Cannon Fodder

Just before I mixed up the barley and favas for dinner this morning, I read this article in the LA Times.  It struck me as yet another misguided volley in the food morality wars.

Attacking the 50 Foot Woman

While much of the blogosphere is talking about the audacity of Virginia Thomas trying to shame Anita Hill into taking back her testimony against Clarence (read Historiann's take on the matter), I want to bring up something that isn't online as far as I can tell, but needs some analysis. And it's kind of related to the nonsense being inflicted on Ms. Hill.

The Spousal Unit reads Mother Jones online a fair amount, mostly to follow Kevin Drum's blog and for the occasional article. A family member gave him a subscription to the dead-tree version of it as a birthday present and the first issue arrived yesterday.

The cover, which I looked for but could not find posted on the web site, is a variation on the iconic movie poster pictured here. In this pulp classic, a wealthy woman who is being abused and cheated on by her scumbag husband has a run in with an alien from outer space and is transformed into a 50 foot tall giant. Her husband attempts to murder her with a lethal injection, but fails. She goes after him and his mistress, kills the mistress and seizes him. She is killed by an explosion and her homicidal spouse is crushed when she falls with him grasped in her hand. Good cheesy fun.

The Mother Jones cover has turned the scantily clad, rampaging female into Sarah Palin standing over a suburban street and crushing a house in her left hand while minivans and SUVs careen in the street and tiny human figures (of tastefully multi-ethnic skin tones) flee in a panic.  The headlines emblazoned across the cover say "ATTACK ON THE MIDDLE CLASS!" "A confused & frightened citizenry votes against its own self-interest" "They say they're taking back America, but really they're taking... your money!!!"

No, really. It's just like that.

Whores, sluts, cunts, and bitches

On Thursday, The Times reported that the Los Angeles Police Protective League provided an audio recording of Brown calling the union to discuss an endorsement. Brown apparently failed to hang up, and then had a conversation with his aides discussing strategy in response to potential police endorsements for Whitman. Whitman had earlier exempted public safety officials from key parts of her pension reform plan — at the same time she said Brown would bend to labor's desires on the issue.

An unidentified voice can be heard saying, "What about saying she's a whore?"

"Democrats urge Brown to apologize over remark about Whitman" - LA Times

I guess my surprise over this remark is that anyone is surprised. The article above tries to minimize the problem by placing it within the context of tough political infighting. The problem, however, is that this is an automatic response to obstreperous women as such and is not a result of tempers running high in an electoral contest.

The use of sexual slurs against women who refuse to behave the way their opponents or competitors want them to behave is normal behavior. It is a culturally acceptable standard for maintaining power relationships between the sexes - women who fail to comply are sexual misfits who deserve to be disciplined for their transgressions. The discipline ranges from name calling and public shaming to rape and murder.

Was Jerry Brown the person who said this? Irrelevant. What matters is that the political left is just as comfortable throwing this around as anyone on the right. Misogyny is an equal opportunity tool of power.

Can you imagine someone in the Brown campaign casually tossing out "What about saying she's a spic/nigger/coon/wop/chink?" (assuming the female opponent is a person of color)? Nope, not even in a private conversation. Yet using comparably derogatory gender-specific language is done without hesitation, and all-too-easily defended with a heated "But she is one!" as justification for the slur. Really? "Whore"? Why not hypocrite, panderer, liar, fraud or any other term that would have been applied to a male opponent? Terminology that is both more accurate and more politically appropriate.

The problem is the unproblematic acceptance of using of women's sexuality as a method to invalidate their participation in the public realm. No matter who the woman is, no matter her political affiliation, no matter her actual behavior, it is perfectly acceptable to casually refer to her as a cunt or a bitch in conversations in a way that calling someone a dago or a yid wouldn't fly and where fag or fairy is raising eyebrows. To describe a woman engaging in any kind of deals or agreements that her opponent dislikes (whether because they are objectionable transactions or merely that they gain her some perceived advantage) as a whore or slut - someone bargaining her sexual favors - is likewise acceptable. Using the term "whore" with regards to a man is not really intended to call his morals into question; it is to feminize and delegitimize him as someone ready to be penetrated.

Which starts to point back to the foundations for the derogation of women in the first place, of course, but that's a bigger topic. The tagline for this blog (You say I'm a bitch as if that were a bad thing...) points directly at the way my gender is used to deny my humanity - that I'm not just a dog, but I'm a female dog - normalizing male as fully human and female as something apart, ontologically distinct as it were. It's my starting point into my political thinking because it is the irreducible fact of my life - that I must provide arguments to demonstrate that I deserve to be treated as fully human.

Back to the gubernatorial campaign. An apology for calling a woman a whore for having engaged in ordinary campaign bargaining misses the mark. An apology is simply "Ooops, our bad. We'll hang up the phone next time. Sorry you feel offended. (snicker)". It is words. The only reassuring action would have been to hear, as the next element in the phone conversation, a roar of disgust that someone attached to the campaign would dare utter that suggestion.

It didn't happen. Sorry, Jerry. I'll be writing in your sister's name in November.

Anglachel

Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old child

Repeat after me:

Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old child.

That child did not seduce him. By her own account, she screamed and struggled and fought and tried to get away.

Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old child.

She is not an "accuser". She is the victim of a brutal, vicious, premeditated attack on her by a fully aware adult. The State of California is the accuser in this legal case, and it is the State that is pursuing this criminal.

Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old child.

In response to that accusation, Polanki pleaded guilty to the crime. He stated for a court of law that he knowingly planned and executed the violent rape of a child. Whether he did so as part of a plea bargain is irrelevant. He pleaded guilty to the full extent of his attack on a minor.

Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old child.

