How Not to Be a Stooge

Well, Atheist Week has come and gone (18-24 March), and the first practice of the year of the Atheist softball team I used to manage (another column, another time) is tomorrow. I figured I need to write something on that sort of theme. You can listen up, or in light of that, you can check out now, your choice. I'd say sit back down and listen to what I have to say, but hey, it's your call.

In an earlier column, I pointed out the fact that I derive major bits of my worldview from Confucianism. More accurately, I've always thought in parallel lines with that school of thought, even before I became aware of it, so when I did I was strongly drawn to it. Exactly how these things happen is hard to say. Actually, I can tell you exactly how this influence came to be, but it's not terribly exciting and I want to get to the good stuff now.

Over the years I've ingested so much of this stuff, it's just me now. It's great for the whole "having a moral compass" thing, but it's not terribly useful when trying to share or pass the ideas on. So in preparation for this column, I was looking back over one of my many different translations of The Analects, trying to find a good explanation of what about this way of thinking was so appealing.

D. C. Lau, in his introduction to his 1979 translation captures it better than anybody. He explains that at the very core of Confucian thinking lies the "unspoken, and therefore, unquestioned, assumption that the only purpose a man can have and also the only worthwhile thing a man can do is to become as good a man as possible. This is something that has to be pursued for its own sake and with complete indifference to success or failure" (12).

Now let's unpack this, because it's a huge and important idea. When beginning, there's nothing better than starting off with fundamentals and right principles, and this is ground zero. To hold the objective of being the best person you can possibly be...that is exactly what separates a serious person from the average guy. You either, in your heart, care, intensely, or you're lukewarm. You think that it is worthwhile to do the right thing as much as possible, and to always try to do it more and more, or you do it just when the act is convenient or has visibility. If you are the former, life is a frantic, restless search for how to be better, how to be more. You feverishly want to know the right thing to do, the right way to live. And if you're in the latter category, there's nothing preventing you from joining the former at some point.

The other huge point here--if you want it to count, the good you do and/or try to be has to be for its own sake. Not for show, and not for future reward. I've often found that everything has a price, but especially it's the case when tasked with doing the right thing. which could be unpopular, unappreciated, and misunderstood. If you start with this as your center, you can never go too far wrong.

Christianity in its modern generic form teaches us to obey. Indoctrination begins before you can even talk, and as you age it's very difficult to break out of it without coring a fundamental part of your identity out, sort of like drilling out too much to fix a cavity. Even if it has long since failed to do anything for you, you still go to church, pray, read scripture, just out of habit. It holds out rewards (God's grace, material prosperity [as proof of being among The Elect], and everlasting life) and punishment (estrangement from the asserted source of life [i.e., God], eternal punishment [Hell], etc). Whatever God approves of is good, and whatever he does not approve of is bad, by definition. So you want to do what God says, and you get rewarded. You definitely don't want to do want he doesn't like, or you'll get punished, and harshly. It's all about obeying and pleasing God. The scriptures harp repeatedly on behaving righteously to be pleasing to God and to receive His rewards.

All fine and dandy on paper, but in the real world we know that being good and being obedient to authority are sometimes mutually exclusive. When I'm told to do something but it seems wrong or unethical, I have to challenge that, and if my reservations aren't satisfied, I'm not doing it! I fail to obey, but I've done the right thing. If my core values were seeking approval from authority or securing a reward from myself, I'd be a much different person. I'd be less, and I'd be grossly disappointed in and ashamed of myself. I wouldn't be able to do the right thing a good portion of the time.

So you can aim low or you can aim higher. If you want to drift through life without thinking about it or struggling too much, you can be an obeyer. Abdicate responsibility for your moral choices to an abstract higher power. It seems harder, but actually it's a lot easier than to have to struggle day to day, reasoning if you have done the right thing, without the instant reset buttons of confession or being born again to erase your mistakes whenever you like. It's no fun to have to figure it out, to take the chance on being wrong, and to have to live with mistakes and go forward. Easier to buy into the franchise of thought that's already there, fully formed, ready for you to just add water and stir.

