Josie Sustaire, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Oregon School of Law)

I was raised by my stay-at-home mom.  She told me on numerous occasions that I could be whatever I wanted to be when I grew up.  I believed her.  I grew up adoring Punky Brewster, Cyndi Lauper and Madonna.  These were girls who refused to fit a mold.  However, I mostly clung to these role models to avoid the other predominant role models I saw on television shows: the moms.  Family Ties, Growing Pains, Roseanne.  I was inundated with images of the stay-at-home mom.  I knew early on, however, that I did not want to be a stay-at-home mom and I disliked the idea that the yardstick against which I would be measured was the at-home mom model.  I know I’m not the only girl to have been raised by parents who told her she could be anything she wanted to be nor am I the first girl to not want to be a stay-at-home mom.  So if this is true, then why are there so few women in leadership roles?  Well, I don’t have the answer, but I have a hunch.

Two of my classmates recently sent me two different news stories addressing this very issue.  The first was an article about Marissa Mayer, who recently made a command decision at Yahoo! to put an end to telecommuting.  This decision has sparked fierce debates (seriously, just Google Marissa Mayer and telecommuting).  This article makes it clear from its title “Marissa Mayer is killing telecommuting, and that’s a good thing,” that Marissa Mayer’s decision was the right one.

For starters, I fundamentally disagree with this approach.  As a woman, I despise when women (the author is a woman) tell other women the “right” and “wrong” way to either parent or run a company because, of course, you can’t do both.  Intelligent, successful women should be fully aware of the fact that what works for one doesn’t work for all.  What I found most troubling is that the author completely ignores the fact that Mayer, despite having axed telecommuting, just had a private nursery built next to her office, an option not available to the other women in her building.  So, as much as I can appreciate the focus on actual interpersonal communication and face-to-face interactions among staff, I find it difficult to look up to a woman who sets two separate standards, one for her and one for all other women below her.

The second article sent to me was a story about Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook.  Sandberg, in her 60 Minutes interview points the finger at women.  She believes that women are their own worst enemies and that women have put up their own barriers to success.  Now, I’ll agree that there are undoubtedly women who make certain decisions that aren’t the pursuit of reaching the top rung of the ladder but I won’t stand with Sandberg and point the finger at one group.  We are ALL to blame for this.  The lack of female leaders isn’t attributable to just some women making some choices, I would wager that it is much more likely to be attributed to a society that still measures a women’s success in a 1950’s framework.

I have a number of titles, at school and at home.  Wife, mommy, part-time chef, partly-part-time housekeeper, student, group leader, mentor, friend.  I wear each of them proudly and at times I am slow to switch gears and I make mistakes.  I’m not perfect.  But I manage and I would like to think I manage fairly well.  I want to succeed just as much as I want my husband, marriage, and my children to succeed.  I don’t feel compelled to choose one title over another.  In fact, when the media, movies, or Momsters make me feel as if I do, I get angry.  I asked a Federal court judge recently who raised five children how to combat the sneers and snide comments from the PTA moms (aka Momsters).  She leaned in and whispered, “You don’t need to worry about them because you know.  You know about you and your family and they don’t.”  At first, I thought, “what the hell kind of advice is that?”  But now I know what she meant.  I am the only one who truly knows what works for me, not the Momsters, or my classmates, professors, advisors, the media, movies, or even powerful female executives. 

Rosie Wang, Resident Blogger (’14, Columbia Law School)

Going into the midnight premiere of Django Unchained, the only real context I had was that (1) It was a Quentin Tarantino movie and (2) in Spike Lee’s opinion, it was racist. Coming out of it, I thought, “Wow, that was breathtakingly racist.” And not because of the copious use of racial slurs (which is what Mr. Lee objected to).

There’s something much more subtle and insidious in it’s portrayal of slavery: It adopts wholesale and without irony some of the worst plantation tropes and erases and reinterprets the historical narrative of black women’s lack of reproductive autonomy.

