Dana Goldstein

Me on CNN.com

We discuss Mark and Jenny Sanford. I'm the cynic. I suggested a divorce might be the best thing for everyone involved...

On "Mistress"

Whether it's the John Edwards saga or the Mark Sanford story, it seems a lot of folks are throwing around the word "mistress" these days. But isn't the term hopelessly old-fashioned -- and just a little bit demeaning to the women involved? For me it fails the basic sniff test for sexism: There is no equivalent term to describe a married woman's male lover.

This is totally unscientific, but I agree with Wikipedia's description of the word : "there is the implication that a mistress may be 'kept'—i.e., that the man is paying for some of the woman's living expenses, or provides her with an allowance." And while this may have been true in the case of John Edwards and Rielle Hunter, it's certainly not the case for Mark Sanford's lover, Maria Belen Chapur, a former journalist who lives with her two children in a luxurious Buenos Aires apartment building. A divorcee, Belen Chapur first met Sanford on a trip to Uruguay, and the couple subsequently spent time together in New York City and the Hamptons.

Then there's that other, more contemporary use of the term "mistress" -- as a synonym for "dominatrix," as in S&M play. But I don't think that's what any headline writer was thinking when they chose the term!

cross-posted at TAPPED

Photo of Rielle Hunter filming John Edwards via Flickr user Chuckumentary.

The Death of Macho?

Photo of women workers in Nepal by Libby Abbott, via Flickr.

In the latest issue of Foreign Policy, Reihan Salam argues that the global financial crisis will lead to "the death of macho." It's a provocative essay, and well worth a read. And while I don't want to diminish the world-historical importance of the shift from an industrial to an information economy -- and the impact that will have on men in particular -- I'm not nearly as convinced as Reihan that the upside of all this will be huge gains for feminism.

Of course, it's true that 80 percent of all American jobs lost during this recession were held by men. But that is due to occupational segregation; blue-collar men have always had access to better, higher-paying jobs than blue-collar women. The collapse of the American manufacturing sector is ending that stable lifestyle for non-college-educated men and the families they support. But it isn't clear at all that blue-collar women, who've been stuck in service-sector jobs, are benefiting from their husbands' and brothers' misfortunes. Instead, the result could be continued rising class inequality, as both working-class women and men get stuck in the service economy with irregular hours, poor pay, and no benefits.

Meanwhile, in many parts of the non-Western world, women remain radically underrepresented in the labor force. In Iran, for example, where feminist frustration is a key driver of the reform movement, only 13 percent of women have paid work outside the home. Presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi actually had campaign advertisements promising to help women gain access to the job market. But during times of high male unemployment, women typically have more trouble, not less, finding work. This is doubly true in traditional societies that still have not fully accepted women in public roles.

In short, there are significant global political barriers to women's economic independence -- especially in the many, many nations where sex discrimination is written into the legal code. But there are also barriers in the United States, where women are disproportionately affected by many of the problems of poverty, from single parenthood, to the sub-prime mortgage crisis, to lack of health insurance.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Me on Bloggingheads

The wonderful Michelle Goldberg and I discuss Michael Jackson, Mark Sanford, the women of Iran, and Sarkozy's proposed burqa ban.

Me on MSNBC

We talk about health care -- kinda sorta. My mom says I need to smile more, and I wholly agree.

Douthat on Love

Ross Douthat is the author of a book arguing that marriage-promotion -- even among the very poor and the very young -- should be a major goal of national social policy. He has an aversion to birth control and abortion. He has even written about his own efforts to stay sexually chaste. So it is surprising that Douthat now writes, "Our meritocrats could stand to leaven their careerism with a little more romantic excess."

What's responsible for Douthat's change of heart? Like me, he is currently reading Cristina Nehring's A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the Twenty-First Century, which uses the lives of literary greats to argue that foolish love -- passion, sex, and even obsession -- fuels genius and productivity. Nehring believes that today's college-educated professionals have sanitized love through feminism and "companionate marriages," focusing too much on child-rearing and real estate acquisition, and not enough on sex. This line of argument offers Douthat an opportunity to engage in one of his favorite pastimes: attacking the culture of affluent liberals. "The same overclass that was once most invested in erotic experimentation ended up building the sturdiest walls against the passions it unleashed," he clucks.