And this is why I love Confucius. You see, the source material for much of Confucian thought, the Lun Yu (aka The Analects) was not written by a supernatural being. It wasn't even written by Confucius, but rather by his students, who collected and revised his ideas after his death. You might say it's the collective document of an ideology at one snapshot in time.

As time went by, his followers could have claimed divine parentage for him. They could have usurped an earlier mystical tradition, like Judaism, and placed him at the center of its canon. They could have written in a scene of literal apotheosis before his death. They didn't. They knew to do so would be to go against everything he stood for. More than anything, Confucius wanted his students and followers to refine themselves by studying and self-examination, to become better people through their own efforts. (Part of this is to be able to read properly, which is more than ingesting ideas--it also means interpreting and critiquing them to see if they hold up.)

It was said that the supernatural is a topic he refused to speak on, and he outrightly refused to comment on life after death. To speak on these bizarre subjects would be an act, more or less, of speculation, and idle speculation is a distraction from the sorts of things you should be learning to straighten yourself out and make yourself a more substantial person. (Think about it: the fire and brimstone of hell and depiction of heaven is generally the most vivid but also the most pander-y thing about any sermon. It's a purely visceral emotional appeal that does nothing to aid your moral instruction. It's also quite circus freakshow-ish...think of how Jonathan Edwards likely had his audience eating out of his hand in sermons like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God...)

And anyhow, what did it matter? If the goal of being a good person was paramount, you're doing everything you can, anyhow. And if God exists, he'd have to be cool with that. But if not, you'd just have to stand against Him. Because right is right. Again, you're the person that does the right thing, or you're the person that panders to the bully. If the bully throws you in Hell for doing the right thing, you can easily re-imagine the scene between Thoreau and Emerson where Emerson asked him why he was in jail, and Thoreau in turn asked Emerson why he was not.

Folks will tell you that this is all garbage, that morality did not exist before Christianity. The chauvinism and small mindedness in such ideas are readily apparent, as this means all the non-Christian cultures are immoral (not just amoral). It also denies Christianity's debt to stoicism, Platonism, Judaism, and many of the mythic tropes it ripped off. And did Confucius not say, "Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire"? Sounds suspiciously like he ripped off the Golden Rule...except that Confucius died in 479 B.C.

Another prong of rebuttal would say that men are innately bad, and they can't be trusted to become good without some dire punishment, that we need hell because if there were no heaven and hell, people would hedonistically and savagely behave as they wished, without consequence.

It is instructive here to consider two major proponents of the Confucian school--Mencius and Xunzi. They differed on one fundamental point. Mencius thought man's essential nature was good, but in need of refinement (i.e., study and introspection for the sake of moral instruction). Xunzi thought the opposite; man's nature is essentially evil, and is in need of moral education, else he is not to be trusted. The latter led to Legalism, which imposed harsh punishments on the people and destroyed books--so that they could not become a basis for criticizing those in power--en masse.

Apologies to Xunzi. He's a superior philosopher whose work everyone should read. But to assume human nature is bad, no matter what carnage you've seen, is flabby thinking. If you assume that we (people) can't be trusted, that means you can't even trust that very idea (that people can't be trusted), because you're a person, and you thought it. I'm with Mencius. Our nature, if it must be broken down into such dichotomous terms, is good, and we can refine ourselves and make ourselves better.

So as A-Week draws to a close, if you would, take the time and think about what you're doing for your own moral instruction and improvement. Are you an obeyer, or are you trying to be better than you are now? What's your plan for it? Do you spend the time you could be using to strengthen yourself trying to please authority and be seen as good?

No school of thought is perfect, but that's the joy of study. You take the core ideas, work with them, and make them into something that has meaning and can do something for you. Nothing gets swallowed whole without it being interpreted and revised by you into something that makes sense. It's a creative act.

And Atheists, remember that you're not off the hook by any means. No God is ok, but living without a moral code, no matter what the source may be, is nihilism and oblivion. (And looking down at others for being in a different place than you is not cool, either.) Those of us who realize there is likely no life after death, or at least in a way in which will allow us to retain our identities, should be especially sensitive to the need to not waste what time we have left to us as who we are.

