This Week in Misogyny is Doing the Stride of Pride

Because why are we still calling it a walk of shame anyway? Oh right, because people are terrible. Let’s see just how terrible people were this week! (As usual, trigger warnings for pretty much everything apply.)

Georgia’s legislature has passed a bill that would ban abortion coverage (except to save the life of the mother) from all state employee health plans and insurance plans offered on the state’s exchanges.

A “heartbeat ban” has been reintroduced in Ohio; it would ban abortions as soon as the heartbeat could be detected, as early as 6 weeks in (before many women even know they’re pregnant or can get a doctor’s appointment).

South Carolina’s house passed a 20-week abortion ban, even though it would only apply to emergencies in hospitals since the state’s clinics don’t perform them after 14 weeks (and even though similar bans have been declared unconstitutional in other states). The only exception is to save the mother’s life.

U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright struck down Arkansas’ 12-week abortion ban as unconstitutional, but allowed a provision that forces mandatory ultrasounds to check for a fetal heartbeat.

Hat tip to the religious leaders and nuns who publicly came out in defense of birth control coverage under Obamacare.

Louisiana took Medicaid eligibility away from some pregnant women and new moms because of a typo on Healthcare.gov that they would have realized was a mistake if they’d looked at the actual law or Medicaid rules.

“Leaning In” may seem like a good idea in theory, but in reality women are frequently punished for negotiating. The latest example comes from a woman applying for a tenure-track position at Nazareth College whose employment offer was withdrawn after she asked for several perks in her contract. (Though, as many of my friends in academia pointed out in a private conversation on Facebook, some of the things she asked for in this particular instance may have been unreasonable, especially her request for a 2015 start date for a position that’s open now.)

Meanwhile the executive director of the Texas Republican Party thinks that the answer to the wage gap is teaching women to negotiate like men rather than allowing them to sue when they find out they’re being discriminated against.

A study of writer representation in the media found that women writers outnumber men… in writings about family and gender. In every other topic, there are more men; in some cases a lot more men.

Headscratcher of the week: A statement from RAINN implies that people who talk about “rape culture” don’t realize that rapes are committed by people, not culture. Of course we understand that! But rape culture helps most rapists get away with it.

Terrible people!

• Susanne Atanus won the Republican primary for Illinois 9th congressional district despite thinking that tornadoes and autism are God’s punishment for abortion and gay rights and that allowing gays in the military will weaken our defenses because they’ll spread AIDS through the armed forces.
• Ralph Reed thinks that to combat poverty we should make it harder for women to get divorced rather than increasing food stamp programs. Because if a man is going to refuse to pay child support and his ex suffers, she would have been so much better off staying with the asshole.
• Conservative talk-radio host and Mitch McConnell fundraiser Dennis Praeger is all kinds of freaked out about the sanctity of straight marriage, which in his view means a woman should never withhold sex from her husband just because she isn’t in the mood.

The Independent‘s children’s book blog will no longer review books that are marketed as “for boys” or “for girls” and fall prey to gender stereotypes about what kids are interested in.

Nice! A study in Italy found that when a woman replaces a man as CEO of a family-owned business, profits go up. Adding women to the board of directors increases this even more.

If you want to carry a spare toothbrush and t-shirt in case you hook up at a party, great, but “Walk of Shame Kits” are a really dumb marketing move because who wants to buy something that tells them to be ashamed that they might use it? I’m also automatically skeptical of products that promote themselves by promising to donate a portion of the proceeds to breast cancer research without specifying which one or how much. (It’s also kinda weird to associate breast cancer with one-night stands.)

Recommended Reading

• Stop asking Ruth Bader Ginsburg to resign! She’s awesome and it could backfire horribly.
• Long, but worth your time: A look at the lives of Nepali women who are shunned while menstruating.
• Why do people react differently when a black model posts a breastfeeding pic than they did when it was a white model? (Also, mad props to Ashley Nicole for being able to walk around while nursing; no way my kiddo would have cooperated with that!)
• Another post from The Root, this time on why fathers shouldn’t be praised for beating their daughters.
• Is the “My Husband’s Stupid Record Collection” tumblr sexist? Not inherently, but the people who like it because it “proves” that women don’t know anything about music are definitely sexist.
• Why the “Female vs. SheMale” segment on RuPaul’s Drag Race was ridiculously transphobic and misogynistic.
• Saturday Night Live‘s segment poking fun at Men’s Right’s Activists was supposed to be feminist, but that was lost in the obnoxiously stereotypical portrayal of a Latina character (who was played by a white woman, since SNL has never hired a single Latina cast member).
• LOVE this: “Feminism is not the F-word.”
• Parents, y’all need to chill.
• This article on how women are trained to fear failure and give up because they have to be better than men to have the same opportunities is so fucking true and it pisses me off how familiar it all is.
• Another blow for women in tech, as Julie Anne Horvath left her position as a developer at GitHub due to harassment and a sexist office culture.
• Kelly Wallace discusses a SXSW panel on how technology both helps and hurts feminism (it’s easier for women to connect and reach a large audience, but then we get all kinds of anonymous harassment).
• Pointlessly gendered products! I assume that the men’s and women’s wrist braces are sized differently, so the existence of both is legit, but it’s still silly that the packaging is totally different (and that the women’s one is more expensive despite presumedly being smaller).
• BuzzFeed decided to remake three sexist ads and show how ridiculous they look when men and women’s roles are reversed. (Slightly NSFW)