It's Been Ten Years Since Steubenville
Author and filmmaker Nancy Schwartzman on how far we have and haven't come since the rape case that changed everything.
Content Warning: Sexual assault. Please consider your mental health before reading.
Ten years ago this month, a young woman was sexually assaulted by a group of high school athletes in Steubenville, Ohio. The girl, who was unconscious, had been transported, stripped of her clothes, and digitally assaulted (meaning the assailants used their hands). Later there would be undeniable evidence: texts and posts on social media in which perpetrators documented, and even bragged, about the horrific acts that took place that night. Two of those students, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, both 16 at the time, were convicted of rape.
Steubenville was a turning point in how we talk about sexual assault and rape culture. It was the first sexual assault case to go viral on social media, sparking major online activism in response. Nancy Schwartzman, a filmmaker and a writer, has followed this case since the beginning, first making a documentary about the town, and most recently publishing Roll Red Roll, a book about the incident. The New York Times called it a “meticulous account” of what happened that night and the culture that allowed for it.
This week, I talked to Nancy about the film, the book, and what she learned from all of it.
Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Why were you initially drawn to investigating the Steubenville rape case?
Nancy Schwartzman: I had already been examining issues of consent in my first film, The Line—what is coercive consent, what is enthusiastic consent, etc. And by the end of having so many conversations with young people about the topic, what became very important, I thought, for us to all be looking at was perpetrator behavior.
[Sexual assault was talked about] very much like the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial. The victim is scrutinized: her behavior, her alcohol levels, her outfit, her prior sexual conduct. For me, what was just never discussed, and actually where the problem was: “What are the conditions that enable sexual assault to run rampant, and what are the behaviors we should be looking out for?”
When Steubenville broke, [at first] I thought, “Nothing about this is new.” But when I started looking into it more closely, all of the text messages and social media were public. And it was a script of how these guys were talking about the victim, how they were planning it in advance, and how they were egging each other on. So all of a sudden, we had a window into perpetrator behavior.
It’s hard to remember now, but Steubenville was one of the first big sexual assault cases where social media and the internet played a huge role. That’s why it garnered so much national attention, right?
Yeah, the Times also didn't break the story; Rachel Dissell in Cleveland started reporting on it. And what was happening was more about how this was dividing the town, and then [the hacker group Anonymous got involved] to get more global media attention. That's what caught the New York Times’ eye. I remember when I first went to Steubenville and sent some pictures to people like, "I'm here, I'm here,” someone was like, “Whoa, Steubenville, that town from the internet.” It was the first time the internet world and what we call brick-and-mortar collided.
Going to talk to older people [in the town], it was this fascinating generational divide. A 70-year-old man who runs the appliance shop and volunteers at Fort Steuben, the historical fort, he was just like, “These people, they came in with masks, these people from the internet.” So the internet “invaded” this town, they [came] in with a threatening message and their faces covered in a mask, and then people actually showed up on the courthouse stairs. It was also interesting that the people who showed up were from the town, so they got to benefit from the anonymity of Anonymous—from the fact that the outside world was saying “Yo, what's going on in your town is fucked up." People could agree quietly after years of being silenced, or going along with it, or not even knowing there's an alternative way possible.
Yeah, that is super interesting. One of the things that you’ve explored in the book is the culture that creates sexual assault. Many of these people in the town were upset about the attention the case was getting and felt that the whole thing was overblown. So can you talk about some of those circumstances a little bit, some of those contexts that you were referring to?
Most people I spoke with, including [a lovely man who owned a big family-owned store], would acknowledge, “Well, what happened was bad.” Everybody categorically agreed that it was bad. So aside from the negative attention, they were horrified. I think one of the things folks didn’t understand... I mean, [the store owner] cornered me in his shop and put his fingers in my face and was like, “Digital, it was digital penetration, it was digital.”
Oh my God.
I know. So I think there was a wild misunderstanding of assault in all its forms. And the [digital penetration] was one detail of the case that was eminently provable in court, but there was a lot of stuff that pointed to other sexual misconduct. So there was a physical minimizing of the actual harm, which was obviously a problem. There was also this question of: “If someone is blacked out, how bad can it be?” So there was a wild misunderstanding there.
The people that I really was the most frightened of, in a way, were the mothers of sons. In all of my screenings, I was like, “Oh, shit, there's a bunch of dads in the back, and there's a bunch of men." I called the men in to be my allies. They're in locker rooms, they know, they grew up in this environment and were like, “Yep, I know this behavior, this is familiar to me, this is not good. I have a daughter or a son, and I don't want him in trouble.” [But] it was the mothers of sons that were fiercely protective. “Not my baby,” and “She must have done something.” I just did not expect this level of obstacle with that demographic.
Why do you think that is?
I don't know. I’m not a parent, and I don’t have a son. I think a mother's love for her son... Well, I think in the big picture, this is a place that is really, really, really steeped in patriarchal tradition. The book covers the history of the mills: The men are working, and the women are at home. There aren’t any places for women to go. There's a really strong separate-sphere ideology. Men are at the mill; women are at home. Mill's closed, men are on the football field, boys are on the field, girls are cheerleaders. There were no women on the city council; it's a very, very Catholic town. There are no women in leadership in the clergy. I mean, it was alarming, across the board.
When we’re thinking about moms protecting their sons, mommies generally love their little boys, and their little boys are perfect. If they do something wrong, it’s someone else's fault. I saw that growing up in my town. The way that gender roles play out, it's wildly unsafe to be a young woman or a queer person in that town.
I think a lot of people in the “#MeToo era” are talking about the limits of the criminal justice system in sexual assault. Steubenville is a rare case where perpetrators were convicted. There was some sense of justice through the criminal justice system, and that's because there was so much documented evidence that you could not ignore it. But what was your learning and takeaway from that? And what happened to the boys after they were convicted?
My book has a whole section about transformational justice and different models for justice. For most of us, we get no justice. I talked to Aya Gruber, who’s an amazing feminist criminologist. So often, the burden of “What should be done?” is on the victim. Like, “Well, it's your obligation to report because he could do it to someone else.” You know what? It's not my obligation to do anything because the criminal justice system is so dangerous for women, it's dangerous for people of color, and it's unreliable. It's not a space for justice. The burden should not be on our shoulders to do something.
But the boys were sentenced: Trent was sentenced to two years in juvenile detention, Ma'Lik was sentenced to nine months, and Ma'Lik got out and finished high school. There was a big ripple of anger because he was brought back onto the football team, and that divided the town. People were like, "Hey, football is a privilege; it's not a right. He should be let back into school, but this was the environment that led him to get caught up in something like gang rape. What about the football team has changed to ensure this doesn't happen?" The coach had said, “He did his time. I believe in second chances.” But they didn't bring anything onto the team to ensure that thinking and behavior changed. That was a missed opportunity, big time.
I think what I really wanted folks to understand is that it's not... Every survivor doesn’t have to become a fucking activist. And you're doing nothing wrong if you're a survivor and you decide not to report to the police, because reporting to the police is a dangerous act that might not be in your best interest.
Samhita Mukhopadhyay is a writer, editor, and speaker. She is the former Executive Editor of Teen Vogue and is the co-editor of Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump's America and the author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life, and the forthcoming book, The Myth of Making It.
