I Believe in Peace, Bitch

I don't like horror movies. And by horror movies, I don't mean psychological thrillers like Silence of the Lambs. I mean movies like Hostel, or that new one with Hillary Swank and the fucking frightening locusts. Movies that are frightening just to scare the shit out of fools willing to part with $12 for a movie ticket without any sort of commentary behind them hold no place in my life or on my Netflix queue.

This morning I was reading Bitchfest, a collection of essays from Bitch magazine. While Bitch is a feminist magazine, it isn't a boring, dull, politics-only publication, but it takes on how women are treated in pop culture by women who like television, sex, and fun. While I consider myself pretty sensitive to portrayals of women, the essays in this book brought up a lot of points I'd never thought of, especially the essay "XXX Offender: Reality Porn and the Rise of Humilitainment" by Shauna Swartz. She describes a new type of porn where a woman is coaxed on a bus, promised money for sex, is debased, and is then left by the side of the road when the man is done. While it's performed by actors, the fact that it's presented as real humiliation of women is a new low for the porn industry. (I say this as a woman who likes porn on the merits. Hi, Mom!)

As soon as I got to work, I got this article from CO about the new horror movies called "gorno." Eli Roth, director of Hostel and Hostel II said this at a junket for his new film:

"Any time people see women in a horror film," he noted, "they say, 'Oh, these girls are just pieces of meat.' And, literally, in Hostel Part II, that's exactly what they are. They are the bait, they are the meat, they are the grist for the mill."

Yeah. Thanks, dude. Thanks for encouraging horny teenage boys to associate hot women and sex with torture. Last time I checked, I am more than a piece of meat, as are most other women. How is it possible that movies that show too many naked breasts have an X rating, but movies that graphically depict extreme violence are open to any kid with a fake ID or a stupid parent?

Kira Cochrane, author of the Guardian article, sums it up nicely:

...[R]ecently the levels of horrific violence on show at the multiplexes - and the sheer cynicism of the films involved - have gone through the roof. And a lot of the most nasty, unrepentant and terrifyingly pointless violence is aimed at women. ...the violence against women that's most troubling, because it is here that sex and extreme violence collide.

I don't really have anything else to add. It's a really sad time to be a woman, what with our eroding abortion rights, continued low pay when compared with men, and getting raped and murdered in porn and at your local movie theater without anyone complaining. Check out Bitchfest, and complain with your wallet when Hostel II comes out. Otherwise, you're just grist for the mill.

We Think We've Come So Far

I've been out of the loop this week. Between living in a house with about three channels that come in and starting my new job, my ability to keep abreast of every new development in the shootings in Virginia and the sinking Russian submarine in Providence is limited. However, news of the 5-4 upholding of the partial birth abortion ban crept onto my radar screen this morning, making my blood boil.

Some choice quotes from the justices' decision:

The court did not explicitly overturn any of its precedents, although Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the four dissenters, said the decision was “so at odds with our jurisprudence” that it “should not have staying power.” Justice Ginsburg called the decision “alarming” and said the majority’s “hostility” to the right to abortion was “not concealed.”...

In describing the federal law’s justifications, Justice Kennedy said that banning the procedure was in fact good for women, protecting them against terminating their pregnancies by a method they might not fully understand in advance and would come to regret later.

“Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child,” he said, adding: “It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form.”

Boiling. My blood could send you to the hospital if it touched your skin after I read that. Hey, Justice Kennedy? Dude? Let me drop some knowledge on you. You're a dude. First of all, you don't know how a mother feels, or how a woman who has had an abortion feels because you will never be a mother, nor will you ever have to decide to have an abortion. You've never been fifteen, sixteen, eighteen years old and had to debate aborting a fetus because you can't imagine what your parents will to do you if they find out you're pregnant. You'll never have to deal with going to school pregnant, having everybody talk about what a slut you are because you were the poor girl whose boyfriend's condom broke. You personally will never have to deal with the guilt that may or may not plague you for the rest of your life, even if you decide abortion is the right choice. You will never know these feelings, so shut the fuck up.

You know who does know these feelings? Women. Women who are smart enough to figure out their own moral code and decide with their doctor whether or not they're comfortable with a late-term (or any-term) abortion. As you so vividly describe in your disgusting attempt to sway the public discourse away from pro-choice groups, a late term abortion is a violent act. Personally, I wouldn't have one done. But that's my choice. I took the facts, thought about them with my equally-powerful lady-brain, and made a choice I fully understand. What year is this? How dare you tell women that they're too stupid to decide whether they want an abortion? How is that appropriate for discussion in a judicial opinion?

