The boobs at Delta, that is.¹

See that photo, to the right? That’s Emily Gillette breastfeeding her child (as you can see, she’s virtually dancing topless!). And that sight is apparently sooo offensive that it can’t be allowed on planes. From the Burlington Free Press:

Gillette said she was seated in the second-to-last row, next to the window, when she began to breast-feed her daughter. Breast-feeding helps babies with the altitude changes through takeoff and landings, Gillette said. She said she was being discreet — her husband was seated between her and the aisle — and no part of her breast was showing.

Gillette said that’s when a flight attendant approached her, trying to hand her a blanket and directing her to cover up. Gillette said she told the attendant she was exercising her legal right to breast-feed, declining the blanket. That’s when Gillette alleges the attendant told her, “You are offending me,” and told her to cover up her daughter’s head with the blanket.

“I declined,” Gillette said in her complaint.

Moments later, a Delta ticket agent approached the Gillettes and said that the flight attendant was having the family removed from the flight.

The airline’s behavior is appalling. To make it even worse, this happened in Vermont, where state law says that mothers have the right to breastfeed in public (Queenbadmama has the text of Vermont’s law).

Lactivists haven’t been taking this lying down - they’ve staged a nurse-in, a turn of events Emily Gillette was apparently surprised but pleased by.

MomsRising.org has a petition you can sign, “to tell Delta Airlines to get a clue and be supportive of breastfeeding mothers. And tell Congress it’s time to pass the Breastfeeding Promotion Act, which amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect breastfeeding mothers.”

As you’d expect, the Momblogs have been covering this story. More blogging on this topic: Queen of the Bad Mommies (who I adore based on her blog name alone!), Blogher, Playground Revolution, Blogging Baby, Mama Knows Breast, The Zero Boss, Mother Talkers (which has a great header image, by the way), Strange As Angels (who is pissed off!), and Aurelia Ann (whose post is titled “Throw Momma From The Plane”).

Thanks to Bean for pointing out this story to me!

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

1. Freedom Air, actually, but Freedom Air was acting as Delta, or Delta was doing business as Freedom Air, or something. I’ve never quite groked all the little airline intertwining. (back)

Both Newsweek and The Nation have both posted articles about the “Quiverfull” movement - the extremist anti-birth-control movement among right-wing Protestants. (The title of this post is a quote from a leader of the movement, quoted in the Newsweek article). Here are some excerpts from the articles. First, from Newsweek:

Beyond such purists, the anti-birth control message appears to be gaining ground among some evangelicals. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has become one of its most prominent advocates. “If a couple sees children as an imposition, as something to be vaccinated against, like an illness, that betrays a deeply erroneous understanding of marriage and children,” says Mohler. “Children should be seen as good by default.” His stance isn’t as extreme as that of quiverfull followers; for instance, he condones the use of condoms for married couples in extreme circumstances, like illness. Still, Mohler’s views are considered “an oddity” in mainstream Baptist circles, according to Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Land admits, however, that Mohler has certainly expanded his following. “He is seen as the popularizer of a position that is still very marginal, but 15 years ago, it wouldn’t have even been discussed,” says Land, adding that he knows of at least two former students who had reverse vasectomies after hearing Mohler’s arguments. […]

Stephanie Coontz, director of research for the Council on Contemporary Families, says she has increasingly noticed articles on the subject in the Christian press. Part of the reason, she argues, is that conservatives are reacting to revolutionary changes in women’s social roles and seeking to re-impose a more traditional order. “The rhetoric is getting more shrill because people are getting more desperate,” she says. “It’s a backlash that I don’t feel will triumph. In the past, large families were helpful economically, but today, they become a disadvantage, especially to younger kids who don’t get as many resources.”

Coontz has it right; what’s at issue here isn’t just how many children to have, but the sex roles for men and women. Men on top, ruling the household; women below, raising the kids. Lots and lots and lots of kids. From the Nation article:

Quiverfull parents try to have upwards of six children. They home-school their families, attend fundamentalist churches and follow biblical guidelines of male headship–”Father knows best”–and female submissiveness. They refuse any attempt to regulate pregnancy. Quiverfull began with the publication of Rick and Jan Hess’s 1989 book, A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ, which argues that God, as the “Great Physician” and sole “Birth Controller,” opens and closes the womb on a case-by-case basis. Women’s attempts to control their own bodies–the Lord’s temple–are a seizure of divine power.

Though there are no exact figures for the size of the movement, the number of families that identify as Quiverfull is likely in the thousands to low tens of thousands. Its word-of-mouth growth can be traced back to conservative Protestant critiques of contraception–adherents consider all birth control, even natural family planning (the rhythm method), to be the province of prostitutes–and the growing belief among evangelicals that the decision of mainstream Protestant churches in the 1950s to approve contraception for married couples led directly to the sexual revolution and then Roe v. Wade.

“Our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice,” write the Hesses. Or, as Mary Pride, in another of the movement’s founding texts, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, puts it, “My body is not my own.” This rebuttal of the feminist health text Our Bodies, Ourselves is deliberate. Quiverfull women are more than mothers. They’re domestic warriors in the battle against what they see as forty years of destruction wrought by women’s liberation: contraception, women’s careers, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and child abuse, in that order.

Although the Quiverfull movement is an extreme, it’s my impression that an anti-birth-control movement has been rising among American evangelicals. Having sex without women risking pregnancy is seen as abdicating the role women have been assigned by God.

You know what the scariest sentence in the Newsweek article is? “His stance isn’t as extreme as that of quiverfull followers; for instance, he condones the use of condoms for married couples in extreme circumstances, like illness.” Yes, that’s what makes someone a moderate on birth control: Condoms are okay if the mom is too deathly ill to risk pregnancy.

Note also the final page of the Nation article, in which DLC¹ paid researcher Kenneth Longman is quoted recommending that Democrats should bid for these voters by urging a return to patriarchy (and giving up on abortion rights). Unsurprising, but still annoying as hell.

1. DLC stands for Democratic Leadership Council, an extremely influential Democratic Party organ. (back)

I saw this study a few week ago, and at the time I didn’t have much time to write about it. The study has important ramifications for women’s rights and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections.

The general findings indicate that at the national level (not the individual level) westerners have more sex partners and fewer sexually transmitted infections (STIs). This challenges some common myths about HIV in Africa, and it seems to me that this study furthers the case for condom distribution and comprehensive health care. Here is a quote:

“We did have some of our preconceptions dashed,” she said, explaining that they had expected to find the most promiscuous behaviour in regions like Africa, with the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases.

That was not the case, as multiple partners were more commonly reported in industrialised countries where the incidence of such diseases were relatively low.

