PLOTT: The real war on women

By Elaina Plott
Guest Columnist

Monday, March 19, 2012

On Feb. 29, Rush Limbaugh called Georgetown Law School student Sandra Fluke both a “slut” and a “prostitute” for arguing that Georgetown students’ contraception should be covered by student health insurance. As a woman, I was offended. Women’s activist groups across the country were infuriated, as they should have been. President Obama offered a personal apology to Fluke, drawing upon a hope that his daughters can someday vocally support their own causes, without fear of vicious, personal attacks from the media. And he’s right: They shouldn’t be afraid.

But neither should Laura Ingraham, called a “right-wing slut” by MSNBC commentator Ed Schultz. Or S.E. Cupp, who Keith Olbermann, a frequent guest of the White House, said should have been aborted. Or Deneen Borelli, who’s been attacked on air as a “washed-up Oreo” for being a black conservative. After tallying off her attacks from the liberal media, Borelli remarked, “I didn’t get a call from President Obama.”

Most disheartening is to hear liberal women engaging in these same attacks against conservative women. It was feminist Gloria Steinem who called Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison a “female impersonator,” and Naomi Wolf who denounced the late Jeane Kirkpatrick as being “uninflected by the experiences of the female body.” It’s a shame that feminists neglect to include all women under their umbrella of advocacy.

Sadly, “slut” is among the nicer things conservative women have been called throughout the years. The Democratic Party, infamous for championing its support of all women, seems to only adopt this stance when it suits them, or when the woman in question carries opinions that align with its platform. It’s not hard to see the glaring double standard of liberals when it comes to women.

But there’s no sense in fueling a competition about which side has proven more victimized. While slut-shaming and name-calling are unacceptable for those in the public sphere, to keep it at the forefront of national dialogue three weeks after the fact, post-apology, is ridiculous. Were there an actual war on women in the United States, we would do well to cease centering it on the remarks of one historically offensive radio host or others like him. Put simply, it’s not helping our cause. If you believe abortion’s immorality to be irrelevant, if you think contraception is a medical necessity for all women and only if you believe there’s no room for right-minded, intelligent discourse on these issues, then yes, Republicans are waging a war on women.

March 8 was International Women’s Day. On what was suposed to be a celebration of the brilliance, beauty and achievement of the female sex, we were complaining about our entitlement to insurance coverage for contraception. We let our newly anointed spokesperson Sandra Fluke tell the world that there is a malicious war on women in the United States of America.

In Saudi Arabia, women are forbidden to drive or use public facilities when men are present. If their bodies are not completely covered, they face verbal and physical harassment from the religious police. Jordanian women live in fear of honor killings from their husbands. In Egypt today, women wonder if they will see their hard-fought rights removed when the new constitution is drafted by an Islamist-majority parliament.

On International Women’s Day, these people were victims of the real war on women. Any misogynistic filth pervading our national dialogue is indeed inexcusable, and it should rightly be exposed and its perpetrators reproached. But the comments of people like Limbaugh and Olbermann should not take on the formal title of a War on Women. In giving them that name, we only fuel the perception that Americans remain ignorant of their standing relative to today’s global landscape.

Ann Romney recently said, “Women care about jobs. Women care about the economy. They care about their children, and they care about the debt.” I hope she’s right. In light of the excessive attention surrounding rhetoric and contraception, I have to wonder where women’s priorities will lie in this next election. If we are bound by the narrow set of women’s interests as defined by the Democratic Party, a shift in those priorities is long overdue. Across the globe, there are countless battles for women’s rights to be fought; it’s time we chose them more wisely.

Elaina Plott is a freshman in Silliman College. Contact her at elaina.plott@yale.edu.

Comments

The Anti-Yale

Just as William F. Buckley’s shouted “fag” to Gore Vidal on public television was a barometer of his own genital insecurity, so too is Rush Limbaugh’s “slut” a barometer of his own need to flaunt his codpiece.

The reason Ms. Fluke and Mr. Obama are focusing on the United States’ oppression instead of world oppression of women, is because they realize that the same phallocentrism which dominates other cultures, lurks just below the veneer of America’s egalitarian aspirations.