But make no mistake -- the likely appeal of Nehring's work, for Douthat, lies in its negative assessment of feminism as an anti-romantic killjoy. This is a major flaw in Nehring's book; she treats feminism, as an ideology, as if it ceased to exist in the 1980s during the internecine wars over the acceptability of pornography and heterosexual relationships. In fact, feminism is a dynamic movement that has continued to evolve over the last two decades. Many feminists call themselves "sex-positive." Some sex workers identify as feminist and even strive to create feminism-friendly pornography. Some feminists are anti-marriage altogether. Others advocate open relationships because they are inherently skeptical of sexual monogamy.

Yet Douthat buys, hook, line, and sinker, into Nehring's reductive analysis of feminism as anti-sex. One possible solution to dull marriages, he suggests, is less equity between marriage partners. He's not talking about the kind of sexual power-play that Nehring adores. Rather, he suggests that highly educated men are "ideal soulmates" for less-educated women, who could benefit from the economic stability such men offer as husbands and fathers. The problem is that many highly educated men want to marry women who share their intellectual interests. And what single moms need -- more than a rich husband who may or may not make them and their kids happy -- are social supports such as decent jobs, health care, child care, and schools.

Those topics aren't sexy, though. I get that.

Photo by Susan Etheridge for The New York Times

cross-posted at TAPPED

Nixon's Outrageously Racist Abortion Statement

There is something really fishy about people who seem unable to talk about abortion without also talking about race. First, there's the Mike Huckabee/Sam Brownback version of the disease: Folks who compare abortion to the Holocaust and slavery. The implication is clear: The lives of fully sentient human beings living outside the womb, those who were murdered in the Holocaust or enslaved and raped during slavery, have the same value as a fetus. Respectful!

Now the New York Times reports that on the day Roe v. Wade was decided, President Nixon expressed -- on tape, of course -- ambivalence. In some situations, abortion "breaks the family," he said. But when it came to interracial couples, Nixon fully supported abortion -- six years after the Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia. "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he said, adding that rape was also such a situation.

Well. Being racist is about the worst reason ever to be pro-choice. And about the worst reason ever to be anti-choice. Just saying.

cross-posted at TAPPED

SCOTUS: School Districts Must Pay for Private Special-Ed Costs

Amid the excitement over yesterday's Supreme Court ruling upholding key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, another decision was lost in the shuffle: In Forest Grove School District v. T.A., the Court reaffirmed that local school districts must reimburse the parents of special education students for private school costs. The case concerned a high school student, "T.A.," who, after years of public schooling, was placed in a $5,200 a month boarding school, and thereafter diagnosed with a number of learning disabilities. T.A.'s home school district, in Oregon, is now on the line for those fees.

Many education reformers will be disgruntled with this decision: In D.C., for example, gadfly schools superintendent Michelle Rhee has frequently cited special education costs as a major road block to her planned overhaul of the public schools, which includes a merit pay proposal that would allow teachers to earn as much as $130,000 a year. As the New York Times reports, about 90,000 American special-ed students are enrolled in private school, most of them there via a referral from a public school that is footing the bill. Last year New York City paid $89 million in private school special-ed tuition. The city had filed an amicus brief in support of Forest Grove.

In the decision -- in which only Justices David Souter, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas dissented -- the Court actually expanded the situations under which public schools are responsible for these costs, saying that student tuition must be provided even if the child was never classified as "special ed" by the public district itself.

Diagnoses of autism-spectrum disorders and ADHD are increasing faster than many schools can deal with them, so parents of special-ed students will undoubtedly celebrate this decision. But that won't quiet debates over whether such large revenue streams should be directed toward educating just a few students outside of the public system -- especially amid state budget crises, when so many public schools are in dire need of financial support.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Iran and the Veil

Photo from Tehran by Farhad Rajabali, via Flickr

The photos coming out of Tehran demonstrate, movingly and beautifully, that women are on the front lines of the protests taking place there, veils and all. The images reminded me of President Obama's focus on the hijab during his June 4 Middle East policy speech from Cairo. Obama chose the issue because it was one on which he could forge an alliance with moderate and conservative Islamists at the expense of our traditional allies in Western Europe. "I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal," he said.

