In a book published posthumously last month, psychotherapist and author Elisabeth Young-Bruehl posits that American society has failed children to the point that prejudice against them deserves its own “ism.” That’s right, along with racism and sexism and homophobia (not a literal –ism, but a figurative one), we need to add childism.

I was skeptical, given that parents today are so likely to be scolded for overparenting—that we’re helicopter parents, that we’re too indulgent, that we keep our kids overscheduled. At the same time, I suspected that the book had to have a bit more heft than was implied by a snarky Jezebel post headlined “Not Letting Kids Have Their Way is Destroying America,” which implied that Young-Bruehl believed bedtimes are bad,  children should be given pet dinosaurs, and “everyone should ride gleaming white horses with pink manes to work instead of cars.”

But rather than advocating parents raise their kids to be Veruca Salts, Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children is primarily concerned about child abuse—violence against children, sexual abuse, and neglect.

Young-Bruehl points to the social breakdowns of the 1960s and early 1970s as the advent of this –ism. I wondered, though, why Young-Bruehl targeted such a recent start date. If childism, as she puts it, happens when people “mistreat children in order to fulfill certain needs through them … or assert themselves when they feel their authority has been questioned,” if childism is when adults treat children like property, why not point to the 19th century, when slave children really were property and child laborers worked in factories during the Industrial Revolution?

Best I can tell, the answer to that question is that Richard Nixon wasn’t president back then. Young-Bruehl begins her book with a didactic, chapter-long definition of prejudice, and then tells the heart-breaking story of one of her patients, a child of divorced parents who was bounced between homes as a child and was sexually abused by an older stepbrother. Only a little bit later do we see what Young-Bruehl is getting at. If only Nixon hadn’t vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act in 1971, the United States would have had universal daycare in the 1970s, which could have kept children safe from abuse by baby-sitters. Similarly, Ronald Reagan, through his tax cuts and efforts at privatization, was almost singlehandedly responsible for the 1980s’ urban decay, the de facto resegregation of inner-city schools, and an “era of frantic prison-building and incarceration—including the incarceration of youths and even children, especially African Americans.” (Wow, I don’t remember the federal government ever being efficient enough to wreak so much havoc so quickly.)

Young-Bruehl’s book is not merely a diatribe against conservative politics. She expresses disdain for the drugged-out, free-love permissiveness of the late 1960s that left some children being raised by selfish, neglectful baby boomers. And she’s no particular fan of the way that Social Security has lifted the elderly out of poverty only at the expense of future generations. But her solutions are predictable and overly simplistic: more social programs, more government involvement in the family life. Child abuse is a serious problem, and Young-Bruehl deserves credit for taking a serious look at it. But her solutions are mere wishful thinking.

After several days of blowback for the decision to pull grant money from Planned Parenthood, the founder and board of directors from the Susan G. Komen for the cure breast cancer charity has apologized and vowed to amend their rules. For those of you not following the controversy, news surfaced earlier this week that Komen pulled grants from Planned Parenthood because they were under an investigation by Congress. However, that investigation is clearly politically motivated: it is led by Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns, who is deeply pro-life and a backer of anti-abortion pregnancy resource centers. Here's the language from the Komen press release about their new policy:

We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not. Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

The result is that Planned Parenthood will be eligible for future grants and the Komen foundation will fulfill existing grants. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards responded to the Komen change with her own press release in which she says:

We are enormously grateful that the Komen Foundation has clarified its grantmaking criteria, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Komen partners, leaders and volunteers. What these past few days have demonstrated is the deep resolve all Americans share in the fight against cancer, and we honor those who are at the helm of this battle.

The question remains, though, whether or not Komen's actions have irrevocably hurt their organization. I would argue that they have. Though most people will forget the kerfuffle by Monday (We've got the Super Bowl and the GOP primary to preoccupy us), Komen has already been politicized where they were once neutral. Even post-apology, pro-choice donors may be wary of the foundation, and if they're committed to eradicating cancer, will find another organization to give to. Pro-life donors may be infuriated by the walk-back, and, the most thorough of them will find organizations that don't give a penny to Planned Parenthood if they want to make a charitable contribution. TBOGG at Firedoglake has a good explanation about how nonprofits get their donations, and they make the smart point that Komen's biggest mistake is that they've tarnished their previously untouchable image. Before, coming out against Komen could be framed as not caring about women's health (despite the many problems with the organization that have nothing to do with Planned Parenthood). With this controversy, those pink ribbons have a muddier hue.

GOP Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is often criticized for being a bit bland, so when he mounted a Minnesota campaign stage on Wednesday sporting a jaunty dash of glitter in his usually plain hair, viewers might understandably have taken the glimmers as an attempt at a livelier image and not—as was intended—an act of protest. Indeed, Romney was the most recent target of the emergent protest form known as “glitter bombing,” in which activists disrupt proceedings by showering glitter on the object of their ire. I’ve written about the tactic here before with regard to the case of sex advice columnist Dan Savage, who has been repeatedly attacked for statements that critics consider to be transphobic or otherwise un-PC. But now I’d like to take on the glitter bomb phenomenon directly: it’s time that this childish and ineffective protest stunt be permanently defused.

Most glitter historians locate the start of the “bomb” repurposing in the ambush of Newt Gingrich back in May of 2010, when an a gay rights activist hollered “Feel the rainbow, Newt!” as he doused the man in sparkles. Since then, other outspoken conservatives (as well as the very not-conservative Savage) have received similar treatment, catching the attention of the news cycle for a day or two and then dispersing into the air. Observers have quibbled over whether the bombings amount to physical assault, but thus far no victim has pursued legal action. Meanwhile, supporters of causes the activists purport to represent (gay and trans rights; with Romney, reportedly immigration reform) acknowledge the attacks with little more than a chuckle. Everyone dusts off and goes home.

Back in the beginning, I was generally supportive of the anti-homophobic glitter bombings; they appeared to be a lighthearted, drag-inflected attempt at undermining the moral seriousness of their targets. But as the trend has continued and the operatives grown more self-important, I’ve come to view glitter bombing with increasing chagrin due to its tantrum-like tenor and inability to accomplish more than minor annoyance. In a culture reawakened to the power of civil disobedience by way of Occupy Wall Street, new forms of protest are bound to proliferate; but that doesn’t mean that all deserve to survive.

