Amanda reviews the year in movies about pregnancy and interviews reproductive rights activist Krista Jacobs. Also, a short examination of conservatives who equate homosexuality with pedophilia.

Links in this episode:
Juno and abortion
Krista Jacob
Pick-up artist wankery
Mike Huckabee on "Meet the Press"

Transcript:

This week on Reality Cast, I'll be interviewing Krista Jacob about the present and future of abortion politics, sharing some thoughts on pregnancy in the movies in 2007, and analyzing a video about that breed of scumbag called the pick-up artist.

Well, this is funny. For a long time, maybe even a couple of years, a number of feminist bloggers have been getting these requests from reactionary reality TV shows to come onto the shows. Of course, all they want to do on these shows is paint you as this horrible stereotype of the big meanie feminist, so everyone is saying no. But looks like "Wife Swap" managed to snag someone finally.

*insert wife swap*

I take it the entire theme of this show is "women are crazy and don't do their assigned, unpaid work quietly enough". It's telling that ABC thinks the definition of fanatical feminism is a woman who thinks teenage girls would be smarter to do their schoolwork than hang their entire future on fleeting youth and beauty. That definition means that believing things like women have the right to control their own fertility is way outside of polite discourse. I swear, these TV shows treat Susan Faludi's book "Backlash" like a blueprint instead of a criticism.

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I don't know about you, but to me it seemed like 2007 was a big year for pregnancy in the movies. I don't know if it's the zeitgeist or what, but a lot of big writers and directors seemed interested in the subject. First you had the dark sci-fi film "Children of Men".

*insert children of men*

Granted, it came out in late 2006, but I didn't see it until early 2007, so I'm including it in this review. I was apprehensive about the movie, because I was afraid it would be a retread of some stereotypes about how all women want babies, or that it would be a panic piece about underpopulation when in fact the world is suffering more from overpopulation. It didn't do either of these things. It was more a meditation on the importance of hope. The lack of children was a metaphor for the larger sense of despair that a lot of us feel in face of seemingly insurmountable problems, like global warming. Lack of children could be a substitute for issues like having half the major cities of the world underwater.

I loved the movie, thought it one of the best pictures I've seen in a long time. Word of warning: It's extremely tense and scary. I wouldn't see this movie if you have high blood pressure, and I'm only half kidding when I say that.

Then there was a movie that seemed on its surface to be just a fluffy comedy but ended up being the movie of the zeitgeist for 2007. I've seen more writing about this movie than almost any other this year.

*insert knocked up*

Yep, "Knocked Up". Director Judd Apatow has a knack for taking fluffy situation comedy cliches and making them both a lot funnier than you'd expect was possible, and also a lot more thoughtful. I'm one of the people who just felt like the ending of this movie struck a wrong note, that the characters end up together when they shouldn't. But to be fair to the movie, he set it up so that you're asking yourself some hard questions. It's not all flowers and songs, but a very real question as to why do people keep trying to shoehorn themselves into these roles that don't fit very well and can make you very unhappy.

The movie came under a lot of criticism because the main female character Allison doesn't even seriously consider an abortion, even though a woman in her spot in real life usually would. At least the movie didn't do what a lot of shows do, which is pretend that the option doesn't even exist, but she dismisses it without giving much of a reason why. I personally didn't think it was that big of a deal, because it at least was accurate-ish. A lot of women do go forward with these kinds of pregnancies for reasons they can't quite articulate. At least Apatow didn't put his audience through a painful, unrealistic scene of Allison deciding not to get an abortion because abortion is so wrong and terrible.

I haven't seen "Juno" yet, but I hear that this movie does unfortunately paint the abortion clinic as a terrible place in order to explain why not an abortion for its main character.

*insert juno*

Most abortion clinics are not terrible places, and as we learn in the interview today, most clinics actually will help you get to the place where you realize you want to have the baby, if that's what you really want to do. I still really want to see "Juno" and suspect that this whole abortion clinic thing is just the exception to a good writing rule. This isn't a politics thing. It's a good writing issue. The reason you don't have a character get an abortion is no baby, no story, but you have to write it in a way that jibes with reality. Otherwise, you might as well have a placard up that says, "And my character decides against the abortion because otherwise I don't have a story." Says the same thing, and is more efficient.

Ten minutes worth of research would show that abortion clinics have counselors, and having a scene where your character sits down with the counselor and realizes she wants the baby would work a lot better as believable writing than demonizing abortion clinics. That said, I'm as charmed by the screenwriter Diablo Cody as anyone, and eager to see the movie.

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*insert interview*

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Ah, the Today Show and its need to portray men and women as stereotypes that are total opposites. The latest repulsive piece is on a guy that's publishing one of those incessant pick-up artist books. The spin on the show is that he's a Casanova who loves ‘em and leaves ‘em, because there's no such thing as a woman who can have sex just for fun. No, we all want to get married right away.

This guy is a braggart, and as usual with these guys who write these books, their main victims are other men who want to hear the secret to "trick" women into bed. The language of tricking women, overriding their agendas, and other nonsense like that pick-up artists peddle in is just a shade to the left of endorsing date rape, so stuff like this is hardly harmless fun.

But what's really funny about this guy's techniques is that they seemed to based around the concept of spending minimal time with the woman you're trying to bed.

*insert wannabe one*

Hit on them and run, huh? Sounds to me like a technique that you have to use if your personality is so repulsive that your odds of getting the number go down the more exposure the woman gets to you.

He swears that he's all about love ‘em and leave ‘em ‘cause he's such a bad boy, a real Lothario, but then he lets this little admission slip.

*insert wannabe two*

He's got a revolving door on his bedroom, but he also admits that he uses little tricks to get them to come back to have sex with him again, which sounds like he's got a little trouble convincing them to come back on their own. But even though he admits to bribing women to see him again, and he admits that he does better as a seducer the less that women see of his personality, he insists that the revolving bedroom door is all his bad boy awesomeness and women's choices to exit stage left have nothing to do with it.

*insert wannabe three*

Keep telling yourself that, dude. Unfortunately, the show swallows this line of nonsense without a bit of skepticism, because the notion that all men want is sex and all women want is love fits their agenda. They're unwilling to look deeper, and predictably, find an expert who's all about how women don't like that icky sex stuff, but just want the love part.

*insert wannabe four*

Once again, I'm impressed by how I'm apparently a man by the standards of the mainstream media, because I can separate sex and love pretty easily. I suspect that a lot of the women, particularly the ones who have to be lured back with earrings, probably just wanted a quick lay, and this guy radiates non-commitment.

If you read the link on the podcast page, you'll see more evidence that this guy is not just a harmless boner about town, unfortunately. Like most pick-up artist advisors, he's got a lot of anger and hostility towards women that translates into language about coercion and trickery.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, with Mike Huckabee getting grilled by Tim Russert on "Meet The Press".

*insert huckabee*

I thought this clip was telling, because it shows the way that social conservative think that you are stupid. That people can't be trusted to know the difference between right and wrong, and that people need to be given a very strict formula to live their lives, basically marriage and babies at 18, without ever lifting your head or asking a single question. And definitely no demanding freedom. Huckabee later denies that he thinks that law-abiding gay people who hurt no one are exactly the same as pedophiles, but he's still admitting that he thinks allowing anyone any option other than this strict formula of compulsive heterosexuality is the ruin of society.