Yet the photos show, quite clearly, that women are chafing against the limitations of the veil. Look how far back they push the scarves; under an "equal" system, is there any doubt these women would be ripping the veils from their heads? That's not to deny that many women do wear the hijab gladly, even in Iran. But by hailing the supposed "choice" involved, we provide cover for authoritarian regimes, like Iran's, that really don't want to provide women with any choice at all in the matter. If anything, the focus on the hijab has often served as a distraction from the underlying oppression the veil represents. As Iranian sociologist Fatemeh Sadeghi wrote in a widely circulated 2008 essay, “Why We Say No to Forced Hijab,” the veil has "nothing to do with morality and religion. It is all about power."

And the fact is that women have very little power under Iranian law. They cannot run for president. If they ask for a divorce, they are highly unlikely to win any subsequent custody battle. Polygamy is legal and was even encouraged by the Ahmadinejad regime as an antidote to female unemployment! Only 13 percent of women participate in the paid work force, compared to over 25 percent in Turkey and over 38 percent in Indonesia. With the permission of a court, fathers can even arrange marriages for daughters under age 13. And in the past year, feminist movement leaders have been arrested and jailed by the regime.

Neo-conservatives have often used women's rights as a justification for ill-conceived U.S. military interventions abroad. Yet in Iran this week, we are getting a look at what a real, homegrown feminist movement looks like. American policy-makers from both the left and right should be paying attention. We owe these women support and admiration -- not condescension.

For further reading: Sexual Politics in Modern Iran, by Janet Afary, and the latest issue of the Middle East Report

cross-posted at TAPPED

New Front in Abortion Wars: The Kansas Governor's Mansion

Sam Brownback with a young supporter at the 2007 CPAC conference in D.C. Photo via Flickr user VictoryNH.

On the heels of Dr. George Tiller's May 31 murder outside his Wichita church, the state of Kansas has, once again, become the nation's foremost battleground over reproductive rights. In recent years Kansas tilted left, in large part due to the leadership of former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a pro-choice moderate. But now, retiring Sen. Sam Brownback -- a conservative Catholic and national spokesman for the anti-abortion rights movement -- has a clear path to the GOP gubernatorial nomination, and is considered the favorite over any potential Democratic nominee.

If elected, Brownback will have an enthusiastic, Republican state legislature to work with on rolling back reproductive rights. It's worth remembering that Sebelius' HHS secretary nomination was almost derailed by that body, which forced her to deal with a series of divisive abortion-related bills during her Senate confirmation hearings. Brownback would certainly unleash those forces, moving forward on legislation that would require doctors performing late-term abortions to submit, in writing, exactly what medical risks "justify" the procedure. In April, in one of her last acts as governor, Sebelius vetoed that bill, which also would have allowed the husbands and parents of patients to sue abortion providers if they suspected the pregnant woman's health wasn't really at risk. The bill was intended to intimidate Dr. Tiller and his brethren out of business, and would stymie the work of Dr. Leroy Carhart, the physician who has promised to begin offering late-term abortions in Kansas in Tiller's stead.

Just to reiterate how radical Sam Brownback is on abortion: He regularly compares abortion to slavery and Jim Crow, and believes the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause applies to fetuses. He opposes abortion rights even in cases of rape and incest, or when the pregnant woman's health is at risk. While campaigning in the GOP presidential primary in 2007, Brownback chose abortion as "the most pressing moral issue in the U.S. today." He also said the repeal of Roe v. Wade would be "a glorious day of human liberty and freedom."

cross-posted at TAPPED

During Recession, Reimagining the American Male

The idea that this recession represents a feminist watershed is, sadly, bunk. While it's true that 49 percent of the work force is female and that men are getting laid off at a faster rate than women, occupational segregation means that women are still more likely to be employed in jobs with irregular hours, no benefits, and without union representation. Sixty percent of children living in poverty are supported by single moms, often young women who have very few options for stable employment with middle-class wages.