In Django Unchained, a German bounty hunter frees a slave, Django and partners up with him in capturing criminals. Django is dedicated to finding and rescuing his wife Hildy, who now belongs to a plantation owner who has male slaves killing each other for sport. It’s supposed to be okay for Tarantino to write and tell this story because it is a revenge fantasy of slaves rising up against their masters and thus subversive and empowering. However, there is a lot that goes wrong in the execution of this idea.

The black body is on sensationalistic display in a way that no white body equivalently is. Hildy is put in the “hot box” for trying to run away, and has water splashed over her nude body when she is released. Django is suspended upside down, naked and about to be castrated after his true intentions to save his wife are revealed.  Nearly naked black men fighting to death appear on screen multiple times. These are fraught images because the institution of slavery viewed black women’s bodies as  open for sexual consumption and black men’s bodies as threatening and open for torture. The way Django Unchained offers images of naked black bodies for visual consumption is exploitative and revels in the morbidity of the scenes, rather than aiming for historical accuracy.

With no historical background knowledge, someone watching the first scene depicting a plantation might think that a black woman’s life under slavery consisted of swinging on oak trees in hoop skirts – as long as she didn’t try to escape. In reality, coerced reproduction and rape is the way that slavery was sustained and slave owners’ wealth multiplied after the 1807 ban on the slave trade. The monetary worth of slave women being auctioned was determined by speculations on her reproductive capacity. Slave owners would pair their slaves with multiple partners and force them to engage in sexual activity without regard for any person’s consent. Slave women were especially vulnerable to sexual assault by their masters and the resulting children from such rapes were targets of violence by the master’s wife.

Harriet Jacob’s narrative of her own experience, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl describes her 55 year old master beginning sexual advance on her when she was 15. She eventually forms a relationship and has two children with another white man as the only method for escaping him. Children were often sold away from their mothers, dashing any potential of forming family bonds. Hildy is 27, and some mention is made of her role as a sex worker, but the very real reproductive consequences are never addressed. The legacy of all this is an entrenched distrust of the medical system among many black women which leads to poor health outcomes and the stereotype of not being able to be trusted to make their own reproductive decisions.

Rosie Wang, Resident Blogger (’14, Columbia Law School)

As the year comes to a close, and law school finals draw close, my already questionable domestic skills really go by the wayside.  I have no real groceries besides frozen tater tots and a jar of capers, my desk is in disarray, and my laundry is perilously close to what can only be described as a underwear crisis. It’s times like these that I can’t help wondering, how do people who work and have kids and other obligations keep up with their housework if even I can’t? How do actual lawyers do this? The answer to this question turns out to be a complicated one, involving gender roles in parenting, housekeeping, and work.

For example, did you know that 84% of married women who are lawyers have a spouse who is employed full time compared to only 44% of married men who are lawyers?  Thus, lawyers who are men are more likely to have a partner shoulder the majority of housework and childcare. This phenomenon isn’t unique to lawyers however, as 55.1% of men compared to 72.1% of women spent time on childcare on the average day. Perhaps even more worryingly, the class divide between women is growing so that even if more educated, more well off women have increased their access to paid maternity leave over time (27% in the early 1970s to 66% in 2006-2008), women who do not have their high school degree’s access has stagnated at 18% through the same time period. All of this matters for reproductive justice because there is a gender-based imbalance in career consequences related to getting married, starting a family, and having children.

Wrapped up in this imbalance is also the debate on the division of domestic labor and it’s impact on marriage.  One study reports that the equal division of housework is correlated with higher rates of divorce (in Norwegian married couples). On the other side,  it doesn’t seem unimaginable to me that communities where the norm is for women take on all the household responsibilities would also stigmatize divorce more, pressuring couples to stay together despite unhappiness or incompatibility.