In the taxonomy of protest types, glitter bombing is an odd bird. Its closest cousin is a category of actions sometimes called “tactical frivolity,” which involves using humor, wit and surrealism to protest or disrupt a politically serious mark; but given the aggressive tenor and pat humourlessness of glitter bombing, that label doesn’t quite fit. And because activists can’t usually manage to get more than a few words out during the hurried delivery of the payload, the act doesn’t reach the level of civil discourse or direct action. In other words, glitter bombing does not speak the same language as a march, occupation or even a petition—it’s just an angry tweet in comparsion to those actions’ grand manifesto.  

To be fair, not all protest gestures need aspire to the same level of impact (death by a thousand cuts is sometimes a great strategy). But this is where the actual form of glitter bombing becomes troublesome—what does glitter mean, exactly? When animal rights operatives throw fake blood on fur coats, the symbolism is clear: this life-giving fluid was spilled out of the desire for extravagant clothing. But when gay or trans people are injured by society, do they shed meaningless confetti? Glitter: a party accessory, Ke$ha’s drug of choice, the stuff children dump all over garbage-destined handicrafts; is this superfluous material really appropriate for the protest of such crucial issues?

Sure, glitter may be a chore to clean up, but the association of LGBT and other struggles with annoying specks doesn’t sound like a win to me. Glitter bombing may have been fierce for a minute, but like all protest movements (see: OWS), it must evolve and innovate or else risk irrelevance. When even fellow travelers are tiring of the antics, you know it’s time to put the shiny stuff away.

Newt Gingrich certainly has a woman problem, but it’s not clear any pundit has yet identified why. His lopsided results in Florida – Gingrich secured far more votes from men than from women, while the opposite was true for Mitt Romney – has prompted a rash of stories attempting to offer an explanation. CNN’s Jack Cafferty has speculated that growing revelations about the former speaker’s extramarital conduct disgusted women in Florida. But the accusations from the second of his three wives, Marianne, that Gingrich once requested an open marriage, broke shortly before the South Carolina primary, so if anything you’d expect it would have had an outsize effect in the Palmetto State. Instead, the gap between Gringrich’s male and female support grew from four points in South Carolina to eight points in Florida. Exit polls show that that his gender gap has been growing over the course of the primary season.

I’m not persuaded that female voters’ primary concern about Gingrich is his past behavior as a husband, though it can’t help. A poll taken in early January shows that Gingrich’s women troubles preceded Marianne Gingrich’s accusations. In that poll, in theoretical match-ups among general election voters, Barack Obama held an eight-point advantage among women against Romney and a whopping 18-point advantage among women against Gingrich. Gingrich’s weakness with women was even greater that of Ron Paul, whose candidacy revolves around the support of young men.

In the Daily Beast, Gingrich’s pollster, Kellyanne Conway, suggests that Gingrich did poorly among women in Florida because they’re late deciders who were proportionately affected by the barrage of anti-Gingrich advertising unleashed in the Sunshine State. It’s true that women are indeed late deciders, but Conway’s explanation may not tell the whole story.

The fuller context is that Gingrich had a problem with women before Florida, and it appears to be getting worse. Romney, meanwhile, consistently maintains an edge with women. Why? Some might suggest it’s because women voters generally lean more Democratic and Romney is seen as a more moderate candidate than Gingrich. But that doesn’t really hold water -- folks voting in these primaries are generally right-leaning to start with. And if Gingrich’s perceived conservatism alone put off women voters, you’d expect the same to be a true for a conservative candidate like Rick Santorum. Instead, Santorum does better with women than he does with men.

There’s something about Gingrich that acts as a repellant to women, like the electoral opposite of Axe body spray. As the Associated Press put it in analyzing the results of the Florida primary, “Some of the data from Tuesday's exit poll suggested women's votes were influenced more by a personal distaste for Gingrich than by liking Romney.” Anybody have a theory about why women don’t like Gingrich?

Rachael, I have to admit that I'm just not a fan of disingenuous manuevering, which is why arguments from anti-choicers about Planned Parenthood needing to be "investigated" for supposed ethics violations mean nothing to me. You and I both know that the movement doesn't give a hoot about making sure that Planned Parenthood is providing top-notch care for women, and that the constant and almost always unfounded complaints stem from anti-choice objections to the very existence of low-cost, pro-choice reproductive health care. At the end of the day, I prefer a clean fight. Anti-choice activists should make their arguments about the sinfulness of abortion and contraception directly. Anti-choicers turn to dirty tricks like bullying, clinic harassment, opening nuisance investigations, and shunning campaigns because they know that making their arguments directly doesn't work. I'm all for a rowdy public discourse. I just hate dirty tricks and deceit. Resorting to dirty tricks like nuisance investigations reads like an admission from anti-choice activists that they know they can't bring an end to comprehensive women's health care by persuading the public to abandon it.

This entire debacle with Komen is a perfect example of substituting dirty tricks for open and vigorous discourse. As Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic discovered, Komen has no more legitimate concerns about Planned Parenthood's ethics than the anti-choice activists that bullied Komen or Rep. Cliff Stearns, who has opened the investigation. The rule about not working with organizations under federal investigation was only created after Stearns opened up the nuisance investigation, and it's clear that it was created to give cover for Komen to abandon Planned Parenthood. It was such a transparent attempt to help destroy Planned Parenthood—and undermine women's comprehensive health care—that one top Komen official resigned over the whole thing.

The anti-choice movement's readiness to do an end run around the hard work of persuading the country to abandon not just safe, legal abortion but accessible contraception and STD prevention/treatment is one reason I take this issue so seriously. This isn't just about women's rights and women's health, though those are both important causes. I just really cannot stand disingenuous or dirty politics. The vast majority of anti-choice politicking is through misinformation campaigns and dirty tricks. Legislators who simply want to prevent women from getting abortions pass abortion restrictions while disingenuously claiming that it's being done for women's health. Contraception and STD funding are being attacked by anti-choicers claiming that it's about "abortion," even though federal funding for abortion is already prohibited. Nuisance investigations are opened on clinics, even though they almost never turn up anything. Anti-choice activists show up at clinics to harass the patients and staff while disingenuously claiming that they're providing "counseling," as if they know the first thing about that. Lies claiming that abortion causes breast cancer and mental illness and that contraception doesn't work proliferate, and often written into law or presented in the classroom. It's maddening.