“There’s a misperception that there’s a great deal of promiscuity in Africa, which is one of the potential reasons for HIV/AIDS spreading so rapidly,” said Dr Paul van Look, director of Reproductive Health and Research at the World Health Organisation, who was unconnected to the study. “But that view is not supported by the evidence.”

Professor Wellings said that implied promiscuity may be less important than factors such as poverty and education – especially in the encouragement of condom use – in the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.

The study’s findings don’t bode well for people who advocate marriage as a way to lower STI transmission, and they show a connection between the status of women and the spread of STIs. Specifically they found that gender equality seems to be correlated with fewer STIs.

Researchers also found that married people have the most sex, and that there has been a gradual shift to delay marriage. While that has meant a predictable rise in the rates of premarital sex, experts believe this doesn’t necessarily translate into more dangerous behaviour.

In some instances, married women may be at more risk than single women.

“A single woman is more able to negotiate safe sex in certain circumstances than a married woman,” said Dr van Look, who pointed out that married women in Africa and Asia are often threatened by unfaithful husbands who frequent prostitutes.

There is much greater equality between women and men with regard to the number of sexual partners in rich countries than in poor countries, the study found.

For example, men and women in Australia, Britain, France and the US tend to have an almost equal number of sexual partners.

By contrast, in Cameroon, Haiti and Kenya, men tend to have multiple partners while women tend only to have one.

So my sense is the more sexual freedom for women, the better the economic and education opportunities for everyone, and the better the health education system, the fewer STIs are spread.

Other people’s elections have two important elements that make them better than my own, first my emotional detachment and my intellectual detachment match. In NZ elections I know Labour sucks, and I know it’s not going to matter that much, but I still end up caring, and I find that frustrating. The other thing is that other people have first past the post voting systems, which while fundamentally undemocratic, are really fun to watch.

I think it’s basically the geek in me that likes elections. I suspect the part of me that decided that all X-files episodes that began with the letter ‘P’ were of superior quality (this was back in Season three, I make no claism f), is exactly the same part of me that loves knowing that the thing to do is watch New Hampshire 2.

Of course an election is no fun if you can’t support a team. I find if you look there’s always something to care about: in Britain it was the fate of Plaid Cymru,¹ in America it was the ballot measures, and knowing if the Democrats took back the house no-one will be able to do anything for two years.

According to CNN all states that had minimum wage increases on the ballots succeeded (often with large margins), that’s far more than any New Zealand election has done. Plus the news on the abortion rights front is all good - two parental notification clauses knocked out, and the South Dakota abortion ban overturned. If they can’t ban abortion in South Dakota, then that has to be a good sign.

The rest is less fun (although go Arizona for being the first state not legislate Homophobia), also I’m not sure that I believe CNN, when it says that it’s covering the key ballot initiatives. I read somewhere that some state voted to investigate bringing in the death penalty. I think that’s key and I don’t even know what state it is.

As for the actual results, I’m generally fond of the US government not being able to do anything, really I am. I might even have the desire to kind of hope that the Democrats take the remaining two Senate seats, if I thought they might use them not to confirm people, but I don’t.²

It’s not that I wouldn’t vote. The thing I like best about my own elections is voting. I’m reasonably pragmatic about voting, and I love making really complicated theories about the best way to use my vote (or really complicated theories about how to answer polling questions - once I was supposed to say that I was going to vote for NZ First, I can’t remember why).³ It’s just that they’re the Democrats; they suck beyond the telling of it. There are probably even occasions where I’d vote for a Democrat in a national race (although I think in the unlikely event that I moved to America I’d make sure I lived somewhere like Mississippi or Massachusetts, so I’d never be tempted to vote for president). I can also think of circumstances that I’d be glad they won. But none of this makes them an fraction more left-wing, or an ounce less of a corporate party. I don’t think it’s elections that bring about meaningful change, but organising.

This election has reminded me everything I find weird about American elections. Top of the list is the fact that you use a different voting system in each part of the country, and it’s elected officials who decide on the voting system.

But second is the fact that Americans vote for everything. In New Zealand all the power is totally centralised and the only thing we vote for is central government (we do occasionally vote for local government but they don’t control any of the most important services such as education).

So I have a question for everyone there whose just voted for the Secretary of State in California, or their local DA or the Insurance Comptroller (what on earth is that?), what difference do you think it makes that these positions are . I imagine that mostly it wouldn’t make a difference, but when would it would mean that . NZ has pretty much the same level of violent, racist, rapist cops across the country. Somewhere you have to elect the sheriff, there would be places where that would encourage violent, racist, rapist cops, and other places where it might not stop it, but it might curb it. Is that people’s experience?

1. Chalk that up to things you didn’t know about me - I’m enough Welsh to support the Plaid (if not Welsh to reliably pronounce it). (back)
2. It sounds like the Virginia Senate race actually resembles the Tauranga Electorate race - which my friend Larry described as sexism beating racism on the day (although it sounds like racism is going to beat sexism in Virginia - isn’t that special). (back)
3. My favourite was that friends who were too principled to vote for Labour or the Greens, but wanted Winston Peters out of a job should vote for the Maori party, on the grounds that the Maori party would have an overhang so voting for then would mean that they wouldn’t get any extra seats, but would make it less likely that NZ first would reach the 5% threshold. Then it was pointed out to me that voting for the Libertarianz would achieve the same result, and I was sad, because that was a really complicated bit of logic out the window. (back)

Alas readers who saw Whale Rider might remember Keisha Castle Hughes, she was the young Maori actress who was nominated for a best Actress Oscar for her role as Paikea. It has just been announced that she is pregnant at 16. Span and Cactus Kate (of all people), have already covered some of the ways the coverage of these facts has been extremely offensive. But I want to look at this discourse in a little more detail, because it is pissing me off. From the NZ Herald:

National MP Paula Bennett, a mother at 17, said whichever way you looked at the situation, 16 was far too young to have a baby.

She believed there was no way a 16-year-old had the maturity to cope with the demands of raising a baby.

and from The Dominion Post

Family Planning executive director Jackie Edmond said New Zealand had the third-highest rate of teen pregnancy in the world. She hoped other teens would not want to “copy” the actress.

This level of tsk-tsking has a very clear subtext about young Maori girls who get pregnant. It’s part of a concerted strategy to blame poor people for being poor.

Look I’m a middle-class white girl, I find the idea of having a baby before I’m economically and socially secure terrifying, but I get to think that one day I will be economically and socially secure. Not everyone grows up with those set of assumptions about their life, and if you don’t have those assumptions your feelings about pregnancy and motherhoood are going to be qutie different.

But there’s actually a bigger issue here. Anika Moa has a song on her new album about the abortion she had when her music career was taking off, that she now regrets. She was told from all sides that if she continued the pregnancy she wouldn’t be able to have a music career - that she had to choose.