Stress rates, measured by levels of cortisol, were measured in married women and men, and declined in married women when their husbands shared the housework.  Stress rates for men, on the other hand, did not  decline in married men unless men had more time to relax, at the expense of their wives’ leisure time. Alternately, a different study promisingly shows that men have higher levels of well-being and lower levels of work-family conflict when making an equal contribution to the household work. How can these be reconciled? The former study was conducted on 30 dual earner couples in Los Angeles, and the latter over 7 European countries. Maybe the difference lies in the sample. By changing innate attitudes in our country towards work as gendered, perhaps we can change stress levels and happiness levels for the better across the board.

Rosie Wang, Resident Blogger (’14, Columbia Law School)

Women being catcalled on the street, paparazzi spying on celebrities’ intimate moments – these are two unsavory, disrespectful practices with unfortunately long legacies and deep roots in our culture. With the modern technology and social networking thrown in the mix, these practices start to intersect and evolve in disturbing ways. Parallels definitely exist between society’s fascination with spy-style photos of Kate Middleton topless on private, secluded property and the power that perpetrators of street harassment feel – parallels that find an overlap in certain internet communities.

Creepshots was a sub-forum of popular link-aggregator Reddit, where anonymous posters upload and comment on photos they take of women’s bodies, taken without these women’s knowledge as they go about their everyday lives. Part of their stated motto was “When you are in public, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. We kindly ask women to respect our right to admire your bodies and stop complaining.” The photos’ distribution for mass consumption, the flippant physiological and sexual commentary they produce, and the fixation on the nonconsensual nature of the photos all combine into something supremely icky although probably not illegal.

Now, some have taken to fighting fire with fire. Gawker exposed the identity of a prominent member of the Reddit community who has the stellar track record of starting sub-Reddits promoting domestic violence and sexual attraction to underage girls. Others tracked usernames into other sites that Creepshots users were active in, gathering personal information and then posting it to a tumblr named “Predditors” that has since been shut down, but not before the arrest of a teacher in Georgia [need link]. The exposed people in question unironically invoked both their 1^st Amendment freedom of expression to photograph women unawares and their own right to privacy and internet anonymity.

This summer, while interning for LSRJ, one of the most inspiring talks I heard was from Sujatha Jesudason and Tracy Weitz of CoreAlign. They asked why, if reproductive rights is the most funded field in women’s issue, do we still seem culturally deadlocked? One of their major points was that the reproductive justice movement has often aimed for incremental changes – reform rather than radical transformation and immediate rather than long term goals. Calling out individual offenders seems to fall squarely into the immediate and incremental. It is reactionary rather than revolutionary and responds to this particular instance, rather than an overall culture of viewing women’s bodies as public property and fetishizing women’s nonconsent. While it is crucial to have discussions on the individual facts of this situation, how can we proactively work to create a different dominant mindset? Perhaps, start by educating people while they are younger. Perhaps the answer is to build into our public school system a more explicit and complex discussion of the importance of privacy and autonomy. Perhaps the answer is to encourage more open discussions among men as a jumping off point to encourage internal moderation of both online communities and real life social groups.

These tactics have echoes of the Hollaback movement, which posts photos of catcallers and narratives of harassment. Both situations have an element of turning the tables of public humiliation on the offenders. But does posting the name, age, and phone numbers of the perpetrators cross the line? While it has undertones of quid pro quo, poetic justice, and may indeed deter future creep-shooters, these tactics raise questions to ponder: Is this sinking to the same level? Is this perhaps engendering (misguided) feelings of victimhood that may fuel a feeling of entitlement or an alienation from seeing women as people rather than a desire to change one’s way of thinking? What can be done that is productive rather than destructive?

Sara Taylor (’11, University of Michigan Law School)

*trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault

I managed to go to a bar the other weekend without being molested.  Pure luck, apparently.  I ran out to the grocery store late last night, too, and missed the unwanted groping.  I am having a great week!  Ooooh, maybe it’s because I was in loose-fitting pajamas, unwashed hair in a bun, glasses, slippers – on both occasions.  But what about the dozen or so years I, a woman, have been engaged in the risky behavior of going to bars and grocery stores?  What insight can I offer so other women can understand and possibly emulate my incredible assault-free hot streak?  Take it away, Judge Hatch!