There was a civil case later, where he was also found guilty and made to pay retribution to the child he brutally violated. Some people think this constitutes "paying" for the crime. It does not. It is a civil proceding for damages against a private individual. It does not pay for his crime against the laws of the state, those that forbid violent assault, even if the criminal is able to hand over a wad of cash afterwards. And, by the way, that is known around these parts as prostitution - the exchange of sexual services for money or goods in trade. The civil law offers additional remedies to those wronged, but it is not a substitute for punishment by a criminal court for criminal acts.

Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old child.

His movie making "genius" is irrelevant to his assault on this child. He planned, in a horrific echo of Humbert Humbert in Lolita, to render the girl unconscious with drugs, unable to protest his carnal use of her body. As in Lolita, the drugs did not work. Unlike Lolita, much like real life, the child fought back. She rejected him. She did not want this to happen. He raped her anyway. Nabokov's novel is art, an examination of how men rationalize their violence against their victims. Polanski's rape is a crime, a case study of a particular man rationalizing his violence against his victim.

Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old child.

There is no defense for what he did. Nothing he has ever done as a movie maker excuses or diminishes the premeditated violation of another's body for his own physical satisfaction. Any pain he has "endured" since that decision - when he knowlingly and with malice of forethought chose to force alcohol and drugs onto a child so he could rape her - is entirely of his own making:

• He chose to rape a child
• He chose to play games with the court system
• He chose to flee when the courts would not agree to diminish his crime
• He has refused to face the consequences of his acts
• He has attempted to buy off the victim and the law
• He has paraded his story around to increase his own celebrity
• He has traded on his celebrity to get his brutal rape excused and escape just punishment for what he did

The defense seems to be Polanski is an artist and should not be subject to the same laws as the rest of humanity becuse he has gratified us with his artistic endeavors. That is an exact inversion of the principle of the law:

Because Roman Polanksi does not wish to share the earth with other human beings, feeling entitled to treat another person as a sex toy for his personal entertainment and gratification, there is no reason why the rest of humanity should wish to share the world with him.

He deserves to go into prison with the rest of the child rapists and spend the rest of his miserable life suffering in his own self-inflicted hell. Why does he deserve this?

Because he drugged and raped a 13 year old child.

Anglachel

Falsies

Right on cue, The Incomparable One, serves up another excellent take down of the so-called-progressive media by focusing on the casual acceptance of sexism by the audience as a legitimate and progressive mode of political rhetoric.

Susie Madrak, in her review of Boehlert's new book, cuts to the chase more crisply than I did the other day:

Perhaps it will help matters if I point out the only blog reviews to date have been written by the bloggers who also protested the treatment of Hilary Clinton in last year’s primary. Which raises an interesting question: Is discussing even the possibility of sexism in the liberal blogosphere the third rail? Looks like it. ...

But the book does have a few flaws. Boehlert takes great pains to list the charges of sexism in the primary without really investigating them; for instance, I can’t imagine why he let it pass when a male blogger claims there was no sexism on his site because he didn’t allow his commenters to call Clinton a "cunt" or a "bitch." (Because, of course, we all know there’s simply no other language that could possibly demean women.)

My point - that the A-List and A-List-wanna-be bloggers were on message with the major media, not in opposition to them - is most clearly demonstrated by the way in which sexism was not simply tolerated, but deliberately and aggressively deployed, first in the primaries and again in the general campaign. I also think that we have to focus on class and liberal disdain for "low culture" as something that amplified the misogyny.

Somerby has always been clued in to this mix, though he often overwhelms the fundamental argument with his exhortative style. Today, though, he sets aside his usual arch delivery and delivers a sharp, uncompromising critique of the fauxgressive media celebrities and the pseudo-liberals who love them.

Bob starts with an insightful, critical, yet also sympathetic report on Marion Barry casting the sole dissent from the D.C . city council's bill to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. Bob makes clear his own disagreement with Barry, and his hope that Barry's assessment of the effect of the vote on D.C.'s black community is wrong. He then asks why there is little attention being given to Barry's opposition and arguments outside of the D.C. Metro area, specifically among the "progressive" media. Indeed, why not? This is a significant political figure making a strong argument about a possibly violent rejection of a cause near and dear to liberal hearts, an argument that has resonance in California where Proposition 8, enshrining anti-gay bigotry in the state constitution, was strongly supported by African American voters. This is a serious point of contention among traditional constituents of the Democratic Party and needs to be understood and dealt with.

What do we get instead? The trivialization of the issue compounded by blatent misogyny, courtesy of Keith Olbermann. A long but excellent excerpt, all emphasis mine:

But it’s funny, ain’t it? You haven’t heard squat about Barry’s “ugly words” on your “progressive” cable news channel! But last night, The Dumbest Person in the World devoted another lengthy segment to ridicule of Carrie Prejean, an insignificant 21-year-old who recently made the mistake of saying something about same-sex marriage which Olbermann has never even bothered describing.(For the record, her view on the matter seems to resemble that of Barack Obama. And that of Hillary Clinton. And John Kerry and Al Gore.) The big nut went on for almost seven minutes mocking Prejean—and her breast implants. But it’s funny, ain’t it? You’ve never heard a word on this program about the things Marion Barry said.

Of course, the reasons for that are obvious:

Olbermann doesn’t have videotape of Barry walking around in a two-piece swim suit. And Barry is an older man, not a younger woman. As Olbermann has made dumb-foundingly clear, he seems to live for the opportunity to ridicule young women. He never says boo about older man—perhaps understanding they could come to his studio and engage in conduct which might require him to obtain a sphincter implant.

Olbermann’s a woman-trasher—a genuine nut on this matter. And no, we hate to break the news: He doesn’t do “progressive” television. He seems to do work designed to capture the eyeballs of well-meaning young liberals. And for some ungodly reason, he does television which has long been devoted to the ridicule of women’s brains and bodies. Marion Barry doesn’t count. An insignificant creation of Donald Trump quite incessantly does. ...

