{"id":4077,"date":"2014-04-03T05:58:32","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T09:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/?p=4077"},"modified":"2014-04-15T11:13:06","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T15:13:06","slug":"planned-parenthood-and-the-myth-of-the-sheepish-dependent-ethically-mono-chromed-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/2014\/04\/planned-parenthood-and-the-myth-of-the-sheepish-dependent-ethically-mono-chromed-woman.html","title":{"rendered":"Planned Parenthood and the Myth of the Sheepish, Dependent, Ethically Mono-chromed Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Planned Parenthood use the term \u201cwomen\u201d to demarcate a group they support, trust, and represent. Since not all women want to be supported, trusted or represented by Planned Parenthood, we must charitably assume that the organization is referring to an <\/a><\/em>idea<\/a> of women<\/a>, and not to that actual, wonderful population \u2014\u00a0<\/em>les personnes de sexe f\u00e9minin. As such, Planned Parenthood are responsible for defining the boundaries of their idea, i.e. when they say \u201cwomen want _____\u201d they implicitly exclude women who \u201cdon\u2019t want _____\u201d \u00a0from their category of \u201cwomen.\u201d Our task is to answer the question: \u201cHow is Planned Parenthood\u2019s category of \u201cwomen\u201d currently being defined?\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Consider the current debates regarding the question of whether employers ethically opposed to acts of (non-medical) contraception ought to be required by the federal government to pay for their employees\u2019 contraceptive devices via a health insurance plan. To convince the public that employers indeed ought to, Planned Parenthood have coined the slogan \u201cNot my boss\u2019 business\u201d and encouraged women to subsume their thought under it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The conceptual transubstantiation required to get the phrase \u201cNot my boss\u2019 business\u201d out of the demand that my \u201cboss\u201d pay for my contraceptive devices makes me tickle. It is akin to saying \u201cBecause you have nothing to do with my sex life, provide for the contraceptive devices that make up a crucial part of my sex life,\u201d or \u201cBecause it is not your business if I have an IUD, pay for my IUD.\u201d It occasions such sublime despair over our human capacity to make any damn sense that I find myself wishing Planned Parenthood would rise victorious \u2014 if only that they could move on to a better slogan. Add \u201cprovide contraception\u201d to the list of fundamental duties an employer has to employees, fine \u2014 just don\u2019t do it on the basis that your employer has nothing to do with contraception. By the actions of the HHS Mandate we are obviously, blindingly<\/em> obviously giving our bosses a direct relation to our sex lives, an economic interest previously non-existent, and a business in our bedroom I promise will get creepy.<\/p>\n

But it makes sense in its own way. To give it crowd-appeal, to make it Facebook-worthy, to craft a narrative in which ideological propositions achieve their highest level of you\u2019d-have-to-be-an-inhuman-ball-of-mysogonistic-fire-hate-to-diasagee-with-this, the debate \u2014 which, in the courts, is being held over the complex issue of religious freedom \u2014 needs to be reduced to something of godlike simplicity: \u201cWomen need birth control and their bosses are denying them it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But we are interested in the effects political decision on Planned Parenthood\u2019s idea of women. Having determined that the political battle will rage between \u201csex-involving-your-boss\u201d and \u201csex-without-your-boss,\u201d an aesthetic was created to promote and defend this construction \u2014 via graphics, videos, press releases, slogans, bumper-stickers and the whole abysmal slew of American politics. Since Planned Parenthood are using representations of women to craft this aesthetic \u2014 and if what we said is true, that in representing an idea of women over the diverse and disagreeable particular women they are also defining who fits and who doesn\u2019t fit into their idea \u2014 then this aesthetic becomes a valuable tool in determining how Planned Parenthood define their category.<\/p>\n

The first noticeable decision is that all women are represented as employees \u2014 and all their employers are men. To use a few examples from the media shared on Planned Parenthood Action\u2019s Facebook page\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Shared March 15th<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Shared March 20th<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of course, bosses are not only always men, they are also Monopoly Men \u2014 caricatures of obese, greedy, for-profit CEOs.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Shared March 30th<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is no matter that the majority of the organizations suing the federal government are non-profit organizations, many of whose oppressive force over their employees amounts to giving them one scoop instead of two from the leftovers of the soup-kitchen line \u2014 The Little Sisters of the Poor and Catholic Charities, to name a few. What matters is that the narrative presented effectively inspires the support of a media-consuming public.<\/p>\n

But this political success \u2014 for it is an immense success \u2014 is simultaneously an ideological failure in terms of Planned Parenthood\u2019s idea of women, who are never represented as holding positions of power<\/em>. Women are the weak. Never mind that many of the \u201cbosses\u201d suing the federal government for forcing them to violate their ethical principles are women, like Lilli Johnson of Johnson Welded Products, Inc., Catherine A. Hartenbower of Hart Electric, LLC, Karen A. Mersino of Mersino Management Company, or Mary Jo Feltl of Feltl and Company Inc. A female boss refusing to conform with a \u201cpro-contraception\u201d law does not fit the narrative which will most effectively convince the public \u2014 a narrative which, to judge the media produced, amounts to that riveting bedtime story \u2014 \u201cBad Male Boss Oppresses Good Female Worker.\u201d By ignoring female leaders for the sake of their political goals, Planned Parenthood unintentionally reinforce the gender inequality they rightly stand against. In representing their idea of the \u201cwomen\u201d they support and defend through the exclusion of the female boss and the over-accentuation of the male boss, Planned Parenthood have implicitly tended their idea of women towards the rank of the employee, and more than that, towards the victimized employee.<\/p>\n