Apparently, women who place themselves in vulnerable situations have a duty to be more vigilant to avoid becoming victims.

Several days ago, Arizona Superior Court Judge Hatch sentenced an ex-law enforcement officer who sexually assaulted a woman at a bar this past July.  After having a bit to drink, the then off-duty officer came up behind the woman, a friend of friends, put his hand up her skirt and fingered her.  He got tossed from the bar and the woman naturally participated in his subsequent prosecution (though let’s have a moment for her courage to do this, as it will become patently clear just how stacked the deck is against her).  Judge Hatch suspended jail time and sentenced him to probation, community service, treatment, and also decided this was the appropriate forum to admonish the victim for being a victim. Said Judge Hatch, “You learned a lesson about friendship and you learned a lesson about vulnerability” and “if you wouldn’t have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you.”

Well, I suppose that stands to reason, but how, exactly, does proximity become proximate cause?

Apparently, bad things can happen in bars. Even going to the grocery store after 10 p.m. can be dangerous for a woman.

Going forward, in furtherance of the common law, this is simply too vague.  I feel like I, too, must learn a lesson about friendship and vulnerability, even though I have narrowly escaped groping all these years.  If sexual assault survivors who venture out after dark and forget to leave their vaginas at home is a mitigating factor, what are the guidelines?  Any hemline limits?  Pants only?  What percentage of cleavage clears the threshold?  Can one be friends of friends of cops?  Have a drink?  Can a woman wield any sexual power at all, or would that be inciting dominance?  Let’s be clear, for heaven’s sake, this is a lesson.  What behavior needs to be demonstrated to believably point fingers at the fingerer?

Tell you what, I did learn something here.  The judge also provided some sage wisdom from her mother…when you blame others, you give up your power to change.

Well, your honor, mom was right.  When you blamed others, you gave up your power to change this tired, archaic, degrading narrative.   That duty of vigilance to avoid victimization was yours.

Shelley Halstead, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

I am not a reviewer of movies but I feel like I can review previews of movies. OK, I don’t even know if I can do that. But I can tell if I want to go see a movie from the preview. And after watching the Ruby Sparks preview I now know I will not be going to see that movie.

Dig this: Through a young author’s spark of imagination, his protagonist, the ingénue Ruby, transforms from existing on the page to a living breathing entity to behold. Or to be held as our writer protagonist will soon enough be able to do. The opening shot of the preview begins with the young male author putting paper into a typewriter (old school, perhaps it’s just that old fashioned kind of love he’s looking for) with his voice over telling us that he has a good idea but then says he thinks “it’s just stupid.” To which another male voice responds, “Tell me about it.” Immediately I think the response is sarcastic, exasperated like mine, as in yeah, buddy, tell me about your stupid idea. So, the young author begins to speak about the girl he wants to write about as her image appears on screen backlit by the sunshine, nothing discernible except the outline of her body, with her legs and figure accentuated beneath a white flowing skirt  as she walks through a golden field. His therapist(?) editor(?) says that it sounds romantic. Cut to him saying: “Ruby is from Dayton, Ohio” (sounds wholesome) “but was kicked out of high school for sleeping with her art teacher, or maybe her Spanish teacher. I haven’t decided yet.” So ok, not that wholesome. And why does he almost immediately begin with examples of her sexual  exploration? Does this exemplify her free spirit? I, of course, wonder what happened to the male teacher she was sleeping with? How old was he? How old was she? Cut to:

Therapist/editor: I’m glad you found something that inspires you.

Young author: [But] I can’t fall in love with a girl I write.

Therapist/editor:  Why not?

Young author: Because she’s not real.

Oh, but soon enough she will be. She will be everything he’s ever wanted, ever dreamed of, ever created. When she does appear in the preview sequence the young author calls his friend to tell him the wacky news. His friend, incredulous at first, says, “There’s no possible way that girl is in your house, because she’s not a real person. People don’t just appear out of thin air.”