For sheer stupidity, we strongly recommend last night’s buffoonish segment, devoted to the eternal dumbness of Miss California. (To watch the segment, click this.) Olbermann plays you every way but blue, citing those breast implants two separate times (including in his opening paragraph) and failing to tell you why Prejean might be upset about the way she’s been treated. (He always forgets to explain this.) You see, in the world of “progressive cable,” calling a young woman a “c*nt” and a b*itch” isn’t worthy of comment —if she fails to hold pseudo-progressive views, that is. “Where are the feminists?” Laura Ingraham inquired. We would broaden her limited framework: Where are the progressives?

Oh, we forgot! They’re dragging their knuckles and sucking their thumbs, watching a 50-year-old nutcase get his eternal jollies. And drive his rating among the demo, putting millions of bucks in his pants.

Where are the "progessives" indeed.

The Incomparable One turns the criticism of the media around to those who eagerly consume it and who are proud to count Olbermann as one of their tribe. Bob asks what Eric Boehlert danced around but couldn't quite bring himself to ask, what Susie and BTD (among others) have asked, which is why are liberals so comfortable with Olbermann's and others' use of liberal politics to engage in crude misogyny?

With Prejean, as with Gov. Palin and in an oblique way with Hillary, the mysogyny is twisted together with a culture critique that tries to have its cheesecake and spit on it, too. The high-minded disdain evinced by (mostly but not always) men like Olbermann allows both the critic and the audience to manhandle stereotypes of "low" women, simultaneously creating what is low and implanting those reviled qualities into a disposable other, inviting each other to ogle, manipulate, possess and indulge in those despicable (yet deeply desired) aspects under the guise of rejecting them. We can't just talk about Prejean's opinions - we also have to stare at her (false, deceitful, whorish) breasts which serve as proof of her shallow character, her vanity, and her desire to be fucked over. She's just asking for it!

We lose sight of the real political challenge, the deep division within the Democratic coalition about our commitment as a party to equal rights, and we are assaulted by yet another misogynistic T&A drool session masquerading as political commentary. In the end, Somerby is less criticizing Olbermann than he is those who watch him with admiration, thinking that this is somehow progressive.

To think you can engage in this kind of misogyny and be progressive is simply false.

Anglachel

But You're Supposed to Teach Me!

Go and read Historiann's post about an obnoxious exchange with a student, Ummm, you e-mailed *me* for advice, remember?, and be sure to read the comment thread.

I agree with commenter Dr. Crazy that the emailer was being sexist as well as rude when one of his ass-covering excuses for being rude was that he wasn't asking Historiann out on a date, which is a weirdly inappropriate reply. Would he have said the same to a male professor? Why would being civil and acknowledging the humanity of the other person be confined to trying to get a date?

Anglachel

Women They Love to Hate

The Incomparable One, Bob Somerby, dissects Olbermann and Archie Bunker (my emphasis):

He’s gotta do it: Progressive interests would be better served if our leaders could stop saying things like what follows. On Wednesday evening, Keith Olbermann was chatting with his “friend,” Margaret Carlson about—what else?—Sarah Palin. Carlson was lounging about the Republican Governors Conference in snowbound Miami:

CARLSON (11/12/08): We’ll always have Sarah Palin, it seems. But here, actually, the governors are wanting to talk about 2010, because the number 2012 is code for talking about Sarah Palin, which was where they do not want to go. Her saying that she doesn’t represent herself, she represents an entire movement that’s going to save the Republican party is just what they quietly don’t want to happen. If they had their way, she wouldn’t be here tomorrow.

OLBERMANN: Wow. I mean, to what degree is that the other prominent Republican governors who got some passing mention during this campaign, with an eye towards 2012—Jindal, Pawlenty, Crist? Is there any sense that any of them are forming a power base behind Palin? Or are they intending to, you know, cut her up like a Roman dictator and smuggle her out under their robes?

CARLSON: Ha, ha. Well, they only say that quietly, Keith.

Sorry, but that’s very strange. A few months ago, Olbermann apologized for picturing Hillary Clinton getting beaten up by a bunch of goons behind locked doors. This week, he was picturing Sarah Palin getting cut up into pieces.

Within moments, he mockingly compared her to Lindsay Lohan—then, to Dizzy Dean.

It’s always surprising to see the way such fellows discuss the women they hate. They seem to find it hard to do so without picturing violence or turning to overt, gender-based derision. In our view, Palin is a remarkably underwhelming figure, in ways which are quite easy to define. You don’t have to compare her to Lohan, or picture her being killed—unless your skills are remarkably weak, or you simply enjoy hating women. But MSNBC has trafficked, for many years, in weird, remarkable woman-loathing. And when it comes to their new uber-star, it seems he’s gotta have it.

But then, here’s Archie Bunker—sorry, Josh Marshall—letting us know, just yesterday, who the latest “dingbat” is. Without even bothering to report what this new "dingbat" actually said! [Anglachel note - WKJM has belatedly identified the woman he was deriding.]

But so it goes as progressive intellectual standards spiral steadily downward. Olbermann’s performance on Wednesday’s show was an unfortunate case in point. He performed in ways which used to define the woeful standards of pseudo-con talk. ...

Increasingly, it’s sad to watch the work done on Countdown. Increasingly, that work reflects the lowball intellectual standards pioneered by pseudo-conservative talk. In the long run, progressive interests will not be served by dumbing down the progressive base. It may be good for ratings and salaries—but it can’t be good for the country. This country badly needs to be smart.

(By the way: There has been a lot of chortling this week about the Martin Eisenstadt hoax. On October 16, Olbermann showed remarkably odd judgment in the way he handled one part of this story. No, he wasn’t taken in by the part of the hoax allegedly involving Joe the Plumber. But in repeating claims which he knew were untrue, he almost seemed to be trying to make sure that some viewers did.)