All that said, there is some truth to the ubiquitous commentary about the recession shifting assumptions on gender, work, and domesticity -- at least among the college educated. Consider this: Between 1995 and 2005, the number of self-employed Americans increased by 27 percent, to 9 million. As Emily Bazelon writes in Sunday's Times Magazine, many of those workers were creative class freelancers, drawn to the Fast Company mantra, as articulated in that dot-com bible in 1997: "The main chance is becoming a free agent in an economy of free agents. ... You create a message and a strategy to promote the brand called You.”

Unsurprisingly, this lifestyle -- which embraced risk, instability, and even narcissism -- was more appealing (and more accessible) to men than to women. Only about a third of all self-employed workers in America are female. And because the recession is hitting freelancers especially hard, some couples are finding that dad -- once proudly self-employed and free-spirited -- is now contributing less than mom to the family's coffers, and is thus due for some serious diaper-changing or floor-scrubbing duty.

One such dad, Aaron Traister, has written a refreshingly honest essay for Salon. For starters, Traister admits that the reason he stays home with his son is not just because he's an awesome father, but also because he is, simply stated, less professionally successful than his wife. "I've always been a flake," he admits. "Whether it's my career or school or creative pursuits, I never seem to follow through, and I have a terrible habit of believing that I am smarter than the people I work for and with. I'm a flake and a schmuck."

But after initial successes in preparing dinners and taking his son on nature walks, Traister finds that his sense of masculinity is, in fact, deeply threatened by stay-at-home parenting. He stops cooking. He starts acting obnoxious to his wife and bragging at dinner parties about how he used to be "butch," working as a bouncer and in a prison. Of course, since this is a personal essay, Traister reaches the point of redemption. While shoveling snow with his son, he realizes that being a man has more to do with testosterone and imparting good values to his children than with having a traditional career. And I think Traister settles upon a really key issue for feminism: that so many men's notions of masculinity have failed to catch up with reality. He writes:

As many of us (for whatever reason) find ourselves in a fiduciary timeout, we should not only think about how to repower the American worker but how to reimagine the American man. The moment our mothers entered the workforce and shattered expectations, the rules about gender roles in this country changed completely, even if our perceptions didn't. Trying to live like our grandfathers is no longer an option.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Sotomayor, Souter, and Identity Politics

One of the clear effects of the Sotomayor nomination is that we're going to be talking -- a lot -- about affirmative action, for the first time in awhile. Of course, there is the rehearsed sense of outrage, from conservatives, that this Hispanic woman was nominated at all. So many qualified white men were available for the job! But is there any evidence that Judge Sotomayor's actual legal opinions on matters of race and gender vary from those of the white dude she would replace on the Court, David Souter? In short, no -- at least not yet.

The Court will soon release its decisions in two cases with gender and race implications: Safford Unified School District v. Redding, which considers the legality of a strip-search of a 13-year old girl, and Ricci v. DeStefano, which deals with the city of New Haven's decision to cancel the results of a firefighters' exam after no black applicant scored high enough to qualify for a promotion. Ricci comes to the Supreme Court from Judge Sotomayor's Second Circuit Court, where she sided with the liberal majority, upholding New Haven's right to cancel the firefighter test results. And in a case similar to Redding, Sotomayor questioned the legality of strip-searches. Unless Souter votes in one or both of these cases to overturn Sotomayor's decision, it seems to me there is little meat to Republican claims that Sotomayor will significantly move the Court to the left in terms of identity politics.

So what are Souter's likely opinions on these cases? When it comes to race, in 2003 he voted with the majority to uphold elements of the University of Michigan's affirmative action program in admissions. In 2007 Souter sided with the minority that wanted to allow municipalities to consider race in assigning students to public schools, in order to foster integration. And during the Ricci hearings, Souter was clearly sympathetic toward New Haven's position, not that of the disgruntled firefighters. From the bench, he said "the most reasonable reading" of the conflict between the test results and New Haven's civil rights obligations was to "[give] the city an opportunity, assuming good faith, to start again" and design a new test. In short, David Souter is a white man who doesn't pretend to live in a color-blind world. He has never shown the tendency of, say, swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy, to pretend racial discrimination does not exist, or that it has no significant public policy ramifications.

