feminist blogs in english

by Amanda Marcotte

A while ago, there was a video circulating where the people filming asked anti-choice protesters how much time a woman should do for abortion.  What was interesting about the video was basically everyone but one dude responded with inane blather to distract from the question.  Sadly, this was taken as evidence that anti-choicers are morons who haven’t thought through the consequences of their hope that abortion might become illegal. 

But that’s not how I read it.  I’m not inclined to think someone who protests at clinics is someone who doesn’t think about the issue at length.  On the contrary!  Their information may be bad, but most avid anti-choicers think about abortion and women having sex without punishment at length. I dare say they’re obsessed with the topic.  And most of them are hip to the P.R. trends.  In the past, anti-choicers who protested clinics tended to be straightforward in their assessment of women who get abortions (or any form of reproductive health care)---they were “sluts” or whatever nasty insult you can think of for women.  Then they realized that this was a bad sales tactic, and now the thing is exhibiting this faux concern for women, who are presumed to be too stupid to know that abortions terminate pregnancies. And part of this strategy is claiming that abortion happens because evil doctors sell it to women who would otherwise be shiny, happy mothers.  And that therefore abortion bans should only target said evil doctors.

The reason that anti-choicers get all bundled up when asked how much time a woman should do for obtaining an abortion isn’t that they haven’t wished they could just toss the sluts in jail, therefore.  It’s that they know it’s impolitic to say so.  Where they’re stupid is that they haven’t come up with a snazzy lie to tell you when you ask.  Or, they hadn’t then.  Since then, I’ve found a lot have self-corrected and now are quick to explain that women are supposedly victims of abortion, and that only doctors should go to jail.

I bring this up, because Utah’s governor just signed a law to throw women in jail for miscarriage. There was some tweaking of the language to conceal this, but that’s what it is.  But what’s really interesting to me is that when it’s not a P.R. effort, but straightforward legislation, there’s no concealing that this is pure punishment aimed at women for basically being women.  If you miscarry in Utah, you can be subject to an investigation of homicide.  If they can create a case that you did something you knew was dangerous to the fetus, they can throw you in jail. That’s the end game for anti-choicers---tossing women in jail for failure to perform reproductively as expected.  And they all know it, even if they know better than to say it.

When Angie Jackson live tweeted her abortion she was speaking about what women have been told must remain private, secret, and yes, shameful. I support women telling their own stories without judgment or stigma. I want a culture where women can talk comfortably about their abortions, even if it is still a difficult choice for some, where women's choices aren't judged. Speaking openly about abortion helps to create this world.

In a piece published yesterday at Salon, former Executive Director of Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island Mary Ann Sorrentino argues Jackson's choice and the procedure she underwent shouldn't be talked about in public. Sorrentino attempts to make a generational argument, claiming pre-Roe feminists understand how bad illegal abortion was and how hard they fought for it, and know their aim was to gain a private right. The author spins the legal right to privacy argument into a condemnation of uppity women who give voice to their own abortion experiences - this private procedure shouldn't be talked about so flagrantly.

Sorrentino's argument has nothing to do with generational divisions. It's an argument that women shouldn't speak their truth in public.

Sorrentino suggests Jackson is irresponsible for not choosing sterilization. Not wanting to carry another pregnancy to term does not equal wanting or being able to have a tubal ligation. But I get the sense Sorrentino has limits on what she considers morally acceptable, and tying your tubes when you decide not to have more kids but still want to have cis hetero sex is apparently the responsible choice.

Sorrentino says Jackson caused the rest of the universe "anguish" and calls her public tweets an "abuse of reproductive rights" - as if abortion is always a severely painful decision that must be kept secret, or you're doing it wrong. She accuses Jackson of having "bad judgment." Sorrentino makes sure to point out Jackson has the right to speak publicly about her abortion, but it's just not the proper thing to do.

Sorrentino's piece reads like she's telling Jackson to be ladylike, to be a "good girl." There are certain things a woman just shouldn't speak about in public. This isn't the feminism of a previous generation - it's an argument that the divides between public and private should be maintained, with women's experiences kept in the private sphere. It's an argument for silence, for stigma, and for an appropriate way of being a lady.

This goes against the approach to destigmatizing abortion that I learned from pre-Roe organizers. The Redstockings Abortion Speakout in 1969 began a traditional of women telling their abortion stories publicly to humanize the procedure, to bring it into the public sphere, and to remove shame. These women didn't listen when they were told their stories should be kept private. Jackson used new technology to share the experience as it was happening, a new twist on an old consciousness raising technique.

