Crisis Pregnancy Centers

One of the things I was working on as an intern at NARAL this summer (other than updating their online content) was researching Crisis Pregnancy Centers. During this time, RH Reality Check came out with this great video about the deceptions spread by CPCs.

From NARAL Pro-Choice California's website (i.e. me):

Crisis Pregnancy Centers, also known as CPCs, are fake clinics and counseling centers that often use deception, inaccurate information and intimidation to prevent potentially pregnant women from accessing abortion and/or birth control services. Commonly, their goal is to impose their anti-choice agenda on women especially in so-called “at risk” communities (low income, minority, non-English speaking, etc). Many of these centers also provide sex education services and therefore have received significant funding both at the state and federal levels from abstinence-only education programs. In trying to make an important and constitutionally protected choice, women should have medically accurate information and counseling that is free of political or religious agenda.

It should be a given that women are provided with complete and accurate information before making choices about their bodies and their reproductive health. And yet.

Being a Woman: The Male Gaze and Saying No

(x-posted from my blogspot)

In response to this (blog entry that just has an embedded video) and this:

The author here grosses me out.

That guy isn’t real. Somebody decided to make him up so they could write the “write fuck me on your chest and smile” line, claiming female = victim and that somehow, if only men would understand and be sensitive to this, it would be okay.

Most men aren’t anything like this guy, and for the rest of us the author has done nothing to improve our understanding of “what it’s like to be a woman.” If the author were listening, I’d respond: “Being a grownup means taking the fuck me sign off your chest and telling people ‘no’ or ‘piss off’ whenever necessary.”

Giving a reality check to a straw man, kind of annoying.

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I see where the commenter is coming from, but I think it's a *very* shallow reading of that clip. The message I got from this video/scene was different. Writing "fuck me" on his chest would be about drawing a parallel between the symbolic gesture and the reality of inhabiting a woman's body--a body that is unfortunately read by some as "willing" just by virtue of being female. If the guy had actually gone out with the FUCK ME on his chest, it wouldn't have been the same thing/feeling...but it wasn't about him actually doing it. It was about showing the parallel between that and walking around with an INVISIBLE (yet oh so visible) marker of "oh yeah, sure, fuck me, that's great, I really want it from you, thank you."

A man walking naked with FUCK ME on his chest would be seen as abnormal, whereas a woman just walking around would not be. Violence against women is perpetrated because it's, in a way, normalized. This is the narrative that we've been given; people assuming a naked man with FUCK ME scrawled on his chest wants and is ready for sex is not realistic, but people assuming a woman walking down the street wants and is ready for sex IS realistic. This whole scene is about the psychological impact; it's about the female character trying to show this man how it feels by creating a "story" that APPROXIMATES that feeling. Taking that story to reality wouldn't work, but THINKING about it and thinking about what it MEANS would certainly make an impact.

Woman is not inherently "victim," but the truth is that in society, many times there is a strong correlation between the two. And if it's not "victim," it's still the receiving end of violence, be it symbolic, physical, or both. And that being said...yeah--if only men could understand and be sensitive to the realities of living in a body marked as "female," we would probably have less scenarios like this. A man would be way less likely to invade a woman's privacy like what happened on The L Word if he understood how that shit felt. A man would be less likely to leer at a woman and think it's okay to grab her ass if he understood how that felt. Obviously it would only be a start. Someone's knowledge doesn't predict what they will do with it.

But the thing is, there's no real way to understand, FULLY understand, unless one has lived through it. Anything else is just an assumption, removed to a certain degree, or a sympathetic thought. No one can TRULY and wholly understand or "feel" what someone else is feeling. We have approximations, yes, and a "common language," yes, but these are only approximations. Still, these approximations are valuable--very valuable. They're the closest we have to the real thing, and they are important. And even if we can't feel exactly what someone else has felt, there are probably huge overlaps, and we can sympathize and find solidarity.