The reason that people are so up in arms over this Komen situation is just this: Anti-choicers lost the argument against safe, legal abortion and accessible contraception. Instead of graciously accepting that the country doesn't agree with them about women's health care and responding with straightforward arguments for why they don't think affordable and safe reproductive health care is good, they instead use junior high school tactics of trying to isolate the victim (Planned Parenthood) in hopes they'll give up. That kind of tactic is off-putting, no matter who you are. Komen seems to realize now that they look like they're involved in dirty tricks, which is why they're running a five-alarm P.R. clean-up campaign on this. That Komen continues to dissemble and try to defend themselves with statements no one believes is only making it worse.

Michelle Obama has been making the rounds on talk show couches this week. Here she is encouraging Jay Leno to eat his veggies. Here she is deflecting questions about daughter Malia's dating life from Rachael Ray. And here she is challenging Ellen DeGeneres to a push-up competition. This is all part of a California swing the first lady is making to raise funds for her husband's reelection campaign, and what's remarkable about Michelle's consecutive appearances is how comfortable she seems with her public self.

This wasn't always the case. When Barack was first elected, it seemed like Michelle was tamping down her personality to fit into some cookie cutter role. She was desperately trying to be as inoffensive as possible, and it washed her out. While her main preoccupations remain wholesome (healthier eating; more benefits for military families), her presentation has become edgier, more authentic.

The latest wave of genuine-seeming public appearances started in early January when Michelle went on CBS's morning show to combat the portrayal of herself in Jodi Kantor's book about the Obama marriage. In that appearance, Michelle calmly fights back against the notion of herself as an "angry black woman." Though many readers found the portrayal of Michelle in Kantor's book eminently relatable, it was still a savvy, strong move for Obama to make.

In the latest round of press, Michelle Obama seems relaxed in her own skin in a way she hasn't previously. On Leno, she was easily joking with Jay about how he should be eating more vegetables. The bit, which could have been extremely awkward, ended up working because of Michelle's charm. On Rachael Ray, she wisely avoids answering the question about Malia's dating life while still making it seem like she's revealing something about her family--that her kids want their parents to be quiet. That's the oldest celebrity trick in the book.

But the Ellen appearance is the most impressive, in a way. You could frame Michelle's pet platforms as ways to bolster the image of her as homemaking mom-in-chief. But she negates that kind of framing by showing off her remarkable physical prowess. Back when pearl-wearing, perfect Barbara Bush was First Lady, could you have imagined that the First Lady would be engaging in a televised push-up competition with an out-and-proud lesbian on national TV? It's an impressive show of strength and originality. Clip of Michelle vs. Ellen below.

As someone who is mildly skeptical of Susan G. Komen for the Cure (for its history of overly  generous compensation for leaders, for its weird legal actions against other cancer groups, for the annoying ubiquity of pink ribbons on everything you buy during October) and outright distrustful of Planned Parenthood, I’ve had the chance to watch their skirmish from afar without feeling too riled one way or the other.

In the end, though, it’s clear that Planned Parenthood’s P.R. machine, well familiar by now with boycotts, is clearly stomping all over Komen, who was not ready for the backlash its received (a backlash aided, no doubt, by the overwhelming liberalness of those in the media who have the opportunity to make their outrage visible). Planned Parenthood will no doubt recoup the money it had received from Komen and it has scored some sympathy and free publicity in the process.

I wish that Komen had done a few things differently. I wish that it had come out right away and said that while it had to cut ties with Planned Parenthood, it had found a corresponding number of free clinics and gynecologists serving women in low-income areas to be the beneficiaries of its largesse. It would have illustrated that Komen was still committed to women’s health care.

And I wish that, if it were going to take the stance of not giving money to Planned Parenthood because of the congressional investigation, that they would have been a little more vocal about the concerns stemming from that investigation. Amanda, I know you referred  called it a “nuisance,” but in reading  the report put together by Americans United for Life, which helped launch the investigation, there are some legitimate concerns. Planned Parenthood offices in California, New Jersey, New York, and Washington state have at various times been audited by state and federal authorizes and discovered to have been overbilling state agencies and committing other improper billing practices. Further, Planned Parenthood has a record of not reporting instances of sexual abuse—and I’m not talking about 16-year-old girls who come in with their 19-year-old boyfriends. The AUL report documents a case in which a 13-year-old girl was raped by an older foster brother and was impregnated—twice. Planned Parenthood is required, if it wants to receive federal funds, to comply with mandatory reporting laws.

Those who are loudly denouncing Komen are getting plenty of attention today. But the Komen foundation would not have acted as it did if it had not been hearing similar complaints from pro-lifers for years. It could not have been a decision that it made lightly. I’m grateful that it listened to the concerns of men and women who told them they would not donate to Komen as long as it had a relationship with the nation’s largest abortion provider.

Because Planned Parenthood can gin up outrage from its supporters at the drop of a hat, and that it will likely come out ahead with this whole affair. It would be nice, however, if once in a while the organization could step back and ask itself why an organization like Komen would sever its ties. There are consequences, or should be, for an organization that continues  to perform more and more abortions—while treating fewer prenatal patients and making fewer adoption referrals—while the nationwide trend has been largely downward since 1990. There should be consequences for an organization whose employees are caught on tape giving inaccurate medical advice or who fail to report anything to authorities when 13- and 14-year-olds show up seeking abortions after being impregnated by men in their 30s and 40s.  About as many Americans are pro-life as are pro-choice, and we will continue to target groups that give their money to Planned Parenthood.

Nicki Minaj—the female pop-rapper known for her stuttering lyrics and wonkified fashion taste—is something of a controversial figure in the contemporary musical landscape. Some listeners revel in her playful, off-kilter style, while others find it as grating as when a video gets out of sync with its audio track. Certain, however, is the fact that Minaj’s star continues to rise: she’s been tapped to accompany Madonna in this weekend’s Superbowl halftime show, and her second proper album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, will be released later this year.  