Jackson's live tweeting of her abortion actually has its roots in pre-Roe work for abortion access. Sorrentino's argument has its roots in anti-feminist understandings of the appropriate place for women's decisions and experiences - out of sight.

To hear Angie Jackson's reasons for sharing her abortion experience in her own words check out this CNN interview:

Full transcript here.

Today, March 10, is the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers. The many health care professionals who make abortion access a reality by providing counseling, scheduling appointments, and assisting with or performing abortions are doing necessary work despite immense stigma and hatred, and they have my heartfelt thanks.

Today is also the anniversary of the 1993 assassination of Dr. David Gunn, the first abortion provider killed in the U.S. because of his job. This past year we lost another provider, Dr. George Tiller, to antiabortion violence. The threat of violence is constant for many providers and, in a year when a provider was assassinated for the first time in over a decade, that threat is on everyone's minds. Yet doctors, nurses, therapists, and other clinic staff keep going to work, because they know the legal right to abortion means nothing if everyone is too afraid to perform the procedure.

The National Abortion Federation (where I work part time) is collecting names, messages, and photos showing appreciation for abortion providers. Head on over to there site to express your thanks and support.

by Amanda Marcotte

Check out this short video on the impact of the ban on most abortions in Kenya:

In Harm’s Way: Unsafe Abortion in Kenya from Center for Reproductive Rights on Vimeo.

Even when you build “exceptions” into abortion bans, they usually don’t do much for people who technically qualify.  Lack of legal providers and the natural inclination of red tape to move slowly even as pregnancy progresses quickly makes it difficult for those who qualify to get the abortions they’re entitled to.  Nothing short of legalization of elective abortion will protect women who have health issues or are raped. 

You can read more at the Center for Reproductive Rights. 

“Our society is so intensely gendered in ways we don’t even notice.”

Wise words from Miriam Zoila Pérez who visited my Queer Identities: LGBT Literature and Film class earlier today. Miriam is one of the editors at Feministing and is also the founder and sole blogger at Radical Doula.

I invited Miriam to visit the class to talk about her trajectory in the reproductive justice movement as well as to share her personal story as a queer Latin@.

At one point, Miriam joked: “Ellen Degeneres was the only inkling I had of what it meant to be a lesbian and since I wasn’t attracted to her, I figured I couldn’t be a lesbian.”

During her college years at Swarthmore, Miriam started her activist work as a volunteer for the Feminist Majority.  In 2004, at the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC, she found herself attracted to the work of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health based on their strong intersectional analysis of women’s health from the perspective of women of color. During the course of the march, she felt connected to their Spanish/English signs that read “Salud, Dignidad, y Justicia” (Health, Dignity, and Justice) and became immediately hooked to their mission.  After college, she began working for the NLIRH.

When asked how reproductive health is a queer issue, Miriam explained how many LGBT individuals have a range of reproductive health needs from lesbian survivors of sexual assault seeking abortion to bisexual women seeking contraception to lesbians and transgender people seeking reproductive healthcare services. “Ultimately,” she said, “reproductive rights is about bodily autonomy, and that’s important to queer folks.”

After hearing Miriam talk about the intersection of queer identity and healthcare, students immediately made connections to their reading of Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues, in which Jess, the protagonist, is denied services at a women’s clinic due to her male gender expression.

As part of the conversation, Miriam explained terms such as cisgender, and talked about how she came to identify as genderqueer: “In the beginning, I couldn’t quite identify fully as a butch because I thought you had to be a certain kind of tough and a certain kind of hard to be butch.  But I still felt this inclination towards a more butch or masculine expression, so identifying as genderqueer fit.”

At the end of her visit, Miriam recommended the Logo series Gender Rebels for students to continue their interest in exploring issues of gender.

One student noted: “The speaker was really fascinating.  I really like that she expanded our discussion of queer issues and reproductive justice.”

I agree.  I especially admire Miriam’s ability to bridge her work across movements: feminist, queer, and reproductive justice.  It’s this kind of bridging that makes activists like Miriam an amazing model not only for young people looking for ways in which to make an impact but also for all of us who seek new inspiration for making our world that much more healthy, dignified, and just.