That’s why I hate the rhetoric of ‘choice’. Women shouldn’t have to choose between being a musician and a mother. Obviously in the months immediately after you give birth you do have physical restrictions on what you are going to do (longer the longer you breast feed). But so? Why does that mean that you can’t make music - and if you make music people want to listen to, why can’t they get to listen to it?

The answer is, of course, ‘capitalism’. I get that - most women do have to make that choice. But the way most people talk about it you’d think these choices forced on us by something people have no control over, rather than our economic system. You’d think that there was some law laid down that once you had a child you couldn’t do anything else, or if you did it would be 100 times harder. The reason that having a child at 16 is so very hard is that having a child is seen as an individualised project. Parenting gets no economic resouces and no support. It’s hard enough to do with a reasonable amount of money - if you don’t have a reasonable amount of money being able to do anything but parent when you have a child is really difficult.

We could organise our world so that parenting wasn’t just supported, but treated as the necessary work that it is. If we did that, if parents didn’t have to work huge amounts of outside hours (or live on the DPB, and all the poverty that that implies), then parenting wouldn’t be the end or your life. Women who were mothers, whether at 16 or 40, could do other things as well, parenting wouldn’t be seen as the end of your life, and your chance to develop.*

Maybe if we lived in a non-capitalist world that valued parenting women would have children young - when they had lots of energy. Maybe women would have them late, because they wanted to grow up first. Maybe women would make a wide variety decisions based from what they want from life.

But until we build that new world I wish people would just stop judging young women.

Note for commenters: This is not the place for a discussion about Keisha Castle-Hughes or her pregnancy - please keep the discussion general rather than specific, or on the discourse rather than the event.

Also published on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

Jill at Feministe wrote a good post about abortion called Beyond Legality. She was responding to a fascinating Alternet article, from a hotline which tries to help women get access to abortion:

“Could you ask your friends for $40? If they say ‘no,’ maybe ask for 20 or even 10?” I hear her ask in her calm voice. Later she tells me that this woman has been evicted from her house for lack of rent, and is crashing with her three children at a friend’s. To another caller, I hear her say, “Well, do you have anything you might pawn? Some jewelry? A TV set?” And to another, “Is it possible you could postpone your car payment until after the abortion?”

Laura’s case management is strikingly labor intensive. She averages about 15 phone calls per case — with the client herself, with the various abortion funds, with the clinic that is the potential site of the abortion — whether in the end the woman successfully obtains sufficient funds for an abortion or not.

Jill puts together a really cogent argument about everything which is wrong with abortion access in the united states, but begins:

With all the focus on simply keeping abortion legal, we often miss the fact that access to abortion remains highly limited and even impossible for some women.

I have to confess that I don’t understand abortion politics in the united states. I don’t understand why access is something that you need to be reminded about. Access means whether or not women can get abortions - I think that’s actually the only way to evaluate abortion policy.

Legally abortion is treated as a crime in New Zealand. It is covered under the crimes act and considered a crime except under circumstances:

(1)For the purposes of sections 183 and 186 of this Act, any act specified in either of those sections is done unlawfully unless, in the case of a pregnancy of not more than 20 weeks’ gestation, the person doing the act believes—
(a)That the continuance of the pregnancy would result in serious danger (not being danger normally attendant upon childbirth) to the life, or to the physical or mental health, of the woman or girl . . .; or
(aa)That there is a substantial risk that the child, if born, would be so physically or mentally abnormal as to be seriously handicapped; or
(b)That the pregnancy is the result of sexual intercourse between—
(i)A parent and child; or
(ii)A brother and sister, whether of the whole blood or of the half blood; or (iii)A grandparent and grandchild; or
(c)That the pregnancy is the result of sexual intercourse that constitutes an offence against section 131(1) of this Act [sexual contact with a dependent family member]; or
(d)That the woman or girl is severely subnormal within the meaning of section 138(2) of this Act.

In order to have a legal abortion in this country you have to have two specially licensed doctors verify that you meet those conditions. I don’t have a right to an abortion in this country. But I’d rather have an unwanted pregnancy here than anywhere in the United States.

If I got a positive pregnancy test I’d go to the doctor (that’d be free because I’m pregnant), then I’d go to the local hospital for two seperate appointments (they’d both be free). At these appointments the required number of doctors would sign up that continuing the pregnancy would damage my mental health and we’d be away (98% of abortion in NZ are done under the mental health provisions). It may not be what it used to be, but we do have a socialised health system and New Zealand - and that does far more for abortion access than any statement of rights.

Now I am lucky, I live in a large city, other areas of New Zealand aren’t so well served (this post gives all the details). But New Zealand women who need to travel to get abortions, and can’t afford to, should be able to get money from their district health board or work and income (our welfare service). It’s not ideal, but it’s far better than having someone at the end of a phone line asking you what you could pawn.

In New Zealand we lost the rights battle so concentrated on winning access (which we did), it seems to me that it worked the other way round - and this has hurt reproductive rights in really serious ways.

In the United States we lost on access as soon as the Hyde Amendment was passed. It became clear that the only women who had a right to choose were women who could afford it. Even if Roe vs. Wade were repealed it would be a difference in scale, not a difference in kind - rich women would be able to make it to New York. Maybe publicly funded abortion for all women aren’t winnable in the US now. But maybe they would have been if that had been what abortion rights groups concentrated on since 1973. Maybe access would be more secure too, because all women would feel like they had something to fight to protect, not just the ones with money.

Also posted at Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty.

A recent US News & World Report column by Dr. Bernadine Healy claims:

Just last week, the Commonwealth Fund issued a score card that flunked U.S. health system performance with newborns. The reason? Our current infant mortality rate of 6.4 per 1,000 live births is high compared with the 3.2 to 3.6 per 1,000 estimated for the three top-scoring countries in the world-Iceland, Finland, and Japan. It’s also higher than the 6 deaths per 1,000 for the European community as a whole. Before putting on the hair shirt, let’s take a look behind these numbers as these comparisons have serious flaws. They also convey little about why we lose nearly 28,000 babies a year, a starting point if we want to bring universal health to our nation’s cradles.

First, it’s shaky ground to compare U.S. infant mortality with reports from other countries. The United States counts all births as live if they show any sign of life, regardless of prematurity or size. This includes what many other countries report as stillbirths. In Austria and Germany, fetal weight must be at least 500 grams (1 pound) to count as a live birth; in other parts of Europe, such as Switzerland, the fetus must be at least 30 centimeters (12 inches) long. In Belgium and France, births at less than 26 weeks of pregnancy are registered as lifeless. And some countries don’t reliably register babies who die within the first 24 hours of birth. Thus, the United States is sure to report higher infant mortality rates.