Minaj is clearly a hot property, so it may come as a surprise that the BET network has reportedly banned the video for her song “Stupid Hoe” for being too explicit for television. But what counts as crossing the line on a network that regularly shows videos featuring nearly nude women gyrating to often objectifying and at times even degrading lyrics? Watching the video, I can’t help but wonder which element is being deemed beyond the pale (and BET isn’t telling yet). Sure, we see essentially bare butts a fair amount, and Minaj performs (rather ironically, in my opinion) the sexualized choreography required of female entertainers, but my more delicate moral sensibilities are definitely not offended. In fact, it’s the seizure-inducing quality of the editing that's really troubling.

But what of the lyrics? While no one is suggesting that “hoe” is a nice word to use in reference to women, it’s certainly common currency in genres like rap and hip-hop. And here, Minaj deploys the put-down in classic “diss” song fashion, using it to call out her female enemies—it’s a symbolic filler more than anything else. Still, BET could censor the word along with the song’s other no-nos (making it even more fantastically choppy!), but that seems overkill. And in any case, if the network has decided it’s in the business of policing sexism or explicit sexuality in its content, then censors have a ton of other cleaning up to do on male-authored tracks.

Of course, one could regret the same-sex misogyny of the thing; Slate’s Jonah Weiner did that during his participation in the magazine’s 2011 Music Club coverage:

…the single is a flashback to the tedious, dispiriting beef that began between Lil Kim and Nicki Minaj when the latter’s star was first on the rise. Women have it tough enough in hip-hop without mean-girling each other. I wish Kim had looked upon Minaj, who owes her an inarguable debt, not with spite but rather, as Missy Elliott did, with pride and excitement. And I wish Nicki Minaj (who may be trying to communicate some hardness herself after her love-song-stuffed debut album) didn’t find it necessary to perpetuate the violence.

But girl-on-girl aggression is not the issue here. If male rappers are celebrated (or at least tolerated) for presenting women as hyper-sexualized playthings, then female artists should certainly be allowed to paint the self-portrait of their choice. Perhaps Minaj’s ridiculous (even satirical?), blunt exaggeration of sexist themes (e.g. caged feline, baby doll, mannequin) makes BET executives uncomfortable. But then, double standards are always awkward.

Watch the (possibly NSFW) video below and then let us know what you think: Is BET's ban the result of sexism or prudence?

The backlash against actress Zooey Deschanel's particular brand of twee reached new heights when her hit sitcom, The New Girl, premiered last fall. The ads proclaimed the comely actress "adorkable," and Jada Yuan's New York Magazine profile of Deschanel expressed the divisive feelings towards her succinctly: "[Women] either covet her bangs or they resent her for seemingly playing into the male fantasy that women are only attractive when they act like girls. Plenty of blog posts have used Deschanel as a launchpad for this very debate."

Last night, The New Girl approached the polarizing nature of Deschanel's girlie-girlness head on in an episode called "Jess and Julia." Lizzy Caplan plays Julia, the hard-edged lawyer girlfriend of Jess's roommate, Nick. Jess sucks up to Julia because she wants Julia to help her get out of a ticket. Jess—who got the ticket because she was braking for an injured bird—plies Julia with cupcakes and cooing, and Julia does not respond kindly. They have the following exchange, with Julia acting as the greek chorus of the blogosphere:

Julia: A judge might buy into this whole thing.

Jess: What whole thing?

Julia: Your whole thing. With the cupcakes, and the braking for birds, and the whole, "Bluebirds help me dress in the morning!"

Jess: I didn’t realize I was doing a thing.

Julia: It’s a great thing! The big beautiful eyes, like a scared baby. I’m sure that gets you out of all kinds of stuff.

The pair continue to clash for most of the rest of the episode, and Julia continues to be the conduit for the criticisms that the blog world lobs at Deschanel. Julia accuses Jess of trying to mess up her relationship with Nick. "I know that I’m the mean lawyer girl who wears suits and works too much," she says. "And you, you’re the really fun teacher girl with all the colorful skirts, and you bake things. And eventually Nick is going to come running to you, and you’ll tuck him in under his blankie."

Later, Jess responds by making nearly the identical argument that the real Deschanel makes in that New York Magazine piece. To Yuan, Deschanel says, "I think the fact that people are associating being girlie with weakness, that needs to be examined. I don’t think that it undermines my power at all." The character Jess makes it funnier, but the message is the same:

"I brake for birds. I rock a lot of polka dots. I have touched glitter in the last 24 hours. I spend my entire day talking to children. And I find it fundamentally strange that you’re not a dessert person. It freaks me out.  I’m sorry that I don’t talk like Murphy Brown. And I hate your pants suit. I wish it had ribbons on it or something just to make it slightly cuter but that doesn’t mean I’m not smart and tough and strong."

That argument is completely reasonable. There shouldn't be just one acceptable way of behaving for women—and whether you're a ball busting lady lawyer with an anger management problem or a beribboned glitter pusher, you shouldn't be shamed for it.

However, that's not the message that was put forth by the end of the episode. In the last fifth of the show, Julia comes over to apologize to Jess, and it turns out that deep down, what Julia really wants is to talk about her feelings and crochet baby hats. That's what makes Julia a happier person—having girl talk about her embarrassing high school days.

Narratively, because Jess/Deschanel is the star of the show, they had to make her be more sympathetic than the Julia character. And intellectually, I understand that. But in the real world, I want those Murphy Brown-talking, pantsuit wearers to be just as acceptable and palatable as the cupcake clan.

In a shocking move Tuesday afternoon, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the country's most famous breast cancer charity, pulled its grants for breast-cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood. Komen claims that their reason is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation from Congress, but as it's well-understood on both the left and the right that the investigation, headed by Rep. Cliff Stearns, is a nuisance investigation that will almost surely turn up nothing, this excuse sounds lame indeed. The likelier explanation is the one offered by Planned Parenthood, that Komen caved under relentless pressure from anti-choice activists who oppose Planned Parenthood for offering abortions as well as low-cost contraception and STD prevention and treatment. In addition, Komen has a history of not playing nice with other women's health organizations. Planned Parenthood has created an emergency fund to replace the Komen grants, to keep the breast-cancer screening service from being interrupted.

