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Aziz Ansari is a feminist

Reince Priebus tells a lie

When men force pregnancy

Nancy Northup on the Texas abortion law

New study on states with abortion restrictions

Duggar’s risible Holocaust statements

Pretty creepy

Phil Robertson is talking again

Jerry Boykin has theories

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, Katha Pollitt will talk about her new book arguing for abortion rights. I’ll have more on the Texas abortion law and a segment on radical right wingers on reality TV.

Aziz Ansari outed himself as a feminist on David Letterman recently, and I really liked his example of what makes you a feminist.

• Aziz Ansari *

I realize there’s a lot of debate in feminist circles about all these celebrities coming out and saying they’re feminist, often because they might have what the feminists call “problematic” stuff in their work or because they might be afraid to talk about more controversial issues like abortion. But as this example shows, it really isn’t so light as that. There are a lot of people who find Beyoncé threatening or think powerful women are emasculating, and pushing back against that is a big deal.

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I’m so used to anti-choicers telling blatant lies about abortion that it takes a lot—a lot I tell you—to shock me. But Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee managed to pull it off, and by “it”, I mean he told a whopper so huge I had to pick my jaw up off my desk. He was being interviewed by Chuck Todd of MSNBC and Todd asked him about the law in Texas that is shutting down nearly all the abortion clinics in the state, forcing some women to drive hundreds of miles to get an abortion, a distance some cannot afford to travel. Priebus responded with two rabid fire lies in a row, lies that were so stunningly and obviously untrue that it was really remarkable.

• Texas 1 *

So I’m going to work backwards here. The second lie he told is that this is about “taxpayer funded abortion”. It is not. He’s just throwing a bunch of nonsense words out. The issue here is that they are shutting down abortion clinics. It has nothing to do with funding. If I burn down your sandwich shop and they come arrest me for arson, it’s not a defense to say I was just against taxpayer-funded sandwiches. That is basically what he’s doing. It’s a lie so big it’s like a mega-lie.

But the first one is a little more in line with what the anti-choice movement is trying to argue generally, that their attempts to ban abortion shouldn’t be construed as misogynist because of all their supposed compassion for women. Priebus and anti-choicers generally like to imply that the abortion restrictions come with a side dose of help and support for having your baby. That is a ridiculous lie, as evidenced by a new report out by Ibis and the Center for Reproductive Rights shows that, to quote Laura Bassett at the Huffington Post, “a state’s performance on indicators for women and children’s health and well-being is inversely proportional to the amount of anti-abortion laws in that state.” So no, there isn’t a desire to support pregnant women. Just a desire to hurt and punish them for having sex.

And of course, there’s the dangers to women who need abortions but can’t get them, from maternal mortality to higher poverty rates. And, as we covered last week, there’s also the higher domestic violence rates. Huffington Post brought an abortion doctor on to explain how women can be terrorized by forced pregnancy and need abortions to escape.

• Texas 2 *

The notion that these restrictions are meant to help women is so laughably thin that only the Fifth Circuit Court has even bothered to sign off on it, as Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights explained on the Rachel Maddow show.

• Texas 3 *

The conflict between the Fifth Circuit Court and all the other courts on this issue is scary, really scary. I personally don’t see a way out of this besides having the Supreme Court look at all these different decisions on what is basically the same law in many different states. And while I usually feel confident about predicting how the court will see various issues, I have to say, I have no idea when it comes to these abortion laws. Justice Anthony Kennedy will almost surely be the swing vote and he takes a paternalistic, controlling view on abortion and could be very amendable to the argument that it has to be taken away for women’s supposed own good, even though, as we’ve seen here, taking legal abortion away can raise a woman’s chances of poverty, medical complications, and even domestic violence. But maybe he will see reason on this. We can only hope.

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Interview

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Conservatives are always accusing Hollywood of being run by the “liberal agenda,” but that has always been an extremely simplistic view. Hollywood has many products that are downright conservative, such as many right-leaning action movies and offensively sexist romantic comedies. But there’s also reality TV. Now, not all reality TV is conservative. Some of it is apolitical, like dance or singing contests. Some, like RuPaul’s Drag Race, have a sly progressive agenda. But overall, I’d say that reality TV leans more to the right, with fare like The Bachelor that pushes retrograde gender ideals or the relentless wedding propaganda of the TLC network. Not that you have to be conservative to enjoy those things, of course, but taken as a whole they send the message that women’s ambitions and education matter less in the long run than their ability to snag a husband. And the less said about misogynist clap-trap like the Real Housewives franchise, the better.