In the Redding strip-search case, Souter's decision is less of a forgone conclusion, since he suggested during arguments that if the drug the school had been searching for had been stronger than ibuprofen, he might be sympathetic to the idea that a humiliating strip-search was necessary. "The ... reasonable analysis in the principal's mind is, 'Better embarrassment than violent sickness or death,'" Souter mused from the bench.

Yet as Adam has eloquently written, it is really the Ricci case, more than any other, that is animating Washington Republicans at the moment. Unless Souter surprises us and votes to overturn the Second Circuit's Ricci ruling, I simply don't see an anti-affirmative action campaign against Sotomayor gaining much traction.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Are Doctors Biased Against Non-Hormonal Birth Control?

As a young teenager, I had a really cheesy poster on my bedroom wall entitled "How to Be a Fabulous Feminist." One of the items on the list was "Visualize perfect birth control." At the age of 14, this confounded me. Weren't the pill and condoms supposed to work pretty much perfectly?

Of course, adults learn that no birth control method is without its flaws. One of the most common methods used by adult couples -- the birth control pill -- is also the one most fraught for many women. The pill can be expensive, and it has many noticeable side effects, ranging from dry eyes and weight gain to blood clots, headaches, and even anxiety and depression. Birth control pills are serious medication that fool a woman's body into thinking and acting as if it were pregnant. Going on or coming off the pill creates a massive change in hormonal body chemistry, affecting one's mood and sense of physical well-being.

Are there "more perfect" options out there -- perhaps non-hormonal options? Today on the Prospect site, I report on a new paper, published in the journal Contraception, arguing that sex-educators and medical researchers give the withdrawal method another look. Yep, that's "pulling out," and although it provides no protection against STIs, one study found couples who use the method perfectly experience only a four percent failure rate in terms of unintended pregnancies, compared to a 2 percent failure rate for the male condom. Of "typical" withdrawal users (those who sometimes mess up), 18 percent will become pregnant over the course of a year, compared to 17 percent of "typical" condom users.

As I write, the implications of all this for sex-education are far from clear. Teenagers are a special demographic group with their own set of risk factors. But what should adults take away from these numbers? According to one study, 56 percent of women rely, at least occasionally, on withdrawal. There is a real desire out there for non-condom, non-hormonal birth control. Monogamous couples do want to prevent pregnancy, but many simply aren't sold on either of the two most popular methods. And withdrawal is not the only -- and probably not the best -- of the alternatives.

"The whole group of non-hormonal options does tend to be treated with a bias," sex-educator Heather Corinna told me. "You do have a lot of reporting from patients saying it’s hard for them to get support from their health care providers against hormonal methods, including diaphragms and cervical caps. Any approach like that from any health care provider is really inappropriate."

It's anecdotal, but it seems true to me. I, for example, am a migraine sufferer who has had trouble finding a birth control pill that doesn't give me more headaches, yet no doctor has ever encouraged me to consider an IUD, cervical cap, or diaphragm. What's to blame? Pharmaceutical companies are highly invested in marketing birth control pills to women and doctors, of course. But it's also a question of simple consumer education -- until women and men are encouraged in school, by their partners, and by the medical profession to visualize birth control that truly works for them, they may not realize there are decent options out there other than the pill. Have we found the "perfect" birth control? Not yet. But there's no reason to stop looking.

cross-posted at TAPPED

A Good Argument Against Opting Out

Late last week, everyone was buzzing about Edmund Andrews' Times Magazine piece, in which he documented his family's descent into a sub-prime mortgage and crippling debt -- all despite the fact that Andrews earns a generous $120,000 annually as a New York Times staff writer. Megan McArdle spent the weekend reading the book from which the piece was excerpted, and she confirms what I suspected: that Andrews' troubles can be traced back, rather clearly, to his habit of marrying women who have opted out of the work force.

The precipitating cause of Andrews' financial problems were a divorce and a rather hasty second marriage, to a woman named Patty. Andrews and Patty dated bi-coastally for one year before Patty and her 10-year old daughter moved from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The couple merged their households and bought a half-million-dollar suburban home immediately, despite the fact that Andrews was paying his first wife $4,000 each month in alimony and child support. That left him with just $2,777 in take-home pay -- and with a new wife who hadn't held a full-time job since the early 1980s.