If you are interested in having Miriam visit your campus or classroom, please contact her here.

by Amanda Marcotte

I know I’ve been writing a lot about reproductive rights and sexual health issues, but the stories I want to comment on seem to be increasing lately.  As someone who writes a lot about these issues, I’ve noticed something interesting over the years about the feedback I get on the “moral” question of abortion, specifically from self-identified pro-choicers.  Occasionally I’ll get an email, comment, or tweet from someone who is worried about the moral gravity of abortion, and suggests that somehow pro-choice arguments would be more compelling if we gave up more ground on the stigma of the procedure, if we spent more time in public worrying about how terrible abortion is (as if women who get abortions aren’t already shamed enough), that I personally haven’t thought enough about how serious a decision abortion must be for women and how tragic it always, always is. 

95-99% of this feedback is from men. 

I have a few theories---some of them work together, due to the both/and nature of this blog---as to why this might be.  I considered the possibility that it’s biological, that these men are so unaware of a woman’s bodily functions that they really don’t stop to think about how early stage pregnancy isn’t like some lightening bolt for women, but more a gradually introduction to bloaty crankiness that has to be confirmed by a pregnancy test, it’s so not lightening bolt-ish.  And so these men don’t have a relationship to the idea of abortion as prevention, which is closer to how women who have abortion---and those of us who feel empathy for them---think of it.  I also considered strongly that for men, it’s really an ego thing.  The sentimental patriarchal arguments forwarded by anti-choice men who clearly get off on the idea of being able to control women with their super-sperm unfortunately have an emotional effect on some men who are intellectually pro-choice.  But what I realized is that a man’s unease with abortion was often, in his own words, related to his desire to be a father---usually recently realized or something he wants very soon. 

It makes no sense, though!  Or at least that’s what I thought at first.  Wanting to be a father, in my mind, was about wanting to make the decision jointly with a woman and moving forward with a plan. But in real life, there are often situations where decisions are made passively, because of an unintended pregnancy.  And I realized how that might actually be something men who want marriage and fatherhood hope for.  Why not?  In our sexist society, the decision to marry is basically on the man.  Women are the ones who are supposed to be eager to get married, but they’re also the ones who are supposed to sit back and wait to be asked.  But asking is showing eagerness, but eagerness is supposed to be girly stuff, so I imagine that’s intimidating for a lot of dudes.  Ways to manage the slight emasculation inherent in picking out jewelry and showing interest in this wedding stuff include having a huge public proposal where people will side with you and her only role is to say “yes”, asking her father first and making it seem transactional, or getting over your hang-ups about masculinity and just asking.  Or....you could get her pregnant and be the conquering hero by making an honest woman of her.  As soon as I realized this, I realized what a powerful fantasy that must be to some men.  It’s the perfect way to get what you want (marriage, babies) without having to say you want that girly stuff. It certainly explained a handful of men’s erratic behavior and opinions that I’ve known in my time.  It was a pet theory of mine, but nothing I thought too much about beyond bullshitting over beers.

Well, no more is it merely a pet theory!  There’s now evidence that my pet theory has some grounding in reality. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy surveyed men and women who said that preventing a pregnancy was important to them, and asked about how they’d feel if there was an unintended pregnancy despite precautions.  The results were staggering:  More than twice as many men as women reported they’d be pleased.

Now, the first thing that is weird and confusing about this is that anyone trying to avoid pregnancy would be pleased if it happened.  But it’s been known for a long time by researchers (and despite some quarrels I have with NCPTUP, I respect that they’re really looking into the ambivalence issue) that a whole lot of unintended pregnancy involves ambivalence.  Which makes sense---only 40% of unintended pregnancies end in abortion, so many of the rest probably involve some level of wanting to have the baby even if the pregnancy was unintended.  Major decisions, such as when to get married or have a child, tend to involve ambivalence and a lot of people do in fact bop along hoping something will happen to make that decision happen for them.  But the gap between men and women was astounding: 43% of men and only 20% of women said they’d be pleased by an accidental pregnancy.

What really interested me, however, was that the shifting in the percentages tends to uphold my theory that a lot of men---and some women, too---see an unintended pregnancy as a way to get desired results without taking definitive action.  The older that both groups got, the more they indicated that they’d be pleased with an unplanned pregnancy, with slightly over half of men 25-29 who were trying to prevent pregnancy indicating they’d be happy if it happened anyway, but only 29% of women in that same age group.  While I’m sure a lot of factors went into people’s thinking, it seems the possibility of marriage and babies being chosen for you gets more attractive with age, as you might imagine.

