The history of the birth control pill, more on the Obama/BAIPA dust-up, and why vampires are still about The Sex.

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Links in this episode:

The pill and mate selection

Humans don’t "do" pheromones

Obama confronts the BAIPA nuts

Jill Stanek admits she was mistaken 

Candidates on abortion at Saddleback

Sarah Seltzer on the Twilight series

CWA on the Twilight series

Ann Coulter loses it once again

 

On this edition of Reality Cast, we’ll have an interview with Elaine Tyler May about the history of the birth control pill.  Also, coverage of the crush of media coverage on abortion and Obama, and more on a series of vampire books by a devout Mormon.  Don’t worry, it’s still about sex, even if conservatives want to claim otherwise.

So maybe you heard this story about how women’s sense of smell changes when she’s on and off the birth control pill, and how this is supposed to affect her ability to be attracted to her mate?  It was from a study done on a very small group of women, and so I’m skeptical. Tracy Clark-Flory has more.  

• insert BC smell *

But get this—it’s worse than even Clark-Flory says.  What these studies of human pheremones don’t tell you is that humans don’t really "do" pheromones.  Rats do, and so do other animals.  But humans don’t have the organ that detects pheromones.  So the odds that humans are reacting to pheromones is pretty damn low.  I guess that means all those commercials for Axe cologne are even stupider than you’d think.

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Hoo boy, has abortion been in the campaign news cycle lately or what?  Last week, I covered the whole fuss of right wingers, following nutbar Jerome Corsi’s lead, trying to argue the absolutely ridiculous, paranoid point that Barack Obama voted for infanticide or something like that when he was in the Illinois senate.  Of course, they don’t really believe this.  They’re just saying it because they’re hoping to raise alarms until your brain shuts down.  The so-called Born Alive Infant Protection Act was a stalking horse for abortion rights, and I think it’s a shame that it was ever taken seriously by anyone ever.  

Obama finally came around to acknowledging the ridiculous accusations.  

• obama calls anti-choicers liars *

It’s not an ideal response.  From the get-go, I think the better way to deal with this crap is to declare that legislation presented by anti-woman groups should be treated as hostile and wrong, unless they go to extraordinary lengths to justify themselves.  As Obama says in this clip, the bill was redundant.  The only reason to pass it was to attack women’s reproductive rights.  Meanwhile, parents who lose children through medically necessary abortions are being used as political footballs.  Even taking legislation like this seriously means dragging out the exploitation of grieving parents to gain ground in the war against women.

What I did like was that he singles out this lying, maudlin, exploitative tactic as the right wing craziness that it is.

• obama calls out right wing tactics *

Of course, for days after this interview, the people pushing this accusation continued to lie about it, until various mainstream media outlets picked up the story and proved that there was no there there.  Finally, Jill Stanek, the woman I covered last week who has been instrumental in pushing this story, admitted that she was mistaken about how it all went down.  

Obama clearly thinks that there’s a possibility of making nice with some of your everyday workaday anti-choice citizens.  I mean, obviously not the Jill Staneks of the world, who are so fetus obsessed that they can’t even pause to consider that the parents of stillborns might have feelings.   But there’s a huge middle section of society that’s uncomfortable with abortion, but perhaps are not crazy right wing misogynist nuts.  Obama’s tactic for reaching out to those people was on full display during the Saddleback Forum. Rick Warren asked the wrong question.

• insert saddleback 1 *

You know, I understand that Rick Warren is one of those men impressed with his manly man sperm magic, but he can bite me.  The idea that a fertilized egg is a "baby" is insulting not just to real babies, but to women.  Women, who make babies with 9 months of hard work creating it with their own bodies.  The idea that it’s a baby as soon as a man shoots, and this is a question of when the so-called baby has human rights is erasing women, their bodies, and their work. We. Are. Not. Flowerpots.  We are people.  And the question is whether we have rights.

Obama countered it with a joke.

• insert saddleback 2 *

I’m not religious, so I believed the mainstream media types when they assured me that this answer was very offensive to the religious people out there, who are assumed to have no sense of humor.  But I actually asked around with some religious people I know, and they thought the answer was actually very in line with a certain Christian viewpoint, which is that Obama was saying that the answer to that question is not with him, a mere man, but with god.  

But that’s the point, isn’t it?  That’s why we have religious freedom. If you think it’s a baby when he hangs his belt at the end of the bed, go for it.  But leave me the right to believe that pregnancy is real, that it actually happens, that a baby is built inside a woman for 9 months.  That I have science on my side seems a little unfair, but again, the beauty of religious freedom is I can’t make you change your mind.  Nor can you use god to control my life.

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• insert interview *

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Our very own Sarah Seltzer wrote about the Twilight Vampire series a month ago, and she seems to have pre-empted a media frenzy.  It’s because there’s a movie based on the series coming out, and to make it even more media-friendly, the author is a devout Mormon, um, housewife.  Is it really fair to call a published writer a housewife?  That would make me a housewife, and I object to that description.  But I suppose "housewife" does make her massive fame and fortune less threatening.  Here’s some CNN coverage:

• insert twilight 1 *

Of course, most of us with even the slightest glimmer of sophistication can tell you why the vampire thing versus the Mormon housewife thing is a little startling.  And it’s not because vampires are scary.  It’s because vampires are a classic symbol of sublimated sexuality.  And, as Sarah said, the timing is perfect because girls nowadays are getting a lot more messages about how they have to be sexy without wanting sex than they were when I was a girl.  The plots of the books reflect this tension.

• insert twilight 2 *

Of course, the heroine is super-desirable, so it’s a way for girls to fantasize about being what they’re told they have to be: chaste in behavior, but visually stimulating for passing men.  After all, pretty much no one strikes the perfect balance in life.  

Naturally, the wingnuts are getting in on the action, because who likes impressing impossible standards on teenage girls more than a wingnut?  Concerned Women for America actually had a podcast praising the book for pushing an abstinence message.  You know, despite all the penetrative and sensual biting that vampires like to get into.  

• twilight 3*

God, you don’t even get close dancing or closed mouth kisses?  Well, of course not.  The point of this exercise is to set the standards so high that pretty much every girl is bound to fail and then hate herself for being a dirty girl.

What the ladies against women don’t mention in this interview, but my readers at Pandagon alerted me to, was that the main character gets pregnant pretty much right away after she gets married in the series.  And it’s, as you might expect, a maudlin tome to feminine self-sacrifice, with the baby and then the birth nearly killing her.  Because it’s demon spawn.  But who cares if it’s demon spawn?  The important thing is that women learn that their bodies don’t belong to them, but should always be subjugated to the needs of the patriarchy.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, the campaign season skips silly and goes straight to surreal edition.  You know you’re hitting rock bottom when you have to trot out Ann Coulter to echo your nonsense, as was done on this Obama and late term abortion thing on Sean Hannity’s show.  If you’re sensitive, I suggest you tune out, because what she says is vicious and heartless.  Like everyone else pumping this thing, she completely forgets that women who need late term abortions are human beings who’ve suffered a great deal of pain.

• insert coulter *

Okay, this is what I mean when I say that their entire worldview is fantasy.  I realize, since I read anti-choice literature all the time, that they think that zygotes have deep, thoughtful lives, but I was unaware that the fantasy extended to thinking that a 20 week old fetus could get up and run around a room.  Coulter, of course, is a heartless person and doesn’t even pause to consider how it might feel to be someone who suffered a medically necessary late term abortion of a wanted pregnancy when she spouts off like this.   

Even Dennis Prager, who is willing to state any kind of right wing lie, is taken aback and skeptical about this.  As he should be, because it’s all lies.