I'll let Justice Ginsberg take it from here:

Justice Ginsburg objected vehemently that “this way of thinking reflects ancient notions of women’s place in the family and under the Constitution — ideas that have long since been discredited.”

She cited century-old Supreme Court cases that upheld a paternalistic view of women’s place in society and contrasted those with more recent cases, including one she successfully argued to the court in 1977 and one in which she wrote the majority opinion in 1996, that rejected “archaic and overbroad generalizations” and assumptions about women’s inherent dependency.

This is why I'm not a Supreme Court justice. My objection would read "Justice Kennedy is too busy jerking off to the idea of all these loose women running around to actually do his job, so instead he elects to use one of the three branches of government as her personal bully pulpit. What a douche. History, I did my best with these assholes. Somebody please help me. Fucking Reagan."

I get so angry when I read things like this, these blatant examples of sexist thought that run so deep in our culture. This guy can come out and call women stupid in a judicial opinion in 2007? And women aren't tossing burning bras into Justice Kennedy's hydrangea bushes? Men, this is why women are still bitching about equal rights: We don't have them yet. And it's hard for you to understand why having the choice is so important to us since nobody tells you what to do with your penis. We're in dark times, ladies. If we're not careful, this is the beginning of the end of our right to abortion. You've been warned.

We Do Need Some Birth Control

I hope Congress has a real good explanation for this nonsense.

Prices for oral contraceptives, or birth control pills, are doubling and tripling at student health centers, the result of a complex change in the Medicaid rebate law that essentially ends an incentive for drug companies to provide deep discounts to colleges....

The change is the result of a chain reaction started by a 2005 deficit-reduction bill that focused on Medicaid, the main federal health insurance program for the poor. College health officials say they had little idea the bill would affect them.

Before the change, pharmaceutical companies typically sold drugs at deep discounts to a range of health care providers, including colleges. With contraceptives, one motivation was attracting customers who would stay with their products for years.

Now a student who was paying $10 for birth control is now paying $22 a month, which, for those of you keeping track, is more than double what they paid a couple of months ago. It doesn't sound like a lot of money, but when you multiply that out (finds calculator), students are paying $144 a year more than they did last year. I don't know if you remember college, but money isn't flowing as freely as keg beer. $144 is half a textbook. Maybe that money comes out of rent. Maybe it just gets piled on the credit card these girls got offered at orientation. In any case, this most basic and easy of medicines is becoming a luxury.

Not all college girls are taking the pill to avoid pregnancy. Some girls need the pill to ease heavy periods, symptoms of endometriosis, or even for acne control. The pill is not just a contraceptive. Also, not every pill has a generic. When I began my foray into birth control pills out of college (I am the one woman in the history of the world who didn't get laid on a regular basis in college) I tried the generic Ortho. Unfortunately, I broke out like crazy. For a person who hardly ever had acne, it was pretty traumatic. My doctor then had me try Yasmin.

"It's expensive," she said, "but maybe it won't work either."

Of course, Yasmin works like a charm. (Look, ma, no babies!) My pharmacist told me that the likelihood of a generic Yasmin isn't very good for at least another five years. My company's insurance, which gets crappier by the year, charged me $20/month last year, which jumped to $30/month this year. Luckily, I participate in the mail-order program, so it ends up costing me $60 for three months' supply, but it ain't cheap. But I remember that the good thing about the pill is that I don't have cramps that knock me over or long, gross periods.

I just don't understand how there is so much government pork that NBC Nightly News can have a weekly feature describing the myriad wastes of money the federal government allows, but college girls can't have affordable birth control? Come on, Congress. I expect better of you.

Make me a Pie

As a rule, I try to avoid fights I can't win. In seventh grade, this girl Niki threatened she was going to kick my ass after I started talking smack about her. Since I had no doubt she'd succeed, I kept my big mouth shut until she calmed down and forgot my snide comments about her loose lips (and perhaps other applications of the word "loose"). In my adult years, I've learned I can't win some fights. My Mom is always going to be uncomfortable with homosexuality, Mitt Romney is still going to run for president no matter how many times I call him a little sissy boy (what did France do to him, I wonder?), and wingnuts are going to continue to be wingnuts no matter how liberally you apply logic to them. They just won't bend.