PHOTO BY HEATHER HAZZAN
Grieving Princess Diana Let Me Mourn My Brother
  August 30, 2022 Hola Meteor readers, I am a puddle of emotions this week. Last night Serena Williams walked onto the court for her first match at her last-ever U.S Open, a tournament she’s won six times over the years. The game was followed by a beautiful tribute from Billie Jean King and a special video narrated by Oprah thanking Serena for everything she’s done for the sport of tennis. And as if that wasn’t enough: Taylor Swift announced a new album for October, so I really don’t know how I’m going to manage all these feelings through the fall. Today’s newsletter is also somber and reflective. In honor of the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death tomorrow, writer Susanne Ramirez de Arellano explores how the princess’s death helped her mourn a more personal one—and what she’s learned in the years since. But first: some news. Lighting a candle, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON“Monsoon on steroids.” That’s just one phrase that’s been used to describe the onslaught of devastating floods that have put a third of Pakistan underwater. The word “dire” fails to capture how bad things are, with a death toll of over 1,000, nearly half a million citizens displaced, and entire cities, towns, and agricultural sites completely wiped out. It’s nothing short of a climate catastrophe, made worse by the country’s melting glaciers. To help those in need, please consider donating through UNICEF, the IRC, Islamic Relief, or LaunchGood.  Then there’s this: In a video shared by Jessica Valenti on Instagram, a story of forced birth that is too horrific told by a pediatric gynecologist in South Carolina.  AND:
 WE REMEMBERIt would be the last time I saw my brother alive. BY SUSANNE RAMÍREZ DE ARELLANO  PRINCESS DIANA IN PARIS, 1988. (IMAGE BY BY JAYNE FINCHER VIA GETTY IMAGES) Tomorrow will be 25 years since Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris, chased by paparazzi on motorcycles in the Pont de L’Alma. Her tragic end shocked the world and caused an unprecedented outpouring of grief in Britain. Her death also embedded itself as a timepost in my life: It would be the last time I saw my younger brother alive. The sequence of that day plays out in my mind’s eye like an old film. I had traveled from London (where I was living and working for a news agency) to New York to see my brother. He was very sick, but he would be flying from Hawaii to see us. My sister called and bluntly said, “I think you’d better get on a plane.” In a blur, I packed, rushed to the airport, and arrived late at night. My beautiful brother, John Lawrence, known to us as Larry, had full-blown AIDS. I woke up the following day to the front page of The New York Times: Diana, Princess of Wales, 36, Dies in a Crash in Paris. I sat at my sister’s kitchen table, in her beautiful home, with a sense of impending doom, only able to read the first paragraph again and again. I refused to believe it. First, my brother, a shadow of his former self, was dying. And now Diana. Two people whose stories would become surreally intertwined in my life. Diana was a facet of daily life in London. Her face was everywhere: in newspapers and magazines, on television programs, and on tea towels. I had seen the fairytale wedding, witnessed the unraveling of her marriage, and been inspired by the emergence of a strong-willed woman coming into her own. And, of course, we all remember that “revenge dress” at the Serpentine Gallery. My brother and I watched the funeral together. (In truth, I think I forced him to watch it.) He lay on the sofa next to me as I stroked his thin legs, and we spoke of the woman who championed the cause of people living with AIDS. Diana publicly took on the HIV crisis as a cause in 1987 when she opened the U.K.'s first HIV/AIDS unit at London’s Middlesex Hospital. She changed the way people thought about AIDS with just one gesture by shaking hands (without wearing gloves) with an AIDS patient who was terminally ill. It was the 1980s, and the shame around the illness was virulent. For me, her gesture was a visually powerful way to confront HIV/AIDS stigma, a public challenge to the notion that HIV was passed from person to person by touch. It was the opposite of my family’s reaction. My father refused to acknowledge that Larry had AIDS, avoiding the crushing inevitability of what would happen. After my brother passed away, he would say that Larry had died of a tumor.  PRINCESS DIANA EXCHANGING HOLIDAY GIFTS WITH A PATIENT IN AN AIDS HOSPICE IN CANADA. (IMAGE BY TIM GRAHAM VIA GETTY IMAGES) The princess was just 36 when she died; my brother, who passed away two months later, on October 30, 1997, was 37. Today, Diana would be 61 and my brother 62—two lives cut short when both had so much in front of them. At present, there are approximately 38.4 million people across the globe living long and healthy lives with HIV. In 2021, 28.7 million people with HIV had access to antiretroviral therapy globally. Yet I am still angry that more was not done to fight AIDS earlier. It could have saved my brother. Maybe it would have given him time to teach me how to surf. Instead, I can still see him riding the waves, lithe and athletic, like a dancer. Larry would laugh because I never stayed on the board for more than a minute. (But how exhilarating that minute was!) This interlacing of stories—Diana's death and my brother's—is not a weepy fascination; there are no happy endings here. But Diana's funeral, and the collective grief of the British, allowed me to deal with what was happening in my life. The mourning of her loss permitted me to grieve mine.  Susanne Ramírez de Arellano is an author on race and diversity, opinion writer, and cultural critic. The former news director of Univision, she writes for NBC News Think, Latino Rebels, and Nuestros Stories, among other outlets. She lives in Brooklyn and is busy writing her first novel.  FOLLOW THE METEOR    Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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Missouri Parents Want to Bring Spanking Back
  August 25, 2022 Good evening Meteor readers, So I assume we’ve all taken a look at Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan by now and had time to run our own numbers and shake our fists at the sky, wondering why this man won’t hit the delete button on everyone’s student debt. Perhaps that’s overly idealistic of me—but it’s equally idealistic for federal loan programs to believe paying $400 a month until the year 3000 is any way to live.  BIG SHOUT OUT TO THE ONE PERSON ON THE RIGHT WHO BROUGHT SNACKS TO THE STUDENT LOAN BORROWERS RALLY IN DC THIS WEEK. (IMAGE BY PAUL MORIGI VIA GETTY IMAGES) But a win is still a win, and this was a win since activists have been working to bring this possibility to life for over a decade. When some of us first started college, “loan forgiveness” wasn’t even a phrase anyone used. And now, it’s the talk of the town! Imagine how much we could get if we pushed for a few more years…But I digress. (Trust me, I could drone on for days about this.) Today we’re loaning you our overview of the news at an introductory rate of 0% interest for the full term of your time here. Let’s roll. Swiping my abacus, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONIdaho again: A judge has placed an injunction on a portion of Idaho’s near-total abortion ban. Although most of the ban goes into effect today, the portion of the law allowing felony charges for physicians providing abortion services is on hold. According to Politico, it “does not provide adequate protection for physicians who perform abortions during a medical emergency, and therefore runs afoul of federal law guaranteeing patients the right to treatment when their health or life is at risk.” But people who help abortion patients in Idaho can still be sued for $20,000, and nearly all abortions are now illegal in the state. You can always help by donating to the state’s local abortion fund. The blue wave that could: The results are in from Tuesday’s primaries in New York and Florida. And surprisingly, it’s not all bad news! Staten Island (which I’m being told is part of New York???) had its highest turnout for a Democratic primary ever. In Florida, an Afro-Cuban Gen Z nominee, Maxwell Alejandro Frost, is almost assured to be the first Gen Zer in Congress after beating out more experienced candidates. And Aramis Ayala, who went toe to toe with former Florida governor Rick Scott over the death penalty, secured the nomination for her state’s attorney general. We have a long way to go before November 8—but this is promising. It shows that people are fed up and ready to fight back.  What the actual fuck: A Missouri school district has reinstated corporal punishment (specifically, hitting with paddles) as a last resort to discipline students. And if that’s not wild enough for you: this proposal was brought to the district by parents who wanted their children to be physically disciplined at school and asked for a vote on reinstating the policy. (Families will still be able to opt-out of the new “paddling” policy by filling out a form.) Now I have no children, so maybe I am missing some sort of logic here, BUT I did once write a lengthy piece about the roots of child-hitting, which go back to the time of colonization and enslavement. The TL;DR is that hitting as a form of discipline in the U.S. arose as a direct response to acculturation and fear of worse violence enacted by the “dominant racial group.” Parents, specifically parents of color, feared what would happen to their children if they misbehaved in front of white authority figures. So the behavior was curbed (to the extreme) inside the home in the hopes of achieving some degree of safety. So what exactly are we teaching kids in Missouri (a state with a 31% Black and Latine population) about themselves when we allow them to be hit in school by an authority figure? Make it make sense. AND:
