Amanda talks courts with Louise Melling of the ACLU, mocks values voters and concedes that Fox made an okay documentary on abortion. Also, secret homosexuality in Harry Potter and secret feminism in Guitar Hero.

Links in this episode:

Facing Reality: Choice
Reproductive Freedom Project
Fun with values voters

Transcript:

This week on Reality Cast, I'll be talking about court watching with Louise Melling from the ACLU, reporting on how Fox News covers abortion, and talking the messed-up values of so-called "values voters". Also, Dumbledore's out of the closet and Bill O'Reilly can't handle it.

So my geeky obsession of the week is the release of a video game, the third guitar hero. Dorky as it is, it's really fun to just grab your guitar-shaped game controller and pretend to be a rock goddess in front of the TV screen. One thing that's making me really happy about this edition is the inclusion of a lot of songs by politically progressive artists like Rage Against The Machine and the Dead Kennedys. And "Kool Thing" by Sonic Youth!

*insert clip*

I love the idea of little kids across America playing that song until they know every word. Sonic Youth was my gateway drug to feminism. It started with some punked up feminist lyrics and 15 plus years later, here I am giving you weekly updates on the state of reproductive rights. Hopefully the game will attract new listeners to these artists and wake up a few young minds out there.

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I promised an analysis of the Fox documentary on abortion called Facing Reality: Choice on last week's episode, and I do try to deliver on my promises. Rewire had one favorable review of the show by Nicole Summer, and I have to admit, after watching the whole thing, I'm inclined to see why Nicole liked it so much.

Here's my take on it: I think my initial impression that Fox was trying to promote stereotypes of who gets abortions was pretty accurate. They get three women who all fit these types. You have Jeanne, the drug-addled promiscuous woman who's put up a kid for adoption, had 3 taken away, and another die from stillbirth, which the show tries to imply was due to her drug use.

*insert Jeanne drug addict*

You have the official good girl Brooke, the church-going one who refuses to get a late-term abortion even though there's exactly no chance of her poor baby living much past being born.

*insert brooke clips*

And then they had Kayla, who I guessed last week was picked because she was going to be the "good girl led astray by a cad" type. But while she was picked to be that stereotype, she ended up defying it. I don't think they're going to find many women who actually fit that stereotype, and they fumbled the ball thinking it would be easy.

But her story ended up being the most interesting. She's a member of a Southern Baptist church, and she got the whole rigamorale about the best birth control being an aspirin you hold between your knees.

*insert Kayla chastity ring*

She ends up being a good example of how damaging abstinence-only education is. She does try to use contraception, but admits that her usage is a bit half-assed, and I can't help but think that it's because she got shoddy education about it in the first place. During the course of the show, she admits that this is her second abortion, and her doctor also implies that there's just a gap of good education about contraception.

She's also a good example of how much the anti-choice position is mostly about show and has no relation to how people really live their lives. Even though she and her mother start off as anti-choice because of their religious beliefs, once Kayla turns up pregnant, the option of abortion is immediately on the table.

In her favor, however, Kayla doesn't do what a lot of anti-choice women who need abortions do, which is to rationalize it away, like their abortions weren't real because they felt sorry about it or their abortions are the moral abortions or however they tell themselves that their abortions don't count. Kayla does some moral accounting and decides that she needs to match her stated beliefs with her real ones.

*insert Kayla switches*

I was honestly shocked to hear such a piece of unvarnished, unapologetic reality on Fox News. But I'll bet my shock was nothing compared to the cognitive dissonance experienced by their conservative audiences who don't expect "good girls" to be pleased with their choices to have abortions. I ended up admiring Kayla for her willingness to live in the real world and not apologize about it.

****************

*insert interview*

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The video blog Veracifier was kind enough to go to the Values Voters Summit two weeks ago in DC so you don't have to. Unintentional hilarity ensued. As you can imagine, the talk was mostly about the threats to society from uppity women who think they control their own bodies and the homosexuals who think they control their own bodies. It's a fascinating glimpse at the propaganda efforts of the far right to hammer at their lies and misinformation until it can replace reality.

One of the interesting turns in the anti-choice movement is the message control on the misogyny issue. They're not stupid and they're quite aware that open misogyny in service of stripping away women's rights just doesn't sell very well to the general public. So while it's just as well to talk of wicked women who don't keep their legs shut in private, in public all talk is supposed to be about how women are poor, stupid children who need to have our rights stripped away for our own protection. In fact, the idea that women are simply too stupid to be trusted with our decisions about our bodies was Kennedy's argument in the recent late term abortion case Carhart vs. Gonzalez that came before the Supreme Court.

Veracifier found a guy to interview who had the anti-choice story down cold.

*insert protecting women*

Abortion hurts women? The official anti-choice story goes something like this: Women can't desire to have non-procreative sex. A woman's greatest and possibly only pleasure in life is being a baby factory, and certainly no woman *really* enjoys having sex for its own sake. Therefore all women who use contraception or have abortions are being exploited by evil men. Men apparently can like sex for the pleasure of sex itself.

Do anti-choicers believe this story? Some probably do. Others give off the distinct impression that they are quite aware that some women have sex for pleasure, and they think those women are sluts and need punishing, but that they can't say that out loud because it veers far too close to openly hating women. So that's why there's strong message control. The official story is women are stupid, not that women are sluts.

This guy has the story down, but he shows his true feelings about women when he's asked about the female Presidential candidate.

*insert hillary scary*

Whoops. That story about how women are imbeciles that need male protection went right out the window, didn't it? Now the real story comes out—smart, savvy women are scary and real men and well-behaved women have to squelch that fear with the boot firmly applied to the female neck.

Man, I swear on this podcast it sounds like I'm plugging for Hillary Clinton, and I'm not. I'm just sick of the misogynist bile thrown at her; why can't people judge her on her qualifications and ideas?

This guy then expounded upon a favorite theory of anti-choicers, which is based on the weird idea that feminists never, ever have children and that political views are genetic.

*insert breeders*

The notion that feminists never have children has an unspoken assumption behind it, which is women who have a choice about childbirth would never opt for it. In reality, we know that feminists have children all the time, that they actually want to do it, but it's interesting that so many right wingers think that absent pressure or outright coercion, women would rarely if ever give birth.

***************

Now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts. Bill O'Reilly has been running around on his show implying that JK Rowling is trying to turn kids gay because she admitted in public that Dumbledore was gay, which is something that adults reading the Harry Potter books could have probably figured out with a close reading. He won't say directly that if kids know that some people are gay, they will somehow be turned gay themselves, but when he uses phrases like "indoctrination" and "gay agenda", it's pretty easy to conclude that's what he means.

Dennis Miller of all people called him out for this on the "O'Reilly Factor". And O'Reilly had to scramble.

*insert o'reilly Dumbledore*

Straight from the horses mouth—Bill O'Reilly thinks it's bad to teach children not to be hateful towards others for arbitrary reasons.