But because it’s the movies we can suspend reality for the sake of art. The art of let’s make believe you are loved not for yourself but what you could be.

 Friend: Have you tried writing more?

Author writes, Ruby acts.

Friend: That’s insane, you’ve manifested a woman with your mind. You can make her do anything you want. For men everywhere, tell me you’re not going to let that go to waste.

This audience member: Big yawn.

 Omniscient voiceover (again): You may see this and think it’s magic, but falling in love is an act of magic.

What’s frustrating about this preview is that it leads us down the oft-trodden male fantasy of the perfect woman. If only one could create her she’d be perfect. (Bwwaahaahaa.) And according to an interview with the NY times, Ms. Kazan, who in real life is the author of the screenplay and plays Ruby on the screen says that “I think I was writing in reaction to a lot of fictional female characters that have been on screen the last few years,” and “just feeling like there’s a diminutive ideal of a girl that’s just one shade away from being true.” While the director puts it more succinctly, “The film is really talking about a male fantasy in a very blatant way.”

Again, I don’t know about the film, but the preview certainly conveys that. For me, it hit that male fantasy squarely on the nose, and appropriately, it made my skin crawl. For the untrained or less cynical or even more hopeful in the crowd (none of whom are me) it’s selling the most magical of magic—it’s selling love or at least the idea of it. The problem is that the preview sells what the interviews, the artists’ statements, and the movie purport to critique—female autonomy within a three dimensional relationship/character. When the omniscient voiceover calls this magic and love it’s forgoing all the creepiness that we just witnessed. They’re selling the fantasy whereby the leading male, lost and forlorn, is to be saved or invigorated by the love of his/the woman.

Believe me, I agree with Kazan and the director that this notion of love, the one where women can be molded by her intimate’s desire, should be critiqued. And I understand that the studio and not the actor/screenwriter/director have a say in the how their film is marketed, but if one does want to make a statement or turn a trope on its head, this preview makes it more difficult for someone like me to buy it.  So even if this movie ends up being quirky and lovely, or quirky and thought provoking, I will never know. But then again, I’m apparently not their target audience.

Rosie Wang, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

I saw Daniel Tosh in March 2011, at Improv in LA, without really knowing who he was. Even with two bloody marys aiding the generosity of my judgment, I didn’t really find his material memorable, mainly because his jokes and all the other ones told that night sounded pretty much the same. Which was concerning, because nearly all of the punchlines centered on the most tired stereotypes about histrionic women and scary black people and clueless white people possible. By now, if you search “Daniel Tosh rape” on Google, you’ll come up with 31.6 million results. Most of them are responses to a tumblr post that reported that Tosh, doing stand-up, announced that rape jokes are always funny, and then when challenged by a female member of the audience, continued,  “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…” The responses by other comics to this incident and Tosh’s semi-apology on Twitter seem to confirm my suspicion that Tosh isn’t an egregious outlier in the comedy world, but part of the mainstream. These tweets show a fundamental misunderstanding about the issue as heckling rather than dehumanizing women, trivializing rape, and threatening someone’s sense of safety when they are in a vulnerable position. To respond to some of these comedians:

• Kumail  Nanjiani said: Do any of you truly believe Tosh would think it was funny if a rape happened in front of him? No. None of you do. It’s called sarcasm.
• And:  It was said in the moment and not a pre written thing.

This only points out that to Nanjiani and Tosh, rape is not real to until they witness it – never mind that statistically it is impossible for them to not know women who have been raped. Even more puzzling is the fact that Nanjiani thinks that Tosh’s gang rape comment wasn’t pre-written is some sort of exonerating factor. I would think it is worse that Tosh spoke of rape, not just in a way that is contrived for easy shock value, but out of instinct, in the heat of the moment, to threaten and belittle a woman he felt was speaking out of turn and place.

• Patton Oswalt said: Wow, @danieltosh had to apologize to a self-aggrandizing, idiotic blogger. Hope I never have to do that (again).