Here’s a graph I made back in May:

Even when stillbirth deaths are included, the US is still doing significantly worse than countries credited with low infant morality rates. It is therefore impossible that the US’s poor standing is caused entirely by the exclusion of stillborn children from infant mortality statistics (although this exclusion may be a contributing factor). The US’s terrible track record, compared to other wealthy countries, is an atrocity, and one that shouldn’t be swept under the rug.

Dr. Healy does claim that the US’s high infant mortality rate is linked to our greater “ethnic and cultural diversity.” I have to wonder about that - is there any evidence that minorities in other first world countries do far worse in infant mortality (and maternal mortality) than majority groups? Or that they do as badly as some minority groups here in the US do?

But it’s true that when it comes to infant and maternal mortality, the US is effectively two nations. As I wrote in 2003, how likely you are to die in birth - or childbirth - in the U.S. depends on race. According to the CDC, the U.S. infant mortality rate for whites is 5.7 per 1000, a rate comparable to Switzerland or Australia. The U.S. infant mortality rate for blacks is 14 per 1000, a rate comparable to Uruguay and Bulgaria. The differences in maternal mortality rates are even more stark - 5.5 per 100,000 for whites, compared to 23.3 per 100,000 for blacks. This means that as far as maternal mortality is concerned, American whites have nearly the best health care in the world - better than Sweden’s - while American blacks might as well be living in Bulgaria or Saudi Arabia. (I’m using 1995 World Health Organization data, available in word format here, to make this comparison).

Bottom line: If we judge by infant and maternal deaths, blacks in the US effectively live in the third world, rather than in the first world. (See this post for some information about infant mortality among other demographic groups in the US.)

Curtsy to Mick at Newsbadger (who seems to have entirely bought the US News & World Report spin, alas).

Pinko Feminist Hellcat has a really interesting post about reproductive justice, and how it’s much more than the right to buy an abortion. Her starting point was Beyond Pro-Choice Versus Pro-Life by Andrea Smith.

Andrea Smith begins with some really interesting interviews she did with Native American women:

Once, while taking an informal survey of Native women in Chicago about their position on abortion—were they “pro-life” or “pro-choice”—I quickly found that their responses did not neatly match up with these media-mandated categories.

Example 1:
Me: Are you pro-choice or pro-life?
Respondent 1: Oh I am definitely pro-life.
Me: So you think abortion should be illegal?
Respondent 1: No, definitely not. People should be able to have an abortion if they want.
Me: Do you think then that there should not be federal funding for abortion services?
Respondent 1: No, there should be funding available so that anyone can afford to have one.
Example 2:
Me: Would you say you are pro-choice or pro-life?
Respondent 2: Well, I would say that I am pro-choice, but the most important thing to me is promoting life in Native communities.

This analysis is much more common than you’d think. Actual women having actual abortions aren’t generally making statements about the life-status of the fetus, but decisions about their own lives, and the reality that we live in.

Sheezlebub laid it all out in her post:

It isn’t about choice. It’s about power, it’s about basic civil and human rights. It’s about dignity. It’s about access to health care so that a woman can do what best for her and her child, instead of having no alternatives and then being thrown in the clink for being a dirty poor brown junkie or a lax bitch who didn’t get prenatal care. There be cooptation down this road of choice rhetoric–that dirty trashy slut made bad choices and should be punished for them! For the sake of the baby, dammit! And lo, she is, and because she’s not a wealthy or middle-class White woman, she’s invisible.

I agree that feminism isn’t about choices - feminism is about changing our society so women no longer have to constantly choose between shitty alternatives.

Despite that I think that there is strength in the slogan ‘a woman’s right to choose’ though (strength that gets lost in the watered down idea of being ‘pro-choice’). When I was going through the archives of an abortion rights group from the women’s liberation era, I found this fantastic leaflet that emphasised that the right to choose meant the right to bring an unplanned pregnancy to term and keep the baby. A right that we can’t have unless the work involved in child-rearing is recognised, and the costs involved in child-rearing is collectivised. To me that’s the (and the idea that women could have a right to choose when they can only have an abortion if they can pay for it is ridiculous).

I am an absolutist about a woman’s right to decide whether or not to end a pregnancy. I don’t think there are any circumstances where I’m a better judge than the pregnant woman about whether or not to continue either a pregnancy or this particular pregnancy. If a woman has had a sex test and decided to abort the pregnancy because the fetus is female, then who am I to say “no, you’re wrong, you can raise a baby girl”? The same is true if the fetus is going to be disabled, or if the father was of a different race.

But the problem in all those situations is that women may have very limited ability to exercise their right to continue their pregnancy and raise that child. You can’t have reproductive justice in a society where women can only have an abortion if they can pay, but equally well you can’t have reproductive justice in a society where women can only continue the pregnancy if they can pay. If we use the right to choose rhetoric, that has to mean that we’re working on both sides of the choice.

Also posted on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

I love doing these slumgullions, but with the first Disability Blog Carnival coming up at Disability Studies, Temple U. I may focus here more on non-blog slumgullionish stuff. Or maybe there will be so much disability blogging I can gather the leftovers here. We’ll see how it goes.

• Mark Boatman at Nodakwheeler had planned to escape the South Dakota nursing home he was stuck in (because of the state’s lack of funding for in-home care) last May, but it didn’t go as planned. Happily, he has recently made a successful break and is enjoying his freedom in Montana.

• In “Born that way,” Third Culture Kid(s) makes a connection between racial outsiderness and being born with a disability.

• Neonatal Doc writes about the reasons prospective parents give (or tell themselves) when they decide to abort a fetus with birth defects. The comments are long and varied, as well. Via Grand Rounds 3.1

• Suzuki unveils prototype fuel cell electric wheelchair. Um, I think it looks like a uncomfortable tinker toy, but it is interesting.

• The online poetry journal Slope presents an American Sign Language Poetry Special Edition. Be sure to watch the video of “Flying Words.” The poetry is pretty cool too.

• Lisa Ferris at A Letter to My Children tells the long and winding tale of making friends at a church when everyone seems uncomfortable with her disability:

People just wouldn’t talk to me. It is one of those things that is hard to put your finger on. Like there are a thousand little ways that people disregard you. And if you looked at each one, you may not think it is a big deal, and some individuals may have even had a very legitimate excuse that has nothing to do with you, but when you put them all together over time…you can only conclude that a large number of people really don’t have any interest in getting to know you. I asked people out for coffee and I got turned down every time. I would go up to people and talk and they would make a hasty exit. Once this woman came up and talked to me and I was fiddling around with my hearing aid from having been using the FM system. I said, “I’m sorry, my hearing aid wasn’t working and I didn’t get all that you said.” She said, “So you just let me go on talking when you couldn’t hear me?” I said I got the gist of what she said but I might have missed some things. She made a hasty exit and has never talked to me again. I have even said hi to her by name and she doesn’t even say hi back. I used to go home from church after this stuff would happen again and again and just feel like crap. Part of it was just asking myself what I was doing wrong or that was so awful? If the Unitarian Universalist can’t deal with me, who can?