Finally, the "...telling people ‘no’ or ‘piss off’ whenever necessary" comment? Telling people "no" or to "piss off" when necessary is a right (and sort of one's duty to a certain extent), but to have that right respected? A totally different ballgame. Women usually don't have the privilege of not having to worry that their "no" may not be respected or even taken seriously. Saying "no" doesn't necessitate or equal a respect of that "no." Just because a woman screams NO and fights back, does that mean a rapist will stop raping her? Just because we say NO, does that mean a mugger will suddenly return all our money and leave us alone? Just because a NO is necessary doesn't mean it will WORK. There are various situations when saying NO just isn't enough.

And sure, most men aren't like the guy in the video, who will set up cameras all over your house...but that's not the point. Most men aren't rapists, or murderers, or robbers--but we still have to talk about those that are, and represent them in the media, and show that they exist. We still have to show that women are hurt, not to normalize that violence, but to show the realities of the world and that they are NOT ACCEPTABLE. We have to put these things in the forefront so people cannot ignore them, so people have to acknowledge them and get educated and DO something about it. The fact that a (presumably) Average Joe (whatever that is) cannot relate at all to this clip and feels that it provides NO insight into how it feels to be a woman is VERY distressing to me.

I wish I could say I wrote this...it's by a friend who's an organizer for TLGB issues:

First Radical

Am I your first radical?
A revolutionary fuck,
feeling you up
while dressing you down
feeling around for sense of identity
while its escaping me as to why,
so I say fuck it,
while helping you
while helping myself 
to a consensual fruit
flavoring the salt of your lips,
the skin of your neck,
the sweat on your thighs.
I've pumped my fist in the air so many times
for the right to do
what I think
we're about to do,
that my biceps all the way to my fingertips
just keeps growing stronger.

But it seems everytime your eyes scream directly into mine,
the message that resonates runs parallel to mine,
and I refuse to deny that this will go by
without feeling,
it's just not the conventional type.
But nothing really is
as every pelvic pump preaches another gospel
according to resistance,
according to power,
according to beauty 
in the Holy Bible of our liberation.

So speak to me in tongues, because you know it'll start miracles.
Make me moan to make sure I'm still breathing.
Press your heart on mine to make sure its still beating
bleeding together
becoming one body we find solidarity
while we pray and preach simultaneously,
in union or individually
or whatever happens to happen.

Kiss my lips that move to make a motion,
then kiss my lips that exist to destroy notions,
connotation, expectations,
and bring life forward.
And I will pray before I come
in
to your universe of one body, one love
that the fuck-up that follows will be a helpful one
God,
eternally omnipresent,
resting between my knees,
grant me the serenity to make my bed,
and lie in it,
love in it,
die in it,
then rise from the dead and refuse to straighten the sheets.
Because as my heavy breath breathes harmony to your heavy swallows,
I find myself bathing in what God gave me
as a Holy and radical communion,
and hoping you'll approach the altar for yours,
receiving blood and body,
leading or following spirit,
which proves to be beautiful, too.
And as you slide your hand inside,
consider you're sliding your hand into mine
as we stand on a picket line screaming for freedom,
and consider that God lies between our grasp,
soaking in to our skin to provide us this strength.
And consider my moans are to celebrate freedom,
and that I scream out God's name
because I see her so clearly.

Love Your Body Day Poster

I would've liked to see non-skirt-wearing women.
Still, the poster's pretty cute.

Scientific study finds that promiscuity is culturally-based. Feminists say, "No kidding."

Jezebel had a good post the other day about a new study showing that promiscuity may be more culturally influenced than biologically/evolutionarily. Well, yeah, no kidding. But evolutionary biologists have long held that, based mainly on studies of fruit flies, males are more promiscuous than females. Spreading one's genes is an evolutionary advantage, but producing eggs is more of an investment than insemination, so females tend to have fewer mating partners while males tend to have more. While these findings are undoubtedly important, the subsequent application to human behavior has been, well, problematic. Claiming cultural norms/stereotypes as "natural" tends to lead into dangerous territory, reinforcing expectations of men's and women's roles in society.

