Jennifer Pozner talks about reality TV, gender roles, and actual reality. Abortion terrorism and its links to all right wing terrorism. Also, right wing talk radio gets rather explicit in its masculinity policing.

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Reality Bites Back

Daddy I Do

National TV! Squee!

Maddow covers anti-choice terrorism

Can men be “stupid babes”, too?

WTF?

On this episode of Reality Cast, Jenn Pozner will be on to talk about her new book on the reactionary elements of reality TV.  Also, I’ll have more on anti-choice terrorism and a segment on the baffling masculinity policing on right wing talk radio.

The ads are going around for the new documentary Daddy I Do, which is about purity balls and abstinence-only. 

• daddy I do *

I haven’t seen it yet, but I want to.  I’m one of the interviewees in it, but I know the director interviewed a lot of people.  I don’t know how much I’m in it. But the scope of her interest in it is breath-taking, and it’s won a ton of awards, including one at Cannes.

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In case you missed it, I have to let you know that your podcaster had the opportunity to actually be on the Rachel Maddow show on November 5^th.  I was on in my capacity as a Slate writer to talk about female Republicans who underperformed compared to expectations in the election. But, as these things happen, Rachel and I talked about reproductive rights.

• abortion 1 *

So that was exciting.  But it shouldn’t be a surprise.  Rachel Maddow stands out as a TV pundit slash host that is unafraid to say the a-word on air.  She doesn’t flinch from talking about abortion or covering reproductive rights, and she scolds pro-choice politicians all the time for not making more hay out of the issue. 

And she returned to the issue the next week on November 8^th, to cover an important issue of right wing terrorism against abortion providers.  She tied it to the larger problem of right wing extremists and even prominent right wing figures and politicians making references to revolution and terrorism to get their way.

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There’s a tendency in most of the mainstream media to see abortion as a separate issue from these other issues.  You even, erroneously, hear them talk about how the Tea Party is more libertarian than conservatives in the past.  This is false, as is evidenced by the fact that the Tea Party candidates were even more anti-choice than Republicans in general, even conservative Republicans.  What people need to understand is that what makes the Tea Party new isn’t that they have new ideas.  It’s that they’re just meaner and more extreme.

And the anti-choice movement isn’t separate from our new crop of right wing extremists.  On the contrary, the anti-choice movement is better understood as being a leader in this.  They push it harder and go farther and test boundaries in terms of extremism and violence, and everyone else follows.

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What’s interesting is that there’s been an uptick in anti-abortion threats of violence, as well as actual violence in the murder of Dr. George Tiller.  This comes after a somewhat relative lull during the Bush administration.  What all this demonstrates in large part is that anti-choice anger isn’t really about abortion per se.  Abortions happen regardless of who is President.  What they’re angry about is the larger culture war, which they believe they’re losing.  And let’s face it.  They are losing.  They may be able to Bible thump and elect right wing politicians, but what they really want, which is for people to stop screwing, just isn’t happening.  Sex for pleasure continues to happen at an unimaginably high rate, and all the laws and picketing and terrorism in the world isn’t stopping that.

But they get even more angry when their noses are rubbed in it after liberals get the upper hand.  A Democrat getting elected to office is a sure fire reason for them to get all riled up.  Abortion doctors become an excellent scapegoat for all their various grievances.

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They then went on to interview one of the doctors who has been targeted.  The common theme here is that the posters proliferate in response to Democrats holding the presidency.  Since the doctors themselves aren’t actually the ones who are the cause of the grievance, I can’t help but think this is about as classic as scapegoating gets.  Culture warriors want a target, but most of the people they hate with power are protected socially.  But since they’ve demonized abortion and abortion providers, it’s easy for them to attack abortion providers.  Of course, they still look like crazed weirdos to most people, but they get a lot more people suggesting they mean well than if they chose their targets differently.  But they don’t mean well.  They’re just bullies who find abortion providers to be ideal targets.

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• insert interview *

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This might seem like a strange diversion, but I nonetheless think it’s worth covering, especially since you guys need a lighter break after the election.  One of the more important concepts in feminist theory is the idea of male homosocial policing.  This is where men police each other to make sure they’re being properly sexist douchebags.  So, the shaming men can experience if they aren’t violent or domineering, or if they don’t treat women like crap.  It’s worse with groups of men that have anxieties about proving their manhood, such as adolescent men.  And, of course, right wing men.  Gender anxieties in right wing circles can get to the levels that would upset high school football players giving wedgies to the nerds.

A recent example was collected from the right wing radio show run by Mike Gallagher.  He had on Fox News host Chris Wallace to promote some Fox News stuff, and the conversation got weird fast.

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It wasn’t enough for Wallace to suggest that real men don’t cry.  He had to go the next step and imply that real men find grief and pain amusing.  Because the most important thing is to be nothing like women, and women are known for having appropriate feelings.  Therefore men should be a little evil, I guess.

But I also want to highlight something that will come up later, which is that there is, in the right wing world, room for men to cry.  It’s a relatively new phenomenon, but in the church environment in conservative congregations, a trend of weeping men has really cropped up.  It’s justified, basically, by the formal understanding that women are inferior in these churches.  With women’s inferiority on hand to make men feel like they can cry, all sorts of hugging and crying suddenly started erupting.  Now you see Glenn Beck on TV with his fake weeping.  It’s all over the place.  But that doesn’t mean that it’s not controversial, as Wallace was so quick to shame Gallagher for being weepy.

Gallagher, understandably, wanted to move off the issue of his own manhood, but Wallace was feeling like being a bully that day, I guess. Gallagher went with jokes about the long-suffering wife.

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A big part of homosocial policing is making sex not about sharing pleasure with a partner, but about competition with other men.  Which is why you see so many young guys seeking a bunch of sexual encounters that aren’t especially satisfying, but can be bragged about later with their buddies.  Wallace is a grown man who is married, and yet can’t seem to let that one go.  On the contrary, it gives him cover to suggest he’d be some crazy bachelor. 

And when Gallagher tried to wrap up, Wallace suggested that he prove his manhood by hiring sex workers.

• wtf 3 *
• wtf 4*

What I liked about this exchange is it captured the central problem of modern day social conservatives.  In the past, defending the patriarchy as-is wasn’t much of a problem.  Sexism wasn’t considered a bad thing, so the fact that men had sexual freedom but women didn’t wasn’t an issue for defenders of the patriarchy.  But now someone like Mike Gallagher, who opposes abortion rights and gay rights, can’t just be like, “Men are men and women and non-straight men can go jump off a cliff if they don’t like it.”  The defense now is some sort of catch-all morality.  Men who want to control female sexuality at least have to pay lip service to not having double standards.

But of course, those double standards are still in play.  The sense I got from this exchange was mostly that Gallagher wasn’t comfortable with Wallace being so up front about his love of the double standard.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, misogyny against anyone who even seems female edition.  Rush Limbaugh went off on a writer at Salon named Sasha Abramsky for an article that makes what should have been non-controversial observations.

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Problem: Sasha Abramsky is a man, a fact that takes roughly two seconds to find out.  I know I’m far from the only one wondering if Limbaugh would like to use the term “stupid babe” for future references to Abramsky, or if he’s going to find some other bigotry to mine for abuse.