Increasingly, Olbermann offers extremely weak work. What can you say about a guy who can’t lay out Palin’s obvious weaknesses without resorting to gender-based trashing? But most strikingly, Olbermann’s instinct for violent imagery doesn’t seem to want to quit. This is bad for progressive interests, and it’s bad for young men and young women. We’d have to say it’s just plain bad for the world in which we all live. Can someone explain why “progressive” leaders can’t seem to quit this kind of talk?

Perhaps more to the point, why don't we have more men like Bob Somerby unflinchingly calling out the misogyny of people like Olbermann?

Hannah Arendt once described this situation as that she was not so much concerned about Bluebeard himself (pirate, marauder, criminal) as she was by those who would not find Bluebeard objectionable. I take this to mean that while there will always be people who will engage in violence and inhumane acts, the danger to a population is those people who do not see that kind of behavior as needing opposition. Perhaps they view it ironically, or explain it away, or secretly approve because it is of momentary advantage to themselves, or because it allows them to vicariously enjoy the expression of things they (usually) know better than to say out loud.

The last two reasons are what we saw on parade this electoral cycle. People like Olbermann would be outrageous and then the enablers would try to explain why it wasn't so bad instead of standing up to the violence and rejecting it. The overall language and imagery would rachet up in the next round. The introduction of violent, misogynist themes into political discourse, the normalization of exhortations or suggestions to do physical harm to non-compliant women, all of it explained away as self-defense mixed with just desserts for getting out of line - hmm, where on the political spectrum is that usually located?

Right. Not anymore.

Anglachel

You Are *So* History, Joanie

I've had a long and wearing day, so I won't be doing much braining, but I had to provide this double dose of Doonesbury. I was raised on equal amounts of Doonesbury and Tom Lehrer (which explains a lot about my political philosophy, no doubt) and Joanie Caucus has always been one of my favorite characters. She has always been a voice for feminism in the comics. The strips documenting her attempt to apply for law school were both comical and enraging. Earlier this year, while imagining a Hillary presidency, Joanie dreamed of being named Attorney General.

This week, Trudeau has been poking sly fun at Obamacan maniacs suddenly deprived of their election drug, but just tossed in a wonderful twist.

Alex Doonesbury, Joanie's granddaughter, is in major Obama withdrawal, as she discusses with her roommate, Drew. To cure the pangs, she attends a political science class where the professor is looking at pre-Hillary female politicians. Alex suddenly gets an education in American political history. (Click the image for the full sized version. I'm not sure why Blogger is shrinking this.)

Maybe Alex will find a political hero closer to home.

Anglachel

Personal and Political

Echidne is a goddess, but you all knew that already, didn't you?

My own recent posts on women, violence and proximity were inspired by Echidne's series on why she is a feminist. If you have not yet read all of them, here are the links:

1. The Right to Go Out
2. Planet of the Guys
3. Our Father Who Art in Heaven
4. The Invisible Women
5. The Female Body As Property

She has completed that series with her current, magnificent post, The Longest Revolution, in which she addresses proximity. She makes this key point (my emphasis):

That women are so integrated on that most primal of levels probably explains why sexism is harder to see than other -isms which oppress people. If women are killed because of their sex it mostly doesn't happen in large public slaughterings but privately, one woman at a time, and in each case we wonder if the cause for the killing might not have been something personal, something unrelated to the gender of the victim. And note that while most racists don't have parents of the race they now hate, all misogynists do. -- It's all too close, too intimate, too hard to see because we lack the necessary distance, the necessary ability to see the possibly oppressed as a separate group.

This is crucial for understanding how misogyny can be simultaneously invisible to most people and yet part of the daily routine for millions of men and women. It's the core of what I am trying to get at when I talk about it being privatised and excused. I'm not a rapist, my girlfriend was just playing hard to get. I'm not a wife beater, she was bitching me out and wouldn't shut up. I'm not committing incest, I'm helping her explore her sexuality. I didn't do anything to her, she was asking for it.

When we do come across situations of women being slaughtered in significant numbers, or executed one at a time, or aborted in numbers large enough to skew sex ratios, or perhaps just kept in gulags of prostitution cut off from any source of protection and offered for rent in a booming sex market, we see the violence as the product of a killer with mental problems, or of an exotic society's bizarre customs, or where the women are participants in crime, instead of understanding women as a class systematically subjected to harm in a way that is unique to them and is due to being female.

Every day women must test the proposition that the men we know aren't a danger to us by putting ourselves in harm's way and seeing whether our trust is justified. In most cases, it is, and this is a good thing. In many cases, it is not and too often those violations occur with men whom we have trusted in the past, like a classmate, an intimate partner, a relative, a co-worker, an authority figure, people on whom our well-being depends.

So, I keep returning to the question, who are you? It doesn't matter what you say online or if you say anything at all. It's just words here. What matters is how you answer that question with your actions. I want you to think what you are doing. I cannot do this thinking for you, nor can I act in your stead. Mandos said "By deduction, what Anglachel must want is for men to help end the privatization of misogyny and rape. What form this is supposed to take is what eludes me." It eludes me as well, not because I can't come up with a nice, thorough, egalitarian to-do list of acts and attitudes I would dearly love to see made flesh in this world, but because you (both Mandos and the generic "you" reading these words) must inhabit a form of life that rejects misogyny and you must do this in the same manner in which you currently inhabit one that embraces misogyny; it can't be done by checking off a list of tasks.

It means reconstructing the world we have in common.

Hillary was talking about this thirteen years ago:

These abuses have continued because, for too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words. But the voices of this conference and of the women at Huairou must be heard loudly and clearly:

It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.

It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the
slavery of prostitution.

