creeping conservatism Archives

Why Is Consent Controversial?

Ask Indiana lawmakers ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

April 24, 2025

Howdy, Meteor readers,

I know everyone is talking about Sinners, but I am what you would call a certified scaredy-cat; I still suffer from Scream. But a bunch of fellow scaredies online say it’s not too bad if you watch it during the day so I’ll see y’all at the afternoon matinee.

In today’s newsletter, we investigate sex miseducation in Indiana. Plus, Nona Willis Aronowitz remembers her “feminist fairy godmother.”

Meow,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Virginity education: Yesterday, Indiana’s House and Senate voted in favor of SB 442, titled “Instruction on Human Sexuality.” You might have heard of it (on our Instagram feed and elsewhere) because of a debate over whether that “instruction” should include the idea of consent. The bill’s author, Sen. Gary Byrne (R-IN), had removed a requirement that teachers address consent earlier this week, arguing that the subject could be seen as “controversial.” (Research from the Indiana Department of Health shows that 56 percent of sexually active high schoolers had experienced some form of sexual violence, with 11th grade girls making up most of that group.) After public outcry, though, the consent requirement was re-added to the bill yesterday—your latest reminder that yelling works.

But here’s the thing: The bill is still light on the education part of sex education. In addition to consent, it requires sex-ed classes in Indiana to teach four things: abstinence, abstinence (yes it’s listed twice), instruction that the best way to avoid STIs is a “mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage” (we remind you, these are children and teens), and the viewing of a high-definition ultrasound video, at least three minutes long, depicting the development of organs in a fetus. It’s giving Catholic-school health class, and I would know, as someone whose sex-ed was having to watch the movie Riding in Cars with Boys.

Let’s linger on the video for a second. These kinds of videos—most notably the notorious “Baby Olivia”—have cropped up over the last two years as a tool of the anti-abortion movement and are more often than not, medically inaccurate and meant to elicit an emotional response rather than be strictly educational. When pressed about the video requirements by Democratic senators yesterday, Byrne insisted he was not specifically suggesting “Baby Olivia,” IndyStar reported, and that school boards would be able to choose which films get shown to students. “There’s plenty of examples of videos,” he argued. (When pressed to name them, he could not.)

Indiana is, of course, not the first state to introduce such narrow requirements for sex-ed classes or to inject what sound like conservative Christian views of sex into a secular public school system. Currently, 37 states have laws that require abstinence as part of sex education, while only 18 require teachers to share information about birth control. As far as education around consent? Only 12 states—13 if the Indiana bill passes—require that it be mentioned. But studies show that simply telling teenagers not to have sex doesn’t protect them from STIs or unwanted pregnancies. What does work, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, is comprehensive education that includes consent, contraception, STI prevention, and sexual health for LGBTQ+ communities.

AND:

The Women’s Health Initiative, a landmark federal project dedicated to studying women’s health, lost a huge portion of its funding this week as a result of the Trump administration’s cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services. Largely known for its contributions to understanding menopause, the WHI also conducted research on chronic disease in older adults. Jean Wactawski-Wende, who led a WHI research branch at the University of Buffalo, told NPR, “It's been one of the most productive studies in history. And to really understand older women's health — dementia, heart failure, frailty — we are the study to do that. And it's been eviscerated right now because of these budget cuts.” Another researcher said there was a “glimmer of hope” that WHI’s work could continue but that nothing was certain.
On a recent episode of her podcast, former First Lady Michelle Obama discussed why she chose to skip Donald Trump’s inauguration, and the very simple answer was: She didn’t want to go. “I'm here really trying to own my life and intentionally practice making the choice that was right for me,” she said. “And it took everything in my power to not do the thing that 'was right,' or was perceived as right, but do the thing that was right for me.”

OBAMA AT A LIVE TAPING FOR HER PODCAST, "IMO." IN HER LEFT HAND, SHE CAN BE SEEN HOLDING ALL OF HER DESIRE TO CONTINUE BEING A PEOPLE PLEASER. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