No matter what brush you paint yourself with, or wherever you are, we can do a lot better. To be good is the most important decision you'll ever make, and that goodness is more real if it comes from your own will and effort, and isn't derived from mere obedience. Don't stop, and in your darkest moments, don't be discouraged.

As Confucius said, "Good people strengthen themselves ceaselessly."

You are that good person.

Do it.

Kansas is My Enemy

Another guest column from my wife, while my next one bakes in the oven a bit longer. In light of today's Elite Eight games, seems like just the right time to run it...

I’m sitting here watching the beginnings of March Madness on TV with my husband, and so I’m thinking about basketball and the role it has assumed in my life.

I’m from Alabama, and so I am, by law of the state, a football fan, specifically an Alabama (Roll Tide!) fan. Since I grew up with a father who likes other sports (not golf, not hockey, not soccer), I do know something about basketball, but I wouldn’t say I’m as comfortable with or knowledgeable about it as I am with football.

Then I got married, and I married a man from North Carolina, where it is state law to love basketball. When we first started dating I knew that I would have to get more familiar with basketball, and more okay with watching a lot of basketball in March and the early part of April.

One day my spouse and I were discussing rivalries. In Alabama, you have one rival: Auburn. And if you’re an Alabama fan, you hate Auburn. You hate people who like Auburn, you hate the city of Auburn, you hate people who attend Auburn, you hate the colors orange and blue, and you hate tigers. I think that covers it. Oh, and even if Auburn isn’t playing Alabama, you root against Auburn in whatever sport they’re playing. If Auburn is playing Florida in lacrosse, you root for Florida.

This is what my husband didn’t understand. ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I root against Duke when they’re playing UNC, but I root for Duke if they’re playing Michigan State.’

‘Nope, not in Alabama. If you hate Auburn, you hate them completely,’ says I.

‘But they’re representing your state. Wouldn’t you rather a team from Alabama win?’

I just shook my head. How could I explain it? Maybe it’s that there are really only two main players in the sports world in Alabama. There’s Auburn and there’s Alabama. I mean, sure, you have UAB, but they don’t really count. But in North Carolina, you have Duke, UNC, NC State, and Wake Forest. All are reasonable contenders for basketball superiority.

Still I can’t understand how you can root against a team one day, cussing them and throwing things at the TV (isn’t that what everyone does?) and then rooting for them the next day. How fickle can you be? If I root against someone, I do it completely. They’re dead to me, in all venues.

And here’s my triumphant basketball story heralding the virtues of hating completely: When we got married, which was in March, we went on our honeymoon in Asheville, NC, and this happened to coincide with the official beginning of the basketball tournament. We watched basketball in our hotel room when we weren’t out and about touring the town. To honor the creation of our new family, my husband created the Memolo March Madness Pool (now in our 8^th season). Family and friends could enter their bracket picks and whoever won got the dough. I think only 5 or 6 people signed up the first year.

Recently, I had submitted an application to Kansas for their Creative Writing PhD program. Even more recently, I had received not one but TWO rejection letters from the school. It was like they were saying, “I know we rejected you in that first letter, but we wanted to be sure you understood that you’re really rejected. Thanks.”

Understandably, this caused me to feel a certain amount of ire towards Kansas. So, when we made our bracket picks, I picked Bucknell (I think they were 14 seed) to beat Kansas. My husband said something like, ‘are you sure you want to pick Bucknell?’ and I said something like ‘screw Kansas’ except more obscene and I kept my pick.

Then the night of the game came and we watched intently. I was more invested since we had the pool going, but I really was rooting against Kansas (see my earlier discussion of completely hating your rival). Kansas had made it to the second round every time since the 1980s, so you can understand why my husband questioned my judgement. It was a tight game, and Kansas was ahead at the half. But in the last seconds of the game Bucknell hit a shot and Kansas wasn’t able to return the favor, and the game ended with Bucknell winning, 64 to 63.

I cheered for Bucknell as if I’d gone to the school and donated money to the alumni fund regularly. The Bison were my heroes. Through them, I had beaten Kansas, and had exacted my revenge for their thoughtless and painful mailing error.

Needless to say, I won the pool that year based solely on that pick. I think I won $15.

