All Things in Moderation

Yesterday, I read through lms’s hiatus post and the comments on it. I’m not here much because of time constraints and health reasons, but I feel a connection to this discussion that goes back to a time on the Plum Line maybe a couple of years ago when I raised the issue of women’s voices in the public sphere. There was a wide ranging conversation that included a request of Greg to add a woman poster.

I  won’t try to reprise all the arguments here. But oddly perhaps, the one comment I remember most was from Cao. He said that the only scientifically proven psychological difference between genders was in competitiveness. I don’t know about the accuracy of that or what studies he was basing it on. But I think it offers one construct that may be useful in thinking about what happens on this blog and others.
 
While I know how very competitive women can be, it’s my sense that men and women differ in the nature of how we’re competitive, and that it has to do with both stakes and practicality. I’m going to offer only one anecdotal example here. I know my son and son-in-law will compete over something as trivial as who is quicker at solving the riddles on their kids’ Popsicle sticks, while the women in the family wouldn’t.
 
Translating this to the world of the blog is maybe a big leap, but I’ll try anyway. I think a lot of discussion on this blog and others has to do with the difference between constructing a point and winning a point. I know that when I’ve raised an issue to discuss and tried to state my case as clearly as I can that I don’t feel like trying to beat down every opposing comment, particularly if it feels tangential. I may try to state my position in another way that I hope will clarify it, but if there is still a lot of opposition noise that I don’t agree with, I am generally ready to exit the discussion. It’s not because I feel vanquished. It’s more because I see no point in trying to convince someone who by opinion and/or temperament won’t be convinced. I have other things to do.
 
I think ATiM is a great experiment, and it would be sad for it to collapse over a difficulty that has a lot to do with how a discussion is carried on. And it’s particularly sad to think that, as hard as lms has worked on this experiment, the climate may no longer feel welcome to her and perhaps to some of the other women. So let me ask this of those men who found themselves entrenched on the other side of the argument about women’s health: does trying to win a point that others may see as strained really make it worth coming across as indifferent to an issue of bedrock importance to the women who live it?

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Chris, you are wrong when you say it is a violation of religious freedom for the Obama administration to require large employers of institutions with religious affiliations to provide insurance that covers contraception for employees. Churches, which are religious entities, are exempted. Universities and hospitals that serve the public and employ people of different religious backgrounds and beliefs should not have the right to deny such coverage to people who do not share the church’s institutional position. In my view, that is a larger violation of religious freedom. Beyond that, it violates the rights of employees to receive the same insurance that the law requires be available to other workers. And beyond that, it is a matter both of women’s rights and women’s health.

I have heard the argument that “liberal” Catholics who helped to pass the Affordable Care Act are incensed that their opposition to Secretary Sebelius’s decision was not respected. They apparently feel their support for ACA earned them policy chits in another area. Why? Presumably, they thought the act was a good idea and a step toward making insurance available to everyone. Did they feel their support was somehow contingent on the idea they would be able to veto the rights to contraception for women who want and need it?

I have long been troubled by the ease with which the church I was baptized in waves its wand over the most deeply personal of human choices. The sexual scandals within the church in recent decades have found clergy and religious throughout the church covering up the most terrible of crimes against children out of a desire to protect the church’s reputation and, I think, out of some sense of loyalty to people who have shared their vocations, in spite of their violations. I think that loyalty could not be more horribly mistaken, but on some level I almost understand it as an empathetic reaction.

It is deeply sad to me that people whose vows and chosen vocations have meant they have not faced real world decisions about child rearing, family size, maternal and infant health, and family financial pressures not only pass down edicts about what is right and wrong in terms of contraception but also show so little empathy for the people whose sexual choices are at variance from those edicts. I find it profoundly immoral that someone in the hierarchy may look the other way when a priest sodomizes a child and yet pound down an iron fist of opprobrium when a woman makes her own very personal choice about family planning. Your ire and sympathies are misplaced, Chris. There is no need to valorize the moral position of institutions (hospitals and universities are people?) over their workers who have a smaller voice but their own moral position and rights.

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