It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.

It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.

It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes.

It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely -- and the right to be heard.

Tell yourself what you are doing to create a form of life where these things do not occur. That will say who you are.

Anglachel

Reproduction of Culture

I read an interesting post in the Feminist Law Professors blog today, "New Study Documents Sharp Rise in Pregnancy Discrimination Complaints, Driven by Discrimination Against Women of Color".

They quote a study done by the National Partnership for Women and Families that presents information about a sharp rise in discrimination against pregnant women in the workplace. (Full report PDF here) The key paragraph from the news release is this:

The new study finds that race and ethnicity appear to be playing a significant role in the rise of pregnancy discrimination complaints. During the discrete period from FY1996 to FY2005, claims filed by women of color jumped 76 percent, while claims overall increased by 25 percent. During that time, complaints filed by Black women increased by 45 percent, by Hispanic women by 135 percent, by Asian/Pacific Islander women by 90 percent, and by American Indian/Alaska Native women by 109 percent. More than half the claims filed with the EEOC during that period (53 percent) were filed in service, retail trade and the financial services, insurance and real estate industries — where some seven in ten women work.

The one thing missing from the study report are the economic demographics of the women who filed discrimination complaints. I suspect that there was no consistent way to gather that data. The PDF only presents summary information with a little data.

Industries that have low educational barriers are heavily represented in the claims filed - retail, manufacturing, transportation. Secretarial and general office employment is not clearly identified. It could be under "Services", "Finance, Insurance & Real Estate," and "Other/ Not Provided". The lack of job category data makes me wonder if the women filing the complaints are ordinary employees, supervisory/managerial, or executive level staff. The examples in the report cite two management-track situations and a hiring policy (Numbers are footnote references):

Examples include a case involving a female regional manager of a hotel chain who was demoted repeatedly after announcing her pregnancy. A senior vice president for the chain asserted that women were not suitable for managerial positions because they missed too much work.35 In another case, a maternity clothing specialty store agreed to pay a settlement after being sued for its policy of not hiring pregnant job applicants.36 In still another case, a rising star who had quickly moved into a manager-in-training position was told to consider her options and had her training rescinded when she announced her pregnancy.37

The mere presence of female reproduction is reason to discriminate. The report cites percentage increases in claims filed by minority women, but does not provide actual numbers, so it is unclear what the numeric breakdown is or if minority women are more likely to be subject to pregnancy discrimination than white women. Given general patterns in racial discrimination, I suspect the answer is yes to the latter. Are managerial level women more likely to file complaints than regular staff?

What can be gleaned from this? The gestating body is not respected. Pregnant women are a suspect class, not trusted to perform their tasks responsibly. The requirement that an infant be tended once born is viewed not as a respected obligation of the birth parent, but as something to be penalized, reducing the value and respectability of the affected party.

My point of curiosity, which the report cannot answer, is how much of the discrimination is culturally based. Are the white women who are discriminated against from an upper middle class background with professional credentials, or are women with origins lower on the socio-economic ladder and perhaps with credentials rather than degrees more likely to be singled out? To what degree are cultural stereotypes of "welfare queen" and "trailer trash" the background biases of the managers who decide a gravid body no longer deserves equal treatment?

In short, do pregnant women of the right class get better treatment, less discriminatory treatment, than pregnant women who are looked at through lenses of cultural disdain?

One of the uglier lines of argument to come from the Left against Gov. Palin and her daughter Bristol was that these women should not reproduce in the first place. They are just trash, they will reproduce an inferior culture, there is something pathological about their fecundity. Why wouldn't either of them get an abortion when the outcome was not going to be good - a Down Syndrome child for one, teen parenthood for the other with mutterings about shotgun weddings and possible incest. It is of a piece with conservative arguments about minority women's reproductive decisions, that those people shouldn't breed.

On top of general misogyny, lower socio-economic status women constantly battle bigotry that would deny them their own children. When it gets applied to women who are not so low on the ladder, such as the Palins, then the culture argument is easier to see because it slips from being a purely economic claim and begins to base its authority on judgment about the kind of mother this or that woman would be, and what pathologies she would inculcate in her offspring. That these arguments have been offered most stridently from the right and against minorities should not camouflage the more general class bias that is used by all political sides. I am concerned about this given the rampant misogyny on the Left coupled with the explicit rejection of working class and poor interests by the current power brokers of the Democratic Party.

The irony, of course, is that discrimination against women in the workplace for being (or potentially being, or just having ceased to be) pregnant is one way in which economic advancement of working class women is curtailed and the "pathological" culture they are presumed to inhabit is prevented from changing itself through stable, sustainable employment.

Anglachel

Girls Have Cooties

The NYT has a front page article, Women Buying Health Policies Pay a Penalty, on the significantly higher premiums private health insurance carriers charge woman. It appears that trying to remain healthy is a reason to charge higher premiums because the users "consume" more of the "product".

Striking new evidence has emerged of a widespread gap in the cost of health insurance, as women pay much more than men of the same age for individual insurance policies providing identical coverage, according to new data from insurance companies and online brokers.

Some insurance executives expressed surprise at the size and prevalence of the disparities, which can make a woman’s insurance cost hundreds of dollars a year more than a man’s. Women’s advocacy groups have raised concerns about the differences, and members of Congress have begun to question the justification for them. ...

In general, insurers say, they charge women more than men of the same age because claims experience shows that women use more health care services. They are more likely to visit doctors, to get regular checkups, to take prescription medications and to have certain chronic illnesses.

Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, an advocacy group that has examined hundreds of individual policies, said: “The wide variation in premiums could not possibly be justified by actuarial principles. We should not tolerate women having to pay more for health insurance, just as we do not tolerate the practice of using race as a factor in setting rates.”

