Quick Hits

Courtesy, as ever, Rebekah at WMC:

For Women, It’s Not The Gender, It’s The Agenda

11/14/08

Boston Globe: While all eyes were focused on Palin and the “Sarah-centric” (her words) crowds that turned out for her rallies, there was a quieter “women’s story” in this race that may make the doorway a little narrow.

Summers May Be Off Of Treasury Short List

11/13/08

Politico.com: Intense backlash from women’s groups may have pushed former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers off the short-list to lead Treasury for President-elect Barack Obama, according to widespread reports circulating in Democratic circles.

Hillary Clinton Emerges As State Dept Candidate

11/14/08

Boston Globe: Sen. Hillary Clinton emerged on Thursday as a candidate to be U.S. secretary of state for Barack Obama, months after he defeated her in an intense contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Women Gaining Political Power

11/13/08

CNN: “Women are about 54 percent of the vote,” CNN contributor Hilary Rosen said. “Do we have equal representation? No. Are we closer to it? Yes.”

POLITICS-US: Feminists Say The Work Has Just Begun

11/13/08

IPS: Women’s right activists see an open door to the White House of President-elect Barack Obama, and they plan to walk right in and take a seat.

Here are some quick hits of issues on the Sex and Sensibility front that caught my eye this week:

1. When Sex and Politics Meet: Amy Schalet, whom Virigina referenced in her post on Juno and teenage love back in January, is at it again with a brilliant article in the Washington Post. This time she has a question for Sarah Palin:

Should public school students be taught that contraception and condoms can prevent unintended pregnancy and disease?

But beyond this, she addresses how parents should address the question of sexuality with their teenage children. A question near and dear to my heart, Schalet makes a great historical argument on the changing role of sexuality in young people’s lives:

Simply put, the circumstances and aspirations of young people have changed since the 1950s, but our society’s narratives about the place of sexuality and the nature of relationships do not reflect these changes. And we pay a price for that inability to talk realistically about teenage sexuality and love.

Of course, with all the hoopla around Sarah Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy. In my opinion, this is a topic that is off-bounds, in my opinion, in any facile understanding of Palin’s VP suitability, but totally in-bounds in questions of conservatives’ and republicans’ generally obtuse and unrealistic (read: abstinence only) approach to teenage sexuality and public sexual health education. And Schalet makes a valid point on this topic:

The Palins, of course, deserve credit for their public embrace of their eldest daughter, which shows that, ideology notwithstanding, parents still love their daughters even if they have sex. If that embrace allays fears that prompt girls to keep sex a secret from their parents, then the Republican Party may have, inadvertently, facilitated the honest conversations we need to move beyond the myth-only approach to adolescent sexuality.

Given Palin’s especial appeal for the conservative Christian base, I wonder whether Palin speaking openly and warmly about her unmarried daughter’s pregnancy does indeed represent a turning-point in public discourse on the realities of teenage sex and love.

2. And about those realities of sex and love: Part of what I love about the feminist blogosphere community is that it acts in many ways like the consciousness-raising groups of the 70s, except with a very different purpose and outcome. Instead of sharing lived experiences that make women realize we all have similar ideas and problems, what often happens is that we realize the diversity of the female experience.

This happened recently in the comments section of a post Courtney did at Feministing on whether it is feminist to demand a female orgasm. The discussion was extremely interesting, and even got a bit brutal with arguments on what a woman should or should not demand from a sexual partner, and whether we should even attempt to write such rules. I’m starting off with my comment and then a few other representative comments:

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