Jo Scott Co talks about high school violence and gendered views of teachers. Mainstreaming of gay rights confuses the conservative movement, and the NY Times gets it right for once on women and reproduction.

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Maternal mortality

Obama repeals DADT

CPAC battle over gay group

Gay conservatives?

Meet the Twiblings

Megyn Kelly freaks out

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking to Jo Scott Coe about her experiences as a teacher with bullying and the gender implications of it.  Also, gay rights move towards the mainstream, putting conservatives in a bind. And the New York Times finally gets a story right when it comes to women and modern reproduction.

I’d like to point you to a UNFPA video that addresses the worldwide problem of maternal mortality.

• maternal mortality *

Of course, one of the most atrocious reasons for high maternal mortality is not just that resources aren’t dedicated to it, but that a lot of these are caused just by women not having legal rights to access basic medical care.

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Over the holiday break, there was a great historical moment in the continuing struggle to extend basic civil rights to all Americans.

* gay 1 *

There are many reasons that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is a game changer, beyond just the most obvious, which is that this represents one of the last major areas where discrimination against gay people in employment was legal.  It means that the gay rights movement can strike one item off the list and move other things up the priority chain.  But most interestingly, it means that a lot of moderate Republicans and even conservatives are beginning to see the writing on the wall.  And the battle over whether or not conservatives are going to continue to push homophobia or give up entirely is now on.

Right now, a fight is erupting on the right over whether or not to let gay conservatives in.  The fight has centered around this.

• gay 2 *

Yep, the Conservative Political Action Conference allowed a group of gay conservatives to co-sponsor their annual conference.  This is causing no end of controversy and consternation on the right, as the head of GO Proud explained.

• gay 3 *

Okay, well, there’s some weird masculinity issues that the gay conservatives and straight conservatives share that they should bond over.  But seriously, this rift isn’t something you can just paper over, where some conservatives are pro-gay and some make hating gays the centerpiece of their activism.  Someone has got to get the upper hand, or at least get it to the point where conservatives are on race, where racism goes on but you’re supposed to be quiet about it.

The question is, why you’re trying to align yourself with conservatives sending every signal in the book that you’re not welcome into their inner circle. Cenk Uygur on MSNBC grilled the chairman Chris Barron about what exactly a gay group gets out of aligning itself with the party that tends to harbor most of the livid, over the top homophobes.

• gay 4 *

Honestly, I feel like Barron’s probably right about this one.  Republicans are seeing the writing on the wall, even conservative Republicans.  Gay rights are getting more popular all the time, and the people who used to be counted on to have a knee-jerk anti-gay response are now changing their minds.  The fact that social conservative groups are fighting back isn’t surprising.  What would be surprising is if they win.  I think they’re going to lose this one, and the result will probably be that they just double down on fighting reproductive rights, which is still going strong as a wedge issue.

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insert interview

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The New York Times Magazine recently had the kind of cover story that usually makes me roll my eyes at all the thoughtless privilege on display.  It was by a journalist who only started to try to have babies in her 40s, only to find out that she was basically infertile.  So, after going through all her options, she ended up using one egg donor, her husband’s sperm, and two separate surrogate mothers.  The mothers gave birth 5 days apart, creating two kids that are genetic siblings that are kind of sort of twins without being twins. 

What was amazing about this story, however, was that the woman at the center of it, Melanie Thernstrom, doesn’t come off as an over-privileged know-nothing as feature articles often do in the New York Times.  She actually came across as a thoughtful, generous person, so I was happy to see her on the Today show to talk about her journey with the two surrogates.  One thing that comes across is that this decision was not made lightly.

• extended 1 *

The most remarkable aspect of it all for me was that Thernstrom approached third party reproduction completely differently than people are usually encouraged to do.  Usually, people are encouraged to downplay or minimize the assistance they required, and even to pretend that everything worked as it would if they didn’t need assistance.  But Melanie went a different direction, and instead saw the experience as more valuable because of all the people involved.

• extended 2 *

Instead of just terminating the relationships between everyone involved as soon as the babies were born, it seems that real friendships emerged.  The egg donor and the gestational carriers all socialize with Melanie and her husband, and the children actually have a relationship with them. 

• extended 3 *

It’s so commonsensical. I was really impressed by this attitude.  Openness seems healthier than hiding, which can make people think you feel shame.  Plus, the more loving adults in a child’s life, the better, I’d think, especially since the women who did the biological work in this case seem to be happy playing auntie to the children.   Melanie reported, however, that the pressure at the hospital and from friends was to push these women away and do things like pretend to breast feed.  She rejected this, feeling like she can stake her claim as the mother without having to be closed or unfair to the women who helped her out.  She was also encouraged to find gestational carriers who didn’t charge money, but again, Melanie rejected that idea.  I agree with her.  Just because you want to do a job doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get adequate compensation. As these new technologies grow in popularity, I hope people can look to this story as a model for how to go about this ethically.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, bad analogies edition.  Megyn Kelly got a little out of control when she got angry at the idea that she shouldn’t call undocumented workers “illegals”.

• rapist *

I’m sorry, but seeing some dudes waiting for work at Home Depot is not the same as being robbed or raped.  And the idea here is that actions can be illegal, but people aren’t. Otherwise, everyone who ever exceeded the speed limit or threw the recycling in the trash bin would be an “illegal”.