The women most likely to be purchasing individual health care are those least likely to be employed and/or married to someone who has employer based health care. The women most likely to have lower household incomes and greater health risks due to the demands of work (possibly needing to do two jobs, leaving little time for self-care) and the structure of food pricing, where the least nutritious is the cheapest. This group of women is also likely to have dependents who are also significant "consumers" of health care.

One of my first thoughts was childbirth and attendant medical complications were factored into the premiums. After seeing what a friend of mine went through to have an "uncomplicated" ceasarian, I can see there would be some significant expenses involved. But that's not necessarily the case:

Insurers say they have a sound reason for charging different premiums: Women ages 19 to 55 tend to cost more than men because they typically use more health care, especially in the childbearing years.

But women still pay more than men for insurance that does not cover maternity care. In the individual market, maternity coverage may be offered as an optional benefit, or rider, for a hefty additional premium.

Crystal D. Kilpatrick, a healthy 33-year-old real estate agent in Austin, Tex., said: “I’ve delayed having a baby because my insurance policy does not cover maternity care. If I have a baby, I’ll have to pay at least $8,000 out of pocket.”

So, it's not because the dames are popping out sproglets. That would be an additional expense. The "but you might get pregnant" argument is the same as what was used for years to deny access to education and good paying jobs. Your biology isn't male, thus, we're going to charge you. How big are these disparities?

Humana, for example, says its Portrait plan offers “ideal coverage for people who want benefits like those provided by big employers.” For a Portrait plan with a $2,500 deductible, a 30-year-old woman pays 31 percent more than a man of the same age in Denver or Chicago and 32 percent more in Tallahassee, Fla.

In Columbus, Ohio, a 30-year-old woman pays 49 percent more than a man of the same age for Anthem’s Blue Access Economy plan. The woman’s monthly premium is $92.87, while a man pays $62.30. At age 40, the gap is somewhat smaller, with Anthem charging women 38 percent more than men for that policy. ...

Thomas T. Noland Jr., a senior vice president of Humana, said: “Premiums for our individual health insurance plans reflect claims experience — the use of medical services — which varies by gender and age. Females use more medical services than males, and this difference is most pronounced in young adults.”

In addition, Mr. Noland said, “Bearing children increases other health risks later in life, such as urinary incontinence, which may require treatment with medication or surgery.” ...

In Iowa, a 30-year-old woman pays $49 a month more than a man of the same age for one of Wellmark’s Select Enhanced plans. Her premium, at $151, is 48 percent higher than the man’s.

So, women and men engage in sex, but women get pregnant and might have complications. That men, statistically more likely to have more partners, are at a higher level of risk for STDs and (since they are less likely to seek treatment) are more likely to suffer the long term effects of a disease like herpes and to spread that disease to other partners doesn't come up. Can we also talk about the propensity for male "young adults" to engage in risky behavior and end up requiring extremely expensive treatment for injuries? A friend of mine is recently out of ICU because of bashing in his own skull in a fall while trying to skateboard while drunk, for example. Are these accidents being factored in to male insurance premiums? Is it really the case that a woman is 48% more expensive to insure, or is it that the insurers know that men don't use medical services enough to make any money off them?

At the same time as women are being charged more because of they might get pregnant and they might make more use of the doctor, the fundamentalists are trying to remove access to effective birth control (in part by trying to force states to drop requirements that birth control be covered by insurance) and discourage use of health care that is aimed at reproductive health, such as pap smears, vaccines and and non-hormonal birth control, especially if provided by clinics that also provide abortion services. Where are the men of the Left in this battle?

Then there is the argument of health care over time. Women use health care earlier in their lives when it will pay out greater benefits in long term health. Men do not. The article did not offer a comparison of health care consumption after 40. Are men actually costing more long-term? The actuarial people warn against sharing the risk:

Cecil D. Bykerk, president of the Society of Actuaries, a professional organization, said that if male and female premiums were equalized, women would pay less but “rates for men would go up.”

Mr. Bykerk, a former executive vice president of Mutual of Omaha, said, “If maternity care is included as a benefit, it drives up rates for everybody, making the whole policy less affordable.”

Um, wouldn't it make the whole policy more affordable to the people most likely to need the health care? Instead of women, and the most vulnerable groups of women, having to bear a premium for the ordinary health needs of life, why don't we spread it around and make it a little more expensive here but a lot less expensive there? In short, why don't we use insurance the way it is supposed to be used, to reduce cost by recognizing the social benefits as well as the individual risks? Some people have their heads on straight:

Mila Kofman, the insurance superintendent in Maine, said: “There’s a strong public policy reason to prohibit gender-based rates. Only women can bear children. There’s an expense to that. But having babies benefits communities and society as a whole. Women should not have to bear the entire expense.”

The cost of poor maternal health as a whole is greater than just the considerable burden on the mother and her children. Of course, one answer I hear even on the Left is that women who can't take care of themselves (i.e., cannot afford health insurance plus the maternity rider) have no business bearing children anyhow. And they shouldn't expect to have contraception to save them, either. They can just keep their knees together and stop being such welfare queens and trailer park trash. Besides, the world is overpopulated and we don't need more people who are just going to reproduce their pathological culture as well as extraneous children.

Hmm, what's familiar about that picture? If you view women primarily as breeders, and then you divide them into the well mannered breeders who limit their reproduction and deserve to be treated like men and the undeserving breeders who have babies to stay on welfare or who are just sluts who fuck until they "have" to get married, well, you don't really have to look at the social benefit that accrues to men whose medical needs are no less than women's, but which follow a different pattern.

There is something profoundly wrong treating human reproduction as a disease peculiar to women.