 WHAT WE'RE READING, WATCHING, AND LISTENING TO THIS WEEKENDIf you don’t plan to spend your weekend watching the MTV VMAs (yes, that program is still running, and sadly I live quite close to where it’s happening), here are some culture offerings we’re enjoying on our days off:
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It's always been hard for teens seeking abortions
  August 23, 2022 Valar morghulis Meteor readers, If that greeting confused you, then I gather you’re not one of the 10 million viewers who tuned in to watch House of the Dragon (the Game of Thrones prequel series) on Sunday. Which is fine, we all have our own thing, and apparently, my thing involves fawning over Matt Smith in a long flowing white wig as he’s waffling between villain and unloved elf man.  My doctoral thesis on how this fictional universe is not anti-feminist is forthcoming. For today’s edition, we’re flying our dragons over the glittering sea of news, so let’s get to it. Valar dohaeris, Shannon Melero (of house Targaryan) P.S. If you’re a New York, Florida, or Oklahoma resident, it’s an election day for you. If you haven’t already, find your polling station and VOTE. You can take this newsletter with you and read it in line.  WHAT'S GOING ONWe’re going to miss you: Dr. Anthony Fauci, a beacon of hope and common sense during the early days of COVID, announced Monday that he would be stepping down from his position as White House Chief Medical Adviser in December. He is NOT retiring but simply “[pursuing] other directions” in his career—which is impressive because he is fully 81 years old and has committed five decades of his life to public service. But in the government, at least: his watch has ended (sorry, last Thrones reference, I promise). Naturally, haters in the Republican party are still threatening an investigation into Fauci’s exact role in the government’s less-than-stellar pandemic response. Here’s what I know: it wasn’t this elderly man who was encouraging me to drink bleach and continue working as if COVID wasn’t real.  AND:
 LET KIDS CHOOSETeens also need abortion rights. Why have we made it so hard for them?BY CINDI LEIVE  A CALIFORNIA TEEN HAVING TO DO THE HARD WORK OF FIGHTING FOR HER RIGHTS BECAUSE THE ADULTS KEEP DROPPING THE BALL. (IMAGE BY RONAN TIVONY VIA GETTY IMAGES) You probably read the headlines last week: A “parentless” 16-year-old in Florida had been denied the right to end her pregnancy by a court that found her “too immature” to make that decision. “I have no words…just rage,” read one typical comment on The Meteor’s post on the subject. “Too immature to have an abortion but mature enough to be a mother at 16?” asked another. “DA FUCK is this ruling?” Excellent question, but if you think that the answer starts on June 24, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade—nope. For decades, teens have had to jump through flaming hoops of humiliation to end their pregnancies. Florida, in fact, has not outlawed abortion—but it is among the at least 36 states with measures requiring teens to notify or secure the permission of one or both parents in order to receive care. The first time I got enraged about this was almost three decades ago, in the 1990s, when, as a fresh-out-of-college editorial assistant, I sat in an editorial meeting at Glamour magazine and pitched a story on the newly emerging parental notification laws. (The knowledge that I wouldn’t have been at that conference-room table at all without the abortion I’d been able to get my freshman year was a motivating if unspoken factor.) Since then, most states have rolled out notification or consent laws—with “judicial bypass” exceptions that allow teens who don’t want to or can’t tell their parents to petition a judge instead for permission to end a pregnancy. The laws became the norm, and many Americans got used to them—an apparently “acceptable” infringement of rights, like the repro equivalent of a drinking age. Except they’re not. The American Academy of Pediatrics opposes these restrictions, pointing out that most teens who can tell a parent about their abortion decision do (I did), and those who opt not to have solid and sometimes terrifying reasons. Plus, the judicial bypass process, meant to make things better, is only as good as the judge you get: In one study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2019, teenagers who went through that system in Texas described it as “intimidating” and “scary,” full of judges who “preached” at them. “We found the bypass process functions as a form of punishment and allows state actors to humiliate adolescents for their personal decisions,” concluded the authors. Just six months ago, another Florida judge denied a 17-year-old an abortion, citing her low GPA as justification. (Don’t try to think through the logic.) Now the horror of post-Roe America has made things worse. For one thing, judicial bypass could disappear as an option, potentially even in states where abortion is legal. And if abortion is illegal in a state, teenagers there are less likely than adults to have money to travel out of state; less likely to be able to rent a car in their name; and less likely to be able to find a telehealth option, usually only available to those over 18. In other words, it’s bad. But—it’s been bad. And this is another reminder that, as Monica Simpson of SisterSong puts it, Roe was the floor. We don’t want to return to a world where legal abortion exists only for the wealthy, the white, or the appropriately “mature,” whatever that means. We want, and need, access for everyone, teenagers included. We should never have gotten used to less.  Everyone needs abortion funds. Teens really need abortion funds. Find your local one at abortionfunds.org.  Cindi Leive is the co-founder of The Meteor, the former editor-in-chief of Glamour and Self, and the author or producer of best-selling books including Together We Rise.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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Why "men are trash" is not enough
  August 18, 2022 Hello, hello, hello Meteor readers, I’m sliding into your inbox this evening in a reflective mood for two very good reasons. The first being that I’m currently reading a book about breathing (recommend), and it’s really got me wondering if I’ve been doing it wrong the entire time. The second is the Q&A in today’s newsletter, which has been like a perfectly cooked steak for my mind since I read the first draft; I just keep coming back to it. My wonderful and talented colleague Samhita Mukhopadhyay spoke to journalist Nona Willis Aronowitz about her latest book, “Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure and an Unfinished Revolution.” It’s a conversation about the philosophical dilemma of being a heterosexual feminist, (which, yes, is possible). But before all that exciting stuff, an amuse bouche of news. Questioning everything, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONSay what ya need to say: Once again, Mike Pence is being given a chance to be more than a stain on history and is doing everything in his power to screw it up. Speaking at a college conference on Wednesday, Pence said that he would consider testifying before the January 6 committee if invited. But he stopped short of giving an absolute yes, despite admitting that “the American people deserve to know what happened.” We do, Mike! And this will I won’t I game you’re playing isn’t cute or noble or anything other than frustrating. If you want the good guy points, get in the chair and tell us the truth.  Bad brother: Embattled former New York governor Andrew Cuomo will be allowed to keep the $5 million he earned from his book about leading the state through season one of the pandemic. In case you can’t remember why this is a big deal: Cuomo used state resources to write the book, including having some of his staff work on it during office hours, an ethics committee ruled that the profit should be put back into state funds. And contrary to the account he gave in his masturbatory memoir, Cuomo was also found to have mismanaged the pandemic. Also, we’ve really given up on questioning him about that whole serial sexual harassment thing, huh? Let's never talk about this again: The NFL and NFLPA have come to a final settlement agreement with Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson. Originally, an arbitrator had ruled to suspend Watson for six games due to the 24 civil lawsuits filed against him alleging sexual misconduct (nearly all of which have been settled outside of court). After an appeal process initiated by commissioner Roger Goodell, Watson will now have to miss 11 games and be hit with a $5 million fine. As someone who perpetually holds out hope that all sports can be better, this is not enough. I understand the punishment is lenient because there were no criminal charges or arrests made but at some point, the NFLPA should draw a line in the sand (I repeat 24 civil lawsuits). It is disappointing they felt anything less than a full season suspension was adequate. Watson still maintains his innocence and claims that he “never assaulted or disrespected anyone.” AND:
  LET'S TALK ABOUT SEXWhen “Men Are Trash” Is Not EnoughAccording to Bad Sex, if you are going to date men and be a feminist about it, you should ask yourself why.BY SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY  THE TRUE MAGIC OF BOOKS THAT MAKE YOU THINK. (PHOTO BY COURTESY OF NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ) Feminists have generally been interested in—and for—women’s sexual freedom. But what happens when sexual liberation—understood as women’s freedom to choose how, when, why, and with whom she has sex—is not enough? That’s exactly what my good friend Nona Willis Aronowitz’s new book “Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure and an Unfinished Revolution” tackles. Part memoir, partly reported, part historiography, the book investigates a brutal truth: how can we sometimes be as free as can be and still unsatisfied in our sexual and love lives? I talked to Nona last week at her book launch. This is a shortened version of our riveting (if I do say so myself!) conversation. Samhita Mukhopadhyay: At what point did you realize you wanted to write a book about s-e-x? Nona Willis Aronowitz: I consider myself a journalist. I've written on a lot of different topics, but ultimately I kept coming back to gender and sexuality over and over again, especially around 2017 when my life was a total mess and also #metoo was happening, and there was this renewed conversation about sex and pleasure. The book is a seamless combination of memoir and history. What was the process of piecing that together? My journey is genuinely connected to reading about all this stuff at the same time things were happening to me. I was up in the library reading about Emma Goldman [and her nonmonogamy] just as I was grappling with nonmonogamy, and I was reading about Dana Densmore and the celibates [who believed the path to feminist liberation was to withhold sex from men] just as I was taking a break from sex. So it was actually an intellectual journey coupled with an emotional journey. My mother, Ellen Willis, was a pro-sex feminist from the sixties and seventies and eighties and nineties, and her legacy was all over this topic. She died in 2006, and I'd been grappling with her work ever since, but this was sort of the deepest, most visceral way that I was grappling with it because finally, I was her age when she was writing, in my thirties and going through some of the same things that she [had been] going through. So I really felt like, for the first time, we were dialoguing rather than me as 22-year-old reading stuff from my mom.  CHEERS TO BESTIES WITH BOOK DEALS. (PHOTO COURTESY OF NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ) I don’t think many people are in a situation where they report out a close relationship. Talk a little about that experience: emotionally and technically going into your mom’s archive, talking to her ex-boyfriends, etc. Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting because I’d known all my life the two ex-boyfriends I spoke to for this book. She was the type of person to keep exes in the mix as friends. I learned a lot of new stuff while technically interviewing them for this, but I knew both of these men. What really was amazing and fascinating was talking to my dad’s ex-wife, Jane. She was very generous with her story. We don’t know each other very well, and she told me some painful things about a dad I didn’t even recognize. So I also did reporting on my dad’s life, my dad’s early life, which, I mean, both my parents grew up in the forties and fifties, respectively. So this is a long ass time ago. So the socialization was different, and they both had to reinvent themselves, and some of those early versions of them, I truly didn’t recognize. I couldn’t help but wonder while reading the book, “God, it could have been so different for me if my parents didn’t put so much pressure on me to get married and so much shame on me about my sexuality.” You had the opposite experience. Yeah, although my parents didn’t apply the pressure. My mom gave me a lot of latitude when it came to being a teenage girl who made mistakes and did whatever I needed to do. She gave me the privacy that I think some teens really dream about. So what I think happened was not shame around sexuality, but shame around not being this perfect sexual feminist because some of my earliest idols were Samantha from Sex in the City and Lil Kim and Foxy Brown and stuff, these very seemingly invulnerable, but obviously not truly invulnerable women who are just like, “I’m going to get that. I’m going to get my pussy ate,” or whatever. I wanted to be them. So I didn’t have shame around my desires, but I did have shame around just not living up to some sort of straw woman expectation of feminism [that casual sex was enough when it wasn’t always].  YOU KNOW A BOOK IS GOOD WHEN THE BACK COVER LOOKS LIKE THIS. (PHOTO COURTESY OF NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ) In the late 90s and early 2000s, there was a lot of pushback on traditional ideas of marriage, and there was more cultural space to be like “I want to be nonmonogamous” or “I want to be casual” or whatever. But, I remember when my friends started to get married, they’d say to me, “I know I’m a really bad feminist, but” trying to make this historically sexist institution feminist in some way. I mean, I thought that I could escape the binds, expectations, and privileges of marriage by just having this irreverent marriage for health insurance. I couldn’t. Marriage gives you status. Marriage gives you heft with old people. It gives you benefits. There are all kinds of crutches and ways in which marriage sort of bumps up your status that’s hard to let go of, even if you’re supposedly a leftist, radical, or free spirit. So, the book is out in the world, and people are responding to it. And not everyone is going to understand it. Some people argue that if women want marriage and monogamy, feminists should be okay with that or that traditional ideas of courtship are actually more feminist than the lack of accountability that might come from casual sex, etc. You addressed some of this backlash to sex-positive feminism in a recent New York Times op-ed. Nona, what else do you have to say to your haters? Well, I do agree that there’s something very wrong with what ‘sex positivity’ has turned into. The premise of the book is that not only the patriarchy but also a certain strain of [sex positive] "feminism" has put a lot of pressure on women. I just disagree about the solutions. Many people are saying there need to be more rules and boundaries. I’m saying there actually needs to be more freedom. I’ll take monogamy as an example—or, let’s say, commitment. People say that a lot of women want commitment [from a partner], but they’re afraid to ask for it, they’re suppressing their true feelings, and their emotional needs are not met by hookup culture. It’s not like I would disagree with that—but I would also say, “Okay, you can’t just take desire at face value.” There are socially constructed reasons why you desire what you desire. That’s true for monogamy. There’s a lot of internalized messaging from a very young age that people aren’t respecting you unless they’re monogamous. I’m not saying that non-monogamy is the real feminism or that monogamy is the real feminism. I’m saying interrogate your desires as much as you possibly can. To me, the core of this book is exploring how to be heterosexual and a feminist…which for a lot of women is simply the default that “men are trash, but we love them anyway.” I don’t think the ‘men are trash’ paradigm is helpful. I think it can be cathartic: Anger towards men is legit; patriarchy sucks. But what does that mean for your life if you say men are trash and still endeavor to love and partner with them? Actually, it’s interesting. Heterosexual women are the only marginalized or oppressed identity who are meant to partner with and fuck and love their oppressors. In most other contexts, you can be a separatist, and there were lesbian separatists, of course, but then it’s like, how do you continue society? We do need men. And, if you truly are heterosexual and you really do want to have loving relationships with men, it’s worth investigating why and how. So ultimately, fine. Have your ‘men are trash’ moment, but then push further—ask yourself why I am attracted to men and why do I want to be with them.  PHOTO BY HEATHER HAZZAN Samhita Mukhopadhyay is a writer, editor, and speaker. She is the former Executive Editor of Teen Vogue and is the co-editor of Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump's America and the author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life, and the forthcoming book, The Myth of Making It.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