Subsequently, I have picked whoever Kansas plays in the tournament (I will hate Kansas forever), but I’ve never been right since.

--Jenn Memolo--

Diminution

"When you're small, you spend your life crawling..."

--Morrissey--

Among the genetically-derived physical attributes for which folks are discriminated against, if I asked you to list the ones that most profoundly affected a person's life, you'd likely mention race or sex; maybe you'd try to throw sexual "preference" in there. Being short wouldn't even register on the radar.

But I'm a 5'6" male, and I can tell you I've been reminded of that fact all of my adult life, and anything I've achieved has been in spite of it. Whereas a taller person cuts an imposing figure and demands respect with much less effort, we more diminutive folk struggle not to be dismissed in nearly every possible way for a factor we can't control and that is ultimately of no relevance to anything other than being able to slam dunk a basketball with ease.

I'm certainly no self-hater--many who know me have described me as "confident-bordering-on-arrogant" (which, I'm sure, does me no favors--I should probably be more reticent and shamed by my shortness), and I personally see nothing wrong with my height and, in fact, would never want to be taller than I am. (Though I did take offense to the "life-sized" model of Alvin they had at the movie theatre last year to promote Alvin and The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. It was only three inches shorter than me. I have to call bullshit on the notion that I'm only three inches taller than a chipmunk.)

Yet, this has been a hard-fought war. For example, just last week I caught a co-worker muttering under his breath that the employee who works under me shouldn't bother to listen to what a little short guy tells her to do. In the past, people who probably considered themselves my friends have made light of my height, and at key and rather public moments (crowded bars, weddings, high school reunions) at length in unflattering ways, joking that my height was the reason why I relate well to small children, that I would need platform shoes or a stepping stool to do this or a booster seat to do that, or noting that I was a "funny little guy" (as a response to my cutting up with them good-naturedly).

Before I met my wife, who thankfully is a person of substance who treats this as the non-issue that it is, this no doubt affected my dating prospects. One girlfriend who professed to love me told me no matter what I did (exercised, worked out, etc.), I'd never be as much of a man as a taller guy, and that she felt more safe when she dated taller men than she did with me. In another instance when I was once set up on a blind date, my date spent the night being rude and unresponsive. Initially I didn't take it personally, because I figured mine was hardly the first blind date where the chemistry failed. I was deeply hurt and offended when it was later passed on to me that the date had disdainfully told her friend (who had dragged me out to meet her in the first place) that she was tempted to rub chalk on me while we were playing pool, so I'd look like the smurf I was as short as.

(If I hadn't gotten the memo before, in 2001 the message was driven home further. Being the lifelong comics geek that I am, it was impossible not to notice the instant transformation of that stud of the Marvel Universe Logan, aka Wolverine. Historically Logan was depicted as 5'2" and quite stocky, but in the wake of the success of Brian Singer's X-Men, and Hugh Jackman's sex symbol-creating performance of the character, Marvel thereafter portrayed Wolverine as the standard 6'1". It was stark and immediate; one month other characters towered over him, as they always had, and the next, he was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Captain America and the like. His incredible tenacity, indomitable personality, and prodigious abilities, though they are the very things that always defined the character, were simply not enough to make him seem sexy and to allow him to be taken seriously as a hero to the public-at-large. Message sent; message received. A pretty important beat for the character, that he would be underestimated by people who didn't know him, and would always prove to be more than met the eye, was tossed to make him more generic and "photogenic," and all the guys who can't and couldn't make it to 6'0" saw one of the few diminutive models of masculinity in pop culture snatched away for homogeneity's sake.)

It always strikes me as odd that it would be deemed socially unacceptable to make disparaging remarks about race if I were black or about my sex if I were a woman, but that bagging on someone for falling below the height average is perfectly ok. In each instance, I try to handle it with all the grace I can muster, but just what the proper response should be is hard to gage. (The instinctive response is to savagely wail on whomever has disrespected you, but that's nowhere near as constructive as it is cathartic.) Should you laugh along at your own body? ("Hahaha, I know, I'm short, it's funny, right?") Get confrontational and call them out? ("F-you you f-ing -f-er!") Ignore it? ("I'm sorry, did you say something?") Stoop to their level and identify some physical attribute they are likely to be sensitive about? ("Well, you have a stupid nose/tooth/ear.") (Others: "I apologize for my height; I'll get on some human growth hormone right away so I'm more acceptable and pleasing to you.") None of these really ring true. You have been placed in a situation where any reaction to or acknowledgement of the comment diminishes you. But ultimately the fact is, anyone who would dismiss you based on such a superficial attribute is probably not someone who has much to offer you, and so you should limit your contact with them if you can.

