For the record:

1. Fat jokes aren’t funny.

2. Jokes that portray women are mannish aren’t funny.

3. A site that claims to be “liberal” would understand that.

Yeah, you can steer clear of them. They aren’t liberal in any meaningful sense of the word.

UPDATE: I guess we can at least be glad they pulled the part making fun of Paul Wellstone’s death — which they used to attack Minnesota State Rep. and gubernatorial candidate Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, Minn. Incidentally, where were Paul and Sheila going again when their plane crashed?

On October 25, 2002, Wellstone died, along with seven others, in a plane crash in northern Minnesota, at approximately 10:22 a.m. He was 58 years old. The other victims were his wife, Sheila; one of his three children, Marcia; the two pilots Richard Conry and Michael Guess, his driver, Will McLaughlin, and campaign staffers Tom Lapic and Mary McEvoy. The plane was en route to Eveleth, where Wellstone was to attend the funeral of Martin Rukavina, a steelworker whose son Tom Rukavina serves in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Wellstone decided to go to the funeral instead of a rally and fundraiser in Minneapolis attended by Mondale and fellow Senator Ted Kennedy

Oh yeah.

You guys stay classy, now.

So hey, I was totally willing to buy Sean Hannity’s claim that it was a totally innocent mistake, because Fox News wouldn’t lie to further the Republican agenda. I mean, the very idea!

So you can imagine just how shocked I was to discover that Fox making exactly the same sort of mistake again, this time to support Sarah Palin:

Now, it’s an easy mistake to make, confusing footage from a McCain/Palin rally from last year with a video of a book tour that’s going on now. I mean, it’s not like there were McCain/Palin signs in the video itself. Oh wait, there were? Damn.

Maybe Fox really is more shameless than Pravda.

(Via Think Progress)

But I’m sorry, no matter how many times I’m told the sexism is obvious, I just don’t see it.

It’s not that the image doesn’t play on sexist tropes. Dear Ceiling Cat, does it ever. If it was a Photoshop job, I’d absolutely decry it for portraying Palin as a bizarre faux-patriotic fembot. I mean, look at it:

That’s out of control. And it reminds me of another image that mixed faked überpatriotism with extreme conformity to gender roles. You may remember this one. It was all the rage in April 2003:

The images are almost a perfect yin-yang of the conservative vision of female and male. Sarah Palin: athletic, but not so athletic that she can’t strike a cheescake pose. A mom, first and foremost, keeping the home fires burning (note the careful positioning of the Blue Star banner over her right shoulder). So in love with her country that she’ll desecrate the flag in order to show it. And George Bush: a total warrior with a big cock. Not concerned about family, but about blowin’ stuff up. A guy fighting in war (or, you know, avoiding it; same difference, right?). So in love with his country that he’ll use soldiers and an aircraft carrier in a premature photo-op to prove it.

Both of these images were calculated — Palin’s, to show she’s not one of “those” women, who choose sensible clothes when they run, but who is sexy all the damn time, because she can be. To show that she loves her country, war, apple pie, and the beautiful scenery you can see from her front porch, the one that was built with kickbacks she received as mayor. And Bush? Bush, of course, to show he isn’t a wimp like Clinton, but a true Warrior-King, one who literally conquered Mesopotamia himself.

Both photos also show something else, something hiding behind the artifice: that both Bush and Palin are Potemkin representations of these ideals. By trying to oversell the idea that they are perfect representations of their genders, Bush and Palin remind us of how hollow those representations can be. Bush is not a warrior, and he looks silly playing dress-up. Palin is not a pin-up girl, and she looks silly playing dress-up. Both took what could be powerful symbols and went so over-the-top with them that they look like fools.

That’s why Newsweek chose this cover. Not because it shows Palin as sexy, but because it shows her as a caricature of herself. As a sitting governor, Palin chose to engage in a photo shoot that would do a better job of validating the “Caribou Barbie” epithet than anything the most misogynist liberal could come up with. As Lindsay Beyerstein accurately says:

Predictably, Palin complained that Newsweek’s use of the image was sexist. Yes, the image was plucked from its original context. The whole point was that the picture was appalling it its original context. Newsweek is holding this picture up to the world and asking: Who does this?

The bottom line is that Palin’s a clown. She doesn’t get a pass because her chosen clown persona is stereotypically feminine.

She caricatures herself. Day in and day out. Good for Newsweek for pointing and laughing.

And that, my friends, is the point. One cannot point out the absurdity of Sarah Palin’s wallowing in sexist tropes without using the very sexist imagery that she herself approved of. Yes, the image is appallingly sexist. But that is not Newsweek’s fault. It’s Palin’s.

Using a photo shoot that Palin posed for and endorsed after the fact to make the point that Palin is a caricature of herself is not sexist. It’s good journalism. Believe me, I will defend Palin from true sexism wherever it rears its ugly head (like, say, this bit of “humor” from HuffPo, which is crappy, and simply an excuse to attack Palin for being a woman). But this is not a case of sexism being used to attack Palin. This is a case of Palin’s own sexism being used to attack Palin. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

It all started when Jim Martin (assistant to show creator Tim Kring and himself a writer on the show) engaged in conversation with (former, now disgruntled) fans about the show, and in the process uttered such gems as “Anyone who thinks they can do better… I dare you. Go ahead. :) I’d love to see it.” and “If you think that Racism and Sexism are thematically integrated in HEROES then you may want to check your intelligence before worrying about it being insulted.” That post has since been deleted, but a kind mouse saved it and shared it with us in wank_report. In his follow-up post about the whole mess, he whined about how he liked the internet better when it wasn’t so self-righteous, and left us with even more gems as “Look up the diversity programs for writers in tv. Ask anyone in the tv world. There is a distinct disadvantage to be a white male when trying to be a staff writer.” and “I’m fully aware of what you are referencing, but I don’t think its a problem on Heroes and I don’t think white privilege is an issue in Hollywood at this point.” Sounds bad enough, right? But no! Turns out that was just the start of a downwards spiral of fail, and it turns out that the fail reached new startling depths when Foz McDermott, a coordinating producer and writer of the show and perpetual bringer of anti-PC and misogyny fail, decided to use his own blog to reply to a particular comment that was left on Jim Martin’s blog. He starts charmingly:

“The idea that white privilege isn’t a problem in Hollywood at this point is an idea coming from a privileged standpoint.” Holy crap lady… if you are indeed a lady… that is hilarious. In a business that is scared of and run by pussy organizations that are so scared of being sued about everything, being OVERLY PC is the actual problem. Being a white male in the business of Hollywood is NOT easy. There are programs and incentives to help everyone except white males.MORE

I’m going to imagine “2012″ happens in the same universe as “The Ugly Truth,” so all those characters die horribly.