Liz Cheney's Challenger Is a Nightmare
  August 16, 2022 Greetings Meteor readers, I wish I could say it’s a great day to be here—but polio is back, and cleaning solution has been found in Capri Sun packets. I don’t know how much I believe in the End Times, as explained in The Book of Revelations, but I could be convinced if we get hit with one more plague. Speaking of, in today’s newsletter, we’re talking about Harriet Hageman, the Wyoming Republican who is projected to win her primary tonight against U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney. Hageman is just the latest addition to our frightening era of right-wing politics, so we’re especially grateful to have Meteor editor and Wyomingite Julianne Escobedo Shepherd give us the full breakdown from the state that out-Trumps them all—and explain what Hageman’s potential win means for the rest of the country. But before that, let’s run through some news. Eyes peeled for the seventh seal 👁, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON The Gem State: Last Friday, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the state’s extreme abortion ban can still go into effect despite the lawsuits filed against it, including one from the Biden administration. Beginning August 25, Idaho will enforce a near-total abortion ban with some exceptions for rape, incest, or preserving the life of the pregnant person. However, a different law also tied up in suits will go into effect immediately: Under this one, “potential relatives” of a fetus aborted after six weeks can now sue abortion providers for $20,000. That means a person’s grandmother, or a partner’s parent, can complain on behalf of a grouping of cells they never met. You can donate to abortion funds in Idaho here. Explain the logic: A 16-year-old in Florida who is reportedly “parentless” asked a court to grant her permission to seek an abortion, per Florida laws requiring minors to have parental consent to obtain one. The court said no, an appeal was filed, and the appellate court upheld the original decision, stating that the 16-year-old “had not established by clear and convincing evidence that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy.” So she’s not mature enough to make a decision over her own body but is mature enough to carry a pregnancy to term? Something I, at 30, don’t feel entirely mature enough to do? Make it make sense! AND:
  HOME ON THE RANGEHarriet Hageman Will Be a Nightmare for WyomingLiz Cheney is a staunch conservative, but at least she believes in democracy.BY JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD  THE FUTURE OF WYOMING WEARS A LOT OF APPROPRIATIVE TURQUOISE. (PHOTO BY NATALIE BEHRING VIA GETTY IMAGES) It should come as no surprise if Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming—who has made it her mission to carve a path for anti-Trump Republicans—is ousted in today’s primary election by virulently conservative, pro-Trump Cheyenne lawyer Harriet Hageman. But for me, as a born-and-raised Wyomingite, this race has been especially excruciating to watch. First of all, it has been psychically painful to feel vaguely protective of any member of the Cheney family—let alone the staunchly conservative Liz, daughter of Wyoming’s Dark Father Dick. Is this how ass-backward national politics have become that I, a Xicana with progressive-left politics and a Brooklyn zip code, am rooting for Liz Cheney to win her primary simply because she has the huevos to stick up for democracy? But I am because the alternative—Cheyenne lawyer Harriet Hageman, an election and climate-change denier and federal government hater—is certainly much worse. And I’m not alone: some Wyoming Democrats, who don’t have a chance in national contests, have switched their party affiliations to cast their primary votes for Liz. How did this happen? Cheney is a Republican stalwart by any measure—she’s anti-abortion and pro-fossil fuels and generally espouses historically popular values in the sparsely populated state. (In the last 70 years, the only Democratic president Wyoming sided with was Lyndon B. Johnson.) But Wyoming has also prided itself on a kind of libertarian ethos that falls squarely in the mythical bootstraps-pulling framework of “rugged individualism,” making it more susceptible to right-leaning “populist” movements that disdain entrenched politicians and the federal government overall. And that susceptibility has only increased. By 2015, a study at the University of Wyoming found that nearly four in 10 Wyomingites agreed with the Tea Party, the right-wing precursor to the MAGA movement. Today, Wyoming is the most pro-Trump state in America, with 69.9% of the vote going toward him in 2020.  WHO WOULD'VE THOUGHT LIZ CHENEY WOULD BE A REASONABLE CHOICE? (PHOTO BY BILL CLARK VIA GETTY IMAGES) And because Cheney has been unwilling to capitulate to Trump, the state’s rightward tilt has cast her as a careerist “RINO.” Last year after she voted to impeach Trump, she was excommunicated from the state’s Republican Party by its chair, Frank Eathorne, a former cop and alleged January 6 participant affiliated with the white supremacist Oath Keepers militia. To a lot of people in my home state, Cheney’s opposition to Trump’s election lies and inaction on January 6—despite having voted with him over 92% of the time—has been received as unforgivable heresy. (Last month, I took a reporting trip through some of Wyoming’s most rural areas and lost count of how many supersized “Trump 2024” and “Fuck Biden” flags I saw, most planted right next to the entrance signs for million-dollar ranches.) In 2021, Eathorne told Steve Bannon that “Western states have the ability to be self-reliant” and flirted with the idea of Wyoming seceding from the United States entirely if Texas were to lead the effort. And now Wyoming will likely elect Harriet Hageman, who’s currently 30 points ahead of Cheney in the polls. Though Hageman is a former friend of Liz and a former opponent of Trump, she is currently an election denier assisted by Trump campaign goon Bill Stepien, and who courted the former President’s endorsement in an effort to further her own political career, previously defined by a failed 2018 bid for governor (third place in the primary). Hageman’s victory would be a nightmare for Wyoming, particularly for constituents interested in maintaining the ecological integrity of public lands. Hageman prides herself on her 20-year war with the Environmental Protection Agency and has launched campaigns against endangered species, the Clean Water Act, and “radical environmentalists,” which led activists to nickname her the “Wicked Witch of the West” in the early 2000s. Having grown up on a ranch, she is adamant about protecting Wyoming landowners from “federal overreach” but would seemingly prefer its beautiful landscape be tended by the protective hands of the coal, oil, and gas industries. Last week she described Biden’s climate-change efforts as a “war on fossil fuels.”  WHAT IS SHE GOING TO DO TO THAT FARMER? (IMAGE COURTESY OF JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD) More recently, she has acted as senior litigation counsel to the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a right-wing law firm that might sound innocuous enough but is on the wrong side of history in every issue imaginable. They’ve represented the losing employers in the landmark LGBTQ+ discrimination case Bostock v. Georgia, which held that employers could not discriminate against gay and trans workers; they’re currently crusading against vaccine mandates and helping a professor use Title IX’s gender discrimination clause to defend himself from the consequences of a student’s rape allegation. In July, Hageman ran a local TV ad that featured her standing alone in the plains, wearing boots and a dress and a king’s ransom’s worth of turquoise jewelry, simultaneously casting her as a rugged white homesteader—an image that carries great weight in Wyoming—and vaguely and confusingly invoking Native Americans. (What is it about horrible conservative white women wearing Native jewelry?) At the end of the clip, Hageman intoned menacingly: “As we so often say here, you’re in Wyoming. Act accordingly.” (For the record, we don’t actually say that.) Ostensibly “act accordingly” was a dig at Cheney’s refusal to genuflect at Trump’s altar, but it also seemed directed towards voters, instructing them to fall in line “or else.” I saw the ad incessantly on local TV throughout early July, but it was replaced with a slightly less portentous clip by early August. But Hageman’s main selling point to Wyomingites is, simply, that she will lick Trump’s jackboots. It’d be foolish for the rest of the country to ignore the tenor of right-wing extremists in the least populous state; as election deniers gain ground in the midterms across the U.S., it behooves us all to know what we’re up against. Wyoming’s unique political landscape is a microcosm of hardliner thought, and what happens there is a warning bell for the rest of the country. It’s ringing real loud.  Julianne Escobedo Shepherd is a Wyoming-born Xicana journalist and editor who lives in New York. She is currently at work on a book for Penguin about her upbringing and the mythology of the American West.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
Are your apps snitching on you?