Unsurprisingly, at first, Patty was unable to secure a middle-income job. When she finally did, she was fired less than a year later. Patty's ex, meanwhile, was in arrears on his $700/month in child support. That meant Andrews was attempting to support two women and four children, essentially maintaining two totally separate households.

Megan's interpretation is that Andrews "couldn't afford to get married. At all." In fact, what Andrews couldn't afford was to marry women unprepared to participate in the work force. (And if he was going to do so, he really should have rented instead of bought real estate.) I'm not suggesting that people in love shouldn't get married. Rather, life is precarious, both emotionally and financially. An effective way for women to inure themselves and their children against this precariousness, at least somewhat, is to work -- regardless of their marital status.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Legacy Preferences...At Public Elementary Schools?

My new column today discusses why the public school choice movement must embrace the rights of urban kids to transfer into high-performing suburban schools. Unfortunately, in many communities the tide is shifting away from the socioeconomic integration of suburban schools, not toward it. Here is a particularly egregious story out of California: In the uber-affluent districts of Beverly Hills and Santa Monica-Malibu, the public schools are admitting out-of-district students who are children of alumni. In exchange, the kids' parents or grandparents sometimes give generous donations. Yep -- these are legacy preferences.

Beverly Hills High does host a program in which high-achieving, non-white Los Angeles students are allowed to attend the school with a "diversity permit." Education research shows, though, that early intervention is key for low-income children. These districts suffer no paucity of funding. If they are going to open their elementary school doors to outsiders, why not reach out to the neediest children instead of the most privileged? I guess the answer to that is that the folks running these systems simply are not motivated by social consciousness.

Hat tip: Alexander Russo, who calls these policies "gross." Indeed.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Obama and the Abortion-Jim Crow Analogy

The main thrust of Obama's Notre Dame commencement address yesterday was finding common ground on reproductive health issues such as abortion and stem cell research. But toward the end of the speech, he switched gears, mentioning the 55th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board decision ending de jure school segregation.

Brown was of course the first major step in dismantling the "separate but equal" doctrine, but it would take a number of years and a nationwide movement to fully realize the dream of civil rights for all of God's children.

The juxtaposition of the two topics struck me, because the most ardent anti-abortion rights activists often compare abortion to slavery and Jim Crow. This is a favorite tactic of Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, for instance, a national spokesperson for conservative Catholic positions on social issues. The same logic leads many evangelical and Catholic youth groups to teach children that they are "survivors" of a mass "holocaust" -- a holocaust of embryos and fetuses since Roe v. Wade.

I doubt the president's speech was written to consciously rebut this theory. Nevertheless, given the familiarity of many in the Notre Dame audience with anti-choice activism, some listeners undoubtedly made the connection.

--Dana Goldstein

Is the Electorate Tilting "Pro-Life?"

Earlier this week, Ross Douthat's latest column and a new Pew survey garnered attention for claiming that more Americans than ever support legal restrictions on abortion. This morning, Gallup released a poll with the cat-nip headline, "More Americans 'Pro-Life' than 'Pro-Choice' for First Time." You will be hearing about this. According to Gallup, one year ago, 50 percent of Americans considered themselves "pro-choice" and 44 percent "pro-life." But this year, Gallup's numbers have flipped, with 51 percent of Americans identifying as "pro-life" and 42 percent as "pro-choice."

Yesterday, Nate Silver did an admirable job of culling survey results on abortion over the last decade, showing that these latest number are, quite likely, outliers. What's more, while it's true that Generation Y is less firmly pro-choice than Gen X or the Baby Boomers, we are more pro-choice than our grandparents in the 65+ crowd. That is politically significant, because those oldest voters are the ones we are gradually replacing in the electorate. That means the United States is likely to remain a moderately pro-choice nation well into the future.

So what could account for the recent Pew and Gallup polls showing a significant change since last year in people's self-identification on "choice"? Explanations are speculative, especially since abortion has not been much in the news; concern about the economy, torture, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been far bigger stories. Silver suggests the Palin family may have affected some voters, but I'm skeptical. Let's face it, Trig is pretty cute, but his parents are adults. Meanwhile, a lot of Americans wondered, out loud, whether 17-year-old Bristol Palin even considered an abortion. I don't think there are very many people who see the Palins as role-models.