And they are aspirations still, not laws.

Recall please that the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment failed to pass the requisite number of state legislatures, even though it had ten years to do so—-and it died in 1982.

There is good reason to focus on America.

As Candide says, Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

Paul D. Keane

M. Div. ’80, etc.

RexMottram08

I believe it was Norman Mailer who called Buckley a “fag”

After Vidal called Buckley a crypto-Nazi, Buckley responded: “I’ll sock you in your mouth you queer and you’ll stay plastered”

River_Tam

Vidal: As far as I am concerned, the only crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself, failing that, I would only say that we can’t have . . .

Howard K. Smith: Now let’s not call names.

Buckley: Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered—

Smith: Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Let’s not call names.

RexMottram08

Grazie!

Although I believe WFB typically rendered it as “goddam”

River_Tam

Ms. Plott is right, but liberals won’t be swayed by her reasoning. Here’s what they’ll say instead: “Yeah, but the difference is that Sandra Fluke is such a nice girl and Laura Ingraham really is a bitch” or “sometimes you just need to call a bitch a bitch”.

KatieA

I’m a liberal and a feminist and I mostly agree with Ms. Plott.

River_Tam

Glad to hear it!

RexMottram08

Mark Steyn: “No, the most basic issue here is not religious morality, individual liberty or fiscal responsibility. It’s that a society in which middle-age children of privilege testify before the most powerful figures in the land to demand state-enforced funding for their sex lives at a time when their government owes more money than anyone has ever owed in the history of the planet is **quite simply nuts**.”

Branford73

Because the accumulated government debt is so large no one should discuss any other political issue? That notion is nuts. Also, part of the issue goes to the question of reduction, albeit in a tiny way, of overall health care costs by encouraging more preventative care.

Perhaps you think that no preventative care should be provided by health insurance without cost to the recipient. That is certainly a valid position to take. I have wondered for awhile if a way to decrease the overall costs of health care would be to increase the deductibles or co-pays across the board so that people will have more at stake in decisions over what treatments to get.

But the prevailing viewpoint now is that encouraging preventative care by covering all of it is cheaper than having to deal with the later higher costs of having to treat the condition intended to be prevented. In the case of contraception supposedly the costs of covering it completely would be less than the costs to the system of the resulting unwanted pregnancies and births.

It seems that contraception is virtually indisputably preventative health care. To keep it out of the overall scheme of fully covering preventative care is to say it should be different because it promotes non-procreative sex by women. Discriminating against contraception for that reason is worth a minor protest.

RexMottram08

I don’t believe that children are a disease, so I disagree with the classification of contraceptive and abortfacient drugs as preventative health care.

Branford73

If you believe that only treatment for diseases should be paid for by insurance, then you must be against insurance coverage for hospital, physician or nurse assisted child delivery.

RexMottram08

Where did I say “only treatment for disease”?

But I am against using insurance to pay for routine child delivery. Insurance is a risk financing tool for expensive AND unexpected events.

The services of a top quality mid-wife can be easily funded with a little advance savings. (and every baby gives you 9 months to save!)
Branford73

That is the traditional view of insurance, but it has been a long time since health insurance held to that model. My youngest is 28 now and my wife’s prenatal doctor visits and vitamins were covered (although maybe part of the deductible). Well-baby visits began to be covered fairly routinely 25 years ago.

This report is old but I’m sure it hasn’t become any cheaper.

“According to a 2007 March of Dimes report, the average cost for routine maternity care (prenatal care, labor, delivery and post-partum care) was $7,737, $7,205 of which was paid by health insurance; cesarean delivery was an average of $10,958, $10,324 of which was paid by insurance.

“Total: $463 – $523 with insurance; $7,737 – $10,958 without insurance.”

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/budgeting-for-baby.asp#axzz1ph3Lpnm8

If ’08 is your class perhaps you haven’t yet started to have kids. When you do can we assume you will not submit you or your wife’s routine pregnancy and child delivery bills to your medical insurance provider, since you are against it? Oh, and can we count on you telling your wife that she can’t have a doctor, must deliver at home and must use a midwife, if she needs any help at all?
RexMottram08

I maintain a high deductible health insurance policy and fund a pre-tax HSA.