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No images? Click here  August 11, 2022 Dear Meteor readers, It’s the day before, the day before the weekend, which means it is a good day! We’ve seen stories about how our personal data can be used against us in post-Roe America, but it's all a little confusing. In today’s newsletter, writer and security nerd Shamira Ibrahim explains how it happens and why we should care. There is a good chance you will finally delete those apps. But first, the news, some of which is actually quite entertaining. Turning off all location services, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONTV rules: While states, companies, schools, and pretty much everyone else living in a state that has banned abortion are in a free-for-all scrambling to figure out how the overturn of Roe applies to them—TV industry workers have questions of their own. Two weeks ago, nearly 1000 TV creators and writers signed a letter to major production studios asking them to “establish clear health and safety policies for employees in anti-abortion states.” Wednesday, Vulture reported that an additional 400 directors have sent their own letter in support of their colleagues demanding “safe, subsidized reproductive health-care access.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, several networks and studios submitted a joint response clarifying that some insurance partners are adding coverage amendments in states where abortion has been restricted. The studios have been in contact with workers affected by any policy changes. Great! Now, I don’t have to cancel all my subscriptions. (Yet.) Where do babies come from? This week a man named Dave Alvord of the Salt Lake City Council wrote in a tweet to Kamala Harris that a fetus is not connected to a woman’s body because “the umbilical cord and placenta do not directly connect to the woman. The baby floats inside the woman.” Usually, when I hear things this nonsensical and hysterical I throw myself on the floor and have a good laugh but as there’s a fetus currently just floating around loose somewhere in my innards—utterly disconnected from me, its life source—so I guess I’ll just wait until it crawls out of its own volition before I move around too much. Perhaps the people that make laws about our bodies should have a basic understanding of how they work. AND:
  HIGH TECHHow Our Data Is Used Against Us In the Post-Roe WorldIt'll take more than deleting an app to protect the privacy of our personal decisions.BY SHAMIRA IBRAHIM  FOR DATA BROKERS, WE'RE ALL JUST NUMBERS ON A SHEET (ILLUSTRATION VIA GETTY IMAGES) This week, a Nebraska teenager and her mother were charged with several felonies for allegedly purchasing an abortion pill and attempting to dispose of the fetus. The police arrested them after accessing the teen’s private Facebook messages where they allegedly discussed their plan. Nebraska PD obtained the messages through a search warrant to Meta (the parent company of Facebook) as part of an ongoing investigation. It has been almost two months since Roe v. Wade was overturned, which protected abortion as a constitutional right via the Fourteenth Amendment. An unforeseen but deeply troubling fallout from the decision is the potential misuse of our online data to enforce state-level abortion bans. It’s not an entirely new phenomenon: a recent report from the Washington Post found that there have been more than 60 cases since the turn of the century involving individuals being investigated, arrested, or charged for allegedly ending their own pregnancy or assisting someone in doing so. And, “a number of those cases have hinged on text messages, search history and other forms of digital evidence.” How your data is capturedOur data is regularly collected online—often in ways we don't realize. You know when you click on a website, you get a notification that states “by using this website, you agree to our use of cookies”? Those “cookies” capture information that advertisers and tech companies can use to track and monitor your activity to know your every move, your tastes, your choices, your purchases, and even your menstrual cycle. Companies often use that information to target you for ads and other types of content that they predict might be relevant to your interests. While most sites have “cookie consent banners,” prompting users to either opt-in or out of being tracked, they are intentionally confusing: How many times do you just “accept all cookies” so you can keep it moving? That information isn't just used to upsell you overpriced facial creams—it can also be used to track your interest in abortion. Recently, it was revealed by the Washington Post that the landing page for scheduling an abortion on the Planned Parenthood website itself cached a number of personal attributes that could potentially be subpoenaed or shared with third-party vendors including users’ IP addresses, ZIP codes, and selected method of abortion, amongst other private information. And that’s just if you are using your computer. Mobile phones often share real-time location data captured through apps you may inadvertently have running in the background. Deleting your period app and requesting that the companies remove your personal data is one strategy to ensure personal security. Still, surveillance that could be used to track your reproductive health goes well beyond that. If not set up properly, other apps like Instagram or Peloton can still track your location. Tracking mobile devices that come within a reasonable radius of a location, a practice known as “geofencing,” is a common tactic to find where someone has been; The New York Times did this in 2019 and identified multiple public figures without much effort. Your data is always on sale  AT LEAST SOMEONE'S LOOKING OUT FOR THE LITTLE GUYS. (IMAGE BY PETER DASILVA VIA GETTY IMAGES) In July, Gizmodo tech reporters Shoshana Wodinsky and Kyle Barr found an astounding number of companies already selling personal data to anyone with a checkbook. They report identifying “32 different brokers across the U.S. selling access to the unique mobile IDs from some 2.9 billion profiles of people pegged as ‘actively pregnant’ or ‘shopping for maternity products.’” And, “data on 478 million customer profiles labeled “interested in pregnancy” or “intending to become pregnant.’” It wouldn’t be such a concern if these companies were just in bed with retailers but some contract with law enforcement agencies. Data broker Venntel counts ICE among their client roster to share location data, which can be used to initiate deportation processes. As Bennett Cyphers, a staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation explained in the same Gizmodo piece, data brokers’ publicly available tools are “a big risk” for abortion seekers. These companies “label people and put people into lists that make it easier for someone who is coming at it like a fishing expedition to narrow down who they want to target and subject them to more scrutiny or surveillance.” As far back as 2015, digital marketing company Copley Advertising used “geofencing” to hone in on “abortion-minded” women, using location data to indicate they were likely in the waiting room of an abortion provider. With that information in hand, Copley’s clients were able to target groups who would then receive banner ads with information on abortion alternatives. Vendors such as SafeGraph have location data on Planned Parenthood offices already prepared for sale, promising their clients information such as “how often people visit, how long they stay, where they came from, where else they go, and more.” And while there is no marker to indicate if someone obtained abortion-related services or was in the area supporting someone else; in 2018, the New York Times was able to use this data to identify someone who had used Planned Parenthood’s services. Other ways to track information by police include facial recognition technology, social media, and even DMV records. It’s also worth noting that if a law enforcement agency provides a search warrant to a company for a particular dataset (such as in the Nebraska case) that company is compelled to turn over any information covered under the warrant—privacy be damned. These tools used collectively help law enforcement investigate and prosecute abortion-seekers and their respective networks of support. How to limit data trackingThe solution to this threat to our privacy has to come from the federal level and reach beyond reproductive legislation to privacy laws as a whole to protect our data from exploitation. These laws should apply to both corporate entities and law enforcement authorities seeking to manipulate the for-profit data model to obtain information that is more difficult to glean from a court-ordered warrant. The European Union took a major step forward by enforcing the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation in 2018), which, while not perfect, has been able to levy significant fines against Big Tech for privacy violations. But until a wide-reaching, federal solution becomes available, there are steps that individuals can take to minimize risk:
For more thorough and frequently updated guides, bookmark the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self-Defense Guide and the Digital Defense Fund’s Guide to Abortion Privacy.  Shamira Ibrahim is a Brooklyn-based culture writer by way of Harlem, Canada, and East Africa, who explores identity, technology, and cultural production as a critic, reporter, feature/profile writer, and essayist.  Be sure to share this newsletter with any of your friends struggling to figure out how to protect themselves online. FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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Don't leave us, Serena