Anglachel

Ambiguous Conversations

Anthony McCarthy has a post up on Echidne of the Snakes that is well worth reading, The Suppression Of Clearly Bigoted Words Is A Necessary Step. What he proposes is very straightforward - when anyone uses bigoted derogatory language towards individuals and/or classes of people or that perpetuates bigotry and derogatory treatment of a class of people, harass the living hell out of them until they stop doing it:

Achieving the suppression of the language of bigotry is straight forward, you suppress it. You make the use of the words uncomfortable and an invitation to be hassled. For example, the blog boys use the word “cunt”. The way to make them uncomfortable is to constantly call them on it when they use it. It’s simple as that. They refer to women in that way, you make that uncomfortable for them, you harass them whenever they say it. You make it not worth their wile to use the word. When they whine about your calling them on it, you just do it anyway. They pout about you ruining their fun and boy bonding, you ignore it and keep calling them on it while taking pleasure at their discomfort. Their discomfort is a sign your plan is working, I see nothing wrong with enjoying it, privately. Of course, you've got to give up using language like that yourself, you've got to have credibility.

I fully concur.

There is no liberal cause that is advanced by using bigoted and derogatory language. Nailing someone for using this kind of language does not require you to check their political credentials or determine what side they're on because it's just wrong. The difficulty will be in training yourself to think more critically about the language you encounter and to refuse to excuse it because it is aimed at a political opponent.

Some stuff is easy, like name calling. "[Name goes here] is a [epithet goes here]!" is a simple formulation that calls for critical evaluation. Calling someone a cunt, a ho, a fag, etc., is simply out of bounds. Simply starting with this would do an enormous service to the level of discourse without preventing powerful opposition.

What's harder are oblique references. What do you do with a statement like "They're just bitter knitters."? To me, this is bigoted and derogatory because of the stereotyping, the projection of intent, and the reduction of a class of people (all supporters of a candidate) to a gendered and mocked activity, but it doesn't use a "bad" word. What about a phrase like "throwing dishes" or "the claws come out"?

What about uses of language that do attempt to use bigoted words and phrases in an ironic or contestatory way? Anthony notes, "Those words and similar ones shouldn’t be tolerated no matter what comedian or pop star has used them in their act, no matter how gratifyingly transgressive they make the user feel." OK, so what about my blog tag line - "You say I'm a bitch as if that were a bad thing..." I use it to mock those who would (and do) call me a bitch. Qualities attributed to being a "bitch," being tough, getting in people's faces, fighting back against domination, are things that women are not supposed to do. Yet, it is clearly an epithet, so should I use it? Why or why not? What about my use of the tag "Media Whores"? Is calling anyone a "whore" ever acceptable?

Pressing on, what about a term that is used widely and is not aimed at anyone in particular, perhaps not even used as an epithet, but which has derogatory overtones? My current pet peeve is "bitch slap", a term linguistically paired with "pimp slap" and arising from abuse of prostitutes by pimps and johns, which was brought into the political lexicon by WKJM as "the bitch-slap theory of politics," and is now used in economics discussions by people like Paul Krugman and Ian Welsh, who used the term today in this article. Why use this particular phrase? What value does it bring except to invoke the picture of a woman being slapped around or, focusing on the slap itself, of a weak, laughable, "girly" way of doing things. Without the derogatory gendered meaning, it doesn't work.

How about agreement with the statement of others? What about Atrios and his infamous "Heh," when he quotes another person's words or links to something that is derogatory and bigoted? Does agreement or promotion deserve the same reaction as being the originator? How about stuff in the comments? Are bloggers or site proprietors to be held responsible for the language of the commenters? I say yes. What do you say?

Finally, what about non-linguistic communications? If I post an image of Anne Coulter being subjected to violence of some kind, but I don't write any objectionable words, should I be harrassed until I remove it? What about blogs that run ads that have bigoted or derogatory imagery and/or phrases?

I think Anthony is right. The only question for me is how far to take it. Commenters, share your thoughts.

Politely.

Anglachel

A Room of One's Own

If you have not yet read Echidne's post, The Right to Go Out, go there at once and read it. It's brief and I'll wait. Back now? Good.

The line from the post that sticks with me is this one (my emphasis): "My second reaction [to a statement quoted in the post] was the realization that people mostly don't see that female fear of the outside as a civil rights issue or a human rights issue. It's just How Things Are."

Without disagreeing with Echidne, I think the argument can be applied more broadly – the problem is that there are almost no physical spaces women may safely occupy and that the home may be even more dangerous than the street. Echidne’s observation that, “In most societies women who go out alone at night are at greater risk than men who go out alone, because women have to deal not only with the risk of getting mugged but also with the risk of getting raped. They are seen as prey,” can be applied to any location. A workplace, a parking lot, a path or sidewalk are places where women are stalked as prey, but so are homes, both in and out of buildings.

The percentage varies with the study being done, but it is the majority of violent assaults on women are by someone they know, a partner, a relative, a family friend. The most common place for this violence is the home. Where the hell do you go if nowhere is safe?

I have been raped more than once, always in my own home, always by someone I knew. I am lucky that the only man who threatened to kill me decided to batter holes in the wall beside my head while screaming how he would kill me instead of doing the deed. I am also lucky that I was able to leave that situation behind.

What of women who cannot? What if you lack the money and the support to get a room of one’s own?

The current financial meltdown will produce an upsurge in violence against women because the opportunity to engage in this violence without repercussions to the abuser will also increase.
If you have no health insurance except what your spouse or domestic partner gets through work, you have to calculate the costs of losing that coverage. If you kick out an abusive partner, will you be able to pay your mortgage or sell the house at any price? Shelters are closing for lack of funds – would there be a place to go to? If you have children who need to be protected, how might homelessness affect them (PDF)? Will rents be affordable even if you have your own income? Will employers hire you if they know you have a restraining order against a violent partner? Will you be targeted to be let go if your home life threatens to spill over into the workplace?

