't push it away, but they also don't seem to like it, you might want to check in before continuing. And asking if someone likes something, or how they want you to do it, can still be sexy; it doesn't have to be awkwardly asking for permission. And yet, I can understand how a person can find themselves in a situation where, after the fact, they find out that their partner didn't want something done and didn't voice it, and they truly didn't know that what they did wasn't okay with their partner.

Let's be honest. It can be hard to say no, especially, but not only, in a relationship with someone (be it a committed relationship, friends-with-benefits relationship or any other situation in which you find yourself having sex with someone you know well and are generally comfortable with). You're used to each other, you're past the point of nervously initiating sex, you're used to trying new things, and suddenly someone wants sex when you don't feel like it, or wants to try something that you're not interested in or ready for. It can be hard to say no. You don't want to disappoint them. And I do wonder, in this kind of situation, in the kind of situation like the example above, does the other partner's unawareness of your discomfort when you don't say anything automatically move them into the rape area? 

I'm really struggling with this concept. The first thing that comes to mind when someone says "rape" is a man (sorry, it is still statistically true, as well as the common image our society gives us) trying to touch/have sex with a woman, her clearly saying no, and him continuing anyway, forcefully if necessary. But I know that rape doesn't only occur in this way. I know the power dynamics between the two can affect how one may react (like an employee not feeling able to say no to a boss). The use of a weapon and threats can keep someone from saying no. 

Can we say that how the person feels about the situation is enough to define at as rape or not? Meaning, if the woman in the situation above said "I feel violated, but I don't feel raped," is that enough to conclude that she then wasn't raped? I'm not sure if that works either, because so many women describe situations of forced sex that they would not themselves define as rape, but many others would. 

So what do you think of the gray area? Does it exist? Do we need to separate the idea of rape from the idea of reporting to the police (meaning, is it better to define it as rape even if the survivor has no intention of pursuing any kind of arrest, as opposed to saying, "I would never try to have this person arrested for this, therefore it wasn't rape")? And is it important to get someone to define their experience as rape when they don't see it that way? Or is this gray area just another symptom of a culture that normalizes rape?

The (Feminist) Conversation: Ashley Judd's Media Attack

So did you hear about Ashley Judd and her "puffy" appearance? Well, neither did I, until today. Apparently news sources and tabloids have recently been discussing Ashley's "declining" appearance, calling her puffy and claiming that she had plastic surgery. Today, Ashley Judd fought back, writing a piece for The Daily Beast in which she attacks the media for their misogynistic comments. Judd offers reasons for her appearance (being sick, taking steroids, and not exercising) but she offers much more. She offers a criticism of our society, our media, and the conversations about women's bodies that negatively affect women and girls. The whole article is worth reading, but this is my favorite section:

That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.

After reading this today, I was thinking, "Tell 'em Ashley!!" I especially like the part about patriarchy being a system in which women and men play a part; she implies that women can be misogynistic, too. This is something I've always tried to express but never been able to word as clearly as she does in that sentence.

Also, call me easy to please, but I was really pleased to see her use the word "feminism" in her piece. (She wrote, "If this conversation about me is going to be had, I will do my part to insist that it is a feminist one, because it has been misogynistic from the start.") Ashley Judd has been an outspoken feminist for a long time; the first time I ever saw a "This is What a Feminist Looks Like" T-shirt was in a picture of Judd wearing one. And I know that feminism seems to be making a bit of a comeback, with women fighting against all the latest attacks on women's bodies, health and decision-making rights. But, it is still nice to see a mainstream figure using the word feminism with no shame and no explanation. She puts it out there because there is no other productive way to talk about these issues.

I, for one, love that Ashley Judd wrote this piece. Women in the spotlight, actresses, musicians, athletes, they all deal with constant objectification, speculation and criticism surrounding their bodies, their clothes and their decisions. Today at the grocery store, my boyfriend and I noticed all of the tabloid magazines by the checkout counters: headlines about the Kardashian women having been "abandoned" by their men, unflattering pictures of "overweight" celebrities with their faces covered and the tagline 'Guess Who?!', speculations about who's getting married, who's getting divorced, who's engaging in adultery. We are bombarded with the policing of women, and celebrity women have to handle it constantly. But Ashley Judd didn't just stand by and take it. She didn't just speak out with reasons for her less-than-stellar appearance. Instead, she pointed out the flaws in the criticism against her. She pointed out that the problem is not with her and her body, but with the media which thinks it has a right to degrade her in such an aggressive and negative way. She pointed out that this "insanity" over women's bodies is a problem for everyone, and that we are all limited by it. And most importantly, she pointed out that we need feminism, feminist discussions, and feminist activism in order to fight it.

Tell 'em, Ashley!