So why the gap?  Are women less interested in marriage and babies than men?  I don’t think that’s it, though often you’ll find women are less enthusiastic about marriage in surveys, but not by this much.  It might be because a woman feels that her future is unknown a little more if she gets pregnant.  I suspect a lot of men who feel they’re in love think, “Well, if it happens, I’ll just suggest we get married, end of story.” But for women who feel warmly about marriage with their partner, it’s not so simple. I know from women I’ve known who got pregnant and then married, the time between when you got pregnant and when he asked can be a very vulnerable time, and asking seems out of the question, because of that stereotype about women who trick men into marriage.  And if he doesn’t ask, then you actually have more decisions to make, not fewer.  Plus you just learned something really heart-breaking, if you were eager for marriage.  Of course, it’s technically true that a pregnant woman can turn down a marriage proposal, and perhaps men should worry about that.  But maybe they don’t, perhaps because it’s assumed that a woman who shoots you down will probably have an abortion.  To be clear, I’m only addressing the thought processes of the half of men that would be pleased.  I think the other half probably have a better grip on how many different outcomes are possible, and some of them really don’t want to face the marriage and babies question now or ever.

One extra thing pointed out in comments at Feministe that made a lot of sense to me was that the burden of pregnancy and child-rearing falls more on women than men, and so men may not take the situation as seriously on average.  There’s something to this, especially with men who are already predisposed to marry and have babies with their current partners.  In these cases, the most they’re probably thinking about is that marriage and babies, but maybe not so much career prospects or education.  Someone at The Sexist suggested that a lot of men might just be happy to find out their sperm works.  One hopes this is not the case, but I think in a few cases, it probably has an influence. We aren’t talking strictly rational reactions, after all.

Unfortunately, the National Campaign tends to run campaigns against unplanned pregnancy based on the premise that men are unreliable and you shouldn’t touch one until you’re ready to breed, and so I fear that they may use this information in unproductive ways.  I’d prefer a campaign encouraging more couples to talk to each other not just about contraception, but what they see happening if contraception fails.  There’s a real taboo against having that discussion, but it’s a really important one to have.  It’s no fun not being on the same page in the event of an unintended pregnancy.

by Amanda Marcotte

This week’s column at RH Reality Check is about the use of wedge issues by anti-choicers, and what they get out of it.  The ones I identify as popular now are pretending to care about racism, pretending to care about women’s health, pretending to care about disability rights, and acting like huge victims of censorship (while actively supporting it in other ways).  Antis love this shit; I get more “but you’re supposed to be tolerant!” whining on Twitter from fetus obsessives than any other conservatives---as if “tolerance” requires liberal women to hand our bodies over to the control of misogynist Jesus freaks.  The article was about wedge issues as a strategy, and not the particular meaning of any one wedge issue, so please read it if you’re interested in the strategic issues at stake.  But because of this, I wasn’t able to address in depth the “genocide” conspiracy theory that Jesse wrote about recently.  RH Reality Check has put together an excellent series documenting how the claim is based in a racist, sexist view of women of color as uniquely unable to think for themselves and make their own decisions.  Here’s Miriam Perez’s piece, which contains links to many others. Shani Hilton also wrote about this at the American Prospect. Jodi Jacobson has put together information explaining why the abortion rate for black women is higher than that of white women---basically lack of access to decent contraception leaves black women far more open to unintended pregnancy.  Interestingly, anti-choicers do everything in their power to avoid talking about main reason for the vast majority of abortions---unwanted pregnancy---so it’s important when dealing with them to remind them every few minutes or so that abortions don’t happen because evil feminists (working with perverted men) force them, or because women who get abortions are painfully stupid and don’t know what they’re doing.  It’s because of unwanted pregnancies, and the stopping of them. Duh.

Access is what I want to talk about now.  The “genocide” claim is a classic wedge issue strategy, and it’s important to view it with that lens---the way that anti-choicers claiming to be anti-racist reinforce racist arguments, the way that these sorts of things create confusing and misleading stories in the mainstream media, the way it’s intended to make liberals run scared of having this discussion.  But the “genocide” claim is also part of a strategy to deprive many women of necessary health care they often can’t get anywhere else.  And some men, too.

The “genocide” rhetoric is being used to push for policy, and not just to confuse the debate about reproductive rights.  The policy desired by anti-choicers?  Defunding Planned Parenthood branches that serve low-income communities, especially ones that are predominantly black or Hispanic.  There’s no doubt other goals, but that’s the biggie.  The idea is to pretend that Planned Parenthood does nothing but abortion, and under the cover of “concern”, take clinics out of communities that often don’t have their reproductive health care needs met even with Planned Parenthood filling in the gaps. 