• I’m eager to hear all kinds of opinions on this: “Right-wing disability” video.

• Pambazuka News covers the problems of sexual violence for disabled women in Kenya.

Crossposted at The Gimp Parade
Check there for more comments

From a notice on a disability listserv:

I am forwarding this on behalf of Feminist Response in Disability Activism (FRIDA), a newly established feminist disability rights organization based in Chicago, founded by a collective of highly skilled and committed disability rights community organizers.

On August 3, 2006, F.R.I.D.A (Feminist Response in Disability Activism) held a Town Hall meeting in Chicago for women with disabilities. One of the issues that emerged from the Town Hall was the fact that many women with disabilities living in nursing homes and institutions are:

1. Not provided with pads and tampons (even though this is required by federal regulations mandating that nursing homes provide certain supplies for residents on Medicaid or Medicare, including sanitary napkins and related supplies);

2. Told they have to buy pads and tampons out of the $30 they receive monthly from their SSI allowance (yep, the rest of their money - $603/month – goes to the nursing home and institution);

3. Not allowed to leave the facility to purchase the pads and tampons due to a “level policy” recently instituted in many Chicago nursing homes that prohibits residents from going on “family visits or independent passes” unless several strict requirements are met; and

4. As a result, some nursing home/institution staff are forcibly suppressing the periods of women with disabilities through continual DepoProvera and other methods so staff don’t have to “deal with the mess.”

DOES THIS INFURIATE YOU?

It should! Access to feminine products is a fundamental aspect of reproductive choice!

WANNA DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?
THEN JOIN THE PAD PATROL/TAMPONS FOR JUSTICE PROJECT!
SEND US YOUR TAMPONS AND PADS!

You can help by donating a box of pads or tampons to the F.R.I.D.A. Pad Patrol. We will make sure the items get into the hands of the women with disabilities who need them.

FRIDA can also take checks or cash to pay for these items; checks should be made out to FRIDA with a note for “pads and tampons”.

Send your pads/tampons to:

F.R.I.D.A. Pad Patrol Distribution Center
C/o Sarah Triano, Access Living
614 W. Roosevelt Road
Chicago, IL 60607

Know a woman with a disability who is being denied access to pads/tampons? Then send her our way and we’ll set her up!

At the FRIDA website, they explain why this isn’t simply a matter to be put to legal action:

In response to some questions about the Pad Patrol, FRIDA is fully aware that in cases where nursing homes or institutions fail to provide sanitary napkins as dictated by federal law, legal recourse is necessary in case where informal negotiation is not successful. We are in full agreement that systemic change is the only way to ensure long term justice. We do, however, feel that systemic change can be achieved on multiple levels. Some folks have asked whether, in distributing sanitary napkins and tampons to nursing homes, we would enable the nursing homes to continue evading the law.

Our viewpoint is as follows… First, in conducting outreach for a pad drive (which has reached as far as Australia) we are exposing a problem in a system, a problem that many feel a personal connection to. Anyone would be shocked by the idea that someone would have to blow their whole allowance on sanitary napkins or else sit in a crust of their own blood. Add to that the fact that showers are often regulated and you must bathe on a schedule. Sometimes, by relating to something so graphically everyday, we can push awareness of the problem to a critical mass of public opinion.

Second, the larger problem beyond the lack of sanitary napkins and the suppression of periods is the entire system of nursing homes and institutions in which so many people with disabilities become trapped. While the average person will be shocked by the pad issue, they will hopefully also learn a little to care about the wider problems of institutionalization. FRIDA feels, as does ADAPT and many other groups, that we would much prefer to live in our own homes with community supports for our needs, rather than in nursing homes, institutions or group homes. In the end, we see that a feminist issue is really a human issue.

Third, and maybe most pragmatically, the woman who is having her period in 3 days cannot wait for a lawsuit to be settled in five years. There is a final question which FRIDA needs to answer to the public, and that is whether this problem really exists, and whether there are women who are willing to speak out about this issue. There are in fact such women but at this time their identities are protected by confidentiality. FRIDA is working to identify women who are willing to speak out. If you or someone you know is willing to testify and let people know what’s really going on with women’s rights in nursing homes and institutions, get in touch….

More contact information available at the FRIDA site.

Crossposted at The Gimp Parade
Check there for more comments

A few days ago I read a story from Rueters about a couple from Maine, who kidnapped their 19 year old daughter. They forced her into a car, and tried taking her to New York so they could force her to have an abortion. The daughter escaped and called police while she hid in a store in New Hampshire. The parents have been arrested and held on $100,000 bail. After reading the first couple paragraphs of the story, my immediate reaction was, “I wonder if the potential father is black.” However, the initial article reveals very little about the motive. After my initial read, the only motive I could glean was that the parents were mad that the boyfriend was in jail. But, this story didn’t add up to me. So yesterday, one of my students mentioned the story and said that–the kidnapped woman’s boyfriend is a black man, and the daughter told police that racism was a motive in the kidnapping.

Based on my research on interracial relationships, this story actually fits fairly well into the narratives I have seen in many white families where relatives strongly object to interracial relationships. The only thing that surprises me about the story is that the parents attempted to kidnap this woman; the cases I know of personally generally involve less direct coercion. I know of 2 cases (one in my research and one in another sociological study) where parents of a white person in an interracial relationship suggested, encouraged, and promoted abortion to prevent the birth of a biracial child (I am hesitantly using the term biracial because most of the white relatives would say the child is black.). I also know of other cases where people encouraged white mother’s to place a child for adoption because the child’s father was black, and I know of many situations where white families offered bribes and/or withdrew emotional and/or financial support as a way to discourage an interracial relationship or a pregnancy that resulted from such a relationship. In these cases, white relatives feel they are protecting the family’s reputation, and/or they feel that the relative in the interracial relationship is too naive (especially women) to know what she/he is getting into. White relatives who feel this way believe that birth of a biracial child is a permanent marker of an interracial relationship that will hurt their relative’s social standing (white privilege), and to some extent, I’m sure they are right about this. The irony of this is that many white relatives of interracial couples would be the first to say that race doesn’t matter or that whites do not have unearned privileges, but suddenly when it hits close to home, they change their tune.

The media attention given to this kidnapping has been varied, ranging from the first story, which was completely raceless, to the subsequent story where race is revealed as a motive. This story also has implications for abortion politics, and thus, it has received attention from those for and against abortion rights. I thought a nice sampling of headlines for this story would reveal a lot about our racial politics, our abortion politics, and where location where race and abortion politics intersect (or don’t intersect in public life).

