Victories all over the map this week on Reality Cast, how to hurt women’s rights to get promoted, hitting up strangers for dates. All this and an interview with Belle Taylor McGhee about emergency contraception access.

Links in this episode:
Aurora Planned Parenthood wins
Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claims condoms cause AIDS
Supreme Court protects contraception coverage
Connecticut bishops all Plan B
Dr. Steven Galson and the FDA
Teen sex cults!
Sexual indoctrination through weddings
Pharmacy Access Partnership

Transcript:

This week's episode I'll be interviewing Belle Taylor McGhee from Pharmacy Access about emergency contraception, crowing over some pro-choice victories in the contraception wars, talking about hitting on women when women are sick of being hit on, and covering yet another insult to women from the Bush administration.

Good news and bad news this week in the ongoing fight between the thuggish anti-choice movement and the pro-choice community. First the good news:

*insert PP clip*

That's the good news. The bad news is that while the Aurora Planned Parenthood managed to evade anti-choice blackmailing tactics, the one that's being built in Denver has not been so lucky. Austin's own anti-choice nut Chris Danze, who really polished the art of using intimidation campaigns against construction companies to delay the building of an Austin Planned Parenthood for two months a few years ago, has announced plans to go to Denver to make sure that every contractor in the city knows that Danze and his thugs know where they live, where their children go to school, where the people they contract with live, etc. Not a threat. Exactly. I mean, not anything that's openly a threat. If you read a threat into being told that you're being watched by a bunch of wild-eyed, misogynist religious fanatics, that's your problem.

Perhaps our Congress could spend a little less time crafting condemnations of various media types and a little more time aiming some legislation at people who engage in what we'd call protection rackets if they were only do it to make money instead of stifle women's rights.

The past couple of weeks have not gone well for the anti-contraceptive portion of the anti-choice agenda. As those of us who watch the anti-choice movement closely can attest, lying is a favorite anti-choice tool. But the problem with lies is that they have to have enough plausibility in them to take off. Telling people that emergency contraception is abortion works as a lie, because most people aren't too well-educated on the difference. Telling people that vaccinations turn good girls slutty tends not to go over so well.

So far, Catholic officials who want to lie to people to get them not to use condoms simply tell people condoms don't work. But apparently too many people were using this simple, life-preserving technique, because Archbishop Francisco Chimoio told BBC reporters that he thinks condoms actually cause AIDS, that there's HIV on the condoms themselves. In case that lie wasn't deadly enough, he also added that he thinks anti-retroviral drugs are a poison being used to kill off the African people.

Lying to people so they get sick and then lying to them so they don't take life-saving drugs. That's the side that people call "pro-life". Which is starting to sound like a sick joke to me.

The good news is that anti-contraception activists lost a big battle last week in the U.S. The Supreme Court refused to hear a case about whether or not religious organizations in New York can refuse to extend contraception coverage to their employees. The refusal upheld the lower court's ruling, which stated that even if your employer is hiding behind religion, they can't deny you your basic rights. It was a victory for both women's rights and for religious freedom.

Anti-choicers who hide behind religion also lost another battle in Connecticut. Catholic hospitals in the state have reluctantly agreed to allow rape victims have emergency contraception when they show up for care. In the past, these ever-so-charitable hospitals, when faced with women who had just suffered rape and were in desperate need of generous care, would have to tell these young women too bad, so sad if they didn't want to get pregnant. Because nothing helps you get over the trauma by having a hospital worker tell you that not only did the rapist violate your bodily integrity, Catholic dogma would do it again.

The hospitals started allowing workers to give full care to rape victims a few days before the state law forced them to do it, presumably so they could claim they did it voluntarily. I guess maintaining the illusion of control was important, even though they don't seem to respect the right to control something as basic as your own fertility.

*insert interview*

The Bush administration continues to deliver slaps to the face of American women with the appointment last week of Dr. Steven Galson, former director of the FDA's Drug Evaluation division, to the position of Acting Surgeon General. If you haven't figured from his title, Dr. Galson was one of the wingnuts who stalled the approval of emergency contraception, known as Plan B, from being sold over the counter. Stalled for years, mind you, at the behest of anti-contraceptive activists.