The existence of breast-cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood has always been a thorn in the anti-choice side. Most of Planned Parenthood's services are related to the choice to be sexually active---contraception, STD screening and treatment, cervical cancer screening---making it easy to write off those services as unnecessary if you follow the strict abstinence-only prescription the Christian right has for women. Breast cancer, however, can strike the lifelong virgin, the married woman who only has sex for procreation, and the dirty fornicator (i.e. the vast majority of American women) alike. Because of this, anti-choicers have tried to create a rift between women's health advocates who focus on breast cancer and those who focus on reproductive health concerns below the waist. Today, they had a victory with Komen's act of cowardice.

No matter how much anti-choicers wish otherwise, it's not feasible to create an approach to women's health that separates good girl concerns from bad girl concerns. For instance, many women land in gynocologist's offices seeking contraceptive services and cervical-cancer screenings, and doctors use that opportunity to teach the art of breast self-exam. As noted in my previous post on the Santorums' pregnancy troubles, even the world of the hated abortion provider and the much-vaunted obstetrician can't be so easily separated, as the latter is often called upon to have knowledge of pregnancy termination in case of a medical emergency.

In the end, the grant money is less important than the symbolism of Komen buying into the conservative myth of good-girl health care vs. bad-girl health care. In reality, women's health care can only work if it's comprehensive health care. Komen has already been under serious scrutiny by those who argue that the organization cares more about shoring up their image than making real progress in the fight for women's health, and with this move today, they proved their critics right.

Great news! A recent study in the journal Ethology reveals that men can detect from a woman’s voice whether she is menstruating. Psychologists Nathan Pipitone from Adams State College and Gordon Gallup from SUNY Albany recorded 10 women counting from one to five, at four different points in their menstrual cycles. Three groups of guys listened to the recordings. The first group was instructed to guess which of the four clips was made during the female speaker’s period. Though the men had a 25 percent likelihood, statistically, of choosing the correct recording, they flagged the menstrual voice 35 percent of the time—a significant difference, according to Pipitone and Gallup. (Perhaps the best part of this study is its coinage of the phrase “menstrual voices,” which Edith Zimmerman poetically explicated in the Hairpin last week. I’m reminded a bit of Coleridge’s “ancestral voices prophesying war,” from Kubla Khan, which makes sense, because “menstrual voices” often also prophesy war.)

The second group of men had the same task, except that researchers replaced the recordings made when the women were closest to ovulation with recordings made on a less fertile day. This was meant to soften the contrast between the sexpot ovulation voice and the “Leave me alone; I’m on my period” voice. Again, the guys correctly guessed the menstruation recording 34 percent of the time. 

The third group had no idea they were participating in a study on fertility. They were asked to select, from the four recordings, the most “unattractive” voice—and yes, they picked the period voice 34 percent of the time. According to Pipitone, giveaways included lower pitch, quality, and mood. In fact, he said, all three of the test groups “seemed to determine the menstrual voices by picking the most unattractive voice.”

When I came across this study yesterday, my face-palm was followed by a melancholy moment. Perhaps studies on the baggage of the human voice—what it can tell us without the help of words—are starting to say more about our nostalgia for old-fashioned communication than about what the researchers actually hope to prove. (Women’s voices sound slightly crankier during menstruation? Whoop-de-doo.) In a culture where Gchatting or emailing the co-worker 2 feet away comes as second nature to many of us, it seems as though unlocking the special properties of spoken language has become an elegiac pursuit, not just a scientific one. In honor of classic oral communication, we’ll let this particular inane ovulation study slide.

Internal critics of the Democratic Party often complain that liberals lack gumption, especially when it comes to dealing with the more theatrical side of politics. If conservatives often work by appealing emotionally to people’s prejudices, hopes and fears (see the current GOP primary sideshow), liberals generally depend on the allure of the “reality-based community” (a land of supposedly self-evident facts and compassionate common sense) to make their case. But in a game that seems to get less reasonable with every election cycle, the Left may need to better master the fine art of political stuntsmanship in order to compete.

How’s this for a template? The Huffington Post reported yesterday on an ingenious protest gesture performed by Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) in response to the GOP-dominated legislature’s move to require abortion-seeking women to undergo a manipulative and medically unnecessary ultrasound prior to the procedure. Noting with concern that men in her state may currently receive treatment for erectile dysfunction without the benefit of similar medical meddling, Howell proposed an amendment to the ultrasound bill that would require a thorough rectal examination and cardiac fitness test of patients before they can receive any little blue pills. According to Howell, it’s only fair that men be subject to at least as much bureaucratic oversight of their bodies as women are:  

"We need some gender equity here," [Howell] told HuffPost. "The Virginia senate is about to pass a bill that will require a woman to have totally unnecessary medical procedure at their cost and inconvenience. If we're going to do that to women, why not do that to men?"

While the symbolic measure was (just barely!) rejected (21 to 19), Howell’s wry procedural commentary on the situation is the kind of reframing maneuver that often better demonstrates the absurdity of the target than a debate based on facts and figures ever could. As things heat up this election year, let’s hope we see more of the same. 

News of Demi Moore's overdose on an alleged combination of whip-its and some kind of smokable incense has been hashed over for days now. Entertainment Weekly wondered if it was morally sound to release the 911 call of Moore's collapse, even though 911 calls are part of the public record in almost every state. Tess Lynch at Grantland wrote a lovely, lyrical piece about reimagining Moore as a shiny-haired Jacqueline Susann heroine. Star Jones and Dr. Nancy Snyderman, gabbing on the Today Show this morning, believe that Moore deserves some privacy.

At this point, what Moore deserves is irrelevant—the nitrous oxide is out of the cannister, and there's no shoving it back in. Morning news show talking heads can argue about celebrity privacy forever and it's not going to turn back the clock on the reality of our current celebrity industrial complex. What's more, a lot of the commentary around her hospitalization follows the logic that this should be a private event for Moore merely because it shows that she's vulnerable. Moore's friend the director Patti Jenkins told E! News over the weekend, "Demi is awesome and so strong. I also hate when people make it a bigger drama than what is going on. She's great."