• We’ll start with this headline from BET.com–”Parents Were Upset Baby’s Father Was Black, Police Say.” Note how this headline focuses on the father’s race as the point of contention for the parents. I also found it interesting that the author uses the term “unborn child.” I know this phrase is passe among many pro-choice advocates, but I can clearly understand why an African American writer would choose to emphasize personhood, given the long history African peoples being treated as less than human. I tried to walk the tightrope between my pro-choice and pro-black views by using this phrase, “to prevent the birth of a biracial child.”
• This headline from Seascoastonline.com comes from the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Herald–”A call for calm in kidnapping probe.” The article is from AP, but even if an article comes from AP, local papers make up their own headlines. What is so ridiculous about this headline is that the article has nothing whatsoever to do with “a call for calm.” I don’t know if the person who wrote this headline was worried that the 10 Black people who live in NH were going to go out and protest this, but the headline certainly does not match the story (Ok, I know the number of Black folks in NH is more than 10, but please allow me a sarcastic moment.). The actual article makes NO mention of the racial aspects of the case, which I don’t necessarily object to. However, I frequently see articles “calling for calm” any time an event is racially charged. Now here is a better headline for the same AP release–”Prosecutors mum on kidnapping charge.” Yes, the headline avoids the race issue, but at least it matches the subject. I would expect a prosecutor not to divulge too much information in a high profile case, to try to preserve the jury pool. But how can the same article have such dramatically different headlines.
• Next comes this headline from Truth Dig.com, a progressive website that seems to cater to a white audience–”Taking the ‘Choice’ Out of ProChoice.” The article makes several good points about reframing pro-choice politics, and remains nearly silent on the racism issue until we get to this lovely quote:

  “The back story, as assembled by police and reporters, has all the elements of soap opera even in its bare bones. Katelyn, a high school honors student who enrolled in Boston College, had been sent to George Washington University in an attempt by her parents to distance her from her boyfriend. The debacle followed her parents’ discovery that she was back in Maine and pregnant. Katelyn has told authorities that her parents were outraged because her boyfriend is black. Their attitude may have been more shaped by the fact that he is in jail, again. But there is nothing that justifies duct tape or the destination.”

  Well, Ellen Goodman needs to read the other reports because this young woman has explicitly stated to police that her parents were upset about the race of her boyfriend, not his criminal record. She seems to take it upon herself to down play the race issue and provide a pseudo-justification for the parents (He’s a jailbird.). What’s sad about this headline, is that it is the same problem we have over and over again in the white progressive/liberal/feminist blogosphere. Some white progressive/liberal/feminist takes it upon her/himself to very carefully outline a progressive/liberal/feminist perspective on a hot button issue (in this case abortion), while simultaneously marginalizing racism and the perspectives of people of color. She makes a good point that this case in no way undermines pro-choice politics, and the family would have an extremely difficult time finding a doctor to perform an abortion on an unwilling woman. Unfortunately, Goodman doesn’t realize (or care about??) the clear racial implications of the case.

• Now here’s another pathetic take on this story. This time we have the anti-abortion website Lifesite with–”New Website Details Thousands of Violent Crimes by Abortion Supporters.” The authors are promoting a new site that basically argues that pro-choice advocates are a bunch of criminals, and the site attempts to use this case to demonstrate the “violent nature of abortion.” While the article briefly mentions race; the author also decides that abortion is violent and the parents were violent not because of their racism but because in the words of one anti-abortion activist, “Abortion is one of the most violent acts known in the history of mankind and its acceptance into our otherwise civil society has served to breed more and more violence to the point where we are now witnessing parents who physically subdue and kidnap their own children in an effort to force them to abort their unborn grandchildren.” Does this guy really think the parents would have wanted this woman to have an abortion if the guy was white? Isn’t racism the underlying cause of this violent act. These crazy parents don’t epitomize pro-choice advocates. First, how can anybody even remotely think that kidnapping somebody and trying to force that same person to have an abortion is in anyways consistent with pro-choice politics. Clearly these parents were anti-choice because they didn’t want to let their daughter have any say in this matter.

A case like this can be framed and used to promote multiple viewpoints, as the headlines reveal. Unfortunately, the vast majority of media outlets, pushed the racist elements of this story to the back of the agenda. In particular, people seem to be attracted to the abortion angle of the story, not the racist angle. If you miss the racist, angle of this story than you miss a huge piece of the puzzle.

From a New York Times article about breastfeeding, class and jobs:

Doctors firmly believe that breast milk is something of a magic elixir for babies, sharply reducing the rate of infection, and quite possibly reducing the risk of allergies, obesity, and chronic disease later in life.

But as pressure to breast-feed increases, a two-class system is emerging for working mothers. For those with autonomy in their jobs — generally, well-paid professionals — breast-feeding, and the pumping it requires, is a matter of choice. It is usually an inconvenience, and it may be an embarrassing comedy of manners, involving leaky bottles tucked into briefcases and brown paper bags in the office refrigerator. But for lower-income mothers — including many who work in restaurants, factories, call centers and the military — pumping at work is close to impossible, causing many women to decline to breast-feed at all, and others to quit after a short time.

It is a particularly literal case of how well-being tends to beget further well-being, and disadvantage tends to create disadvantage — passed down in a mother’s milk, or lack thereof.

Via Noli Irritare Leones, I learn of Michigan’s “Coercive Abortion Prevention Act.” What the CAPA would do is make it a crime to “commit, attempt to commit, or conspire to commit physical harm to the pregnant female” in order to force her to have an abortion; or to commit “repeated or continuing harassment of the pregnant female that would cause her to reasonably feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, or harassed” to compel her to seek an abortion. As well as providing criminal and misdemeanor penalties, CAPA also makes it possible for women to sue coercers in civil court.

Three comments on CAPA:

1) CAPA’s sponsors don’t oppose coercion when pro-lifers do it.

The law itself seems benign, at least on the surface. What makes it twisted, is that the Michigan pro-lifers who pushed CAPA through the legislature, actively worked to defeat an amendment to this law, which would have left CAPA intact but also have applied the same rules and penalties to people who coerce women not to have an abortion. In other words, pro-lifers explicitly opposed making it illegal to “commit, attempt to commit, or conspire to commit physical harm to the pregnant female” if the intent is to coerce her into giving birth.

(Pro-lifers might respond that there’s no need for such a law, since such things are already illegal. But if that’s their view, then how can they claim CAPA is needed at all?)

Of course, this is not surprising, since being pro-life by definition means being in favor of forcing pregnant women to give birth unwillingly.