What about community programs that try to combat violence? The Family Justice Center of San Diego provides a one-stop-shop to help victims of domestic violence to work their way through the legal and social service tangle and get help. It both is and is not a part of the city and relies on volunteers, grants and donations to keep running. How will it be affected when corporate donor budgets are cut to the bone, charitable groups have less to give, and volunteers may need that time to work for wages? City of San Diego Police Department has one of the best domestic violence response units in the country, and works closely with the Family Justice Center (FJC). The City is also looking at a 10% cut across the board budget cut. What will happen to this unit? To similar units in other cities? What about emergency medical services? What about undocumented aliens? Will they protest if it might mean a visit from the INS? FJC won’t ask about your residency or citizenship, but will legal and social service agencies that use public funds be required to report suspected illegals?

Given a political and cultural environment awash in misogynistic imagery and sentiments, where the leader of the majority party is openly courting cultural conservatives and saying privately to the money men that social programs and services will be cut, we can expect to see policy and funding choices biased towards “family values” and increasing privatization of the risks of ordinary life. If misogyny and violence against women are not seen as civil rights or human rights violations, then the home becomes that much more dangerous a place because it is just a private matter, just that bitch getting in his face, you know, so you can understand why he had to give her a smack to make her calm down. Or maybe more than that. Whatever it takes to reassure the abuser that order has been restored.

In the current political environment, how difficult will it be to secure a room of one’s own?

Anglachel

Update - I have received some incredible comments from a number of people, some who said they've never posted a comment before to a blog. They are almost all stories about a woman's encounter with violence in her home. After consideration, I will not post these, even if the writer did not specifically say "don't publish", though most of you did say that. Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me these things.

Democratic Women up for Election

Courtesy of Hillary, information and contribution links to Democratic women up for election:

Three Senate Challengers:

In North Carolina, Kay Hagan is running a great race and some polls even show her ahead. Kay will invest in helping families stay in their homes, reducing foreclosures, and finding innovative new ways to stabilize neighborhoods. She will seek public-private partnerships to renovate neighborhoods and turn foreclosed properties into affordable rental or ownership units.

Mary Landrieu has been working her heart out for the people of Louisiana, still focused on Katrina recovery three years later while her opponents are doing everything they can to knock her out of her Senate seat. Senator Landrieu is spearheading efforts to rewrite federal disaster laws, which are unsuited to deal with larger disasters like Hurricane Katrina and largely ignore communities that host disaster evacuees.

And Jeanne Shaheen is criss-crossing the battleground state of New Hampshire, working hard in a race that is one of our top pick-up opportunities. Jeanne and I both have a long record of advocating for expanding children's healthcare. While Governor, Jeanne launched the New Hampshire's Children's Health Insurance Program, which has provided affordable health insurance to tens of thousands of New Hampshire children.

Anglachel - I'd really love for Jeanne Shaheen to pick up John Sununu's old seat.

Running for Office for the First Time:

In Colorado, Betsy Markey is running against Marilyn Musgrave, one of the most conservative, anti-choice Republicans in Congress. She's facing a million-dollar attack plan from a GOP desperate to hold on to this seat.

In Pennsylvania, local businesswoman Kathy Dahlkemper has taken the lead in a race that many thought Democrats couldn't win. Her opponent, Republican Phil English, has held his seat since 1994.

Shelly Moore-Capito is the only Republican in West Virginia's Congressional delegation, and Anne Barth, who has worked for years with my Senate colleague and friend Robert Byrd, has the chance to make West Virginia a totally Democratic state.

Anglachel - Some new faces in the House would be a good idea, especially if we can replace wingnut Marilyn Musgrave with Betsy Markey.

Wes Clark is supporting women Democrats, too. He's one man who isn't afraid to promote women in the military or in politics.

3 Fighting Women

Gabrielle Giffords
Gabrielle Giffords is a first term Congresswoman running for re-election in Arizona's 8th Congressional District. Gabrielle's business experience has made her an effective leader, successfully pushing 7 bills and amendments into law while introducing over 20 pieces of legislation in the House. Her priorities include expanding health care for American families and promoting alternative energy research and development.

Gabrielle's a rising star in our Party, and we must keep her seat in Congress. But her race is one of the most competitive in the country, and she needs our help. The right-wing is pouring in national resources in an attempt to take back this seat. In fact, George W. Bush visited Arizona to campaign for her opponent earlier this summer, raising half a million dollars. Help Gabrielle fight back against the likes of George W. Bush.

Dina Titus
Dina has worked tirelessly on behalf of Nevada's most vulnerable citizens by promoting legislation that allows seniors and other Nevadans to purchase less expensive prescription drugs from Canada, mandates tougher penalties for criminals who commit identity theft, and increases penalties for offenders who perpetrate crimes against the disabled.

Her opponent, Jon Porter, has spent the last six years fighting for the Washington special interests. That's why he doesn't want to run on the issues and is up with the first negative ad in the race. I am asking you to join me and help Dina fight back.

Judy Baker
Judy Baker is running in Missouri's 9th Congressional District. It's a tough district with a partisan voting index of R+7, but her first poll shows her two points ahead of her opponent. This is exactly the kind of race the WesPAC community has made our specialty. We don't back down from the tough fights, and this is one of them.

Judy's experience saving rural health clinics and operating her own small business has made her a strong leader in the state legislature, where she has advocated for education and health care access. She stood up to the Republican governor's plan to cut 200,000 children and seniors off of Medicaid and voted to cut her own benefits instead.

The polls show Judy within striking distance of Republican Blaine Luetkemeyer. We need to help her make up the difference. Please contribute to Judy's campaign today!

Anglachel - Dina and Judy are two-fers. Electing them puts in a Democratic woman and takes out a Republican man. Not a bad exchange rate.

Put Democratic women into power at every possible opportunity.

Anglachel