In the meanwhile, I have gained a lot from my shortness. Possibly in some effort to compensate and prove wrong the naysayers, I'm always trying to improve myself physically, be it with weights, running, or the speed bag, and even though I go through my ebbs and flows with exercise, the will to be better and the chip on my shoulder generally keeps me healthier and stronger than I would be otherwise. It's also taught me, as much as I can, to patiently tolerate bad behavior because it's not bad people, but rather simply human nature to look for reasons to exclude and dismiss others (as a method toward simplification), and as Confucius teaches, I should observe these tendencies in others (and their effects) so I can try to curb them in my own behavior. And so far as the group I'm in, I'm always looking at things from the outside, even if I'm really on the inside. I've come to identify with the underdog and the outsider in almost every situation, and even though it slows down my reaction time on some issues, it keeps me from doing anything too fucked up to anyone else, without solid reason. I'm not black, or a woman, or gay, or really any of the standard minorities you can instantly drum up, but I can pretty easily empathize with how they have been and are marginalized, dismissed, derided, and excluded.

Yeah, I've read all of the crap about how you're less likely to get raises, or be respected and admired, or be considered sexy, and all of the other stuff that men of average or greater height take for granted and I can honestly say that I don't feel slighted in the least. I have taken, and likely will continue to take a lot of guff for being short. But whether it's true or not, I tend to see myself as a scrapper, as someone who in reality can go toe-to-toe with anyone and who is perpetually challenging himself to grow more (ok, metaphorically, you jackass), and I also tend, because they are generally skewed by projections and divorced from reality, to mistrust other's perceptions of me. The confidence and sense of well being I feel about the whole issue are rock solid because they are hard-won and time-tested. At 5'6", I have a loving and fulfilling marriage to a beautiful and brilliant wife, a daughter whom I adore, a lovely home, and a career that's solid and that both challenges me and affords me a measure of security. I have creative outlets (writing, music). It's a good life. So it seems in truth, height's only an issue if you allow it to be.

Having said all that, if I ever run into Randy Newman on the street, I'll knock his goddamned teeth down his throat.

"You Have the Right to Remain, but Anything You Do Will Be Held Against You..."

Just had a birthday, and as usual I was fortunate enough to rake in quite a few awesome gifts. One of those (much to my wife's chagrin) was Homicide: Life on the Streets--The Complete Series. Every since I got turned on to David Simon's The Wire, I've been trying to track down anything associated with the man. He's doing journalism as fiction, speaking to today's problems in a way that highlights them through narrative but doesn't provide any answers to questions posed. Homicide is where Simon got his start on TV, and it is an outrageously rich experience, especially when put side by side with other network series, both historically and in the (police procedural) genre.

The best way to describe what makes Homicide such a high quality show is to compare it with standard cop fare like, say, Law and Order. I, like many of you readers, used to watch the absolute hell out of L&O, but as time went by, I found its stale narrative formula never did anything for me. It seems there's a set number of O'Henry-like twists that happen at very specific points of each episode. The characters are never developed well...you know a bit about them, but they're not enough like real people to actually care much about them one way or another (except for Olivia Benson in SVU, who's basically a modern saint, or Robert Goren in Criminal Intent, who is quite animated but too emotionally jacked up to really identify with). The greatest impediment to characterization is the...how can I put it and still be nice?...uh, ruthlessly economical nature of the dialogue. Every line has to be explaining some basic fact--there's no room for anything to breathe. I'm not Shakespeare myself, but I know enough about writing to know that this could be done better and that it's a tell-tale sign that the writers are just doing enough to crank out a show and meet deadlines. You can't argue with its (bland, pedestrian) record of success, but after a while you feel like you've wasted an hour of your life and gotten only just what you expected, which wasn't really much to begin with, and you may be inclined to move on to something else. I was.