Of course, I don’t believe anti-abortion Congressfolks in Michigan consciously favor violence against women seeking abortion. So why were they so dead set against outlawing coercion? Because they want to protect anti-abortion activists. In particular, I think they didn’t want to make it possible for women to sue so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers for using fright and intimidation to compel women not to have abortions.

Pro-choice groups in more liberal states should propose “Coercion Prevention Acts” of their own — acts which would make it illegal for women to be “terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, or harassed” to compel her to make any reproductive decision (not just about abortion or not-abortion, but also sterilization and not-sterilization). If the laws are passed, then good.

And when “pro-life” leaders oppose such laws - as I’m sure they would - then at least the foulness of their views would be forced a bit more into the open.

2) Where are the MRAs?

I’m surprised Men’s Rights Advocates aren’t screaming opposition to CAPA. Under CAPA, it can be “coercion” if someone living with the pregnant woman - say, the father of the fetus - says he’ll move out, if the pregnant woman bears a child. From the text of the law:

A person who has actual knowledge that a female individual is pregnant shall not do any of the following with the intent to compel a pregnant female to seek an abortion:

[…]

(b) file or attempt to file for a divorce from the pregnant female.

(c) withdraw or attempt to withdraw financial support from the pregnant female that had previously been supplied or offered to the pregnant female.

(d) change or attempt to change an existing housing or cohabitation arrangement with the pregnant female.

In the most extreme case - an 18 or older, unwilling father moving out (or just saying he will move out) from his “cohabitation arrangement with the pregnant female” if she’s 17 or under - a man could be thrown in jail for a year and fined $5000.

Being legally forced to continue cohabitation is much more intrusive than being forced to pay child support. Yet I haven’t seen “Choice For Men” advocates saying a word against this law. My guess is that they’re just not aware of it.

The above-quoted bit of the law goes too far. This section of the law tries to provide a legislative solution to the fact that some people are assholes, but assholishness isn’t a problem the Michigan legislature is capable of solving. Also, it’s unconstitutional as all get-out.

3) CAPA doesn’t address the most common reason women are forced to have unwanted abortions.

It’s terrible when any woman is coerced to have an abortion — or to give birth — by an abuser. But also terrible, and far more common, is when women feel forced to have abortions because of their economic circumstances. It’s ironic, therefore, that anti-abortion legislators, despite their supposed opposition to coerced abortion, nonetheless oppose any but the most grudging and measly programs to assist poor single mothers.

Even if we limit the scope of our cocern to abused pregnant women, CAPA fails to address the most pressing needs. To quote Michigan NOW:

The vast majority of battered women who feel “coerced” to consider or have an abortion are forced to consider this option not because of threats from the batterer but because child custody laws do not adequately protect battered women and their children or because current social policies do not allow battered women to feel they have the resources necessary to provide for their child such as employment, employment training, safe child care, and housing and health care.

(Hey, shouldn’t Michigan NOW be called “MOW?” That would be cool, because it would be the same upsidedown as it is right side up.)

* * * Please Note * * *
Comments on this post are reserved for feminists, pro-feminists, and feminist allies. Others may leave comments at the crosspost at Creative Destruction.

It seems that about 1/4 of the readers of this magazine were offended by this cover. I can’t even feign any sort of objectivity on this subject. I usually try to be the semi-neutral academic blogger, but I can’t figure out why people would view breastfeeding as gross, disgusting, or sexual. I just had a big debate between myself and all but 2 (out of 18) of my students on the subject of breastfeeding. The majority of students felt that is was “icky” and should be done in private. Of course these same students also didn’t know about the health benefits of breastfeeding, how often it needs to be done, and the numerous studies showing that breast milk is generally healthier than infant formula. They were clueless. Now I’m an educator, and I have come to expect this sort of reaction; however, it is usually a small but vocal minority of students, not the vast majority of the class. The funny thing is that these are the same people who are not the least bit offended at the latest Maxim cover or numerous pictures of Pam Anderson with her breasts equally exposed, but suddenly when breasts are used for what they are actually for people get loopy.

The magazine was reporting on a survey from the American Dietetic Association, and the findings of that study are even more depressing:

The picture in Babytalk was aimed at illustrating the controversy surrounding breastfeeding in the United States, where a national survey by the American Dietetic Association found that 57 percent of those polled are opposed to women breastfeeding in public and 72 percent think it is inappropriate to show a woman breastfeeding on television programs.

So most of the people in this random sample survey think that women should not breastfeed in public (I wonder if the survey asked how many opposed those Maxim covers???).

The good news is that in spite of the general opposition to breastfeeding in public, most states (32) have laws allowing women to breast feed anywhere. However, there are still states that do not have such laws, and more laws are need to protect breast feeding mothers and their children. Here is a brief summary of some of the breastfeeding laws from the National Council of State Legislatures:

• Thirty two states allow mothers to breastfeed in any public or private location (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Texas, Vermont and Virginia). Fifteen states exempt breastfeeding from public indecency laws (Alaska, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin).
• Ten states have laws related to breastfeeding in the workplace (California, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington).
• Ten states exempt breastfeeding mothers from jury duty (California, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma Oregon and Virginia).
• Four states have implemented or encouraged the development of a breastfeeding awareness education campaign (California, Illinois, Missouri, and Vermont).Nevertheless, it is still shocking to see such a low level of support for breastfeeding in the general public.

Nevertheless, the controversy over the cover and the ADA survey indicate that the social support system for breastfeeding is lacking. In spite of the numerous medical and social benefits to breastfeeding, there still seems to be a notion that breastfeeding should be hidden from public view.

Here’s More Info. on Breastfeeding Rights:

A Summary of States’ Breastfeeding Laws from the National Council of State Legislatures.

La Leche League Summary of Breastfeeding legislation.

(Warning: This post is really long. Primarily because it took me about 3-4 weeks to write and research.)

Well, It seems like menstruation has been the hot topic on feminist blogs for the past few months, and I wanted to follow-up on my previous post about using hormonal birth control to suppress menstruation. For those of you who missed the earlier post here it is at Alas and at Rachel’s Tavern. My concerns about menstrual suppression revolved around three issues 1)the lack of studies of the long term health effects of this 2)the possibility that women may get pregnant and not know about it in time to get adequate prenatal care or have access to abortion and 3)the marketing and framing of menstruation as abnormal bad or gross. If I were to prioritize those three things, the last one is the one that I am most concerned about, and that is the one I would like to emphasize in this post.

Amanda over at Pandagon took exception to my view, and made this argument:

The problem isn’t discussing one’s feelings about it or anything like that, but I have a big, fat problem with the kneejerk assumption that “natural” is more valuable than “unnatural”. Every time someone praises menstruation as something that makes them feel like a woman or whatever, I wonder if they’re working for Tampax or something.