However, a new study that actually takes a look at human behavior has shown that "Evidence for sex differences in variation in reproductive success alone does not allow us to make generalizations about sex roles, as numerous variables will influence [previous findings] for men and women." But not only is the notion of promiscuous men and choosy women culturally based, it may also be wrong. While men had more children by different partners than women did overall, number of sexual partners is extremely difficult to measure because people lie about it. The social expectation for men to sleep around and women to want committed relationships tends to make men exaggerate upwards and women exaggerate downwards when surveyed about the number of sexual partners they'd had.

This study is encouraging, because it shows an awareness by the scientific community that humans are embedded in culture - a fact that tends to be ignored in evolutionary biology. On the other hand, Elizabeth Wilson (who gave a talk at the differences colloquium a few weeks ago) got me thinking about the fact that feminism tends to ignore biology, too. To paraphrase Wilson, although nothing can be explained in purely biological terms - especially biology - feminism does need to be more engaged with biology. When we distance ourselves from the scientific community, we end up shooting ourselves in the foot when we could be focused on working through similar issues. And the last thing we want is to show how completely out-of-touch we are by suggesting that fruit fly research is unimportant.

How to engage biology is, of course, the difficult question. But I get discouraged when I end up in arguments with my biology-focused friends about things like the influence of evolution and/or culture on sex and gender, because it gets in the way of our shared commitment to social justice. I make a habit of calling out science out for its assumed objectivity - nothing is purely objective; we don't exist in a vacuum - but the last thing I want to do is alienate it because it isn't self-aware enough. It would be more productive to help it become more self-aware, and then work in conversation with it.

Take Back the Night!

I just wanted to make a quick comment on Thursday night. We had a critical mass for Take Back the Night (~35),and then a really fantastic speak out that lasted until midnight. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend the speak-out, but I did yell my way through the hour and a half long march through campus buildings and spaces, and up Thayer st. It was a powerful event, with students of different genders, and I hope it's as good (or maybe even better!) next year.

My favorite chant of the (very loud) march was one made up by a participant--"8-6-4-2, Brown has rape, too. 1-2-3-4, we won't take it anymore!" Recognizing that sexual assault occurs and that we as individual students have a responsibility to fight the culture of rape is really important. There's a huge tendency to minimize rape, either by ascribing it as being inevitable based on a situation, or as a trivial problem (I'm thinking of the yells down my hall saying that an exam "raped" them). There are two parts that need to be worked on--the culture, and the policies. As far as Brown's messed up policies, I'm a big fan of the SATForce's work on campus, so if this is an issue that you want to take action on, I'm sure they could use them.

Back to the event, there was definitely a certain amount of hostility to the march, particularly in certain areas of campus. People view events about stopping sexual assault as a comment about them specifically, as opposed to the culture in general.

This may not have been the most intelligible post ever made--but the weather is nice, my brain is fried, and the work has to get done. I hope you're all having an amazing reading period! If other people have thoughts on this, feel free to let me know, or comment--there's definitely some interesting and conflicting views about stopping sexual assault.

Body Language

I was at a congressional hearing last week, and at a Degree Day meeting today.  What do these two events have in common?

Gendered body language.

Women tended to look down, slouch, hunch shoulders.  Women smiled, men did not.  Men were loud, women were not and tended to speak in a higher, lighter tone that almost asked people not to argue or criticize.  Men spread out, leaned back and took up space, one politician blatantly falling asleep in his seat.  Women tended to use qualifying statements or precede their presentations with how they didn't actually plan to be speaking and how they weren't qualified.  Men spoke longer than women.  There were no openly trans people there.

Issue 1:  Basic traditional sexism- man-identified people need to tone the assertive confidence down a little, women-identified need to bring it up to a happy medium.  We need to take extra care in how we nurture kids and treat people of different genders, making sure female-identified people get told and shown they are powerful.

Issue 2:  Dissociate our mental framework (expectations, interpretation, etc.) for body language and confidence from people's (assigned?) genders.  Create trans-inclusive space and make legal equality for trans people so more trans people have the resources to be participating in all these things.

Issue 3:  We need to learn how to respect the voices of people with all different personalities and comfort levels in any given situation.

I get frustrated when people quit after Issue 1; it just pisses off lots of man-identified people and makes a lot of women-identified people feel indignant (hey, I'm not weak or under-confident, and good people respect me!) and is generally unproductive.