We are expecting our first child and routine delivery costs will be paid out of the HSA. If there are complications, insurance will cover those unexpected circumstances.

You can get a nice car for $10k. I see a lot of Americans, even “poor” Americans, with VERY nice cars…
Branford73

OK, if you’re arguing that all preventative care which doesn’t treat disease shouldn’t be covered I might agree as I said in my first reply to you. But you said that since children are not a disease contraception was not preventative health care.

By the way, you’re welcome for the tax subsidy in your HSA to help you with your coming non-disease health expense.

And sincerely, good luck and congrats on your first born.
RexMottram08

Pre-tax savings is materially different from a tax credit or “subsidy.”
I am a producer. I earn a living by providing a service that others value. It’s MY money, not an allowance from Mommy and Daddy Federal Gov’t.
I’m happy to let you keep your money too.

Children aren’t a disease. Fertility clinics aren’t disease incubators.
Branford73

From the U.S. Treasury website describing HSA’s:
“Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) were created in 2003 so that individuals covered by high-deductible health plans could receive ***tax-preferred treatment*** of money saved for medical expenses.”(emphasis added)

“I am a producer.” How Randian of you. Break out “job creator” and I’ll break out “dripping with privilege” language.

Every conservative considers his “favorable tax treatment” as different than a subsidy, and no doubt deserved because of his exalted status as “producer” (who never consumes more than he produces, as if such a thing can be quantitatively analyzed).

“Children aren’t a disease.” Keep repeating that mantra, it was so convincing before. Add on “contraception is not health care”. We’ll see come November how many women voters are really pissed off about how the contraception issue is being treated by Republicans.
Branford73

Also, I found this rundown of expenses from a midwifery website in Nashville.

“The global fee for midwifery services is $3,600. The fee is reduced to $3,200 when paid in full by 36 weeks (required if you do not have insurance).

Additional expenses may include lab work, travel fees for additional requested home visits, non-routine visits or procedures, and medications such as Rhogam or antibiotics. Initial lab work is $150; you may have this performed by another provider. Additional lab testing during pregnancy is determined according to each client’s individual needs.

The global fee does not include any services not performed by the midwives, including physician consultation, ultrasounds, or visits to other outside providers. ”

Heated debate often breaks out on whether hospital deliveries or home deliveries with midwives are better. I have an opinion but I don’t want to infect this thread with that volatile debate.

hadley

Although the costs of contraception are less than the costs of unwanted pregnancies, profit-oriented medical insurance companies, which keep careful statistics of costs, outcomes, etc, do not provide contraception for free. If they thought it was in their interests to do so, they would do so, without a government mandate. So, your analysis on this point is flawed.

Branford73

It won’t be any more or less free than any other fully covered health benefit. Any increased cost to the carriers will be built into the premium structure. However, otherwise your point is a good argument against mandating any cost free (to patients) preventative health care. But not to block contraception alone.

yayasisterhood

If contraceptives and abortifacients are preventative care, are fertility drugs disease-inducers?

eli2015

Ms. Plott is making a good point, but this article is all over the place.
GeoJoe

When some liberals use gendered insults, they still aim to denigrate specific people. If they used less loaded terms, no one would consider their pointed attacks to be inappropriate speech. But the offensive speech of people like Rush Limbaugh dovetails with the offensive policies of conservative politicians across the country. Restrictions on abortions, cuts to health care for women, etc. actually harm many people, whereas liberal commentators like Bill Maher only offend fragile sensibilities. So any supposed equivalency is a false one.

Obviously Ms. Plott made many more (imho, completely wrong) points, but this is in danger of becoming a rant…

River_Tam

TLDR: “It’s okay if Bill Maher looks like a sexist pig, because he supports the Democratic party and therefore can’t actually be a sexist pig.”

Reminds me of Democrats and race…

“I voted for Obama, I can’t be racist”

“It’s okay if Joe Biden mocked Indian people with fake accents – he’s a Democrat!”

“Yeah, Robert Byrd was in the KKK. But he’s a Democrat now!”

“Sure Hillary Clinton said that Gandhi ran a gas station in St Louis – but you know she didn’t mean it – she’s a Democrat!”