Maybe she is "great." But probably she's going through a bit of a rough spot—she's having to deal with a splashy divorce from someone whom she allowed to subsume her public identity. When she married Ashton, the face she showed the world was @mrskutcher, the miraculously young-looking middle-aged star who bagged a younger man. The two of them took on child trafficking together and looked sexy and powerful with their Brady Bunchish mixed family and really good hair. Then he cheated on her in a gross way, which shattered that carefully constructed picture with one ugly Us Weekly cover.

So instead of pretending that she never went near a can of Reddi-Whip or that she's not trying to find herself again, Moore should embrace the messy transitional period. Why are we so afraid of female emotion and distress that Moore's friends have to go out of their way to describe her as "strong"? Why can't she be both strong and inebriated? Why can't she be both strong and depressed because her life has changed in ways she didn't necessarily want or predict? Why can't she be both strong and undignified?

With all these swirling speculations about Moore I keep thinking of the '70s movie An Unmarried Woman, in which Jill Clayburgh gets dumped by her husband and is left unmoored. Her character drinks too much at SoHo bars, has affairs with artists, and is both resilient and sloppy at the same time. At the end of the movie, she's come out the other side of her grief over her divorce and is a better woman for it. She had to go through some less than stellar moments to get there, but it was worth it in the end. Moore actually said it best herself a few months ago. She tweeted, "[V]ulnerability is one of the most powerful things we can share. Which is different then being needy. Have courage to be seen."

On Friday, the New York Times published a story revealing that Yale’s football hero, Patrick Witt, may have been involved in an instance of sexual assault. Witt was the quarterback who became a media idol after electing to play in the Harvard-Yale game, scheduled for the same day as his Rhodes scholarship interview.

What we know: An anonymous source alerted the Rhodes Trust to a (deeply murky) informal complaint lodged against Witt in September. The trust then requested an additional letter of support for Witt’s candidacy from Yale. And at some point near or during this swirl of sub rosa communications, the student-athlete decided to forfeit his Rhodes scholarship interview for the game.      

Friday morning, frustrated by a university that finds ever-new and inventive ways to heap ignominy on itself, and mourning my lost sports idealism, I banged out an angry blog post criticizing Yale for promoting an untruth—namely, that Witt had withdrawn his Rhodes application out of loyalty to his team. I assumed that Witt had actually declined the interview because he believed his candidacy was compromised by the sexual assault complaint.

But, as commenters have pointed out, we don’t know when Rhodes informed Yale that they wanted a letter of re-endorsement for Wit, nor when (or if) Yale told Witt his application was in jeopardy. I shouldn’t have concluded that Patrick Witt made his decision to play at Harvard-Yale in light of doubts about his Rhodes application. And I shouldn’t have automatically faulted Yale for acceding to the narrative in which Witt chooses team fealty over personal glory.

At the heart of the story are those off-record charges that no one can prove or disprove. And though I believe in protecting the privacy of complainants, such vagueness and secrecy is unfortunately typical of the university’s response to all kinds of sexual misconduct, alleged and obvious. The school’s failure to address glaring sexist episodes in its recent past seems to shape the way many people see Patrick Witt: They have failed in prosecuting so many clear-cut cases that a heavy suspicion hangs over the men of Yale. They are unjustly (to quote one of the commenters on my first post) “guilty until proven innocent.”

The Yale administration needs to demonstrate that it protects women by adopting transparent, decisive sexual grievance policies. In doing so—provided he’s innocent—it will also protect the next Patrick Witt.

In case you missed it, the Jan. 30 issue of The New Yorker contained a powerful essay by Adam Gopnik on the staggering number of people (disproportionally of color) we have imprisoned—often, with sentences absurdly out of whack with the severity of their crimes—in this country. Here’s a brief taste:

Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.

Gopnik goes on to trace the intellectual history of our contemporary zeal for lengthy, impersonal, probably ineffective confinements, concluding that what’s needed is not a revolutionary throwing-over of the prison system, but instead a concerted, multifaceted effort to starve the beast though small measures: for example, the legalization and regulation of marijuana.

While this is all very compelling, one thing is missing from Gopnik’s harrowing portrait of “Lockuptown”—he doesn’t really acknowledge that city’s female residents.

According to a report (PDF) published by advocacy group the Women’s Prison Association in 2009, the number of women in prison had risen by a stunning 823 percent since 1977, compared to a relative increase of about half that much in men. The reasons for incarceration were largely non-violent, with drug offenses and minor property crimes accounting for about two-thirds of all female infractions. As with men, women of color were disproportionately represented in prison, and roughly two-thirds of all incarcerated women were mothers.

While their overall rosters are smaller than those of their male counterparts, jailed women are clearly caught up in same kind of unjust system that Gopnik describes. But the female prison population also has problems of its own. Kurt Erickson of the Illinois-based newspaper the Herald-Review reported over the weekend that his state’s female-only institutions are anxiously looking to recruit more female guards due to complaints from inmates of sexual harassment and other inappropriate behavior at the hands of male supervisors. Erikson cites a report by a prison watchdog group that notes that “a great number of inmates expressed distress over lack of privacy and the feeling that their bodies were thoroughly exposed and on display to observation and surveillance by male officers in the housing units.”

Gopnik is right in his piece to point out the startling ease with which our culture condones—even snickers at—the same-sex rape of men in prison; but it must be admitted that women are at far greater risk of similar violations in the system as it is currently constituted. I point this out not to luridly compare the values of different traumas, but rather to say simply that, in any discussion aimed at remedying our prison-happy culture, the complicated situation of women must be considered equally alongside that of men.   

Faced with dimming prospects of stealing the nomination from Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich is trying to shore up his Catholic bona fides and attract Christian right voters by going on the warpath against stem cell research and in-vitro fertilization. This move should be seen as an invitation to journalists to ask him why, if he's so Catholic, he doesn't return to the woman that, under Catholic dogma, is his first and therefore only real wife. Unfortunately, I doubt very much that anyone has the guts to do that, so we're left with yet another nauseating show of a man whose shamelessness makes Donald Trump jealous preening like he's some kind of moral authority on anything.