For instance, of the “genocide” argument being used to fight the building of a specific Planned Parenthood branch in Houston.  The niceness of the clinic is being held out as further proof that it’s “evil”, though even though there’s all this feigned concern for the heavily minority population of the neighborhood, the underlying belief that non-white citizens don’t deserve nice things comes through loud and clear.  Under the guise of stopping “genocide”, in other words, anti-choicers are trying to cut off access to health care for the very people they feign concern for.  The fact that black women are less likely than white women to have regular access to health care services is surely one of the reasons that the abortion rate is higher for black women---the most reliable forms of contraception for women who really don’t want to have more kids for reasons we should respect are mostly forms of contraception you have to see a doctor to get.  Cutting off access to Planned Parenthood will only make this situation worse.

But Planned Parenthood has a lot more health care services than those geared strictly towards contraception and abortion. I went to the Houston Planned Parenthood website to find out exactly how many services anti-choicers are trying to snatch away from the citizens of Houston who rely on Planned Parenthood.  The list is very long indeed: diabetes testing, anemia testing, flu vaccinations, blood pressure screening, smoking cessation, cholesterol screening, cancer screening for women, extensive gynecological services, STD testing.  Just to name a few.  Planned Parenthood has expanded its services in a lot of areas based on what the community needs.  In parts of California, Planned Parenthood works with WIC, for instance.

According to Planned Parenthood’s demographics research, 75% of their patients are at or below 150% of the poverty level.  That’s about $33,000 for a family of four, and for a single parent with one child, that’s surviving on $22,000 or less a year.  In other words, you’re looking at a lot of women who don’t have health insurance, and so the cost controlled services at Planned Parenthood are often the only access they’ve got.  When anti-choicers attack Planned Parenthood, the people they’re attacking are those who have very little money and very little access to health care and who often have to go without or get substandard care if they don’t have Planned Parenthood.  That’s the ugly truth of the matter.  Behind all this feigned concern is a dark, sadistic plan to deprive people in need of health care. 

This weekend, the New York Times had a front page article about the racist Atlanta billboards that Samhita covered a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately, the entire article is a detailed explanation of the Right to Life group's opinion, analysis and tactics. Loretta Ross, National Coordinator of Sistersong, is quoted in response, but her arguments barely make a splash on the piece. This doesn't seem like fair and balanced reporting to me.

Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check has more on what was wrong with the article:

But the Times story failed on several fronts. First, it failed to explore in any real depth the factors underlying reproductive and sexual health problems among African American women. Nowhere does the article cite the actual public health data that would immediately discredit the claims of anti-choice groups using racial wedge issues to raise money and gain power.

Second, it failed to provide context for the widespread support among African-American leaders in Congress and in the public health community for expanding access to services.

And third, the Times gave inordinate amounts of space to truly questionable characters in the anti-choice movement without exploring how these groups themselves are at fault for the problem about which they profess to be so worried. In fact, it failed to ask any questions at all about what the so-called right-to-life groups cited were doing to address the causal factors behind high rates of abortion. Nor did it really question the validity or credibility of these groups in any real way, or ask what they've done to address poverty, social isolation, or broader health concerns among African American women. The answer? Nothing.

RH Reality Check has been running a series in response to this campaign for a few weeks now. It includes Shark-fu's great response to the campaign. I also wrote a piece for the series last week, which Courtney linked to, but I wanted to re-emphasize it.

While this campaign targets African American women specifically, we've seen these arguments used to target other women of color. I argue that it is a classic divide and conquer strategy, an attempt to pit women of color against reproductive justice activists. Here is an excerpt from that piece:

Latinas and other women of color don't need to be protected by paternalistic ideologues motivated by a political agenda that disregards the needs of women of color and their families. So thanks for your concern, anti-choicers, but I think the women of color advocates working within the reproductive justice movement have got it covered. We're working in those clinics you attack, we're helping to shape policies and provide services in our communities, services that allow us to decide what our needs are.

We know whom we can trust to make decisions about family creation: women themselves. We don't need limits on what services we can access. And we don't need your ideological bullying.

The next time one of your crisis pregnancy centers, one of your dramatic billboards, or one of your bogus pieces of "sex and race selection" legislation actually works to support women through whatever choice they make for their families--we'll talk.