“Sure Spike Lee called Clarence Thomas an Uncle Tom… but Spike Lee’s a Democrat and Democrats can’t be racist! Plus he’s black, and black people can’t be racist either. Unless they’re Republicans of course.”

“Sure Harry Truman called New York ‘k*ketown’, but he’s a Democrat – he can’t be racist!”

“Sure Clinton called a guy a F*cking Jew Bastard, but she’s a Democrat and Democrats aren’t racist like those Republicans over there.”

GeoJoe

Woah, not what I said, but I guess you needed to get some strong feelings off your chest?

RexMottram08

You do realize that young girls are aborted more often than young boys?
ldffly

Some of Maher’s comments would offend the strongest sensibilities. If I had been married to Sarah Palin (not in my wildest dreams) and I heard any man, Maher included, call my wife that filthy name, I would do my best to floor him. A little jail time? Well, to paraphrase Robert Mitchum, at least I’d wouldn’t have to deal with the riff raff on the outside.

The Anti-Yale

And the difference between the demeaning terms “fag” and “queer” is exactly what, pray tell ?

Why are men so hung-up on what OTHER men do with their phalluses?

And with what women do with their vaginas?

From a Freudian perspective this seems a bit like regression, sort of like an infant playing with his excrement.

PK

theantiantiyale

I have so many problems with this comment.

xfxjuice

ITT: Generalizations from both sides, about both sides.
ElizabethGrayHenry

Did y’all hear Bill Maher say of himself and Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, “Clearly we’re the least racist people in America because I gave a ton of money to Obama and she’s Nancy Pelosi’s daughter!”

Seriously? You can’t be racist if you’re a liberal? Just like you can’t be sexist if you’re a liberal, I guess, and like you’re kind of automatically sexist (and racist!) if you’re a conservative.

I’ve heard the word ‘bigot’ defined as a conservative who wins an argument with a liberal. The more I live, the more I think that’s actually pretty true.

Branford73

“a conservative who wins an argument with a liberal.”

Does that ever happen? Sort of a joke, but usually no one concedes defeat. Each side believes he won, and as they walk away from the argument, the liberal thinks “bigot” while the conservative thinks “socialist” (or if he’s older “commie pinko”).

I don’t think it is a valid excuse for crappy behavior to say the other side does it, too.
River_Tam

> I’ve heard the word ‘bigot’ defined as a conservative who wins an argument with a liberal.

That’s because it’s unfalsifiable, and when it comes down to it, liberalism is a faith-based endeavor.

Jess

I don’t think you actually argued anything here except that the war on women is actually a bipartisan endeavor. Which is correct.

ohno

Spot on.
River_Tam

There is no war on women. The only “war on women” that exists in the US is the one in the heads of the deluded #OWS crowd.

#firstworldproblems.

SM2013

As a liberal, please know that not all of us like or agree with Bill Maher–I think he’s an inconsistent blowhard who can be as much an enemy of logic as the rest of them.

However, I think that what GeoJoe was trying to point out in the difference between Maher’s comment and Limbaugh’s was in the salience of the comment’s sexism to the political issue being discussed. Calling Coulter that word, while sexist and inappropriate, was limited in its idiocy to those two faults, as the intent was to give a generic insult–the same could have been accomplished in a less sexist way by calling her an ass or a dolt. Limbaugh’s insult, though sexist and inappropriate in the same way, is rendered not easily comparable to Maher’s by virtue of its salience to the political content being discussed. Calling somebody a slut pollutes the issue in a way that no reasonable person can call constructive to the argument and only serves to misinform.