The only problem with that argument was that it was not my point. If I was making that argument, I think she has a valid point. I try very consciously to avoid the term “natural”–things like poison ivy and stinging nettles natural. The natural framework is problematic. First, off you’d be hard pressed to get people to agree on what is natural, and second we can’t assume that things that are “natural” are necessarily better than things that are created by people. I also think there are just as many people making money off menstruation as there will be on stopping menstruation. Whether you think a period is “natural” or not, we do need to understand that there is nothing abnormal about periods.

One commenter defended my position very well. La Luba said,

But traditionally, it is the male body that has been viewed as “normal” or “natural,” and the female body that is viewed as abnormal, unnatural, cursed, in need of “fixing.” Arguments like this are really intended to reclaim the female body as OK in its own right; that there isn’t something wrong with us, simply because our bodies aren’t male.

I’m not attached to “natural” as meaning “completely without medical intervention.” But I’m very suspicious of an effort by Big Pharma to focus the marketing of this pill formula towards women without problem periods. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. There is a lot of effective right-wing organizing towards abolishing birth control; Big Pharma is reacting to that by targeting the market in a way they know will have a positive effect on their bottom line–by reminding women of the negative aspects of their periods. That will create a demand. Women who wouldn’t dream of fighting for their right to control when and if they get pregnant will definitely get out in the streets to demand the right to live without a period–and don’t think for a minute that has nothing to do with the history of how women, and our menstruation, has been viewed.
Color me skeptical.

And yes, the fact that many women aren’t aware that “periods” while on the pill speaks to the fact that we are taught to be divorced from our bodies and their functions—that we are taught that our bodies are for being seen and being “done to,” rather than being active. I’m seeing this issue against a backdrop of how women’s bodies are viewed and treated, and I see Rachel’s point about semen. Semen has never been traditionally viewed with the negativity menstrual blood has. We haven’t heard semen referred to as “the curse” our whole lives.

I can’t see the marketing of this pill as being any different from the marketing of say, breast implants, or plastic surgery. Restorative breast implants and plastic surgery can make sense for cancer patients, or burn patients….but is this something the rest of us need, or should want? No one would question this “choice” if periods had been traditionally viewed through a neutral lens, as neither good nor bad, just there. That’s not the backdrop we’re working with here. Especially considering the religious overtones of “unclean” menstruating women; of “hysterical”, “unstable” menstruating women. Those myths are still out there. We are still fighting those myths. Whether or not an individual woman makes the choice to take this pill is immaterial. But whether this pill is seen as a “magic bullet” to rid us of the “hysterical” myth is very material. I don’t want a future of “but of course women are just as capable as men! we’re not hysterical anymore, ever since the pill! It’s only those women who don’t take the pill who are hysterical!!” arguments. There’s plenty of pseudo-feminists who would ride that train. (not that it would work. the bars would just be moved again.—but that’s another reason these conversations are necessary.)
I’m not saying that having this pill as an option is adding fuel to these fires. This pill is neutral, in and of itself. I’m saying it’s well worth questioning the why of this option. There are good reasons for making this choice, to take this pill. There are also good reasons for making the choice to not take this pill. Guess which choice is likely to be validated in an antifeminist, capitalist society such as we live in? A world where plastic surgeons make sales pitches in health clubs, because working out isn’t “enough” to make a woman “beautiful?” A world where women are more likely to swallow a man’s semen after oral sex than men are to perform oral sex on a menstruating woman (why is menstrual blood generally considered “ickier” than semen, hmm? wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact it comes out of a female body, would it?).

Natural hell. That’s not the bottom line for me.

Later LaLuba, also added the following comment which I agree with,

Who here is fetishizing “natural” I don’t have high blood pressure; does that mean I’m fetishing the concept of “natural” if I don’t take high blood pressure medicine?
I haven’t really noticed a mainstream tendency to fetishize natural. The mainstream tendency is to fetishize the “better living through chemistry”. And women’s bodies are the favorite battleground. For all the mention of fetishizing “natural”, I have yet to hear of a bottle-feeding mother being asked to leave a public place for not breastfeeding. It’s breastfeeding mothers who are regarded as disgusting, animalistic, filthy, unsanitary, and a public health hazard. Not to mention just plain slutty broads who want to show their tits. I have yet to see much cultural support for women who aren’t getting the full intervention workup. And yes, part of that is because historically, women were/are viewed as being closer to “animal” nature than men. I don’t like fuzzy-headed la-la arguments about some amorphous concept of what is-or-is-not “natural” either, but dammit, we are pressured to tamper with our bodies more than men are, and for specious reasons. Like I said before, there are good reasons for choosing this particular version of the Pill (in reality, a continous dose of the same-old-same-old Pill), but there are also good reasons not to. And women who choose not to are likely to be regarded as unclean freaks, the same way breastfeeding mothers are.
Look. This Pill has been around for generations. There’s a reason it is being marketed in this way, at this time. And it’s because of the pre-existing disgust women were taught to feel about our bodies. Yes, blood stains clothing. Yet people in general do not feel the same way about a bloody nose and a bloody cunt. There is a special revulsion reserved for menstruation. Why? It’s not just about the bloodstains.

I think we need to take a particularly strong stand against the phenomenon that La Luba addresses (in the bold writing). I strongly agree with this proposition. Marketing anti-period or no period pills really is really an ingenious way to help the fight against birth control. I can’t tell you how many young women I know who swear they take birth control pills ONLY to regulate their periods or cut down on period cramps. They say this because they know it is much more acceptable to say, “I am trying to feel better during my period” than it is to say “I’m having sex, and I don’t want to get pregnant.” I’m not chiding people for taking BCP to cut down on painful periods. I’m just pointing out that the “ick” fact associated with periods is something that the right wing embraces, and feminists need to be very careful not to embrace this too.

To me one of the underlying issues is body image—how we feel about our periods is part of our body image. Body image is not just whether we like our weight, breasts, or cellulite. It’s also whether or not we accept the bodily processes that are associated with women. A study by the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals found that MOST women did not enjoy their period (71%) and would like to stop periods (62%). I don’t necessarily find this troubling. I did find some of the study’s other findings bothersome:

Forty-five percent do not avoid touching themselves when menstruating; but the sample was split on whether they thought menstrual blood was disgusting, at 37% disagree/strongly disagree and 37% agree/strongly agree.

I’m shocked at the number of women who will not touch themselves when they are on their period. I remember having an argument with a classmate in high school who believed that women were not supposed to bathe while on their period. She learned this from her mother who forbade her from washing during her period. One of the other findings I found interesting was the fact that 75% of women “believe men have a real advantage by not having the monthly interruption of a period.” On some level this is probably true, but I worry that people are not going to realize that it is the social arrangements of patriarchy that disadvantage menstruation, not anything defective in