Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters (9 page)

One New York City website called Holla Back catches street harassers in the act and publishes their pictures online. Readers are encouraged to take pictures of would-be flashers and harassers with their camera phones and send them in with their stories. (“If you can’t slap ’em, snap ’em” is their motto. Perfect.)
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The organization RightRides, which you learned about in Chapter 1, offers free rides home to women who are out late on the weekends.

There are even organizations dedicated to educating men about violence against women—there aren’t a lot of them, but they’re there. Men Can Stop Rape is an organization that provides training for younger men and boys on violence and gender equality. We could use a lot more organizations like this. Remember: This is not just women’s problem!

And these are just a few examples. Across the country, young women are thinking of new ways to take the battle against violence into their own hands. And you can too. You have to.

It’s not news that women’s reproductive rights are under attack. Shit, by the time I’m done writing this sentence, another state will probably outlaw abortion. And if there’s any issue that’s associated with feminism, it’s abortion. Because feminists eat babies. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)

Feminist baby-eating aside, repro rights are about more than abortion and birth control. They’re about being able to have sex when we want to. They’re about having affordable, accessible contraception. They’re about being able to control our bodies even if we can’t drive a car or vote yet. And if we’re feeling parental, they’re also about being allowed to have children. Unfortunately, these seemingly reasonable things are a lot more complicated than they should be. Especially for young women.

We don’t hear that much about how reproductive rights is a young women’s issue. I mean, we
are
the fertile ones, right? Not only are young women more likely to get pregnant, we’re also more likely to have restrictions on our contraceptive choices and pregnancy options. That’s why it’s so important that we be on top of this shit. Repro rights is the one issue that mainstream U.S. women’s organizations have been focusing on for a long time—but younger women are at the center of the battle, so we have to take our rightful place in it.

There’s something else about women’s repro rights that isn’t talked about that much—the
real
reason behind the anti-abortion, anti-contraception nonsense. At the heart of it all, it’s truly about just hating sex, or at least hating that women have sex. There’s a lot of talk about life and morals, but it’s nonsense. To the people who want to limit your choices, it’s about slut-punishing. They are completely terrified of girls having The Sex. So much so that they’d rather see us pregnant or with an STD than give us the tools to have The Sex safely. Shit, they’re even making up bizarre stories about birth control-based teen sex cults (I’m not joking).

If we want anything to change, we can’t forget this. Plus, we can make fun of them for being all prudey.

Nothing exemplifies the real motives of the anti-sexers as much as their stance on birth control. They talk a big game about how bad abortion is, but most of them don’t say much about contraception. That’s because they don’t want you to
know what they really think—that birth control is bad. They don’t want you to use it. Ever. Now why in the world would the people who hate abortion so much want you to forgo the one thing that keeps you from getting pregnant?

Because it’s for sluts. Seriously. According to Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis (who tried to remove a state requirement that sex ed classes teach contraception), birth control is “a way to have all the goodies and not pay the price,” the “price” being pregnancy, of course. That’s your punishment for being a big ol’ whore.

The idea is that only sluts use contraception, because only sluts would have premarital sex. And when you have sex while you’re married, you should be trying to pop out babies, so no birth control for you, either.

Basically, it’s more of the same “sex is bad and shameful” crap. Sex isn’t supposed to be fun, so they’re not about to make it easy.

The bottom line? They don’t care about our health. They don’t care about increasing the number of abortions (which will inevitably happen if we don’t have birth control access). All they care about is making sure that women aren’t having sex, and that if we are, we’re “punished.” Period. But of course, most of them won’t admit that.

I mean, even President Bush refuses to say whether he is for or against birth control. In 2005, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan refused to give Bush’s stance
on birth control. Since then, members of Congress have sent him four different letters asking him point blank whether he is for or against birth control—they’ve gotten no answer. Bush and the other anti-sexers know that if they let out how they
really
feel about contraception, too many people will catch on to their true agenda.

They know that the majority of Americans support birth control. Using contraception isn’t some radical idea—it’s pretty frigging normal. In fact, 99 percent of women will use birth control at one point in their lives.

That’s why anti-choicers are so disturbing. Despite the fact that the majority of us think birth control is fine and dandy, lawmakers, powerful organizations, and even the president are creating new ways to keep birth control away from us every day.

Check this one out: At publication time, a lawmaker in Wisconsin, Representative Daniel LeMahieu, is close to banning birth control from being distributed in any of that state’s colleges. And again—it’s all about The Sex or, in this case, fear of spring break. (Cue scary music.) LeMahieu got all bent out of shape when he saw an ad in a University of Wisconsin campus paper that recommended picking up some emergency contraception (EC) before heading out for spring break. Most would say a smart idea, no? Everyone knows that plenty of The Sexing goes on during spring break, and that in case a condom breaks it’s good to have backup birth control. That’s not exactly how LeMahieu saw it: “I am outraged that our public institutions are giving young college women the tools for having promiscuous sexual relations, whether on campus or thousands of miles away on spring break.”
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Girls Gone Wild on Birth Control! Because who among us hasn’t gotten a little wet in the panties when confronted with contraception? That plastic case is just so . . . sexy. Anyway, this ad started LeMahieu on his banning-birth-control crusade—it’s just a matter of time before colleges in other states follow his lead.