Dave Weigel

Consider this an open thread for you to share thoughts, self-promotion, and random bits of arcana.

That out of the way, it’s time for me to defend Carrie Prejean.

As you may have heard, former Miss California USA-slash-anti-gay activist Carrie Prejean has a sex tape that’s gotten loose, and perhaps “several more” in the hopper. (No, I’m not linking to stories; keep reading, you’ll see why.) This is, of course, totes hilarious, as Prejean was trying to build a career around moralizing while still being a normal human with feet of clay. This tape, as I read from various liberal blogs and see discussed on liberal talk shows, is a tape of Prejean masturbating that she sent to an ex-boyfriend at some point. The ex-boyfriend is now distributing the tape, and telling stories of how Prejean allegedly wanted him to say she was underage when she made it — leading Michael Musto to opine waggishly that she’s just a typical girl, wanting to look younger than she is.

Hee hee, ho ho, sigh.

You know why Carrie Prejean wants us to think that tape may be illegal? Because she doesn’t want everyone and their twin sister to have video of her masturbating. Why? Because she didn’t release a video of her masturbating for worldwide distribution. She sent it to her then-boyfriend.

Now, yes, Prejean has been involved in moralizing. And here’s where I’m supposed to say that she has this coming, having the temerity to be a sexual being while criticizing others for their sexuality. But you know what? I’m having trouble believing that. Because while Prejean’s opinions on same-sex marriage may be wrong, it doesn’t therefore follow that it’s okay for someone she trusted to break that trust by sharing private videos with the public. Indeed, on the moral spectrum, I’m having trouble seeing why Prejean should be embarrassed by the sex tape, and a whole lot of reason to think that her ex-boyfriend is a major league asshole who women should avoid like the plague. Men too, for that matter.

Guys? It’s me, Jeff. Let’s say your wife, girlfriend, lover, friend with benefits, or friend without benefits is nice enough to send you a tape of herself in flagrante delicto. Guess what? She didn’t sent that to you and anyone you feel like forwarding that to. Unless your best friend, your preacher, your mom, Harvey Levin, Joe Lieberman, or J.K. Rowling was copied in on the email,¹ you shouldn’t send it to any of them without first seeking permission from the young² lady in question.

The reason, of course, is that this woman is choosing to risk a bit of her privacy to give you a momentary sexual thrill — perhaps many, depending on how lonely you are and whether or not your girlfriend goes to college out of state. You owe it to her not to run to your roommate and say, “Hey, look what this girl sent me!” Why this is so should be blindingly obvious — what said woman sent for your consumption may not be something she’d want her mom, her high school math teacher, Kevin Sorbo, or the crowd at an L.A. Lakers game to see. She sent it to you, personally, because she likes you and trusts you enough that you won’t go sending it to someone else. If you go sending it to someone else, that proves that you’re a scumbag who can’t be trusted, and while the woman may be guilty of not seeing that quickly enough, the only real jerk in this picture is you.

You see, it’s like sex. If you and your girlfriend are having consensual sex, that’s fine. If you invite your buddy in unannounced to start having sex with your girlfriend too, without clearing it with her? That’s rape. No, selling smutty pictures of your ex-girlfriend to TMZ isn’t rape. But it’s rape’s evil, less-reviled cousin, and it’s in the same moral ballpark. And just because we like to put the fault back on the Carrie Prejeans of the world for sending these tapes in the first place, the fact is that their privacy is being violated, while the ex-boyfriend in question is lauded for said violation. A moment’s foolishness in the name of lust or love is understandable; a willful betrayal of trust in the name of lulz or cash is reprehensible.

It’s sick and wrong. And it’s nothing to laugh about, even if the victim in this case has been moralizing about other things. For all her wrongness, I don’t recall Prejean arguing that LGBTQQ individuals should have their nude, intimate photos and videos released to the world. She’s wrong on marriage. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to laugh when she’s violated.

1. They may have been. Hey, I don’t judge.
2. At heart. As long as you’re legal, I say feel free to send sexy videos to your heart’s content, no matter how old you are.

I vaguely wish there were a “Sorry your mother was pro-life. My mother chose me” bumpersticker, but it’s too long, and there’s no way to make sure the snark would just reach those who deserve it with their asinine assumptions that the only way a woman would have a baby is if she didn’t believe she had any other option.

ETA: Oo, or for mothers, “Pro-choice: my children are wanted.”

But you wouldn’t want to put that out there because it would be cruel to the still-children kids of pro-life mothers who are old enough to process the implication they aren’t wanted, but not old enough to understand that the political point is about challenging preconceptions about pro-choice mothers. “Pro-choice and a mom” is probably better, if less amusingly snark-ridden. That’s got to already exist somewhere, right?

Posted with the kind permission of Kevin Moore. Click on the cartoon to see it bigger, and to see Kevin’s commentary and links.

In addition to Kevin’s comments, I’d point out this post by Ezra, pointing out that (by the weird definition of “subsidize” conservatives are suddenly using), Stupak “did not block the federal government from subsidizing abortion. All it did was block it from subsidizing abortion for poorer women.”

And read as well this piece, pointing out that by the Bishop’s definition of federal funding, the enormous support the Federal government pays to Catholic hospitals and charities must be a subsidization of religion, and is presumably unconstitutional.

Iran has criticised Oxford University after one of its colleges established a scholarship in honour of a woman killed during post-election unrest in June.

The Iranian embassy in London denounced the £4,000 ($6,600) Neda Agha-Soltan Graduate Scholarship offered by Queen’s College as “politically motivated”.

Queen’s said the award would help impoverished Iranians study at Oxford.

Ms Soltan became a symbol of the opposition after she was shot dead at an anti-government protest in Tehran.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran denounces Oxford scholarship

For me, even though I agree with the politics, or at least what the politics behind the scholarship are perceived to be–since we don’t know who endowed the scholarship or why–the question is whether or not that is a good thing. I am still made uneasy by the way Neda’s image, and the idea of Neda, is exploited as a symbol of opposition to the government of the Islamic Republic, and, as an academic, I wonder about the degree to which a scholarship like this cannot help but be part of that exploitation, no matter how academically sound, impartial, etc. Queen’s College is in administering and awarding the money.