GeoJoe

Exactly! Thank you for saying this better than I did.

ohno

Ha. Ha ha. I’ll just shut up about feminism forever, because, gosh! I’m allowed to drive a car, aren’t I? And I don’t have to wear a burqa! Guess there’s equality, forever and ever. How silly I was.
Dancer

The author mentions the severe absence of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the concern women have in Egypt about losing rights. She could have mentioned Pakistan among others. All these countries are supported by the U.S., receive money and military aid. When it comes to women’s rights, there is a lot of talk but the walk is backwards. We saw the same hypocrisy coming from the U.S. administration regarding women’s rights in Afghanistan. Kill them from 1980 to 2001, then claim to be saving them from 2001 to today. Now in the U.S. we have too many politicians and media mouthpieces slandering women and deciding for women, or other women, what they can and can’t do with their bodies and their lives. We again have political figures who want to get the government off our backs and into our bedrooms and into our meetings with doctor. It’s not about individuals who say this or that, it’s about policies. Let’s come together to make sure that our mothers, wives, daughters, sisters are never again railroaded into an ugly past.

RexMottram08

Ask Hillary Clinton what she plans to do. Maybe exporting abortion and 1960s sexual ideology isn’t the best State Department strategy for women.

Dancer

Ms. Clinton continues to support dictators and regimes that oppress women, just as all her predecessors have done. If you see oppression abroad today supported by the U.S. government and the 1%, expect it to appear at home tomorrow, if not this afternoon. Women around the world don’t need rich and super rich fundamentalists and their media mouthpieces to tell them how to live. If women want abortions they will get them either under medically safe conditions or dangerously in the back alley, the choice often depending on how much money they have.

ldffly

“Naomi Wolf who denounced the late Jeane Kirkpatrick as being ‘uninflected by the experiences of the female body.’ ”

When I read matter like this from the pen of a Yale graduate, it makes me euphoric that I finished up at Yale before the postmodern flood washed away so much good scholarship and thinking.

Yale12

Oh get over yourself. There were dumb people at Yale when you went to here too (and Elaina Plott is a freshman, not a graduate, which – looking back at where I was 4 years ago – makes a big difference), and none of it has anything to do with postmodernism. I’m so sick of entitled alums saying “Back in my day, people were smarter and classes were harder.” Newsflash: people who graduated thirty years before you did were saying the same thing about you and modernism.

ldffly

No need to get over myself because in no way, shape or form do I believe that the capacities of Yale undergrads have suffered a slow roll south in the last 30 years. Nothing in my post indicated that. I do believe (implied in my post) that the administration and a significant portion of the faculty work under presumptions of contemporary gender theory and critique of objectivity that are highly questionable. I do believe that represents a serious decline in quality of scholarship and thought.

My contempt is for that version of postmodern thought usually titled deconstruction. Naomi Wolf was the target, not Elaina Plott. (I was entirely aware that Ms. Plott hadn’t yet graduated. Graduation will come for her in a few years and I wish her all the best.)

No postmodern attitudes expressed here? Personal critique by way of a grammatical category? Just what does it mean to “inflect” or even “uninflect” the experience of the female body? Maybe her phrase is pure gibberish, but Ms. Wolf is more likely expressing that postmodern attitude that reality doesn’t stand outside language. So though it might not mean much to me, it must mean something serious to Naomi Wolf. Too bad.

The Anti-Yale

I’m beginning to think that the Christian metaphor is really the operative dynamic in history: there is no salvation without crucifixion.

Just as Lincoln concluded, “For every drop of blood from the lash a drop of blood from the sword” so too human history seems to require blood sacrifice for progress. And so the greatest oppressed group in human history, WOMEN<.
The Anti-Yale

(contined)
will probably have to endure hundreds of thousands of more unnecessary “sacrificial” deaths (crucifixions, if you will) before they are liberated from the yoke of male domination.

What may speed the bloodbath—and the liberation —-is the Internet (and the cellphone access to the Internet), just as it has fueled the Arab Spring.

But the operative dynamic will be the Christian metaphor: Crucify Him ! (Her!).

PK

M. Div. ’80, etc..
silliwin01

Let’s be real: this is a huge step up from Ms. Plott’s first contributions to the YDN opinion section. It’s nice to see college is helping her learn to be a better writer.
The Anti-Yale

“Just what does it mean to “inflect” or even “uninflect” the experience of the female body?”

I suppose it means the same as to use the proper “inflection” in speaking a foreign language.

The deconstructionist writer (Ms. Who?) was suggesting that the late U.N. Ambassador, Ms. Kirkpatrick, “had a poker up her ass” (as I think the current vulgarism goes).

PK
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