At least Gingrich is addressing something that has always made me a little bonkers about the whole ridiculous stem cell debate. The problem is that restrictions on stem cell research are a purely symbolic move by anti-choice activists, made to shore up their shaky claims that they're interested in "life" instead of simply oppressing women. The reason that it's obvious that it's simply symbolics is the the embryos that would otherwise be used for stem cell research---ones that were created for possible IVF implantation but never used---are instead just thrown in the trash. But the anti-choice movement mostly ignores IVF in their activism, if not in the literature, because they know it's hard to gin up outrage at married women trying to bear children, as opposed to dirty sluts trying to avoid marriage who haunt the dreams of those who support abortion restrictions. Gingrich, with his usual tin ear for moderating political concerns, doesn't care about all that, and has decided to roll up attacks on IVF alongside his attacks on stem cell research, basically calling for an end to both. About 1 percent of annual births in the U.S. are IVF-conceived.

Gingrich should slow his roll on the attacks on stem cell research, however. Recent news suggests that stem cells could be used in the future to fix erectile dysfunction. The hope is that the treatments could address a form of ED that Viagra can't do much for, the kind caused by Peyronie's disease, which is a condition where (guys, you may want to brace yourself before reading this) the penis develops thick scar tissue that can make erections painful or impossible. If this treatment proves workable, prepare for the sound of a million "life begins at conception" bumper stickers being scraped off cars in unison. Peyronie's is a lot more common as men age, and unfortunately can't be addressed by opening up a Tiffany's account for wife No. 4. Something to consider before committing to a hard-line stance opposing stem cell research.

The phrase "the personal is political," coined by second-wave feminists, has been distorted and manipulated far beyond what it was originally meant to describe--basically, it was encouraging women to realize that many of the problems that seem personal are due to political forces of misogyny and sexism--but I can't think of a better opportunity to revive it than in response to this obscenely apoliticized article by Elizabeth Bernstein, writing for the Wall St. Journal, about couples who struggle over nagging. Bernstein admits that women are more likely to be labeled nags than men, but she downplays the problem. More importantly, she frames at as a problem that rises out some mysterious, unchangeable struggle between men and women--despite her claims that it goes both ways, unsurprisingly she could only find examples where the wife was labeled the nag--that has to be mitigated, mainly by the nag doing even more work to seem placating and passive, to avoid annoying her husband.

What Bernstein fails to acknowledge is that "nagging" is not an objective description of a behavior. For a nag to take place, it requires that the person being asked to do a household chore feel put upon. Without the recipient labeling it that way, it's not nagging. It's simply asking. The reason that women "nag" more is because of the power difference between a woman and her husband in typical marriages; women don't have the social space to ignore requests or to procrastinate endlessly, creating a situation where the ask has to come up again. 

Because the analysis assumes that there's no political angle to this, the solutions to a nagging cycles are--surprise!--mostly on the backs of women. Ironically, women nag because they're trying to get their husbands to do their fair share of household chores, but of course, the solutions for nagging always translate to women doing more work. To Bernstein's credit, she does avoid recommending what most women who get labeled "nag" have to do to escape it, which is to stop expecting their husbands to share in the work and just do it themselves. But her solutions are nearly as bad, and lean on the already-existing expectation that women's job is to do the majority of the emotional work in a relationship: be more placating, lower your standards (which, in real life, usually ends up as doing it yourself), hold his hand through it by giving him a timetable, or hiring someone else to do it (which only works if you have the money, but for most couples means that the wife does it herself).

I have an alternative solution that I've seen work really well for many couples: If the male partner stops viewing it as women's work to anticipate what needs to be done, and instead chooses to do his work without being asked, that works really well! And if he is asked to do something, as long as it's reasonable of course (it usually is), he does it without having to be asked twice, either by getting right on it or telling his partner when she can expect to see it done. Interestingly, I've seen bona fide conservative couples who managed to figure this magic formula out, so it's not like you need to be radical feminists to embrace this frightening new lifestyle. It just requires abandoning the notion that domesticity is emasculating or that open communication is more difficult than it is.

As recently as yesterday, Patrick Witt was known as the Yale quarterback who became a media hero after he announced that he would play in the Harvard-Yale football game rather than go to his Rhodes Scholarship interview, which was scheduled for the same day. It turns out that this tidy narrative of athletic fealty was completely false; Witt was no longer eligible for the prestigious award, as the Rhodes Trust had learned of unofficial sexual assault charges against Witt and suspended his application. So the wrenching choice between personal honor and team obligation was actually a convenient cover: Instead of a slap on the wrist for alleged misbehavior, Witt got more laurels.

The New York Times does a pretty thorough job debunking the version of events in which Witt plays a selfless athlete-god. The QB knew when he first applied to the Rhodes about the scheduling conflict and proceeded anyway; he had an off-campus record of two minor arrests, the first for criminal trespass and “creating a public disturbance” outside a New Haven dance club in 2010, and the second, in 2007, for entering a dormitory drunk after hours, lying about his identity, going upstairs without an escort, and then shoving a student guard and running from a police officer. Because they took place off-campus, Yale didn’t know (or didn’t care to know) about these charges when it first endorsed Witt for the scholarship back in October.

As for the alleged sexual assault, the victim lodged charges informally, without filing a police report. So it’s possible that the only university officials who were aware of Witt’s alleged transgressions were members of the new Sexual Assault Harassment and Response and Education Center, the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct, and eventually the dean of Witt’s residential college. (The dean traditionally writes a glowing report on any Rhodes nominees from his college, although he may not have known about the complaint when he penned Witt’s.)  

Still, as one Slate staffer pointed out, it’s odd that the officials involved didn’t see the need to put the assault charges on Witt’s record—and yet when the Rhodes Trust informed the university that they wouldn’t consider Witt unless Yale re-endorsed him, Old Blue declined to stand behind its candidate.

The staffer wrote that if university higher-ups had information suggesting Patrick Witt did not deserve a fellowship, they should have shared it. If they didn’t believe the information was solid because no one had proved anything, then that should have been their reply to the Rhodes Trust.