I wonder what others think.

Consider this an open thread. Post what you like, with whom you like, for as long as you like. Self-linkage is welcome.

I don’t believe in “natural” rights. Rights are a human institution; those rights that aren’t institutionalized by humans don’t exist. The only rights I, or any of us, have, are the rights that are recognized by the society in which we live.

So I don’t think — for example — that same-sex couples have a right to equal treatment under the law when it comes to marriage, in most US states. They don’t. They should, and I think they will in my lifetime. But we’re not there yet.

When people speak of having rights that aren’t recognized by society, I can’t agree. Where would rights like that come from? From God, I suppose, but I don’t believe in God. From nature, one could say, if one has never ever watched a nature show in one’s life. If you have a right to live, and the government shoots you anyway, and there are no consequences for those who shot you, then in what meaningful sense did the right to live ever exist?

Of course, it can be powerful to speak as if there are rights that exist outside of human institutions. It’s a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy; if you say “I have a right to blah, and that right is being denied to me,” then that use of the rights rhetoric makes it more likely that someday you will have the right to blah. I acknowledge that speaking of rights that way can be useful. But I don’t think it’s accurate.

Illustration via TRG’s Flickr page.

Someday someone will explain to me this fascination America has with the idea that Michelle Obama has white relatives like it’s remotely unusual for a descendant of slaves in America. I notice with all the talk of “So and so was impregnated by X slaveowner” and the rush to interview the white relatives so they can say the obligatory “I’d love to reunite with that side of the family and talk about our history” no one discusses exactly how so many mulattoes came to be born during and after slavery. I know the story of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings has been played as very romantic, but I sincerely doubt that even if it was that way for them, the same is true of Michelle Obama’s great great great grandmother’s relationship with the man that bought her when she was 6 and impregnated her at 15.

I know romance has nothing to do with why my maiden name is Irish. The slaveowner on that side kept very detailed records of everything. Including Or why my grandmother’s mother had straight hair. My great great grandfather raised her (and presumably loved her) anyway, but there’s some pretty clear evidence in the records that their reasons for moving north to Chicago weren’t based on a desire to leave the farm land that he worked so hard to acquire and hold onto through Reconstruction. My great grandmother was born in 1894 and she’s listed as mulatto, but her parents are listed as black. It’s on that list of things that was never explicitly discussed, but no one in our family is laboring under the delusion that the way she got here was about romance you know?

The power dynamic between slave and slaveowner is almost never recognized in these romanticized revisionist histories, much less what it meant to be a WOC assaulted and impregnated by a white man in a society where you had no hope of him ever facing anything approximating justice. There’s a lot of talk about how long ago slavery ended, but there’s not a lot of talk about the impact it, (and all the events that followed) have had on family dynamics in the black community. Or the psychological effects of institutional racism in any community. Even here there’s no discussion of how the white relatives feel when the new found cousin isn’t the First Lady. Because let me tell you what, our Irish relatives weren’t so excited when we found them. A whole lot of those “Cherokee” relatives people like to claim weren’t NDN, but it was a convenient lie for white families looking to avoid the stigma of having been touched by the tarbrush.

I blog a lot about sociology, critical race theory, and history. I’m not alone, after all there’s tons of research being done in those areas. Not so much when it comes to the psychological effects of racism on an individual level. It’s difficult enough to talk about being a POC and what we deal with as a result of modern institutional racism without trying to articulate the generational emotional and physical trauma of living in a society that’s innately hostile to your very existence. There’s been some work done but it’s not an area that’s easy to navigate academically or socially. Because really when you’re talking about these kinds of family stories it’s easier to smile politely and just not discuss it than to dig up all those bones and really face the pain.

There’s such a stigma attached to seeking mental health assistance (including some very specific intra-community impediments) that I can completely understand why this is the proverbial elephant in the room when it comes to discussing race and racism. But (like all the other aspects) it’s one that cannot be ignored. Because even when it’s not acknowledged the fact remains that racism has an impact on every aspect of life. Everything from parenting choices, to jobs, to housing, to how our communities function is impacted by this huge awful weight and that doesn’t happen in some emotionless vacuum. Even the “positive” stereotypes are hurtful because they’re rooted in deeply ugly historical and social context. Is it really so difficult to at least consider the psychological impact of that kind of ongoing trauma might be beyond the grasp of the casual observer?

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Marcia is a perceptive reader and wonderful interviewer and her questions led me to see things in my poetry that I hadn’t seen before. My favorite part of the conversation was about the poem called “Working The Dotted Line,” which tells the story of the first time an old girlfriend and I had sex, and she was a virgin. What I liked best about Marcia’s reading of this piece was her noticing my mother’s presence in the poem and how that started me talking about something I often encounter but have never given much serious thought. Most of the men I know, even as adults, are deeply uncomfortable with their mother’s sexuality, and I don’t understand it. Or, to be more accurate, while I understand intellectually, I don’t get it emotionally. As well, they often it profoundly disturbing that I am not made uncomfortable not just by the idea of my mother as a sexual being, but by the fact that, when I was growing up, I knew–that she made no effort to hide the fact (though she certainly did not rub it in my face either)–that she had sexual relationships with at least some of the men she dated. I even knew that my mother would occasionally go to bars, or dancing, where men would try to pick her up, or where she might try to pick someone up herself, and it didn’t bother me. Indeed, it seemed to me perfectly natural. Why wouldn’t my mother, who was in her 30s at the time, go out and have a good time, and do things that other single 30-year-old women did when they socialized? My mother has been a single woman since I was around 12 years old, and I have always known that she had a sex life. More to the point, I have never expected her not to have one or to keep it hidden from me. I met all, or at least most (as far as I know), of the men she dated when I was growing up, and it never seemed strange to me or wrong or awkward that she should have men in her life or that I should know she was having sex with them. (Though it was often, I think, awkward for them.) I don’t really have much else to say about this for now, but it is something I want to write about, something I had never really thought to write about until Marcia brought it up. Here is the poem:

Working The Dotted Line

I don’t remember what vacation
I was home for, or how Beth
managed to be in New York
on the one day we’d have
the apartment to ourselves,
but I think I recall
my mother’s hanging crystals
scattering the afternoon sunlight
in small rainbows that shimmied
on the walls and on our skin,
and I can still see Beth stretching
nervous along the length
of the daybed’s mattress,
and my fingers tracing
the ridges of her ribs
as she tugged at my erection.
I’m ready. Let’s do it!