Update: SPARK Reproductive Justice Now has a campaign to urge CBS Outdoor to bring the billboards down. Click here to take action.

Heather Corinna, a writer and activist, is the founder of Scarleteen, one of the internet's best sex ed resources for young people, and the author of S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-to-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide for Getting You Through High School and College. Scarleteen, which Corinna started in 1998, tries to fill the gaps left - whether intentionally or unintentionally - in sex education provided by teachers and parents. Scarleteen is for and by young people, aims to equip young people with all the information they need to make the best choices they can make. It also provides a space for them to talk, in an honest and safe way, about issues that they might not otherwise be able to explore, like bisexuality, coming out and abusive relationships. I particularly like this post, about men, masculinity and breakups.

Corinna is also one of the founders of the All Girl Army, a blogger collective for young feminists (some as young as 10, and who doesn't love a 10-year-old feminist?). Each of their bloggers was asked to define what feminism means to them. Check it out - it'll put a smile on your face.

Corinna, whose writing has been published in the Chicago Tribune, Bitch and Bust, among many, many others. She also writes erotica, and publishes her erotic photography online at her site Femmerotic. Those of you who read RH Reality Check will recognize Corinna from her Get Real! series, answering readers' questions about sex, sexuality and sexual health. In this week's column, about sex and guilt, she writes: "I have yet to see any sound evidence that people enjoying pleasure, sexual or otherwise, in ways that do not hurt anyone -- that everyone involves wants and engages in with basic care and respect for themselves and others -- has anything but positive benefits for people and the world as a whole." Amen to that.

And now, without further ado, the Feministing Five, with Heather Corinna.

Chloe Angyal: What led you to sex and sexuality education and activism?

Heather Corinna: I've been a general educator since college: I started out working with developmentally disabled adults, then went into Montessori and alternative early childhood and elementary education, while at the same time still working on my arts, including my writing. I grew up with a father who was a political activist, and a mother who worked in healthcare. In a lot of ways, my sexuality and sexual life was a lone place of real freedom for me in my teens during the 80's, a notion that stands so counter to so much of what people say about young adult sexuality but which was so true for me. That given, I was often the unofficial sex expert in high school and college, so while I'm sure my advice back them wasn't as informed as it could have been, I got started in this early. I've also been writing for the whole of my life, so when you put all of those ingredients in the pot, I think it's tough to see how I would have wound up anywhere BUT in sexuality education and activism.

When I first started publishing online in the mid-late 90's, I was working centrally with adult women's sexuality and sexuality in the arts, as well as writing erotica for anthologies, and young people began to send me advice questions, likely because a) there just wasn't much on the 'net to choose from at the time (so finding my stuff was mighty easy), and b) most of the sexuality spaces there were around then were some skeevy BBS' (which seemed primarily to be manned and used by adult men who got off on teenagers talking about sex and offered very little actual support or factual information) that I don't imagine felt like safe spaces for young people. There wasn't anything for young people I could refer them to, so we just gradually built Scarleteen as we went, until it got to the point where it became my full-time job.

At this point, most of my week is based on directing and operating Scarleteen and doing other kinds of written sex ed/sexuality articles, but I also direct an in-person sex education outreach program in Seattle. At the current time through that program, I serve both homeless or transient youth as well as patients or clients at abortion clinics under 25 who can get an in-depth one-on-one sex education consult with me on the day of their procedures.

CA: Who is your favorite fictional heroine, and who are your heroines in real life?

HC: It's crazy tough to pick just one, but Oothoon in William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion would have to win it if it was just one. It's a short piece, but in but a few pages, mostly composed of Oothoon speaking and telling her own tale, she does those most magnificent telling-off on everything from how crazy it is for anyone to suggest that a woman raped is somehow "tainted" or "impure," to what's really at the core of sexual jealousy to what sexual freedom and women's sexuality could really be like in a better world. It also contains Blake's concept of what innocence is, which is radically different from how we usually hear it defined. For Blake, innocence was simply where we are at without experience, less about purity and more about an open wonder, then we get life experience, and the ideal state -- unlike the one we often see, which is this perpetual state of innocence or "purity" -- is to return to innocence informed and deepened by experience.