  August 9, 2022 Hey there Meteor readers, It’s only Tuesday and yet it’s been a whole-ass week for my emotions. I’ll spare you an explainer on my own personal Jerry Springer-esque drama, but there’s also been the return of Donald Trump to the news cycle, confounding goings-on at the WWE—and the loss of the bright star that was Dame Olivia Newton-John, who died on Monday. I was on the phone with Samhita when she told me the news and my immediate reaction was “shut the fuck up,” which is often not the way I speak to my superiors, but this was an occasion. Grease was the first non-cartoon musical I remember watching with my father, and it was one of our favorites. It was the movie that introduced me to the joy of musicals, and Sandra Dee taught me about the highs and lows of summer lovin’. After my father was gone, I clung to his Grease VHS cassette, finding comfort in Newton-John’s smiling face looking back at me long after the invention of DVD players. Eventually, I found my way to her music and was even more enamored. She always seemed to emit joy and I wanted so much to absorb that. I hope wherever her spirit has gone, there’s a roller disco waiting for her.  WHAT A SMILE. (IMAGE BY EVENING STANDARD/HULTON ARCHIVE VIA GETTY IMAGES) What’s waiting for you in today’s newsletter is the rundown of our week so far, from the new abortion restrictions in Indiana to Serena Williams’ retirement. Vibing to 80s music, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONThe Next Evolution for Serena WilliamsBY SHANNON MELERO  THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME! (IMAGE BY STEVE RUSSELL VIA GETTY IMAGES) Here is a sentence I thought I would never type: Serena Williams has announced her retirement from professional tennis, although she is referring to it as an “evolution” which feels much better to my ailing heart. In a deeply honest essay for Vogue, Williams, whose decades-long career includes 23 Grand Slam titles, says she’s stepping away from the sport to continue to grow her family and focus on other areas of her life. “Believe me,” she writes, “I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. I don’t think it’s fair. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family.” As with everything she does, Williams fully owns her decision to retire. “I’ve been reluctant to admit to myself or anyone else that I have to move on from playing tennis.” And considering the scope of her achievements, who wouldn’t be? Serena Williams is one of the greatest athletes of my lifetime. She not only changed the sport of tennis, but she also made it fashionable with her iconic (and troublesome) catsuits, tutus, and hairstyles. Through her dominance on the court, she also broke racial, economic, and gender barriers, creating the blueprint for a new generation of athletes like Naomi Osaka, Coco Gauff, Sloane Stephens, and Emma Raducanu. These women are making huge waves in the sport and in their business dealings—achievements made possible by the example of both Venus and Serena Williams. The U.S. Open this month will be her final competition, and as ever we’ll all be cheering for her (but not when the ball is in play, have some respect). And whenever she takes that last wave, twirl, and walks off into her future, I’m certain I’ll be crying more than I am right now. When I read the Vogue piece I had to stop myself from crafting a witch jar in the hopes of spelling my way into getting just one more year of Serena Williams. She’s been playing nearly my whole life. I literally don’t know a tennis world without her! But that would be selfish (and spells can be time-consuming). Williams has given fans more than we deserve and the least any of us can do is send her off into the next chapter with love, support, and gratitude that she allowed us a small window into her life.  Hoosier horror: Indiana became the first state to pass an abortion ban since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. The inhumane bill was signed into law by Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb last Friday and only allows for abortions “in cases of rape, incest, lethal fetal abnormality, or when the procedure is necessary to prevent severe health risks or death,” according to The Washington Post; further, the rape and incest exceptions are so narrowly written that in practice they actually exclude many survivors of both crimes. This is particularly dreadful as Indiana had recently served as a haven for patients in surrounding states such as Ohio that have already passed near-total bans. Incensed Democratic state leaders, employers, and activists who oppose the law are gearing up for the long fight ahead. We’re ready.  A FEW MORE THINGS:
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What You Should Know About Monkeypox
Dr. Darien on its symptoms, its contagion—and what we're getting wrong about it.
BY SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY
It’s been a big week for the monkeypox virus. The World Health Organization has said it is a “public health emergency of international concern.” On Friday, San Francisco and New York City declared a state of emergency to stop the spread. I’ve seen the pictures of people waiting in long lines to get the vaccines. (And the images of infections are terrifying). There are 3,000 confirmed cases in the United States. How worried should we be?
I had more questions than answers, so I reached out to my friend Dr. Darien Sutton, an emergency physician and medical contributor on ABC.
Samhita Mukhopadhyay: OK, let’s start at the beginning. What kind of virus is monkeypox, and how does it spread?
Dr. Darien Sutton: So, monkeypox belongs to a family of viruses called the orthopoxvirus, [which also] includes something we commonly know as smallpox. Smallpox was officially eradicated within the United States by 1980, thanks to vaccines. But after that, monkeypox continued, mainly endemic to places like central and Western Africa. It presents with similar symptoms [as smallpox], albeit milder, but it’s still something to be concerned about.
The symptoms we classically know monkeypox to be associated with include this whole body rash of papules and pimples that can be quite debilitating. What’s interesting now is that [in] the cases of monkeypox that we’re seeing outside of endemic areas around the world (the United States has the most reported known cases), the rashes are mainly localized in specific regions of patients’ bodies—that can be their hands, feet, shoulders, and genitals.
Transmission happens via contact, most often from close contact—skin to skin—but it can also happen from sharing items with someone infected, such as clothing or towels. There’s also the possibility of respiratory droplets, [though] not in the same way that COVID-19 transmits where it’s aerosolized and airborne; with monkeypox, droplets are less likely to transmit from person to person. To compare, to get COVID [through] a close physical interaction with someone without touching can require 15 minutes for transmission, but monkeypox requires around three hours.
I saw some debate about whether monkeypox is an STI or not. Is it? Does it matter what we call it?
It is not an STI, and it does matter what we call it. It’s a contact virus. So it transfers from person to person through close contact, and the umbrella of contact includes sexual or intimate contact. So yes, it can be transmitted during sexual intercourse, but [that] is not the only form of transmission.
That’s also, I think, part of why it’s been talked about as something that’s only affecting gay men. Is that true? How is it going to impact the larger population?
So the initial conversation and communication around monkeypox was that it might have been sexually transmitted and only affected gay men. And those inaccuracies put a lot of people at risk. When a pathogen first starts [to spread], it often will transmit within a self-associating community. It [just] so happened that the first couple of cases were associated with social events that involved gay and bisexual men.
Through self-association, that pathogen will continue to transfer until it is stopped. And that’s why it’s so important to pay attention to early calls to action, especially when we heard from queer communities, thought leaders, and epidemiologists months ago that monkeypox was known to be a problem. But obviously, those calls were not heard or met with immediate responses [and] people were left with little to no resources [with delayed access to vaccines and treatment].
So now, we will see transmission outside of this initial self-associating group into the general population. And that’s why it’s important to explain to people how this virus can be transmitted and how everyone is at risk. Using language that defines the disease [with] the location or group you first find it in will always lead to misinformation. We don't call bacterial meningitis—which often happens in colleges— “college meningitis.” We didn’t call COVID “restaurant COVID” when we first saw outbreaks through indoor dining.
We see pathogens all the time, and we don't define them by location or people, except when it happens to queer people. Then we quickly define them.
You make a good point: We have a real-time example of what happened with COVID and how it spread. What do you think has kind of caused the delay in vaccine distribution, especially since we know how important vaccines were to curb COVID?
Unfortunately, when the discussion involves sexuality or gender identity in science, the ball often gets fumbled.
Adam Serwer wrote for the Atlantic that when wealthy, white politicians realized that COVID was disproportionately killing low-income and Black people, you suddenly saw calls for banning masks and reopening the economy. Do you see a similar pattern here?
I get concerned when a pathogen is identified with a group that’s already vulnerable. And that’s what I’m already starting to see. When I look in the comment sections [of stories] regarding monkeypox, I see a lot of obvious hatred and homophobia. I’ve seen what happens with COVID-19 misinformation, and I see how easy it is for misinformation to spread. And I’m afraid that homophobia will fuel this misinformation, off-tracking the direction we need to go.
Before we go: What are your recommendations for staying safe from monkeypox?
Number one is education. [Then] awareness of symptoms. Many people may have mild to no symptoms and may not realize they are infectious with monkeypox. [But] if you have any pustules or pimples that are in places where you don't normally get them, and especially if they are associated with flu-like symptoms or swollen lymph nodes or fever, really pay attention and isolate yourself because you may be at risk of having a monkeypox infection. Check in with your local department of health to find access to testing. And then, if you are at risk [of infection], there may be vaccines available within your community that you can get that can protect you against a severe monkeypox infection.