It was her first time, not mine,
but it was my first condom,
and I’d forgotten to read the directions,
so I stood there growing soft,
squinting at the print on the box
telling me the step-by-step
I needed to learn
was on the inside.
I ripped the cardboard open
and sat reading on the bed’s edge,
thumbing the foil-packed
lubricated circle,
trying to visualize
what I had to do.
Beth reached into my lap
to ready me again,
but when I tore along the dotted line,
our protection, like a goldfish
taken by hand from its bowl,
slipped from my grasp
and landed under the desk
my mother sat at
when she paid the bills.
When I picked it up,
it was covered with the dust
and small particles of dirt
that settle daily into all our lives,
so I didn’t put the next one on
till I was kneeling hard
between Beth’s open legs.
She raised herself on her elbows,
smiling that the second skin
we needed to keep us safe
should make me so clumsy,
but once I let go
of what the instructions called
the reservoir tip—I thought
of the dams holding water back
in the mountains near where she lived
and what would happen if they broke—
her smile disappeared
and bunching the sheet beneath her
into her fists, she lifted
her butt onto the pillow
we’d heard would make things easier.

I bent for a quick look
at where I had to go
and climbed up onto her,
trying with one hand
to be graceful and accurate
and with the other
to balance over her
without falling.
At her first grimace
I pulled back. No!
She shook her head, eyes
clamped shut and then
staring wide, her voice
a whisper through clenched teeth,
Just do it! Get it over with!

So I entered her again, trying
from the tightness in her face
to gauge how hard not to push,
but when she cried out anyway,
I left her body one more time
and crouched over her,
my latex-covered penis
nosing downward
towards her navel,
and I placed my palms
against her cheeks,
I cannot hurt you like this!

Look, it’s going to hurt, she said.
There’s no other way.
And I’ve chosen you!

And since I wanted so much to be her choice,
I kissed her eyelids and her mouth,
and with my eyes buried
in the hollow of her neck
moved slowly in
till I felt her flesh
stop giving way. Then,
with one arm around her rib cage
and the other around her head,
holding her tight against my chest,
I pulled down and thrust up
in a single motion I breathed through
like I was lifting heavy boxes.
She screamed into the muscle
just above my collar bone,
bit deep into my flesh,
and, as she bled onto me,
I bled.

We said nothing afterwards.
We didn’t cuddle
or smile at each other as we dressed
or walk hand in hand
to the train that took her home;
and I did not ask her
what her silence meant,
nor she mine, but if she had,
I would’ve told her this:
My wordlessness was shame.
I’d no idea how not to hurt her;
and I would’ve told her
I wanted it to do over,
which is what I’d tell her even now.

The Cold War was a fact of life.

My parents had grown up during it; I had grown up during it. And I had little doubt my children would grow up during it. From before my parents were born, the Soviet Union and the United States of America were the premier powers on two sides of a chessboard. On America’s side, we had friends like France and Britain. The Soviets had allies like Poland and Czechoslovakia. China was off doing its own thing, Soviet in policy, but more on America’s side than not. Still, the chess pieces were controlled by the Americans and the Soviets, and smack dab in the center of the board were the twins — West and East Germany.

Yes, I know that is a simplistic, America-centric view of what was a difficult, confusing, and dangerous time in human history. But it was the view we were sold — not for nothing was the president referred to, as far back as my memory goes, as “Leader of the Free World.” And while America’s NATO allies were far more independent than was suggested at the time, America played an outsized role in the alliance for the same reason the Soviets did. We were armed to the teeth, armed with weapons that could destroy humanity a dozen times over, in a myriad of horrific ways.

It was these weapons that transformed the Cold War from a mere struggle for national prestige to the potentially suicidal confrontation it was. Some have suggested that nuclear weapons, perversely, may have saved lives, by making the cost of direct conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact too dire for sane leaders ever to comprehend. But if they did so, they did so at a very high price, for every man, woman, and child in the world knew that if ever west or east found itself with a truly unhinged leader, one willing to destroy the world to save it, that all of us could be dead within minutes — if we were lucky. The unlucky — those would be survivors, forced to live in a world where burning wood for fires would unleash radioactive toxins, a world where what few humans survived would be faced with a cataclysmic nuclear winter, followed by several millennia of radioactive poison slowly killing us off, as we descended from our pinnacle to, at best, a stone-age existence. As Albert Einstein once noted, he didn’t know what weapons World War III would be fought with, but World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones.

This was our world, a world in which two sides were constantly jockeying for position, two sides that could end my life and the lives of everyone I loved in an instant. A world in which the Eastern Bloc might as well have been located on Mars. A world in which an Iron Curtain divided Us from Them.

The Iron Curtain was not just a clever metaphor coined by Winston Churchill. It had a real-world counterpart: the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall was built to keep East Germans from escaping to the democratic West, as 3.5 million did between the end of World War II and the start of construction. This outflow had both direct negative affects — it cost East Germany 20 percent of its citizens — and indirect ones, as the constant movement from East to West was a propaganda coup for NATO and democratic Western Europe. It could not continue.

And so the wall was built, beginning on August 13, 1961. It began as a haphazard barrier, made up of barbed wire, chain-link fences, mine fields and unfortified areas patrolled by soldiers. It was still just a wire fence when John F. Kennedy delivered his famous Ich bin ein Berliner¹ speech in 1963, albeit a completed one. The wall was built up over time, with concrete walls added in the late 1960s. By the time I was born, in 1974, that wall was complete, and the upgraded Grenzmauer 75 was being installed, 12 feet high and four feet thick, with significant reinforcements on the Eastern side. It is that wall that is remembered best, and the first thing I think of when the words “Iron Curtain” are mentioned.

That wall was the symbol of the Cold War, the unending, unyielding, potentially lethal war that had my parents hiding under their school desks, and that had me lying awake some nights, wondering if my home in suburban Minneapolis would be destroyed in the initial blast wave, or if I might live long enough to see the misery afterward. That massive concrete wall — the one Ronald Reagan urged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down, as if that could happen — was a permanent fixture. It would stand throughout my lifetime. Because countries don’t simply decide one day to let their citizens be free. It doesn’t happen — even if the Soviets are mouthing pretty words like Перестройка and Гла́сность.

