Women are Dumb?

One dumb woman - Charlotte Allen - seems to think so. I can't believe the Washington Post published this. Nor can Katha Pollitt (read her article; it's great). The lack of cogent logical argument is enough for me to use this as an extra credit assignment for my Intro Logic students - find all the fallacies! One big (non-logical) contradiction that makes me really wonder about Allen's piece, though, is if she really thinks she's that stupid, and that women should

relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home.

why is she bothering writing for the Post? Women like Allen embrace this practical contradiction all the time. Phyllis Schlafly is a perfect example. She's out writing books, giving talks, writing columns and running an organization with the sole purpose of telling women that they should be at home rubbing their husband's feet. Don't these women see this? Oh, wait, I forgot. They are women. And women, we know, can't do logic.

Some other responses to Allen. And a Q&A with her on the article. The Q&A reveals just how misinformed and crazy Allen really is.

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Let's Go Be Lazy in Wisconsin

So, anti-choice pharmacists in Wisconsin don't want to do their jobs. I've given my take on this before. If you can't perform the tasks of your profession, get another job. Don't ask the state to give you an exception. But the anti-choice, anti-birth control pharmacists of Wisconsin are in an uproar about more than just the prospect of dispensing what the doctor prescribes. They're ticked off about the Birth Control Protection Act, which not only protects the rights of patients by forcing pharmacists to do their job, but also defines 'abortion' so as to exclude the effects of contraceptives.

According to ChristianNewsWire, this is beyond the pale, since

It is a medical fact that the morning-after pill (a high dosage of the birth control pill) and most, if not all, birth control drugs and devices including the intrauterine device (IUD), Depo Provera, Norplant, the Patch, and the Pill can act to terminate a pregnancy by chemically altering the lining of the uterus (endometrium) so that a newly conceived child is unable to implant in the womb, thus starving and dying.

Well, no, actually, it's not a medical fact. If you define pregnancy as beginning at fertilization, then yes, IUDs do result in the termination of a pregnancy. And hormonal methods may have the same result, albeit very rarely, since their primary function is to prevent ovulation and thicken the mucus lining the cervix to prevent sperm from penetrating. And usually, if they don't succeed in that, the result is not an embryo being flushed from the woman's system, but implantation. But not only is it not a "medical fact" that pregnancy begins at fertilization, it's silly to even think of defining it as such. If that's the case, then many sexually active women have been pregnant numerous times and had miscarriages. Of course, they can't inform their doctors of this, since they don't know. Additionally, imagine attempting to expand this definition out, given the advances in reproductive technologies. When a doctor fertilizes a woman's egg with her partner's sperm in a pitre dish, is she pregnant? If a store of her fertilized eggs is preserved in deep freeze, does she remain pregnant until her blastocysts die? If she dies while those blastocysts are still being preserved, does that mean that a dead woman can be pregnant? If a couple enlists the aid of a surrogate mother, who is pregnant? It's obviously not the biological mother. But then the woman who has preserved blastocysts can't be pregnant either. If pregnancy begins at fertilization, then someone has got to be pregnant, though. The egg is fertilized, after all. Is the tank pregnant?

ChristianNewsWire's nutty statements of "medical fact" aside, what really caught my attention was this:

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees the right to freely exercise one's religious convictions. The Wisconsin Constitution expressly protects the rights of conscience. Under Article 1, Section 18, of our state constitution, "any control of, or interference with, the rights of conscience" shall not be permitted.

Now, obviously ChristianNewsWire and the anti-birth control pharmacists who are pushing this line against the Birth Control Protection Act are thinking that they are going to stop this legislation by claiming it violates their religious freedom through their rights of conscience. Here's the problem. Not every one who is anti-choice is religious, or is anti-choice because of their religious convictions. Are these Wisconsin pharmacists suggesting that it's okay to force someone who is anti-choice, but has no religious affiliation, to dispense birth control? I doubt it. But if this really is about conscience, and not about religion, then the Wisconsin constitution would seem to protect the rights of conscience of vegetarians who work at McDonalds and don't want to serve meat, or vegans who work at Mervyns but refuse to sell wool or leather, or school nurses, or doctors, who believe that vaccines are evil and refuse to distribute them to kids. Or heck, some renegade pastafarians who refuse to serve spaghetti, but insist on working at Italian restaurants. It's their right of conscience, after all. I guess anyone who has scruples against doing something required by a profession can work in that profession and yet not do their job in Wisconsin. My new set of principles - never prostituting my labor out for pay. I think I'll go get a job in Wisconsin.

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Colorado Rep. Calls Teen Parents "Sluts"

Oh, this is rich. Colorado Rep. Larry Liston made the following statement a a Republican caucus luncheon about teen parents:

In my parents' day and age, they were sent away. They were shunned. They were called what they are ... There's no sense of shame today. Society condones it ... They're sluts. And I don't mean just the women. I mean the men, too.

This is a prime example of the pro-life religious right's real agenda. They say they're all for saving babies. But rather than pushing for measures that would reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions, they'd rather shun those who find themselves in the unfortunate situation of being unmarried, young, and pregnant.

After all, a culture that denys its youth access to birth control and then shuns girls who get pregnant, brands them whores, sends them away, and destroys their future couldn't possibly prompt pregnant teens to opt for abortion, could it? At the base of this is just an outright hatred of women, and a fear of female sexuality and female empowerment. Rep. Liston wants us to return to the good ol' days when women's sexuality was treated as something that didn't exist, and women were denied power over their bodies, their futures, their lives, by the very cultural mores that he lauds. And, by the way, as far as I know, the men were never branded as sluts in those good ol' days.

Liston later apologized:

The derogatory term I used was offensive and inappropriate and I would like to apologize for using it.

To my mind, though, this is a non-apology. He apologizes for using the term "slut". But it doesn't matter what word he uses; it's the notion behind it that is offensive. I would only be satisfied by an apology that recognized the misogyny in Liston's original statement, and rejected it outright. I won't be holding my breath.

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