Unfortunately, it’s not just on college campuses that we can’t get birth control. Women of all ages are being denied contraception at the one place you’re supposed to be able to get it—the pharmacy. Imagine this: You take your monthly trip to the local pharmacy for your birth control pills. When you hand your prescription slip to the pharmacist, he randomly asks you if you’re married or if you’re using the pills to regulate your period. When you answer him (even though you’d like to smack him silly and tell him it’s none of his business), you say that you use the pill for the reason most women do—to avoid getting pregnant—and no,
you’re not married. He tells you sorry, but he can’t fill the prescription—he doesn’t believe in premarital sex. Even when you inform him it doesn’t really matter what
he
thinks, he still refuses. It gets so bad that you have to go find a police officer to escort you into the store and
force
him to give you your pills.

Sounds ridiculous (and fucking annoying), but this is what actually happened to college student Amanda Phiede in 2004 in Wisconsin—and that’s just one woman’s story.
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Pharmacists all over the country have been straight-up refusing to give women birth control, even though it’s their job. And because of the introduction of something called “conscience clause laws,” they’re getting away with it. Thirteen states have introduced laws that would allow pharmacists, nurses, and other healthcare professionals to refuse to distribute medication that goes against their moral, ethical, or religious beliefs. So essentially, if a pharmacist thinks that premarital sex is wrong, they don’t have to give you your pills. If contraception is against
their
religion, they don’t have to dispense
your
medication. I don’t know about you, but when I go to the pharmacy I just want my pills, not a lecture about someone else’s morals.

By the way, notice that pharmacists aren’t refusing to give men condoms or grilling them about their marital status. The anti-sexers really only focus on women (since we’re the keepers of the all-powerful hymen, I guess).

I joke, but this is a huge deal. First it’s birth control. Next thing you know, nurses are refusing to treat gay
patients because homosexuality is against their religion. It’s scary shit.

And while some states are creating laws that would force pharmacists and healthcare professionals to dispense contraception (you know, ’cause it’s their job), it’s not stopping anti-sexers from stooping to new lows.

Dan Gransinger, a pharmacist at Kmart in Scottsdale, Arizona, wrote a letter to the editor of
The Arizona Republic
recommending that other pharmacists who have a problem dispensing emergency contraception simply lie to their female customers:

Yes, he actually wrote this. You have to love how nonchalant he is about lying. As if it’s no big deal . . . not to mention illegal.

We cannot let women be kept from their legal right to birth control! These new state laws that force pharmacists to do their jobs are a good first step, but with nutties like Gransinger around, it’s clear that laws aren’t enough. Find out about the birth control policies of your local pharmacist—make sure that women in your area aren’t being denied their right to birth control.

There has been way too much confusion (put out there deliberately, mind you) about what exactly EC is. Is it the abortion pill? Is it birth control? Let’s get this out of the way once and for all: Emergency contraception is
not
abortion.

And don’t think for a second that you’re uninformed or stupid because you didn’t know this. The same folks who are trying to make sure that you don’t have birth control are also trying to make sure that you are confused, and they are succeeding. A lot more people are against abortion than birth control. If they can make a form of birth control seem like a form of abortion, then they’re closer to their goal of banning all birth control. They’re doing it in baby steps.

Emergency contraception, also called the morning-after pill, is basically a large dose of birth control pills. It prevents you from getting pregnant; it
doesn’t
end an existing pregnancy. EC will stop an egg from leaving the ovary, stop sperm from meeting the egg, or prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in your uterus. Despite the bullshit to the contrary, EC doesn’t end pregnancy; it stops pregnancy from happening. Medical abortion—which you can find out about at the end of this chapter—is something completely different. Glad we have that out of the way.

In addition to the attempt to confuse EC with abortion, the other big lie being told about EC is that—like birth control—it will make you whorish. Especially if you’re a teen girl. (Seems like anything will set us off on a fucking rampage, huh?) In fact, that’s the main reason that EC isn’t
available without a prescription. The FDA stalled for years on giving EC over-the-counter status, using young women and their potential sluttiness as the excuse. They only (grudgingly) okayed it for over-the-counter sale in 2006, and even now it’s only available to women over eighteen years old—leaving out the women who perhaps need it the most: young women. I speak from personal experience when I tell you that EC is definitely not something that makes you particularly horny. When I was seventeen years old, I took it and felt sick to my stomach all day afterward.

In a 2006 investigation into the FDA’s inappropriate lack of action on EC, a memo was found that shows just how insane the government has become over sex and young women. An FDA doctor said in the 2004 memo that one of the FDA heads, Dr. Janet Woodcock, expressed concern over EC and said that the FDA “could not anticipate or prevent extreme promiscuous behaviors, such as the medication taking on an ‘urban legend’ status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of [EC].”
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