The Purity Myth (21 page)

The video made the rounds in the political and feminist blogosphere, gaining attention for the fact that
not one protestor
was able to answer these questions. They all cited women as “victims” of doctors, or simply said they had never thought about the question.
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In 2007, then–presidential hopeful Republican Mike Huckabee re- sponded similarly to the question: “I think if a doctor knowingly took the life of an unborn child for money, and that’s why he was doing it, yeah, I think you would, you would find some way to sanction that doctor. . . . I think you don’t punish the woman, first of all, because it’s not about . . . I consider her a victim, not a criminal.”*
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By painting women as victims, the virginity movement doesn’t have to deal with the political fallout—a lot less support for its cause—of saying that women who have abortions belong in prison.

It’s also telling that Huckabee assumes abortion providers are men. (I suppose that makes it easier to portray them as taking advantage of poor wid- dle women.) Yet again, we’re seeing the women-don’t-realize-they’re-getting- abortions-when-they-get-abortions argument in action.

* But of course, if
Roe
were overturned, she
would
be a criminal and
would
go to jail. It’s an inconvenient fact the virginity movement likes to ignore in favor of describing scary abortion doctors who go
bump
in the night.

jessica valenti
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This kind of thinly veiled condescension is also evident in the earlier men- tioned trend of pharmacists’ refusing to give women contraception. The pharma- cist assumeshe* knowsbest, ignoringthe decision made betweenawomanandher doctor. Not only is this invasive and presumptuous—it’s also sometimes illegal.

For example, a pharmacist at Kmart, Dan Gransinger, wrote in an
Arizona Republic
letter to the editor in 2005 that pharmacists who take issue with dis- pensing EC should simply lie to their female customers:

The pharmacist should just tell the patient that he is out of the medica-

tion and can order it, but it will take a week to get here. The patient will be forced to go to another pharmacy because she has to take these medicines

within 72 hours for them to be ef fective. Problem solved.
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Something is amiss when a pharmacist can write to a local paper and unabashedly, and without fear of consequences, advocate breaking the law and lying to female customers.

One woman (who preferred not to be named, for fear of losing her job), a Wal-Mart pharmacy employee, emailed me to say that her supervising phar- macist refused to stock EC—a violation of store policy.

We are not allowed to order it, and if some comes in from the warehouse, he immediately arranges for it to be sent back. If someone calls asking for Plan B, we’re supposed to say that we’ve run out of stock. This pharmacist apparently has NO problem dispensing birth control or Viagra, Cialis, or Levitra, however.

[And] it ’s not just Plan B that pharmacists refuse to dispense. There have

* I write “he” because I have yet to discover an example of a female pharmacist refusing to dispense contraception.

been two specific occasions that I can recall where women have brought in prescriptions for Cytotec and a pain pill, which is often used when women

have had a miscarriage to pass any tissue that may be left. This pharmacist immediately began to question the doctor’s prescription and whether it was being used to cause an abortion. In both instances, he wound up talking to

the women about it, I guess so he could have a “clear conscience.” One of the

women had her young son with her, and she had to tell him to step aside so she could explain to the pharmacist that, yes, she had had a miscarriage and that was why the doctor had prescribed [Cytotec].

Shocking, indeed, but this kind of paternalism is par for the course in the virginity movement. Pharmacists for Life International, a group of extremist anti-choice pharmacists, are even
organizing
to make it easier to deny women contraceptives—and the ideology behind their actions is steeped in patroniza- tion. In a
Washington Post
article profiling the group, pharmacist Lloyd Duplan- tis said, “After researching the science behind steroidal contraceptives, I decided they could hurt the woman and possibly hurt her unborn child. I decided to opt out.”*
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Theactualwomanandwhatshewantsarenotevenpartoftheequation— because, again, the assumption is that she can’t make decisions for herself.

Behind all this paternalism is a simple distrust of women. The virginity movement doesn’t just believe that women can’t be trusted to make decisions about their bodies—it believes
men
can make those decisions better.

A group of legislators in Ohio, for example, proposed a bill in 2007 that would give men control of whether a woman could have an abortion. The bill

* It’s worth nothing that the Pharmacists for Life website features anti-choice columnist Jill Stanek, who actually asserted that abortion providers and Chinese people eat fetuses! The group also calls Feministing a radical feminazi site, so I have a special place in my heart for it.

jessica valenti
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would prevent women from getting an abortion without a written note of con- sent from the father of the fetus. Permission slips aside, if a woman seeking an abortion didn’t know who the father of the fetus is, she would
not be allowed
to obtain an abortion. In this particular legislation, distrust of women mani- fests itself even more clearly in the stipulation that women would be required to present a police report if they wanted to “prove” that the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest—because their word is not enough. (Not to men- tion, how does a young woman “prove” incest unless she reports her parent or relative—something that is too scary and prohibitive for many girls? That may be precisely the point.)
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The bill is still being considered.

Similarlysexistattitudesareatplayin“marriagepromotion” programs— which some women have to attend in order to receive their welfare benefits.

In 2006, President Bush committed $500 million to the Healthy Mar- riage Initiative as part of the welfare-reform bill reauthorization. Instead of funding antipoverty measures that have proven successful—like education, childcare, and job training—this initiative supports programs (often reli- gious) that tell women that marriage—not more education or a better-paying job—will save them from poverty. The idea is that women can’t escape pover- ty on their own—best that they marry out of it. But, of course, many women in poverty marry men in a similar economic position.

And while the “healthy marriage” rhetoric sounds innocuous, its goal is most certainly not. This isn’t about helping welfare recipients have “healthy” marriages; it’s about ensuring that they have traditional marriages*— namely, marriages in which women don’t work. Instead of encouraging a

* It’s telling that President Bush cited his Healthy Marriage Initiative in the same breath in which he defined marriage as a heterosexual institution in a 2003 statement on the creation of Marriage Protection Week.
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two-income household, the classes teach women that it’s better for them to stay home and support their husbands.

Given the promotion of family values that goes hand in hand with these programs, it’s noteworthy that in 2004, one of the Bush administration’s first marriage-promotion programs was charged with sex discrimination. The Penn- sylvania-based marriage education course for unmarried couples with children offered employment services—but only to the men in the program. Another government-funded program, the biblically based Marriage Savers, makes the case that marriage is good for income because women can help men do better at their jobs by being, well, housewifely: “The married man won’t go to work hun- gover, exhausted, or tardy because of fewer bachelor habits, and because he eats better and sees the doctor sooner, thanks to his wife. She is also a good adviser on career decisions, and relieves him of chores, so he can do a better job.”
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Never mind that women are 40 percent more likely than men to be poor, and that 90 percent of welfare recipients are women. Better that we’re mar- ried than given the opportunity to be educated and receive work training. Fear of women being unmarried—especially women with children—trumps logic when it comes to battling poverty. It’s literally more important to the virginity movement that American women adhere to traditional gender and sex roles than that they are able to make a living wage. (Add common stereo- types about “welfare moms” with hordes of children, and it makes sense that these federally funded programs are so keen to marry off poor women.)

That’s really what paternalistic policies come down to—what men want and what men think is best for women. And, sadly, too many of the men*

* Because, let’s face it, considering the low number of women in political decision-making positions in the United States (women hold only 24 percent of elected state offices), it really is men who are formulating policy.
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