Homicide, in contrast, begins with (as all decent cop shows should) the first day of rookie detective Tim Bayliss (played by Kyle Secor). This is cliche, but it's also pretty smart--it puts you right in there with him, learning the ropes, learning about the people that he works with. And the people he works with are all rather interesting. John Munch (Richard Belzer) is a cyncial-on-the-outside/marshmellow-on-the-inside misanthrope/softy that is crusty Walter Matthau-as-a-cop. This character has since appeared on Law and Order and, in a cameo, on The Wire. Kay Howard (Melissa Leo) is a tough-as-nails hypercompetent female cop who takes no crap and stands with the best of them. Al Giordello (Yaphet Kotto), is the seasoned shift commander who is an Italian-American widower. "G," as his subordinates affectionately call him, has seen it all and has still escaped with his integrity in tact. He is exactly the sort of father figure, mentor, and supervisor we all wish we had, but rarely do. Frank Pemberton (played by Andre Braugher) is one of the most dynamic characters I've seen on television. Self-contained, highly intelligent, and capable of razor-sharp disses, Herculean acts of valor, and nuclear bursts of passion, the man is a true individual and hardly ever predictable. Braugher brings just the sort of energy that Brando brought to his roles in his Elia Kazan films (Streetcar's Stanley and Waterfront's Terry Malloy), and you can't take your eyes off of him for a second, no matter what else is going on in the scene. (Fans of The Wire will see heavy shades of McNulty in this character and his outlaw "go-it-alone/win-at-all-costs" attitude.) Rounding out the cast is veteran actor Ned Beatty, who plays Bolander, a late-middle-aged divorcee who, as many others, fends off frustration and defeat each and every day (and doesn't have to squeal like a pig nor bumble around after Gene Hackman).

The show succeeds because all the characters are people, not caricatures or "types." Sure, they're exceptional detectives, but we have met them all at one point or another. Things happen to them and they change as a result. They solve crimes by following up on leads and talking to witnesses, not by camera tricks or special effects (are you listening, CSI?), and there are plenty of "idle" moments where they have a conversation, tell a story, have an argument that shows you how they came to be where they're at and how each character differs from the other. Lots of perspectives are represented, and you can more or less understand even characters you don't really like.

They are also relatable in this: they have a job to do--solving murders--that will eventually destroy them emotionally unless they find some way to become numb to it. And in becoming numb to it, they begin down the slow road of becoming numb to life. How can they win? Who wants to lose themselves to do a job well, even if the job is worth doing? As a result, most of them are divorced, estranged from their children, and have little time for family and friends. None of them is a perfect physical specimen. They don't take fancy vacations. They have money troubles, and they're ill-tempered and tired nearly all the time. Can you relate?

And this is your way in. Have you ever found yourself having to do something, having to work in an environment, where you KNOW you can't be nice? The idea occurs to you that being nice/good and being effective are mutually exclusive. The bad guys will eat you up unless you toss your white hat in the fireplace. Yet, at your core, you value being a good, moral person. What do you do? How long can you hold out? You may even find, to your dismay, that you thrive in such an environment. How long, until it changes you and strips all your good away and leaves you a bitter husk? Do you sacrifice the opportunity all for one act of nobility that, you know when all is said and done, will sink your ship? If you read noir and espionage fiction, this is all "old hat" to you, but you've never dipped into these genres, I've just lain out the welcome mat.

It took me many years, but I prefer these worlds to the spandex, consequenceless fables of infinite (but impossible) virility that super heroes represent. This the real world. These are real people, and they have real problems. What is the solution? Is it one, or are they many? Are there any? I want to see how they handle it. I want to know how they go wrong, or succeed. I want to know if there's a way out with dignity and peace of mind.

