Happy Valentine's Day

As I write, Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives are planning a measure to "zero out" Title X federal funding for Planned Parenthood. A few weeks back, this same group sought to limit federal funds for abortion to victims of what they termed "forcible" rape, until they were clued in that all rape is, by definition, forcible. Last month, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat pined for those good old Florence Crittenden homes where unwed white mothers gestated blue ribbon babies for "deserving" infertile couples. Lately, a certain modest proposal doesn't seem at all remote.

While it's been a miserable winter, and Valentine's Day marks the brink of spring, the climate for women shows every sign of receding into a hostile ice age. Cutting Title X funding for Planned Parenthood (whose clinics do not use federal funding to provide abortion) would after all prove disastrous for the many thousands of limited-income women who rely on its well-women services, including not just contraception but cervical cancer screenings and breast exams. (Why limit contraception if the goal is to prevent abortion?). Similarly, Republican representatives who last month considered rape vs. "Rape-Rape" clearly hoped for a world in which only evidence of a life-threatening struggle would guarantee lack of consent, and other victims--including those who are underage, unconscious, or of limited mental capacity--"deserve" what they get.

The significance of what 3rd wave feminists identify as slut-shaming in the anti-abortion movement is well documented but hardly represents the only evidence that it is ultimately women's sexual subjectivity, their very desire that constitutes the real problem in the culture. In his 2009 New York Times Magazine piece on the topic, Daniel Bergner compares female desire to an impenetrable thicket of trees, quoting sexologist Meredith Chivers on the difficulties of seeing into it:

And sometimes Chivers talked as if the actual forest wasn’t visible at all, as if its complexities were an indication less of inherent intricacy than of societal efforts to regulate female eros, of cultural constraints that have left women’s lust dampened, distorted, inaccessible to understanding. “So many cultures have quite strict codes governing female sexuality,” she said. “If that sexuality is relatively passive, then why so many rules to control it? Why is it so frightening?” There was the implication, in her words, that she might never illuminate her subject because she could not even see it, that the data she and her colleagues collect might be deceptive, might represent only the creations of culture, and that her interpretations might be leading away from underlying truth. There was the intimation that, at its core, women’s sexuality might not be passive at all. There was the chance that the long history of fear might have buried the nature of women’s lust too deeply to unearth, to view.

While televised football games are paid for by advertisments that routinely reference four-hour erections, this spot for a product called Zestra was deemed too sensational last fall by Facebook and WebMD, and by 98 out of 100 television stations. It becomes harder to see what you're told not to look for, what's not supposed to be there at all, making Bergner's metaphor of blindness especially apt. The considerable efforts--of science, of medicine--not to see female desire have sometimes been absurd. At this point, if you're like me, you're grateful for any tiny swatch of humor.