Once it was approved, Dr. Galson went into damage control mode, trying to push the story line that he and other anti-choice FDA members had real health concerns, when it appeared to all thinking Americans that they were in fact using the FDA's power to try to control the sexual behavior of free citizens. On PBS's Newshour, Dr. Galson denied the accusations of using the FDA to mess with people's private decisions.

*insert emergency contraception*

I've got a memo from August 26th, 2005 by Steve Galson that indicates otherwise. In it, he writes and I quote:

The less developed cognitive abilities of women under age 17 could lead to inappropriate use of Plan B and the potential for younger women engaging in risky sexual behavior, behaviors which carry significant safety and efficacy concerns.

Hardly the disinterested stance towards promiscuity that he's laying claim to. And of course the idea that the entire agency was not interested in using their power to muck with people's sex lives was proven untrue by the notorious memo from Dr. Janet Woodcock, deputy operations commissioner, where she suggested Plan B would lead kids to start orgy cults based around the drug.

************************************************************************

Now I would like to relate to people in a healthy way and start dating. The problem is my lack of social skills practice and social knowledge. These are the things I do not know, in question form:

4. What ways of approaching women are there that are respectful and courteous and do not evoke discomfort, even if it is clear that I am attracted to the woman in question?

I think the issue of pretense is a sticky one, because if you feel that it's a pretense to talk to a woman because you find her interesting as a human being and not just as a sex object, then you probably should just leave her alone. Or, to put it another way, the acceptable stance whenever hitting on someone is to feel that she is self-evidently attractive physically and now you want to find out if she's got a personality that you also find attractive. Why women so often get irate at men hitting on us is that a lot of men exude this sense that they don't care if you love Radiohead or about your opinions on the war. So if you approach people, anyone, it's not that you need to worry overmuch about the pretense. Don't have pretenses. Desire to have someone's company not just for the sex potential, but for the pleasure of her company. You can't really fake that, so the best thing to do is go into the situation believing it.

That said, the great unfairness that lays for even well-meaning men wanting to hit on women is that most women are going to be defensive and reject you right off the bat. The key to this is not to take it personally. I know, easier said than done. But women get hit on pretty much non-stop, and often by men who don't grasp the basic concept that no one owes you her time or attention. A lot of men can't seem to tell the difference between sexually harassing someone and hitting on her, either. So women get into "reject all approaches" mode. On top of it, a lot of women really do have much better things to do at any point in time than entertain would-be suitors. The woman on the train you're eyeballing is probably thinking about her work, and you approaching her will probably just be irritating, and it's nothing personal.

So I don't recommend hitting on strangers in public places as a way to get dates. The key to successful dating is to be able to find people to date who you genuinely find interesting as people, and in situations where you can broadcast that interest. Which is why having hobbies that put you in contact with other people is so critical. The woman on the train who knows you're just chatting her up because you like her ass is going to blow you off. The woman in your political club that you talk politics with knows you care what she thinks, and will be more open to hearing at some point that you also think she is cute. It's not that women are insulted at being thought attractive. What is insulting to us is being told that our looks are all that matters.

I'm thinking maybe this last segment could be called the Wisdom of Wingnuts, but that might be a little over the top. Thanks to Pam Spaulding both of Pam's House Blend and Pandagon, for digging up this silly video of Alan Colmes, the most benighted liberal in the country, arguing with one of the lackeys from Concerned Women of America about a children's book called "King & King", a fairy tale about two princes who fall in love and get married. The Concerned Women representative is Sandy Rios, and she seems to be under the impression that telling kids that gay couples exist is basically pornography.

*insert CWA audio*

Poor Ms. Rios. If she can't tell the difference between telling kids that two people are married and going into details of each couple's sex life, how on earth does she explain straight marriages to her children? My god, married couples are everywhere, even straight ones. There's sex around every corner, sexual indoctrination for kindergarteners lurking on the wedding bands of every PTA mom. I bet Ms. Rios herself is married, and has her children living with her and her husband in their den of marital iniquity. Scandalous, really.