A more likely explanation is that endless coverage of rare, late-term abortion -- combined with complacency due to abortion's long-term legality -- has made many Americans "squishy" on the issue, open to various restrictions while still supportive of general access to the procedure. In addition, Barack Obama hasn't gone out of his way to identify as "pro-choice" on the national stage, so the term may signal, to many young voters, a sort of old-fashioned, 1970s attitude. But in general, I think we should be wary of reading too much into two polls. Longer-term trend lines confirm that we are living in a country divided on abortion but with a clear preference for choice in most circumstances.

cross-psoted at TAPPED

Two New Pieces -- About Sex!

Today, I review two new biographies, of sex researchers Masters and Johnson and of longtime Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown. What links them? Lessons on the complications of mixing sex and work:

"I've never worked anywhere without being sexually involved with somebody in the office."

So said Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan magazine for over 30 years, in a 1982 interview. When the reporter asked Gurley Brown if she had any ethical or feminist compunction about sleeping with a boss, she replied, "Why discriminate against him?"

And yesterday, I reported on porn industry lobbying efforts during the economic crisis:

In a time of economic crisis, lawmakers are more likely to give the porn industry grief than gratitude. Legislators in California, New York, Florida, Texas, and Washington state recently proposed stemming budget losses through various skin tariffs, ranging from a Magnum-sized 25 percent sales tax on X-rated movies to a $5 "pole tax" on visits to strip clubs.

Mark Halperin: Oh Noes, A Woman Might Get the Job!

You know what is so offensive? Those damn P.C. police pressuring the president to place a second woman on the Supreme Court. You know, because it's not embarrassing or anything that although 51 percent of the population is female, only 11 percent of the Court is. And it's not like the Court routinely makes decisions that affect women's health and very autonomy! No, siree. Let's get a white dude in there!

To be serious for a moment, we should expect a whole lot more of this as the nomination process gets underway. But since there are so many eminently qualified women of all races, I have to assume that anybody who makes this complaint is really just, in their heart of hearts, offended by diversity and equality in representation.

Hat tip: Eric Kleefeld.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Obama on Gender and the Recession

For me, the most fascinating segment of Obama's New York Times Magazine interview with David Leonhardt was the one on how the recession is impacting gender roles. Leonhardt begins with the premise -- a false one -- that the recession is primarily impacting men, especially on a sort of psychic level. He likens the situation to that of Obama's grandfather, who is portrayed in Dreams From My Father as feeling less-than -- in terms of masculinity -- because he earned less than his wife, a bank manager.

LEONHARDT: I think there are a lot of men out there today, working at G.M. and Chrysler and other places, who feel the same kind of dejection that your grandfather did. What do you think the future of work looks like for men?

THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s an interesting question, because as I said, you know, you go in to factories all across the Midwest and you talk to the men who work there — they’ve got extraordinary skill and extraordinary pride in what they make. And I think that for them, the loss of manufacturing is a loss of a way of life and not just a loss of income.

The thing is, this is not a male economic crisis. There is no nationwide pandemic of women out-earning men. Indeed, the opposite is true; women continue to earn just 78 cents on the male dollar, even for the same work, with the same educational background, and the same number of years on the job. Women still make up slightly less than half the workforce (49 percent). And while it is true that four of five jobs lost in this economic crisis -- so far -- were held by men, that speaks mostly to the inequalities borne of occupational gender segregation. Men are losing more jobs because they had more of the good, unionized jobs in construction and manufacturing to begin with.

In other words, just because men are losing-out, it doesn't mean women are winning. A recession is no time for a battle of the sexes. Rather, it's a time to remember that as more and more families lose the salary of male breadwinners, we must make sure that the jobs held by women pay better and have better benefits. Obama goes on in the interview to discuss the importance of attracting men to professions like nursing and teaching. The same logic should be applied to women getting into "green jobs" in sectors such as transportation and construction.

cross-posted at TAPPED