And yet, in the fall of my sophomore year in High School, that appeared to be exactly what was happening. In August, Hungary had opened its border crossings with neutral, democratic Austria, and quickly, 13,000 East Germans booked tours to Hungary, and didn’t return. Czechoslovakia soon followed suit, forcing East Germany to seal its border with an ostensibly aligned country. Those East Germans who hadn’t left began to agitate for their freedom. They first chanted “Wir wollen raus! — “We want out!” Then, as weeks went by, sensing that more than freedom to travel may be afoot, the protesters began to chant, “Wir bleiben hier!” — we are staying here.

On October 18, Erich Honecker, who had served as General Secretary of the DDR for eighteen years, abruptly resigned. Egon Krenz was elected to replace him, in a split vote by the People’s Chamber. Krenz said he would institute democratic reforms, but events had overtaken him. Krenz re-opened the Czechoslovak-East German border. The Politburo formally began to discuss lifting travel restrictions with the West, as they weren’t enforceable at that point.

On November 9, 1989, twenty years ago today, Günter Schabowski, First Secretary of the East Berlin Chapter of the Socialist Unity Party, was given the news that travel restrictions with West Germany were to be lifted. They were not to be lifted that day; however, the information Schabowski had did not contain the date they were to end. And so Schabowski, asked when the rules were to be lifted, replied “sofort, unverzüglich” — immediately, without delay.

East Berliners streamed to the border, and realizing that they had nothing to gain from killing people for trying to cross the border over a miscommunication, the East German government ordered its troops to let them through, unencumbered. On November 9, 1989, for all intents and purposes, the Berlin Wall fell.

The Ossis were greeted by the Wessis with open arms, and a jubilant celebration began. Within days, people on both sides of the wall arrived with sledgehammers to knock it down, piece by piece, crumbling rock by crumbling rock.

Krenz’s government did not last another month, and East Germany did not last another year. By December 6, Mannfred Gerlach, who had split with the ruling Communist Party in early October, was elected as head of the Council of State and de facto Head of State; he would be replaced when the Council of State was abolished the following April, and Sabine Bergmann-Pohl, the President of the Volkskammer, replaced him. Her government would last until October 2, 1990, the date on which East and West Germany ceased to exist, as all territory belonging to the DDR was brought into the Bundesrepublik. A nation went directly from being part of the Warsaw Pact to part of a NATO ally. And the Cold War began to end.

There were many other milestones on the way to the liberating of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Czechoslovakia all joined East Germany in shedding their Communist legacies in 1989. In August of 1991, an attempted coup would fail in the USSR, leading to the dissolution of the empire and the freeing of nations like the Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

It did not bring about, as Francis Fukuyama said it would, the “End of History.” Yugoslavia would implode spectacularly, leading to genocidal violence. In a number of former Soviet states, border disputes and ethnic divisions would foment wars and create breakaway, failed states. And while parts of the east, like the Baltic Republics and the Czech Republic, are thriving, others — including East Germany — continue to struggle with the transition from a command economy to Eurocapitalism.

But the end of the Cold War did end a period of political repression in much of Europe, and it ended the threat of global cataclysm that two generations of humans took as an enduring part of life. The worst al Qaeda can dish out today is kids playing with pop-guns next to the threat of an all-out nuclear war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

That threat died over several years. But symbolically, it died twenty years ago today, when people who wanted the freedom to visit their cousins, to speak their minds, and to chart their own destinies abruptly found themselves able to do so. I still remember sitting in my sophomore German class, unable to believe what we were seeing on the television that had been wheeled in for the day. Twenty years later, I have trouble believing it. But I am grateful beyond words that my daughter is not growing up in the world I did, and that throughout Eastern Europe a whole generation is growing up free.

1. As a former German student, I would be remiss if I failed to note what you probably already know: that ein Berliner is not a resident of Berlin, but rather a hot, fried pastry similar to a donut. Thus, Kennedy was saying, “I am a donut.” The crowd clapped anyhow; even then, the inability of Americans to speak anything other than English was well-known.

* * *

The first two minutes of this piece are stunning. After that, it turns into a well-done cover of Toto’s “Africa,” which is one of these songs I like for the sound but the lyrics are annoying because they scream exoticization of Africa. And the earworm factor is not to be believed.

1. Wal-Mart Bans Gay Couple For Not Shoplifting
2. The Stupak Amendment might, in effect, make sure that insurance that covers abortion is unavailable to most women - regardless of if they use the public option, or the government exchange, at all. I really hope this shit never becomes law.
3. List of Democrats who voted for Stupak Amendment. They’re not all in very conservative districts, either. Let’s hope for some primary challenges.
4. Whose Health Care Victory Is It? Not Women’s. More on Stupak, from Ann Friedman.
5. GLAAD should lighten up about South Park using the word “fag.”
6. You know, every single chronic pain patient I’ve known in my life has had horrible experiences like this. Is it that way in other countries, or is it just another example of how much the US sucks? It seems to me that we could be doing so much better, be so much more humane.
7. “It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war.” Click through to see who said it.
8. This expectation that “good people” won’t be bigots is rather amazing.
9. It turns out DVR is good for television networks, after all.
10. Very impressive face paintings.
11. Diary of an Anxious Black Women discusses Rhianna, “Precious,” Toni Morrison, the quest for authenticity, and the representation of black women’s pain in media. Really good post.
12. Do Smart, Hard-Working People Really Deserve To Make More Money?
13. Cat and Girl: The Trap. Sometimes I love Cat and Girl.
14. Sex after mastectomy; Why aren’t doctors preparing women? Note: Reading this article will leaved you pissed off more than you might expect. (Via.)
15. On the White Anti-Racist Spokesperson
16. The Obama Administration is secretly pushing an incredibly awful international copyright treaty.
17. Study: The Government is Discriminating Against Asian Business Owners.
18. What if we spent just one year spending as much on internal infrastructure as we do on the Defense Department?
19. Spending $47,000 on dinner for five. Two points. One, that’s the right table to have been serving, as far as the tip goes. Two, couldn’t a restaurant that charges this month spring for a receipt-printer that was designed this century?
20. Why US health care is so expensive: Like the restaurant in the above link, It all comes down to prices. We simply pay more, for everything.
21. Pantshead asks Shoshana Johnson if she’s ever been to Iraq. No, really. Also, the country isn’t 93% white and 63-82% male, so why are MSNBC’s guests? (Via.)