But that’s just the mildly conservative stuff. What’s really interesting to me is how reality TV has given voice to right-wing radicalism. I’m not talking about everyday conservatism, but fundamentalist Christian, science-denying, majorly anti-sex, super-homophobic Bible-thumping fringe right wing ideology. Such as the Duggar family of the show 19 and Counting. The Duggars often get packaged as a harmless, if shocking large, bunch of well-meaning cuddle bears. In reality, they are adherents to a form of Christianity so misogynist and controlling that even most fundamentalists don’t go that far. They don’t believe in birth control but also don’t believe women should be able to say no to sex when their husbands want it. They believe that your dad should basically arrange your marriage for you if you’re a woman and you shouldn’t even kiss before your wedding. Oh yeah, and women shouldn’t really be educated because they exist only to serve men and make babies. One of the many elder daughters on the show made headlines with the nutty statements recently.

• Reality 1 *

This sort of statement is not only ahistorical and misogynist, it’s also blatant anti-Semitic. I mean, I’m sure they don’t see it that way because hey, they are against genocide and not for it. But that’s a really low bar, which I hope is obvious. No, this is anti-Semitic because for all the “pro-life” bleating, it’s actually a way to reduce the suffering and murder of millions of Jewish people by making it all about this radical anti-sex agenda. That the desire of the Duggar family to control your sex life and end women’s equality is somehow the moral equivalent of the resistance movement that fought the Nazis. That is an unbelievable hijacking of a very real historical event for the sleazy and frankly immoral purposes of the radical Christian right.

Less risible but just as head-scratching is this video from one of the wives of the Duggar boys, Anna Duggar, and her sister Priscilla Waller, in which they talk about marriage.

• Reality 2 *

They go on to talk about how the purpose of a woman’s life is to be a “helpmeet” who exists solely for no other reason than to be a wife and mother. But even though the point of your life is to be a wife, the amount of control you’re allowed to have even over that decision is miniscule and apparently your parents are the ones who decide.

• Reality 3 *

All of which suggests that the idea here is that you agree to an engagement with a man you barely know, because they have all these rules against socializing with the opposite sex. So maybe now you’re engaged and you actually get to talk to him and you discover you aren’t into him. Sounds like you’re not allowed to break the engagement unless your parents do it for you. So you’re left praying that your parents don’t make you marry a man you don’t love and who may even scare you. I’m guessing that part gets edited out on TLC.

Shifting gears to another radical right-wing family whose out of control misogyny and homophobia hasn’t prevented them from getting a cutesy reality TV show on A&E: The Robertsons of Duck Dynasty. Phil Robertson was at it again recently, giving this bizarre sermon at a West Monroe church. After claiming the church dictates that marriage is one-man-one-woman, he goes off.

• Reality 4 *

And if you never leave the house you’ll never catch a cold. And if you never love anyone, you’ll never suffer grief. And if you die today, you won’t risk feeling sad tomorrow. This logic is as endless as it is ridiculous. Sometimes we have to balance risk with our need to live and learn and enjoy our lives. Needless to say, Mr. Preacher Man here doesn’t know his Bible, or he’d know that many of the patriarchs of the Bible committed adultery or had multiple wives. But simply telling people to give up the opportunity to experiment, to learn about themselves and what they like in favor of marrying someone you barely know with the vain hope that their spouse will happen to satisfy them sexually? Crap, I’d rather get gonorrhea. At least you can cure that with antibiotics. An unhappy marriage from which there is no escape sounds exponentially worse.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, racist eugenics paranoia edition. Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council was on a conference call with E.W. Jackson this week and he had some theories about Muslims.

• Boykin *

For people who are quick to accuse liberals of “eugenics,” conservatives sure are quick to push the idea that we need to manipulate people’s private reproductive choices for the purpose of engineering a society they want to see, aren’t they?