Art like this is honest in that it faces up to the fact that every day of your adult life is a Faustian bargain parlayed into tomorrow. Sure, some crime fiction goes too far into the netherworld of despair, but Homicide has just enough hope in it to hold out the possibility, maybe a fact, maybe an illusion, that if you're tough and smart enough and play your cards right, and just a bit lucky, too, even if somewhere down the line you made a deal with the devil, you just may be able to cancel that check mere moments before it bounces, and live happily ever after.

Get Margaret Atwood on the Phone

[Note: Jacques Mofeau is off but will return next week. What follows is a guest column done by Ms. Jacques Mofeau--my lovely wife. Yep, I roped her into doing one. Trying to con her into becoming a biweekly contributor...she definitely has the chops. Read on, and see for yourself.]

The other day I was on Facebook and one of my “friends” had posted this article: “Newest GOP Attack on Women: Just Say No to Tampons.” This is, of course, a farce, posted on the website freewoodpost.com, but it got me thinking. In the article (again, not real), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) (who put together the Committee on contraception coverage that received so much attention because it was an all-male panel) was quoted as saying, “It is unnatural for a woman to insert a foreign object into her body for the sake of stopping the menstrual flow. I, as well as several others seek to eliminate the sales of such objects. Women should let nature take care of itself the way that our Almighty Creator intended. To try to manipulate and control such an occurrence goes against God’s plan for women.” Okay, so that’s crazy, but not too long ago I would have said the same thing about a group of men getting together and talking about women’s contraception choices and insurance coverage.

It’s all Obama’s fault. He decided it would be a good idea for insurance companies to be required to cover payment for contraception for women. That crazy guy. How dare he show support for women and their finances. How many men have paid for any contraception other than condoms? What do condoms cost, $15, $20? Okay, so what about the Pill or the Ring? That’s more like $50 a month. The IUD? Try $1500-$2000 for a 5-year coverage. Same for the Injection and the Rod Implant. And for those done with kids, let’s not forget the $10K+ tubal ligation (heaven forbid a man get a vasectomy, which is cheaper and less invasive and safer than tubal ligation). Yes, some insurances cover portions of these costs. When I purchased the Pill, I didn’t pay $50 a pop, but I generally paid more than the cost of condoms.

So would I say that my opinion is that it’s a good thing for insurance to fully pay for contraception? Yes, yes you could say that. Let me be clear that I am biased.

Somehow, though, this turned into a thing like gay marriage or abortions. Somehow, someone got the idea that if insurance companies are required to pay for contraception, then people are being forced to use contraception.

For example, along the abortion line, Rick Santorum went on Face the Nation and said that he was against prenatal testing (or rather, he was against insurance companies paying for prenatal testing) because “a lot of prenatal tests are done to identify deformities in utero and the customary procedure is to encourage abortions.” He went on to say “that people have the right to have prenatal testing done, ‘but to have the government force people to provide it free, to me, is a bit loaded’” (Face the Nation).

To add to it, he said (not on Face the Nation, but in another speech) that the only reason Obama wanted insurance companies to pay for prenatal testing was “”Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and, therefore, less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society’” (msn.com). The implication here is that if insurance is required to pay for prenatal testing then people will be made to get the testing and, if it’s determined they have a child with disabilities, they will be forced to get an abortion.

And Santorum’s take on insurance paying for contraception? “’This has nothing to do with access,’ he said. ‘This is having someone pay for it, pay for something that shouldn’t be in an insurance plan anyway because it is not, really an insurable item. This is something that is affordable, available. You don’t need insurance for these types of relatively small expenditures. This is simply someone trying to impose their values on somebody else, with the arm of the government doing so. That should offend everybody, people of faith and no faith that the government could get on a roll that is that aggressive’” (Washingtonmonthly.com). See my previous paragraph on the costs of contraception. I don’t know about other women, but $50/month or $2000 every 5 years is not a “relatively small expenditure”.

Along these lines, there was this segment on the TODAY show (yes, I’m quoting the TODAY show) in which a panel of 2 women and one man were asked their opinions on the creation of the first male birth control pill. The two women expressed interest; again, see my paragraph on the cost of birth control. I know I think it would be nice for a man to burden some of the responsibility of contraception. The male panelist, however, said something about how he had a daughter and he’d hate for her to relinquish her power over contraception to a man who would likely be unreliable in taking a pill. Maybe this is true; maybe a man wouldn’t be reliable and maybe it’s still a good idea for the woman to take measures to prevent pregnancy. But all I could think was 1) are women so reliable? I’m sure there are women who said they were on the pill who really weren’t. And 2) I’ve never met a man who would deliberately sabotage contraception. Most men are pretty firm on not wanting to get a girl pregnant (unless they’re in a stable relationship and pregnancy has been discussed and planned).