To say that the blogger only wanted attention, that they were idiotic (presumably for going somewhere they know they might be offended) is not just distasteful, it is lazy. It’s lazy to assume a woman is an opportunist trying to show a performer up, rather than putting in the effort to understand her experiences and point of view. It is lazy to task a huge part of the population with swimming against the tide of a culture that constantly reminds them of their pain rather than trying ensure that every space is safe for them. By implying that he’s also offended others, Oswalt turns being hateful into a badge of honor.

• Jim Norton said: “Comics are pigs for making rape jokes, but Christian Bale is a great actor for American Psycho. Everyone can go fuck themselves.”

False comparison. American Psycho is a critique of modern American culture’s ideal of the alpha male, and thus the very mindset fuels rape jokes and attempts to justify them. It’s a work that makes artistic use of hyperbole to show us what the revolting and disturbing endpoint of an obsession with money, status, and machismo is. Admittedly, the movie glamorizes violence and is troublesome in many ways, but in the end it shows Patrick Bateman as the clearly mentally ill star of a cautionary tale. Ideally, if you’re aiming for dark, transgressive humor, this kind of evisceration of mainstream mores is what smart, creative comedy is supposed to do. It’s not taboo to make light of rape, because despite the cries of “PC Police” by the privileged, desensitization to rape is everywhere. It is actually more transgressive, creative, and unexpected to attack rape culture itself, as has been successfully done before.

Some comedians are reflexively defending Tosh to defend comedy and its ability to push boundaries. But comedy is the most powerful and at its best when the boundaries belong to those in power, not those who are already marginalized. All of these excuses serve to reinforce the message to rape survivors: “Large segments of society don’t value you as much as they value the brief thrill of feeling ‘edgy.’ Your feelings are messy and a wet blanket on our fun at your expense.”  It is also part of a larger epidemic of men talking over women who are trying to explain what it is like to live in a society that shames rape victims, accusing them of deserving it if they don’t guard against rape in the right ways, and of being paranoid and hysterical if they do. In the end, there is simply no right place to make fun of rape victims and no wrong place to speak up against rape culture.

Catrina Otonoga, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

I am an Ohio girl at heart. The child and grandchild of immigrants, I was taught to speak English with a Cleveland accent, to cheer for the Buckeyes and never utter the name of that state up North, and to eat my schnitzel and stuffed cabbage with a side of Bertman’s stadium mustard and French fries.  And, when I began dating my partner from Southeastern Ohio, I learned to love the low, winding hills of Appalachia, the sounds of banjos, fiddles, mandolins, and the sweet burn of bourbon. I sat on porch swings and listened for the call of the whippoorwill, and walked our dog along dirt roads lined with miles of forest and tinged with the scent of honeysuckle.

But, just beyond those tree lined roads, coal, the black gold of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and the way it is mined, threatens to destroy and maim the health and wealth of Appalachian women today and into future generations. Coal is king in this part of the country, and women in the region face what may seem an insurmountable hurdle to getting their voices heard over the increasing booms of explosives. Women continue to be pushed into poverty in Appalachia and face barriers to employment, education, and health services. These women are largely overlooked by academia, and statistics on their experiences are difficult to find. Now, their communities are being threatened, their bodies destroyed, their voices ignored by governments and mining executives. Mining is not just a climate issue, or an environmental issue, but increasingly a reproductive justice issue.

I have seen the environmental effects of mountain top mining first hand, the earth stripped bare of its former lush. But, the effects of blasting away mountain tops in search of unsustainable resources stretch beyond the environmental. Coal Ash and coal slurry, byproducts of coal mining, contain; mercury, iron, lead, manganese, cadium, and haxavalent chromium (the stuff Erin Brockovich sued over), which has been linked to cancer. These dangerous byproducts are stored in underground pipelines and ponds, which spring leaks and seep into water for drinking, showering and cooking.  Mountain top mining has been linked to birth defects, fetal abnormality, and infertility. The rate of children born with birth defects is 42% higher in mountaintop removal mining areas than elsewhere in Appalachia. It’s an invisible process, happening over generations, but eventually the outcome is poison— poison of land, rivers, and people. Where the disastrous effects are mountain top mining are most visible, you can practically see the air around you, tinged with dust and chemicals, the rivers and creeks are no longer clear, the earth is stripped to its core, this is where people often have the least access to agency and the most risk to their health.