In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,” the court wrote, “makes it no less and no more unlawful.”

The case rested on whether the school’s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not. The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s [which is how the boy is referred to in court documents] mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.

“The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.”

The same reasoning would apply to a Christian school that “refused to admit a child on the ground that, albeit practicing Christians, the child’s family were of Jewish origin,” the court said. (via Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question - NYTimes.com.)

Is Jewish a religious or an ethnic identity? I was always taught it is both. Antisemites, on the other hand, have almost always argued otherwise. For the Nazis, Jewish was racial; go back further, and you find the Catholic Church treating Jewish as if it were a biological characteristic. Jewish men, for example, were understood to menstruate; Jews in general were believed incapable of perceiving the world accurately, of telling the truth in any language other than Hebrew, even of learning any language other than Hebrew–all because of the inherent deficiencies they suffered from as Jews. Even Jews who converted to Catholicism could not fully be trusted to have become sincere Christians, people at the time believed, because “once a Jew always a Jew,” and all it took to send a Jewish convert to be burned at the stake, or otherwise tortured and put to death, was for someone to imply that he or she was still, secretly, Jewish.

That Jews should trace their Jewishness back through their mothers, according to the rabbis, is commanded in the Torah. Here are the relevant verses from Deuteronomy 7:

1. When the Lord the God shall bring thee into the land wither thou goest to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before thee, the Hittite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; 2. and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them up before thee, and thous shalt smite them; (then) thou shalt utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them; 3. neither shalt thou make marriages with them: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take for thy son. 4. For he will turn away thy son from following Me, that they may serve other gods; so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and He will destroy thee quickly. (Emphasis mine.)

The commentator Rashi explains the passage I have italicized as follows. (I am quoting here and above from The Pentateuch and Rashi’s Commentary: A Linear Translation into English, published in 1950 by S. S. & R. Publishing, Brooklyn, NY.)

For he will turn away thy son from following Me: [Rashi is here paraphrasing the passage from the Torah:] The son of a heathen, if he will marry your daughter, will turn away your son, which your daughter will bear him, from following Me. So [here begins Rashi's commentary], we learn that your daughter’s son that is born of a heathen is considered your son; but the son of your son that is born of a heathen woman is not considered your son, but her son, for it is not stated regarding his [the heathen's] daughter: “Thou shalt not take…for she will turn away thy son from following Me.” (Emphasis mine)

In other words, a son born to your (Jewish) son and a non-Jewish woman does not count as a member of your family, i.e., that child is not considered Jewish, and so it is not necessary to state the possibility that she will turn the child away from her or his Jewish heritage. One spiritual/mystical explanation that is given for this line of thinking is as follows:

Jewishness is not in our DNA. It is in our soul. The reason it is passed down through the maternal line is not just because it is easier to identify who your mother is. It is because the soul identity is more directly shaped by the mother than the father.

From a purely physical perspective, a child is more directly connected to their mother. The father’s contribution to the production of a child is instantaneous and remote. The mother, on the other hand, gives her very self to the child . The child is conceived inside the mother, develops inside the mother, is sustained and nourished by the mother, and is born from the mother.

This is not to say that a father and child are not intimately attached. Of course they are. But as deep and essential as the bond between father and child may be, the child’s actual body was never a part of her father’s body. But she was a part of her mother. Every child begins as an extension of their mother’s body.

This is a simple fact. It doesn’t mean she will be closer to her mother, or more similar to her mother, or follow her mother’s ways. We are not discussing the emotional bond between parent and child, but rather the natural physical bond. There is a more direct physical link between mother and child, because a child starts off as a part of her mother.

The body and its workings are a mirror image of the workings of the soul. The physical world is a parallel of the spiritual world. And so, the direct physical link between mother and child is a reflection of a soul link between them. While the father’s soul contributes to the identity of the child’s soul, it is the mother’s soul that actually defines it. If the mother has a Jewish soul, the child does too.

If the mother is not Jewish but the father is, his Jewish soul will not be extended to the child. There may be a spark of Jewishness there, but if it was not gestated in a Jewish mother, the child will have to go through conversion for their Jewishness to be activated.

Jewishness is passed down by the mother because being Jewish is a spiritual identity, it defines our very being. And our very being we get from our mother, both in body and in soul. (Via Chabad.)

This explanation essentializes Jewish in a way that would have been very familiar to the medieval Church, I think, and I imagine the Nazis as well, to the degree that any of them accepted the notion of a soul, would have endorsed it as well. I think anyone who believes in the necessity of keeping church and state separate, however, would be rightly troubled if a secular court were to accept such an explanation for why the actions of the Orthodox High School in England refused admission to M. (I should be clear that I have not read the court documents and so I don’t know if this explanation even entered into the school’s argument.) More to the point, if you read the passage from Deuteronomy without the mystical explanation, it’s hard to see matrilineal descent as anything other than a question of ethnicity.

The more I think about the questions raised by this case, the dizzier I get. I don’t know British law; I don’t know the Race Relations Act; I don’t what the legal standing of M’s family’s suit would be here in the States. Indeed, I think the idea of a court ruling on what I have always thought of as a religious question is kind of scary. If the courts can rule on this, then what other questions that have traditionally been handled within religious communities by the followers of the faith in question might the courts and then the government suddenly have jurisdiction over? What happens then to our separation of Church and State. Then there is the part of me that says the legal question is almost beside the point. The larger question is who gets to define the criteria by which someone is considered Jewish by other Jews? If we follow the reasoning of the Orthodox, aren’t we (and I mean here the Jews) saying that it’s okay for us to discriminate within our own community in a way that we would never accept were the discrimination racial, say, or ethnic and taking place outside the community?

Cross-posted on It’s All Connected.

Does teen literature exaggerate the mean girl phenomena too much?

Neesha Meminger: “This is a question I’ve often pondered myself. I think my main concern with the “mean girls” phenomenon is that they focus on inter-personal dynamics without also looking at the larger, social,
economic, and political constructs within which we all function. In the case of books, films, television shows, and other mean girls representations, certain isolated incidents are used to somehow prove that *everyone* can be abusive and that violence is a natural and intrinsic part of human nature; without any consideration of the power imbalances at play.