So, what about this all-male panel that talked about the insurance-contraception issue? The premise was that these were religious leaders, and they stated they felt this issue was a freedom of religion rather than a women’s rights/contraception issue. Obama’s policy was going to force religious groups who were anti-abortion/contraception to pay for it. But what were they actually talking about? Contraception. And again, who pays for contraception most of the time? Women. I know that for many women, taking away or prohibiting insurance payment for contraception would result in women not being able to afford it, and then you’ve got more women getting pregnant when they don’t want to. Maybe that would lead to a rise in abortions? Maybe. So how was it that no one thought it would be a good idea to have a woman on that panel? Wouldn’t it be useful to have a female perspective, since women would be the people affected by this ruling, either way?

Shortly after this panel met and the feminist crap hit the fan, SNL’s Amy Poehler cameoed on the show to do a skit with Seth Meyers called “Really?” Maybe the best joke centered around Foster Freiss’ comment that when he was young, women used an aspirin between their knees as contraception. Freiss later apologized for the comment, but Poehler said in the skit: “’Well, we'd love to accept your apology, Foster, but you made a mistake -- and now you're going to have to live with that mistake for the rest of your life.’" Check it out on Hulu.com.

And let’s not forget our friend Rush Limbaugh. Of course he had to put in his two cents. Recently he was quoted as saying during a broadcast, in response to the female Georgetown student who was denied the right to speak at a one of the contraception hearings, that the student (Sandra Fluke) was a “slut” and then added “if we’re going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch” (huffingtonpost.com). I think I must quote Seth and Amy and say, “Really??!” Using contraception makes women sluts? What about those of us who are married, in long-term, committed relationships? Just because we don’t want to be Michelle Dugger doesn’t make us sluts for using contraception.

Again, we have a man expressing his (admittedly extreme) opinions about contraception, but where are the women? Yes, the women in Congress are voicing their concerns. Congresswomen Maloney and Norton walked out on one of the committee meetings, and others have since condemned the meetings as an affront to women’s rights.

I’ve never identified myself as a feminist, per se. I’ve never protested or marched or written letters to fight for a right or freedom. I have been fortunate enough to live in an era in which women experience the full gamut of freedoms when it comes to our bodies. Despite the debates, we are allowed to get abortions in most places. We are allowed to make our own choices for contraception and family planning. I’m not saying things are perfect, but compared to how things have been in the past, I have it pretty good.

But now I’m getting worried. I read The Handmaid’s Tale. I can see how bad this could go if something isn’t done. Truth? I don’t think this debate is about the freedom of religion. I think it is about the access to contraception (and possibly, abortions). It worries me that a lot of these meetings and panels and discussions include men, but few women. It worries me that many of the Republican candidates are anti-abortion and anti-contraception (or at least anti-insurance-paying-for-contraception). It worries me that the state of Virginia attempted to pass a bill that would require a transvaginal ultrasound for women requesting an abortion and another bill that would essentially ban both abortion and the use of hormonal contraception in the state. It worries me that the Catholic church withdrew its support (financially and otherwise) of St. Joseph’s hospital in Arizona when a physician performed an abortion on a woman whose pregnancy would almost certainly kill her if allowed to continue (thewashingtonpost.com). For me, these events are akin to a women’s rights apocalypse. It did make me feel a little better when I read that the bill proposed to reverse the Obama birth control policy was defeated in the Senate, but only by a narrow margin of 51-48. That’s too close for comfort.

I may have no venue to protest, except for this article. I also have power in the form of the vote, which is still a freedom allowed to me as a woman, for now. I can only hope that this article informs the uninformed and perhaps encourages those not registered to vote to please do so, since this is an issue that will affect every woman in this country, one way or the other.