So of course, when I checked Universal Hub yesterday and saw that Celtics radio commentator Cedric Maxwell had taken issue with a female ref's call not by saying she'd made a bad call but by telling her to "get back in the kitchen" I had to get into it. Not only were the WEEI-wingnuts being referred to Universal Hub in droves, but they resorted to such wonderful ad hominem attacks on Adam Gaffin, who didn't even post the original writeup on the incident.

Of course, when I announced that Adam was my new platonic crush (the man is married!) and that Maxwell's argument was a "stupid fucking" argument, I got slammed too. Which is fine. Wingnuts are wont to do that. So here are my rebuttals to my detractors.

Detractor #1

Amy, Who was he arguing with? Or did you not hear the comments. There was no argument. In fact he said she was one of the better refs in the league after his mockery of Tommy Heinsohn. Also, I am very offended by your vulgar language. I do not find it funny. Anyone who agrees with me can be my platonic girlfriend.

While I appreciate the use of my own turn of phrase, Detractor #1 doesn't quite get my use of the word "argument." Just because nobody is yelling back at you like it's the Jerry Springer Show doesn't mean you're not making an argument by making a statement. Using the line of reason, "She made a bad call, she's a woman, she should get back into the kitchen and cook breakfast" is an argument. Not a strong or reasonable argument, but an argument nevertheless.

Also, I swear. I don't see what the big deal is about swearing on the internet. The well-spoken folks who came around to anonymously call the owner of the website were throwing around "pussy" like it was nothing. It must be because I'm a woman. Good thing I don't have any babies to kiss with this mouth, huh?

Detractor #2

You and adam deserve eachother. How about you stop making a big deal out of nothing?? Do you really think Max wants all women in the kitchen, did you even hear how he was imitating Tommy Heinsohn? Can you really be this dumb?

Well, I'm smart enough to find the space bar and shift key, hoss. I'd say I'm doing pretty well.

Detractor #3

It's not a "stupid fucking argument", there's no argument at all. It was a joke, you need to get over it. I bet if Dane Cook said it, you'd be eating up.

Nope. I hate Dane Cook with all the power of my soul. In fact, I hate all these comedians who are doing their best watered-down Bill Hicks or Chris Rock bits and fucking Jessica Simpson because of it. Bill Hicks swore a lot, yes, but he was also well-read, had good arguments for why he thought the way he did, and was actually funny.

And, to get to what (I think) was this guy's point-- yes, I laugh at women jokes in the right context. Cartman's "get in the kitchen and make me a pie" line to his mom is hilarious because Matt Parker and Trey Stone are making fun of jackholes who say these things by putting it in the mouth of this boy who doesn't know better. Grown men, like Maxwell and these anonymous internet boobs, should.

Detractor #4

You two should take a long walk off a short pier. Get a sense of humor you PC thugs! Maybe if someone gave you a proper seeing to every now and again you wouldn't be so bitter and miserable and quick to jump on these comments which mean absolutely nothing. Get bent the both of you.

I'm not about to burn my bra over what some radio broadcaster for the effing Celtics (sorry, kcee) has to say about women. However, this is not a something out of nothing situation. This guy said or repeated this "joke" about women when he'd just disparaged the female referee's call. Women, especially those in male-dominated fields, have to put up with a lot of bullshit just because they have vaginas and tits. I'm not saying this woman didn't make a bad call, but even joking that she did so because women belong in the kitchen and not in a sports arena is sexist. Sorry. Unless Maxwell is going to tell a male referee to "get back into your cubicle and be a wage slave to support your at-home wife" which is clunky and also not funny, it's going to upset my feminist sensibilities. It's the fact that Maxwell used this while he and the female ref were both on the clock. I don't tell my boss that she should get back in the kitchen because she didn't give me the raise I want because it's not appropriate in the workplace. Keep it to yourself.

Despite the fact that Maxwell apologized and now the issue's moot, I'm sure the argument will go on until this weekend over on Universal Hub, and I'm sure I'll be told that married Adam and I will be spending the rest of eternity in a humorless PC hell, while in heaven women wear aprons and serve their men while they watch Fear Factor and porn.