On the whole, it's a giant rant about so many of the things that infuriate and frustrate me the most, and I don't know that I've ever seen a better one. (And goodness knows I rant enough about it myself to have personally made the attempt many times over.) This from 1793, no less, and from a male writer and artist, too. The first time I read it, it blew my socks off so much that my professor at the time allowed me to skip class for several days so I could read and reread it over and over again and just let myself drown in it. One of my fave passages in it is:

Infancy! fearless, lustful, happy, nestling for delight
In laps of pleasure: Innocence! honest, open, seeking
The vigorous joys of morning light, open to virgin bliss,
Who taught thee modesty, subtil modesty, child of night and sleep?
When thou awakest wilt thou dissemble all thy secret joys,
Or wert thou not awake when all this mystery was disclos'd?
Then com'st thou forth a modest virgin knowing to dissemble,
With nets found under thy night pillow, to catch virgin joy
And brand it with the name of whore, and sell it in the night
In silence, ev'n without a whisper, and in seeming sleep.
Religious dreams and holy vespers light thy smoky fires:
Once were thy fires lighted by the eyes of honest morn.
And does my Theotormon seek this hypocrite modesty,
This knowing, artful, secret, fearful, cautious, trembling hypocrite?
Then is Oothoon a whore indeed! and all the virgin joys
Of life are harlots; and Theotormon is a sick man's dream;
And Oothoon is the crafty slave of selfish holiness.

CA: What recent news story made you want to scream?

HC: This piece, about Utah potentially criminalizing women who abort and miscarry.
Not only does it infuriate me as a feminist and as someone in reproductive health including abortion, but also as an educator. By no means do I think that people really being educated about sexuality, our bodies and the whole process of reproduction will magically fix or prevent the kind of ideology and dynamics really at the heart of this proposal. However, barely a day passes where I don't read someone, including the media, legislators, magazines in the market, saying or suggesting something really freaking ignorant about women's bodies, reproduction or sex which makes clear that their own sex ed was sorely lacking.

Miscarriage is often totally unavoidable (and in some ways is actually about our bodies being very smart, and doing things to help to try and protect our own health). It is not, as it is often suggested to be, often about women doing something wrong, something being wrong with women, or women being "careless" with their pregnancies. A great many pregnancies, potentially as many as half, end in miscarriage, many before women even knew they were pregnant. These are the indisputable facts of our bodies and how they work. The idea that pregnancy is certain or guaranteed to end in a birth unless a woman mucks it up or doesn't do all the right things not only is inaccurate, it clearly comes from the notion that anything unwanted or bad that happens to women must be our fault or doing.

Criminalizing any reproduction choice is heinous enough. But seeking to criminalize women's own bodily functions -- and doing so based on a few cases which are not representative of most women or most miscarriages -- outside of our control is beyond the pale many steps further. The worst part is, folks like this may even know these facts and simply act like they don't on purpose, but so much of the general population doesn't know the facts that snowing people is all too easy. There is a substantial segment of people in the world who aren't as outraged over things like this as I think they would be if they got that it isn't just the ideology that's horrifying, it's an ideology held up in part because of a collective (and often purposefully sustained, such as by abstinence-only sex education) ignorance about something no one should be ignorant about: not even being educated accurately about the bodies we inhabit and live your lives through is an outrage to me.

CA: What, in your opinion, is the greatest challenge facing feminism today?

HC: The idea that we don't need it anymore, that everyone is all equal and equitable and there aren't any more gender disparities. Not only is that either a tremendous falsehood or a very deep ignorance, it is often either said by people who either have a ton of privilege or by those who clearly need feminism the most because they're so deeply disempowered that it seems like they need to say that to try and protect what little agency they have.

We don't have gender equality or gender equity. Certainly not globally, and we don't have it yet in the states, either. Women still do not have pay equity. Women's right to full autonomy over our bodies, something the majority of male-bodied people have, is still not complete and is often tenuous at best, particularly when we're talking about reproductive choice and health and full sexual freedom. Marginalized women in particular -- either by virtue of race, immigration status, age, gender identity or sexual orientation, economic class, what have you -- still usually have far less rights than men of those same marginalized groups.

The saddest thing to me in the espousal of the idea that we're post-feminist is how many women who suggest as much are doing so (I think Ariel Levy speaks very well to aspects of this) for their own personal gain on the backs of their sisters. Of course, it's nearly as sad to me how many women think that where we are at with equity isn't about having made progress, but about still needing much more, but that this is either as good as we can expect, or worse still, that we should be grateful for being given any crumbs of equity at all.

CA: You're going to a desert island, and you get to take one food, one drink and one feminist. What do you take?