The media acts surprised when a child or a pregnant person gets infected with monkeypox. It’s not a surprise. There’s an active outbreak. And I think a call to action continues for those governing this public health crisis to realize that this is a real problem. And although it may not have outcomes similar to COVID-19 in terms of hospitalizations, this can be detrimental to someone’s life.
Some tips from NPR on how to take precautions against monkeypox
- Avoid crowds where it’s hard not to touch other people.
- Separate potentially contaminated fabrics [bedding, towels, linens used by someone who has been diagnosed] until they can be washed.
- Wash hands regularly!
- Disclose to potential sexual or intimate partners if you fear you may have been exposed.
- If you think you have been exposed or are at risk of exposure, you may be eligible for the vaccine.
- Stay up to date on monkeypox spread in your area.
Samhita Mukhopadhyay is a writer, editor, and speaker. She is the former Executive Editor of Teen Vogue and is the co-editor of Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump's America and the author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life, and the forthcoming book, The Myth of Making It.
PHOTO BY HEATHER HAZZAN
"It's Going to be Fucking Chaos"
BY SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY
As you know, the Supreme Court of the United States of America is set to overturn Roe v. Wade. The decision could come as early as tomorrow or likely in the next 10 days. If our worst fears are realized, this decision would set women’s rights and the rights of anyone with a uterus back generations.
In the days, weeks, months, and years ahead there will be, most likely, a lot of thinking, strategizing, protesting, and rabble-rousing (along with crying and fist-shaking). The path forward will be a long one. But what should we do in the very short term—the moment the decision comes in?
In anticipation of this moment, I sat down with Renee Bracey Sherman, a decades-long reproductive justice leader who, through her organization We Testify, has worked to elevate the stories of people who have had abortions. She also led the charge on the steps of the SCOTUS on the day the court heard oral arguments on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that will determine the future of abortion rights.
Samhita Mukhopadhyay: So, say the abortion decision comes in and it’s what we expect—meaning it overturns Roe v. Wade. What do the next 24 hours look like, especially in trigger-ban states? What happens if you have an appointment?
Renee Bracey Sherman: My real answer is just, it's going to be fucking chaos, utter chaos.
In states with the trigger bans, [say] someone is in a clinic waiting for care—they might be mid-care, mid-counseling. And I just really feel for those people who will schedule their appointment and go in and get as far as doing the counseling, doing the ultra[sound], maybe even have their legs in the stirrups, and then when the decision comes down, [they] will have to get off the examination table. And I don't know that people realize how heartbreaking that’s going to be.
And then they’re not going to be able to just go down to another clinic on the street or not even to the next state. And we've already seen the cruelty of states like Oklahoma, that saw that people [coming from Texas, where abortion is largely already banned] needed care, and then turned around and said, “Cool, we're going to get rid of this so you can't come here.”
We’ll [also] have lawyers reading through the decision. Let’s say we are overturning or reversing Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But then you have to [look] at the fine print of the decision. What about Roe is wrong? What about Casey is wrong? Are there legal grounds for us to sue? What is that in comparison to what the state laws are, or the state statute? What laws are still on the books? Because there are a lot of places where laws from the 1800s are still on the books. Roe [negated] those. Do those laws go back into effect? Is there kind of a cross mix? It's pure chaos.
A lot of clinics will have to stop providing immediately because of the trigger bans, but also because their lawyers are going to advise them to stop until they can read through the decision and assess the level of risk.
And it’s not going to be [just] 24 hours, but months and maybe even a year, because there’s going to be lawsuits. And so there are questions of, “Can we provide abortions today? Can we not?”
And I think that's the saddest part about it: that people are just not going to be able to have clear information. So what we're asking people to do is to avoid at all costs the sensationalism and the wanting to freak out. Because people are trying to get abortions in that moment and they won't know whether this tweet is correct or this information is correct, and it's just exhausting and chaotic.
And I don't know that people realize how heartbreaking that’s going to be.
It's interesting to consider the idea of staying calm at that moment.
Somebody did a tweet saying that Plan B had been banned in a state and that tweet got tens of thousands of retweets. Plan B hasn’t been banned anywhere! Your insurance might not cover it and that sucks, but it’s not banned. The anti-abortion movement has a vested interest in sowing dysfunction and chaos because they don’t want anyone to be able to get an abortion. What they want is for people to think, This is just too hard, I'm going to go to jail. It's going to be bad. It's going to be unsafe, and give up.
The thing is that, as we’ve known for the last 4,000 years, people who have abortions never give up. We’ve been doing it for a long time. We will keep doing it. That’s not going to change, but what we can do is ask people to take a breath and fact-check the information before spreading it widely and turning into alarmists. Is that a word?
That is a word! This idea of keeping calm and making sure your information is accurate, that’s a really important call to action. What other advice do you have for people who want to help right after the decision? Should we hit the streets? Should we be chaining ourselves to fire hydrants?
We need all tactics. People absolutely should take to the streets and protest and make their voices heard. I do love a good protest and I want to make sure that we don’t have a couple of protests and then it dies off and people go back to accepting this as the new status quo and normalize this, which I feel is what’s happened over the last decade.
What’s really challenging at this moment is that we are being attacked from eight million different directions and so people do lose interest, because there's another tragedy or another horrible decision to come down. So how do we keep the stamina to actually make a change so that the people who are harmed in the process aren’t forgotten?
Yes, absolutely protest. Absolutely vote, for sure. Vote for pro-abortion candidates up and down. Become a single-issue voter. If your candidate is not super supportive of abortion, I promise you they’re probably not good on a whole lot of other issues either. I've never met an anti-abortion candidate who was excellent on Medicaid coverage of healthcare and immigration and literally everything else.
But then getting involved in your community is really what I ask people to do. Open up to your community. Become a person that people can go to, to receive care. Whether that’s opening up your home, opening up your car for rides, giving up your time at a local clinic or clinic defense, if that’s what the clinic wants. And then, of course, show up and become a monthly donor to your local abortion fund. Also, know the self-managed abortion protocol. You may not need it, but someone in your life may need it.
I think it's really, really essential that people look around at what’s happening in their communities because there is a lot of work happening already. You do not have to recreate the wheel. Do not try to create an “underground railroad”; just stop. That's really anti-Black language. It's terrible. Just get involved with the people who are doing [that kind of work already] because there are a lot of security protocols and if you can’t give of your time or your money, that’s fine. You can just show up with love and support for the people in your life who need abortions and start the conversation at home. That’s really where we need to do the work.
You’ve been doing reproductive justice work for over a decade. How are you feeling right now?
I feel like I constantly swing between tired, frustrated, feeling a lot of despair, and also feeling like this sucks [but] we've got this. And I think there are days that it's extremely draining because we didn't have to be here if people [had taken] racial justice, economic justice, access to healthcare, and feminism seriously. But also, I'm in the middle of co-writing a book on the history of Black and brown people's experiences with abortion, and in working on that…I feel a little bit hopeful. Reading a lot of books on the history of abortion, it puts it in perspective when I'm thinking about this as something that's been [an] issue for thousands of years.
So I have to just remember that this moment in time is one blip on the large, expansive history of humankind and the history of abortion and that there has always been some sort of white supremacist, white Christian nationalist forces to try to tamp down, not just abortion, but sex and sexuality and people just living their lives. So I have to go, “Okay, this is part of it, and we can survive through this.”
Samhita Mukhopadhyay is a writer, editor, and speaker. She is the former Executive Editor of Teen Vogue and is the co-editor of Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump's America and the author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life, and the forthcoming book, The Myth of Making It.