A certain subgroup of Yale men consistently disrespects women (by the way, Pat Witt was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, the fraternity behind 2011’s notorious “No Means Yes” scandal), and the university administration consistently protects them. In 2011, 16 Yale students filed a Title IX complaint against Yale, citing a “hostile sexual environment” – but many think a serious response has yet to materialize. It’s unsettling that, in this case, Yale may have encouraged the press to lionize a student who was dismissed from a competition because of alleged sexual assault. Enough is enough, Old Blue: You’re better than this. Don’t make us all wish we’d gone to Harvard.   

Is there truth to the conventional wisdom that a presidential bid usually enhances a politician’s standing, regardless of the outcome? There is much to be gained, after all, both during and after a failed presidential run. Books sell, speaking fees go up, Fox News turns former candidates into “analysts” and rewards them handsomely. Losing candidates can influence the debates and the media coverage, pushing a party’s platform in one direction or another. Presidential politics isn’t just about winning, after all; a failed candidate returns home with elevated stature and the possibility of being tapped for a post in the new president’s cabinet. All the better if that candidate hung on to his or her elected position while making that presidential run, so when it’s all over, there’s another job to go back to.

This election may put that theory to the test. Governor Rick Perry could not have imagined that he’d be worse off after a presidential run, but here he is, with his job approval rating in Texas a full 10 points behind where it was a year ago. By the time he faces reelection in 2014, Texans may well not have forgotten how badly Perry flubbed his moment in the national spotlight. Forty-five percent of Texans say he didn’t just hurt his image; he hurt the state’s, too. That cliché about any publicity being good publicity doesn’t hold true when the thing you’re most famous for is saying “oops.”

But if Perry is the cautionary tale, Michele Bachmann's example is more likely to lend support to the conventional wisdom. Bachmann recently announced she will run for re-election in the fall. She's not a shoo-in, to be fair: Democrats are already attacking her for missing votes while she was campaigning, and a recent poll shows well over half of Minnesotans don’t want her to run again. They may or may not be the Minnesotans who matter when it comes to voting in the sixth district. Bachmann's district is being redrawn, and no one yet knows what it will look like come election time. But she has passionate followers and she's a solid fundraiser, and the Associated Press describes her as likely to be a "heavy favorite."

Let's say she wins. What did Bachmann gain by running for president, if all she does is return to an institution where she’s known for generating more heat than light and where, as Politico recently put it, “she has no place in the House leadership”? The answer may have less to do with her reputation in the workplace and more to do with her national profile. If before Bachmann’s national reputation was as a charming but undisciplined politician at the far edge of mainstream Republicanism, now she has been legitimized by the firewalk of a presidential race, and by the fact that, for a brief time in Iowa, she almost seemed like she stood half a chance. If before, Bachmann was known primarily as a bombastic congresswoman who once accused Obama of being anti-American on TV, now she is a bombastic former presidential candidate accusing Obama of “socialism” on TV. And that adds up to a world of difference.

For years, a small but vocal patient community has claimed that the medical establishment is ignoring its debilitating, horrifying-sounding disease. Morgellons, according to its sufferers, is characterized by tiny parasites living under the skin, which produce fiber-like substances that spring from lesions. While most doctors dismissed the disease as an outbreak of delusional parasitosis, Morgellons sufferers have insisted that it was insulting to be told that “it’s all in your head.” Many felt vindicated when the CDC decided to undertake a study of the ailment. Even when a 2011 Mayo Clinic study suggested that the disease is psychosomatic, the Morgellons community clung to hope that the CDC would vindicate them.

But now the CDC’s report is out, and Morgellons activists are horrified: The study, carried out in Northern California, found no environmental or infectious cause, nor evidence of real parasites. The fibers, which many Morgellons patients have insisted were of composed of a substance that was unidentifiable by any lab, were mostly just pieces of fabric and skin fragments from repeated scratching. (You can read the full study on the Public Library of Science.) In conclusion, the CDC writes on its “Unexplained Dermopathy” page,

This comprehensive study of an unexplained apparent dermopathy demonstrated no infectious cause and no evidence of an environmental link. There was no indication that it would be helpful to perform additional testing for infectious diseases as a potential cause. Future efforts should focus on helping patients reduce their symptoms through careful attention to treatment of co-existing medical, including psychiatric conditions, that might be contributing to their symptoms.

For many who believe that Morgellons has ruined their lives, this is a bitter pill, and they don’t want to swallow it. They want reassurance that this is real. Joni Mitchell, who says she suffers from Morgellons, told the Los Angeles Times in 2010, "In America, the Morgellons is always diagnosed as 'delusion of parasites,' and they send you to a psychiatrist. I'm actually trying to get out of the music business to battle for Morgellons sufferers to receive the credibility that's owed to them." Another sufferer told the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, “We just want to be acknowledged. This is not a delusion."

But those two things aren’t mutually exclusive, and no one is saying that they aren’t suffering. I believe the researchers would be the first to say that Morgellons patients are experiencing very real symptoms that adversely affect their lives. Psychosomatic does not mean they are “faking it”; it just means there is no medical cause. Still, they will search on, and perhaps become an increasingly insular and paranoid community. Already, some point to chemtrails as causing their symptoms; others, nanomaterials. The doctor on Respectful Insolence writes, “Unfortunately, it's probable that no amount of evidence will convince such people, at least until we find treatments that are effective in alleviating their symptoms. Maybe not even then.”

The reluctance to accept the CDC study's results highlights the different ways society views medical conditions and psychological conditions. If we treated them equally, a psychosomatic diagnosis would not bother patients so much; but because of the stigma of mental illness, people are loath to accept such a diagnosis.

For a long time, Morgellons sufferers have claimed that their suffering has been brushed off because the majority of them are women. As one wrote to the Washington Post in 2008, “Women's concerns have been routinely dismissed. Anxiety about childbirth? ‘Women have been having babies for millenia.’ Morning sickness? ‘There's no such thing; it's all in your head.’ ” This is a fair point; women have, historically, been patted on the head at times. But now, rigorous research supports the idea that this is not one of those occasions.