HC: Pistachios. And water. I have so many other beverages of choice I'd earnestly prefer, but I am really bad at drinking enough water and feel like being on a desert island might be just the thing that finally motivates me to care for myself properly in that regard. Victoria Woodhull, if dead feminists count. If we need someone living, bell hooks.

by Amanda Marcotte

As I reported this morning, I jumped in on Twitter last night and started, with the help of others, to flood #livetweetingabortion with cold, hard facts.  Today, I decided to experiment, and stayed on #livetweetingabortion most of the day to see what could be done by trying to stick to facts, correct misinformation, and quiz anti-choicers about their larger beliefs about sex and women’s rights.  I tried to avoid platitudes, though I did give in and make a couple jokes.  These were the results:

*Most anti-choicers fled the scene.

*A few tried to retaliate with links, but most were called out quickly for using blatant, misleading propaganda to fight against reputable research.

*Of the few that stayed in and argued, most eventually dropped the “OMG BAYBEEZ” thing pretty quickly.  They would return to it, sure, but the facade that this isn’t about punishing sexually active women was dropped quickly.

Of the arguers, I saw these arguments, available for all reading #livetweetingabortion to read:

*That a man has a right to force his wife not to use the birth control pill.  This was part of a larger argument about how the price women pay to be in families was submission to men’s desires. When I asked how much force/violence a man should be able to use to assert his right to prevent his wife from using birth control, she freaked out and left the conversation.

*That merely waiting for “the one” would be enough to prevent HPV, and that getting stuck with a needle is too painful to tolerate just to avoid cervical cancer.

*That the Centers for Disease Control’s information on abortion safety (conclusion: pretty damn safe) isn’t reliable.

*That married people have no need for contraception.

*That all single people should not have sex, ever.

*That instead of teaching sex ed in schools, there should be religious indoctrination.

A couple anti-choicers didn’t take the bait when asked if they supported the right to use contraception, but repeatedly ignored the question.  However, most asked proudly answered.  Of those, 100% dismissed contraception as unnecessary or wrong.  For those reading who thought that anti-choicers were nice people who simply thought abortion was murder, it was hard to impossible to walk away with that conclusion intact.  The more that anti-choicers dug a hole for themselves with their radical anti-sex arguments, the more the pro-choicers in the room were able to stay on track, and not get sideswiped arguing about impossibilities like when life begins or if there’s a god who cares how you fuck.

Now, there’s things about this experiment that are hard to prove.  For instance, just because pro-choicers were able to control the debate and get anti-choicers to admit impolitic things, such as their loathing for most people’s sexual choices, doesn’t mean that others were reading.  However, I do feel that some folks that went in already convinced of pro-choice arguments on the grounds of bodily autonomy really seemed to learn more about the anti-sex agenda of the anti-choice movement.  Clearly, no hardcore anti-choicers were going to change their minds, but since this Twitter feed was well-publicized, it’s likely that some fence sitters came in and saw screeching about the evils of contraception from anti-choicers, and that could have an effect.  But by and large, I think the most prominent effect was helping center the pro-choicers in the room on the fact that anti-choicers are warring against very normal sexual choices in our culture.

What the experiment did demonstrate, it seems to me, is that facts are extremely effective at undermining conservative bullshit.  On this argument, conservatives prefer to argue about unknowables, like if fetuses have souls, or they prefer to use glittering generalities, such as encouraging “responsibility”.  Facts help derail these strategies.  For instance, if someone talks about responsibility, the fact that 3/4 of women who have abortions cite responsibilities to others as a reason can refocus the discussion.  A lot of liberals end up buying into conservative frameworks---"responsibility" does sound good!---without thinking of how that framework is fundamentally dishonest.  Facts can help. 

However, this experiment was performed in an arena of gender and sexuality, and so the results may be hard to replicate in other ways.  Why?  Because the abortion discussion---and most misconceptions that allow people to sympathize with the anti-choice view---is dominated by misogynist beliefs about women that simply aren’t backed up by facts.  The beliefs are that women are stupid, thoughtless, and have very little moral grounding on their own, and thus cannot be trusted to make the own decisions about their family size or their sex lives.  The facts prove the opposite: women who have abortions tend to know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.  They have children and families and finances and relationships.  In fact, women who have abortions look very much like the women we all know and respect.  They are the women we know and respect. Facts help establish this narrative.

I’m not sure the results could be replicated in other arenas, but I think this Twitter storm pushes us a little closer to understanding how these sorts of arguments roll out from conservatives, and what it might take to dismantle their misleading narratives.