Again, this reduction of women to the category of the employed works extremely well. Who could give anything but support to a timid, bewildered-looking female employee being denied her fundamental needs by a male employer who looks like he just stepped off the set of Mad Men to steal hot chocolate from orphans?<\/p>\n

But an argument might be made that within Planned Parenthood\u2019s picture of women as employees is not so much the implication that she cannot or will not be a boss, but rather that \u2014 if she were a boss \u2014 she would not be opposed to paying for contraception. Now that this is factually<\/em> false is obvious. Again, many of the employers suing the United States government are women. Many of the plaintiffs in general are women, like Stacy Molai<\/a>\u00a0or Sister Mary Catherine. And even if this were not the case, the mere fact that there are woman on this planet who are ethically opposed to paying for your non-medical contraceptive devices \u2014 who assumedly would not ditch such a conviction upon becoming a boss \u2014 this is enough to question the idea implicit in Planned Parenthood\u2019s aesthetic, that \u201cwomen \u2014 if they were<\/em> employers \u2014 would have no problem paying for their employees\u2019 contraceptives.\u201d But again, the question is not whether Planned Parenthood are being factually accurate, but how they are defining their idea of women in their representation of \u201cwomen\u201d over against the diversity and disagreement of actual, particular women.<\/p>\n

Here, women are incredibly mono-chromed. They are denied an ethical existence in the realm of sexuality. The Planned Parenthood idea of a woman is someone who could not possibly have an conflict between the precepts of an ethical code and the demand of employees that she pay for their contraception. \u201cHaving the proper views regarding contraception\u201d has become a border which contains Planned Parenthood\u2019s idea of a woman, and particular women must conform to this if they are cross the border and be included in the category.<\/p>\n

Here we see a similarity in Planned Parenthood\u2019s claim to represent \u201cwomen\u201d in their promotion of abortion access \u2014 despite the majority of women opposing legal abortion in all or most cases (20%, 37% respectively). Against all factual evidence, \u201cwomen\u201d are made synonymous with \u201cpro-choice women.\u201d \u201cWomen,\u201d as Planned Parenthood uses the term, are synonymous with \u201cpro-HHS-Mandate women.\u201d In short, \u201cwomen\u201d are defined as those type of creatures who, by their very nature, agree with Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n

This is the logical consequence of speaking for \u201cwomen\u201d as a general category. Either your idea of women will conform to the truth about the views and positions of actual women \u2014 which will require it to become as detailed, descriptive and complex as the subject matter demands \u2014 or your idea will conform particular women unto itself. Since Planned Parenthood are speaking for \u201cwomen\u201d over and against the actual positions of particular women, I can only assume that the latter is true, that their use of the word refers to a certain category, the shape of which comes to light in their inability to represent \u201cwomen\u201d as leaders ethically-convicted against<\/em> the ideology of Planned Parenthood. Women are those types of creatures who agree with Planned Parenthood, and thus they can be \u201cstood for\u201d and \u201cspoken for\u201d by the institution without contradiction.<\/p>\n

Now while understand Planned Parenthood\u2019s need to categorize for the sake of rhetoric \u2014 something I am certainly<\/em> guilty of, as are most organizations who operate in a rhetorical mode \u2014 allow me a minor-league, existential table-flip against this impossibly paternalistic \u201cspeaking for women\u201d that plagues America\u2019s political scene. Women speak for themselves. Admitting this \u2014 which involves admitting that women are often your self-proclaimed enemies \u2014 is one of the most pro-woman moves a \u201cpro-woman\u201d institution can make. It is not an act of female treason to oppose Planned Parenthood, no, it is precisely an act of assertion that affirms \u201cwomen\u201d as neither this nor that pre-defined thing<\/em>, there to be stood for, spoken for, and blithely represented. Women\u00a0belong to themselves, thinking, acting and feeling out of a locus of personal interiority that no other can grasp, and on which no institution can claim a privileged access point. This incommunicable interiority is revealed<\/em> in disagreement, which asserts the person against the paradigm, the ideology and the zeitgeist. The recognition of female opposition is one of the highest honors anyone who dares make the general statement \u201cwe support women\u201d can bestow. If you believe that women are free, they must be free to disagree, free, even, to be detested by you \u2014 precisely as women. Denying this is the proposal of a universal feminine sheepishness that would never assert itself contrarily.<\/p>\n

But this is what Planned Parenthood do<\/em> in their easy, reductive schema that drives a media-consuming public from position to position. They present women as a type of being impossibly passive to their own ideology \u2014 as equatable<\/em> with their ideology. The religious convictions, ethical decisions, and moral concerns that daily call all others to assert themselves in freedom \u2014 even if it is against the opinion of the entire world \u2014 these are expected to be quashed upon entry into Planned Parenthood\u2019s category of \u201cwomen.\u201d\u00a0There is no place for an ethically-convicted, independent woman within their aesthetic, simply because their narrative must remain one in which \u201cgood, female employees need contraception, and their bad, male employers are denying them it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Planned Parenthood use the term \u201cwomen\u201d to demarcate a group they support, trust, and represent. Since not all women want to be supported, trusted or represented by Planned Parenthood, we must charitably assume that the organization is referring to an idea of women, and not to that actual, wonderful population \u2014\u00a0les personnes de sexe f\u00e9minin. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-objectification","category-sex-2"],"yoast_head":"\nPlanned Parenthood and the Myth of the Sheepish, Dependent, Ethically Mono-chromed Woman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Planned Parenthood use the term "women" to demarcate a group they support, trust, and represent. 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