Collisions with Reality

I have been furious beyond belief at how men have dominated the contraception “debate”. Look, here’s a link wrap-up comprised of articles solely by men! Here’s a Congressional hearing that’s mostly male!

I couldn’t quite pinpoint why these conversations were so male-dominated. I had plenty of ideas, but nothing concrete. And then I read this conversation between David Brooks and Gail Collins. Brooks’ exasperation was a revelation to me. To conservatives, women are problems, rather than people who may or may not have problems. And when you look at it that way, suddenly everything falls into place. Why ask a woman what she thinks when she’s the problem in the first place?

The mainstream media may mostly be buying into this narrative, but women’s voices are out there. Check out the RH Reality Check site, where the vast majority of authors are women. Read Irin Carmon’s work on Salon. Gail Collins is fighting the good fight over at the NY Times, particularly in this column. Finally, the Planned Parenthood Saved Me tumblr is worth a read.

Because I’m not sure which part of this is more disgusting in 2012: that we’re still having this contraceptive debate, or that it’s being dominated by men.

Like many others, I was heartened by the response to Komen pulling grants for mammograms from Planned Parenthood. And so it got me wondering. If we can agree that all women should have access to mammograms, what about access to pap smears? From there it’s not much of a jump to agreeing that everyone should have access to colonoscopies (even if no one really wants a colonoscopy).

Maybe it’s a bit of a bigger jump to note that everyone should then have access to cancer treatment, but otherwise what’s the point of a free screening?

And from all that, for the second time in a week, I can only conclude that universal health care might be the solution to some of these problems.