For instance, yes there are mean girls. Of course girls in high school (and middle school and grade school) can be horribly cruel to one another. Girls can absolutely be bullies. Girls beat one another up and can be downright
vicious to those who are perceived to be “different” or “weaker.” Whenever this issue is raised, I am reminded of the 1996 case of Reena Virk, the Indian, Punjabi teen who was murdered by a gang of mostly girls in British
Columbia, Canada. She was viciously attacked by girls she had desperately wanted to be friends with.

The media responded to this horrific tragedy by labeling it as “girl violence” or the “rise of girl gangs.” The whole focus was on the fact that the group of teens who beat Virk to death were mostly girls. There was no race analysis, no class analysis, and absolutely no mention of enforced hetero-normativity (for a great, non-mainstream analysis of that case, see Yasmin Jiwani’s essays as well as Sheila Batacharya’s).MORE

The rules of nutrition

First rule of nutrition: eat or die.

Second rule of nutrition: there are no other rules.MORE

What is normal eating?

Normal eating is going to the table hungry and eating until you are satisfied. It is being able to choose food you like and eat it and truly get enough of it—not just stop eating because you think you should.

Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food.

Normal eating is giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good.

Normal eating is mostly three meals a day, or four or five, or it can be choosing to munch along the way. It is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they taste so wonderful.

Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more.MORE

In which homework is assigned

Now, when you were thinking about disability access, you probably thought of transcripts and ramps and disabled bathrooms. And those things are important. But did you think about invisible access for invisible disabilities? Where well-known accessibility measures like those transcripts, ramps and bathrooms are often not available (or not properly) the measures that don’t immediately spring to an abled person’s mind don’t have a hope in hell.* And, speaking as someone with an invisible chronic illness, having to out myself in order to perhaps be granted access, with the very real possibility of not being believed, is one of the most unpleasant parts of my life.** I doubt you thought about access to services for people who aren’t accessing them in person. I doubt you’ve ever thought about how to give directions without visual reference. In fact, I bet most of the things you thought of were those that were in your face.

Which brings me to my next point. Accessibility is not just about alternatives and gadgets and adaptations. It’s about you.*** It’s about all the abled people who are in charge of accessibility measures. And that’s not just those of you in a position of authority, that’s you making your way down the street. Remember, you often don’t know who is and who isn’t a PWD, and you don’t know the kind of impact you’re having on them. The world is designed to suit the abled, and it’s every last one of you impacting us. It’s about your attitudes making our lives harder. (Did you ever consider how awful it is to have a loud, public discussion of one’s needs? Did you ever consider that forcing your idea of help on us might be detrimental? Did you consider the kind of devastation you privileging your perceptions over our experiences can lead to?****) It’s about whether you decide our enjoyment, our livelihoods, our life experiences and our humanity are worth your attention.MORE

Guest Post: Disability and Asexuality

Talking about the intersection of asexuality and disability is pretty difficult, because “asexuality” gets another meaning in disability rights discourse: it’s used to refer to the various stereotypes about disabled people’s sexualities. People do often seem to realise that this is problematic when it’s pointed out to them. However, what not so many people realise off the bat is that it goes beyond just “problematic”.

The stereotypes in question actually consist of a wide variety of things tossed together, some of which are in line with asexuality but many of which seem to have little to do with asexuality or in fact to be entirely opposed to it (I am interested to see how the stereotype of the disabled woman not saying no because she feels lucky anyone wants her is supposed to relate to asexuality, for instance). What they have in common, however, seems to be: denying disabled people their sexual agency and the right to make decisions or have knowledge about their own bodies and sexualities. The stereotypes about disabled people’s sexualities seem quite in line with the common tendency to consider us childlike, helpless and needing to be protected for our own good.

Asexual adults? Are not children. Nor do we (or, at least, should we) lack agency. In fact, the very existence of the asexual movement shows that we are in opposition to a lot of these ideas! We’re organising, we’re campaigning, we’re demanding that our sexual identity should be recognised and considered valid; disabled people are stereotyped to not have a sexual identity at all. (There is a distinction between the lack of a sexual orientation and a sexual orientation incorporating lack of sexual attraction that most people miss, but that is crucially important in this context.) Taking all the stereotypes disabled people get hit with regarding sex and sexuality and claiming that they all boil down to making them like asexual people? Like me? Is something I actually find really offensive.

An example: the desexualisation of disabled people often gets used to justify giving them less extensive sex ed or no sex ed at all compared to abled people. However, saying this is because they’re stereotyped as asexual entirely misses the fact that – asexual people need sex ed too!MORE

Asexuality and Rape

IMPORTANT: Read this first. This post will be talking about the impact of the rape culture on the asexuality community and will be based on the y’know fact that rape and coercion towards sex are as common as they are in reality. This means if you desire to spend the comment thread whining about how rape isn’t all that common or other rape apologist lies, your comment will never make it.

Okay, that out of the way, this post has been a long time in the coming. I’ve been wanting to talk more about asexuality and this is an issue that has been bugging me for years now. There has been a long conversation in the community and outside of it on the question of “Are Asexuals Oppressed?” Rather, do asexuals face discrimination or the effects of bigotry yet?

And well, the answer is no big surprise. No, there is not much of an active resistance to asexuality because the bigots don’t really know we exist and most resistance we do get is from assumptions or presentations within the LGBTQ community (assumed to be gay because of lack of interest in opposite sex, assumed to be gay by same-sex relationship or strong friendship, seen as trans or intersex or genderqueer by presentation, etc…).

In fact, most activists for the asexual community such as David Jay have focused on the well acknowledged problematic inclusion of asexuality as a mental disorder in the DSM.

And well, I have little to say about that. It’s a disgrace, it should be amended and conversations with psychologists have been mostly positive, but the narrow focus has allowed a far more subtle and interconnected problem to receive little to no acknowledgment.

That problem is how asexuals are exceptionally prone to the outskirts of the rape culture when they interact with and date sexuals. This is especially true of romantic asexuals.

Now what I mean by this is not that they are especially prone to forcible rape and the types of rape we most focus on when discussing rape, though these occur far too often and can affect asexuals just as much as sexuals.

What I mean are coercive rapes. Those where one’s autonomy and free choice is put to intense pressure and manipulation in order to force a technical consent, which is nowhere near the gold standard of mutual enthusiastic consent or informed consent. This can occur in many forms
MORE

Rape Culture 101

Rape culture is treating straight sexuality as the norm. Rape culture is lumping queer sexuality into nonconsensual sexual practices like pedophilia and bestiality. Rape culture is privileging heterosexuality because ubiquitous imagery of two adults of the same-sex engaging in egalitarian partnerships without gender-based dominance and submission undermines (erroneous) biological rationales for the rape culture’s existence.

Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to “cure” queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and “the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms.”

Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another (”I’ll make you my bitch”). Rape culture is making rape a ubiquitous part of male-exclusive bonding. Rape culture is ignoring the cavernous need for men’s prison reform in part because the threat of being raped in prison is considered an acceptable deterrent to committing crime, and the threat only works if actual men are actually being raped.

Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women’s daily movements. Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you’re alone, if you’re with a stranger, if you’re in a group, if you’re in a group of strangers, if it’s dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you’re carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you’re wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who’s around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who’s at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn’t follow all the rules it’s your fault.MORE

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Frankly, I don’t know why the GOP is going to vote for the amendment, at least if their goal is to stop health care reform; about their only chance of stopping the House from passing the bill is to get the Stupak amendment to fail. If it passes, the leadership has the votes to move it forward; if not, they probably still do, but it may peel off enough pro-life Democrats to make a difference.

Evidently, the GOP leadership has decided that reproductive rights is an issue that is important enough for principle to trump strategy. It would be nice if the Democratic leadership felt the same way.

The amendment likely has the votes, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi has evidently decided not to stand in the way of a vote, in order to avoid any further delay in getting the bill voted off the floor. And I can understand that, and even support it as strategy; the bill passing the House today is not the final bill. It will have to be reconciled with the Senate’s bill (if one ever passes) in a conference committee, and the bill that comes out of conference could favor the language of either, both, or neither, depending. Pelosi will appoint the House conferees; presumably Bart Stupak will not be one of them.

So yeah, some bad language is okay at this stage of the game because it’s still a work in progress. But I tend to agree with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., about the endgame here:

The Illinois Democrat said she’ll vote for passage today regardless of whether Stupak’s amendment is included, but would oppose a final bill if the amendment makes it through conference committe.

“If that language were in the final final bill, I certainly couldn’t support it,” Schakowsky said.

That, I think, is the important thing for Democrats to understand, because if that language is in the final bill, I can’t support it, either.

The Stupak Amendment is a bitter pill to swallow, but as of today, it’s a purely symbolic one. Yes, it sucks that a majority of members in the House believe that a person’s right to choose can be chucked aside at will. But the vote today won’t ultimately chuck that right aside. It’s the vote on the final bill that comes out of conference that matters.

If the Stupak language survives the conference committee, it is incumbent on those of us who support reproductive rights to pull our support, and actively campaign for defeat of the bill. For today, I’ll grit my teeth and make note of which Democrats to lean on when the vote for final passage comes. But that’s for today. Tomorrow starts the fight to make sure that the bill that ultimately is passed is a bill that supporters of reproductive rights can support.

The news:

House Democratic leaders agreed Friday night to settle an impasse over abortion by letting the entire House vote on a proposed solution, a risky decision that could determine the fate of their trillion-dollar overhaul of the nation’s health care system.

Under the agreement, anti-abortion Democrats will be permitted to offer an amendment on the House floor to the health-care overhaul bill. The amendment would prohibit a new government-run insurance plan created by the health-care bill from offering to cover abortion services, congressional sources said. It would also block people who received federal subsidies for the purchase of health insurance from buying policies that offered coverage for abortions.

The deal clears the way for the dozens of Democratic lawmakers who oppose abortion to lend their support to the health care package, the most dramatic expansion of health coverage in more than 40 years. It also satisfies the demands of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had threatened to oppose the House bill.

If the amendment from Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) passes, said Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the bishops conference, “we become enthusiastic advocates for moving forward with health care reform.”

The amendment is expected to pass with the combined support of more than 40 anti-abortion Democrats and virtually every House Republican. That likelihood meant that leaders of the much larger group of Democrats who support abortion rights were not happy to learn of the deal.

“There will be no abortion, not just with public funds, but with private funds under the public option, and that’s not acceptable,” said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.).

House leaders met with that bloc of Democrats late Friday to try to quell their frustration., but the agreement makes clear that they believe abortion-rights Democrats will find it difficult to vote against the health-care bill even with such a restriction attached to it.

According to Politico, “Female Democrats on the Rules Committee, including Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter, left the room during consideration of the Stupak amendment and didn’t cast a vote.”

Keep in mind, even before this amendment, the House bill restricted abortion coverage. But it didn’t do enough to punish poor women, so that wasn’t good enough for either the Blue Dogs, the Republicans, or the Catholic Church.

Ezra writes:

If this amendment passes, it will mean that virtually all women with insurance through the exchange who find themselves in the unwanted and unexpected position of needing to terminate a pregnancy will not have coverage for the procedure. Abortion coverage will not be outlawed in this country. It will simply be tiered, reserved for those rich enough to afford insurance themselves or lucky enough to receive from their employers.

From USA Today (via Jack and Jill Politics):

Nearly 90% of private health insurance policies now offer abortion coverage, and almost half of women with private insurance have it. But women covered under the new system would have to find supplemental insurance or pay out of pocket for an unanticipated procedure that can cost from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on complexity. For anyone unable to afford it, this would amount to a de facto ban.

From Democrasheild:

If the Stupak amendment passes, uninsured women who get health care through the public option will have to pay out-of-pocket to get an abortion. And even if a woman uses her own money to buy an insurance plan from a private company through the exchange, she won’t be able to get a plan that covers abortion. [...]

The “exchanges” discussed there are health insurance exchanges, which are marketplaces where people will be able to purchase insurance. Since insurance companies will have to compete against one another and the public option. the exchanges will provide better insurance plans at lower costs. They’re designed to help those who don’t have insurance or who have inadequate insurance but can’t afford better.

Because many small employers are expected to switch to using the exchanges, this means that women who currently have abortion coverage through their small employer, will have their coverage replaced with insurance that doesn’t cover abortion.

Ezra also points out, even if (as now seems likely) this amendment is part of the bill the House passes, that doesn’t guarantee it’ll be in the final legislation: “Even if it muscles into the House bill, it will also have to pass in the Senate, and then survive conference, before it becomes law.” That seems like a pretty thin reed of hope to me, but better than no hope at all.

I’ve been trying to find out if the Stupak Amendment contains exceptions for abortions necessary to prevent immediate threats to the life or health of the woman. I haven’t been able to find out, so far.