Despite isolation, poverty and little access to health resources, the women of Appalachia are rising up and calling mountaintop mining what it is, not just an assault on their homes but on their bodies.  Women like Marilyn Mullins are receiving national attention after leading a group of women to march on the West Virginia state capital, heads shaved in solidarity with the land. The Central Appalachian Women’s Tribunal, which focused on gender and climate justice, brought together groups including the Feminist Task Force of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, the Loretto Community at the United Nations, and West Virginia Free to hold the first tribunal of its kind in the US in early May of this year. Women’s bodies have always been tied to the land in terms like Mother Nature, Mother Earth, and virgin forests.  It is time to take back not only the land, but to further incorporate environmental assaults and their aftermath on women’s bodies into the framework of reproductive justice.

Elisabeth Smith, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

Everywhere you look someone is pontificating about the war on women. We must defend ourselves! No, there isn’t a war! Wait, actually the President is the one waging it.

Lately those of us who support the right to safe and legal abortions and the ability to access them regardless of race, economics, legal status, or geography, have been reacting. We’ve been told to be fearful because fear can be a powerful, yet short-term motivator.  March, yell, scream, protest, call your Senator, your Governor, your Representative!  Where does such fear take us though? Does it marginalize our beliefs far better than a zealot on the other side ever could?

Fear precludes discussions of why contraception and abortion and the ability to plan our families are crucial. Reacting fearfully does not allow for conversations about gender, race, and class. If we’re only focused on today’s crisis how can we explain that if rights don’t include access then for many people they are meaningless?

Reproductive justice (RJ) recognizes the effects of compound identities (race, ethnicity, gender, age, class, legal status, etc.) on reproductive autonomy and the interactions of those identities with healthcare, education, access to information, and social support. RJ advocates envision a world in which people with the necessary rights, information, and resources could make reproductive choices with dignity and free from violence or oppression.

In order to achieve the goals of our movement, we need to stop reacting and start talking, start imagining what an RJ world would look like. Sure, it wouldn’t include the District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act or similar state laws, but why wouldn’t it? If I just scream and say no and thrash about, I’m not giving anyone reason to listen to me or be persuaded.

I’d like to propose something radical. Let’s stop being angry and quash the fear that manufactures short-term effects. Let’s talk, let’s brainstorm, let’s help people understand why realizing reproductive justice is crucial for the betterment of our communities, our country, and the world. Let’s stop using the language of fear and oppression: war, battle, struggle, fight, strike, blow, assault.

Now, please understand that I’m not suggesting that we naively sing kumbaya while the states and the federal government limit our rights and inhibit access. We need allies who work to counter those measures, but we also need allies who explain why RJ is necessary on our terms, using our language.

Reframing conversations about contraception and abortion, one piece of the RJ framework, requires recognizing basic truths: people will always have sex, sometimes without wanting that sex to lead to pregnancy and sometimes with the hope of having a child.   Let’s start there.

In terms of contraception and abortion, what would an RJ world look like to you?

Rosie Wang, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

*trigger warning for transphobia.

In mid-December of last year I was at the tail end of finals. I hadn’t left the two block radius around library for weeks. I kept coming up with terrible law jokes like: “What did the turtle say after he had to pay damages to a thin skull plaintiff? …Tort-is-hell.” Obviously, I was facing major burnout.

It was under those conditions that I decided to give up on studying in favor of escaping into a more cheerful version of mid-20’s New York life than I was currently leading – namely, by watching Netflix marathons of How I Met Your Mother. My classmates referenced it constantly and favorably as a cultural touchstone for our generation. I figured that since one of the main characters attended Columbia Law, it would almost be like studying vicariously. Well, Marshall had way too much free time to be remotely realistic as a law student and the show turned out to be virulently transphobic. It was a multi-season phenomenon (spoiler alerts ahead!):

Season 1, Episode 19:

[Barney pays an escort $500 to attend a social function with Ted.]

Barney: Ted you’re my cabrone, you think I’m going to stick you with some toothless tranny from Port Authority?

Season 2, Episode 9:

[Ted’s wonders why his friends dislike his date. He alternately imagines that she had a man falsely imprisoned for statutory rape, enjoys killing puppies, and the following:]

Ted: I’ll be back in one second.

Kathy: I bet he’s going to the urinal. Yeah, I remember when I had a penis.

Season 3, Episode 8:

Ted: If there’s some potential “Ohhh….” [dealbreaker] moment, I want know about it right away. I mean, what’s the alternative?

[Cut to fantasy sequence Robin and Ted at the altar]

Priest: I now pronounce you man and wife.

Ted: I love you.

Robin: I used to be a dude.

Ted: Ohhh….

Season 6, Episode 5:

[Ted, in a rough part of town, is approached by a blonde woman shortly after being approached by a cross dressed, possibly transgender sex worker.]

Ted: Look, mister you are very convincing, and I’m very flattered. Confused, even, but I’m not looking –

Zoe: Definitely not a drag queen. But you have me rethinking this eyeshadow.

[Later in the episode after Ted compliments her looks.]

Zoe: That’s sweet. It would be sweeter if you hadn’t said I was a tranny before, but it’s still sweet.

Season 7, Episode 5:

[Ted wonders why his date is secretive. A fantasy sequence ensues where Ted is in the bathroom of the restaurant and Janet comes in.]

 Ted: This is the men’s room.

[Janet strides to the urinal and hikes up her dress.]

Janet: I know. I’m a dude.

Ted: [gasp of horror]

Ted, the main character, the everyman we are supposed to champion and identify with, apparently lives in constant fear of transgender people and his friends are not much better. HIMYM consistently takes cheap, easy shots at trans people, a kneejerk reaction to the portrayal of transgender sexuality and bodies as something unfamiliar to be feared. The writers clearly assume that the audience will guffaw along with this, because they assume that everyone agrees that a person undergoing a gender transition is the least desirable partner possible, someone’s worst nightmare. And on top of being portrayed as inherently unattractive, transgender people are also portayed as inherently immoral. Ted imagines trans women as predators who trap poor deceived straight men into marriage by pretending they are cis-women (because how else would they find a romantic partner)! People in the transgender community even belong in the same train of thought as sadists who target baby animals. The slur “tranny” is bandied about as if it were hilarious in and of itself. Zoe, who later becomes Ted’s serious girlfriend, uses it in an  especially clueless way by equating cross dressers, drag queens, and “trannies” into one non-conforming group of People She is Insulted To Be Associated With.

The message that biology trumps any internal sense of self or personal choice is reinforced through Ted’s imaginings. The hypothetical “reveals” are always crass and focused on intimate anatomy and bodily functions. People are identified as transgender, not because of different gender expression, but because they visually or verbally announce the presence of a penis or erstwhile penis. All this is completely disassociated from any reference to internal sense of self or humanity.

If it seems ridiculous that this actually happens on a show watched by over 9 million people, what is even more startling to is that HIMYM has won six Emmy’s and was nominated for a GLAAD award. The GLAAD nomination probably is a result of HIMYM starring an openly gay actor and writing a gay brother for him (who is a total amalgamation of non-threatening gay stereotypes). However, Neil Patrick Harris’ sexual orientation in no way begins to excuse the frequent potshots at people with gender identities that do not match the biological sex they were born with. Indeed, GLAAD awards are given to recognize “outstanding images of the LGBT community,” but what part of being outstanding is the tired trope of “gay panic” supposed to fit into?

Season 8 of HIMYM starts in two months. Its highly anticipated as the season in which the audience might find out the answer to the titular question, but I’d rather know when these characters will meet some empathy.