This week, Sportico released its list of the 50 highest-paid athletes of all time; topping the list is Michael Jordan, who has earned roughly $3 billion since turning pro in 1984. That’s not surprising—but what is is that there’s only one woman on this list, coming in at number 40. Can you guess who it is? Some hints: she retired in 2022 and did not play a team sport. Click here for the answer.
The Department of Education is set to resume student loan collections beginning May 5, ending a five-year pause that began as part of pandemic relief. This will be especially troublesome for women borrowers. So what does it mean for you? If your account is in default or is very close to being in default (you can determine your status here if you’re not sure), then the DOE will move your loan into collections. Once in collections, you can either try to arrange a payment plan or, in the worst-case scenario, the Treasury Offset Program could authorize “involuntary payments” from your paycheck. May the finance gods be with us all.
Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum has had enough of Kristi Noem’s mierda. After ads featuring U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Noem threatening to “hunt down” Mexican immigrants ran on Mexican television, Sheinbaum responded by asking her government to approve a measure that would ban “foreign governments from carrying out political and ideological propaganda in our country.” Sigue jodiendo para que vea.
Feminist journalist Karen Durbin died last Tuesday at the age of 80. She was a widely revered critic who ran The Village Voice in the 90s, famously putting an image of a woman with an exposed tampon string on the magazine’s cover in 1995. The Meteor’s Nona Willis Aronowitz, whose mother was close to Durbin, remembers Durbin “as a dishy, witty auntie figure, a bottle-redhead who loved girly things like shopping and celebrity gossip but also was a dead-serious feminist and journalist who steered me toward foundational pro-sex essays when I was writing my college thesis on 70s porn. She was one of my first feminist fairy godmothers.”

DURBIN IN 1994. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

WEEKEND READING 📚

Online: When we said we wanted a “womanosphere” this is not what we meant. (The Guardian)

On history repeating itself: Historian Greg Grandin explores Latin America’s journey from “fighting to facilitating fascism.” (Democracy Now)

On mixtapes: Have a cry with writer Jill Mapes, her dad, and a shared appreciation for good music. (Hearing Things)

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The Secret War on Birth Control

And the not-so-secret broligarchy ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

April 15, 2025

Hello, sweet Meteor readers,

Happy Tax Day! This year I learned about the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, which sounded heavenly given that my family spent fully $15,000 on daycare last year. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that the maximum credit you can claim is 20% of $3,000…i.e. $600. Womp womp. (And Republicans have contemplated dropping even this piddling credit.) The state of childcare in this country is enraging.

Today, we’re tracking the sneaky, scary erosion of birth control rights in America. Plus, Harvey Weinstein is back in court, and the “broligarchy” gets a dressing-down.

Free daycare on demand,

Nona Willis Aronowitz

WHAT'S GOING ON

The secret war on birth control: From the moment the high court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, one Supreme Court justice signaled that birth control access was in danger. In a concurring opinion back then, Justice Clarence Thomas urged the court to re-examine “demonstrably erroneous decisions” like Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 ruling which granted Americans a constitutional right to birth control.

So what’s happened to birth control since that fateful ruling? Last week, the National Women’s Law Center released a report addressing that question, and it finds that our right to contraception is indeed eroding. Since 2022, some lawmakers have wasted no time proposing or musing about bans on some forms of birth control; a nominee for Michigan attorney general compared emergency contraception to fentanyl. But there’s one big obstacle in their way: Birth control is incredibly popular. Upward of 90% of Americans believe it should be legal. So policymakers have turned to less obvious tactics to restrict contraception.

BIRTH CONTROL PILLS SHOULD BE AS CONTROVERSIAL AS DANGLY EARRINGS. VIA GETTY IMAGES

Lawmakers “know that they can’t attack birth control publicly or on paper, so they’re doing it secretly,” said Kimi Chernoby, senior counsel for reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center and the primary author of the report. Chernoby pointed to an innocuous-sounding bill called the Medical Ethics Defense Act, passed just last week in the Tennessee Senate that has a good chance of passing the House, given that a subcommittee already approved it. Not once does it mention birth control. But the legislator who sponsored the bill later said in an interview that the law would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control. This sneakiness can reach the point of absurdity: Texas senator Bryan Hughes, the guy who crafted the state’s abortion ban, just presented a bill that would test wastewater for abortion medication and hormones found in birth control, because of the supposed health risk it poses “especially for pregnant women and children.” Oh, the irony.

And to avoid political blowback, birth control opponents are also going after people on the margins, namely teens (by introducing parental consent laws for birth control) and low-income people (by restricting Title X and Medicaid recipients’ access to contraception). It’s a strategy the report calls “the anti-abortion playbook” because it mirrors anti-abortion activists’ journey from Roe to Dobbs: Start by targeting people who hold less political clout, and inch toward the mainstream from there. They’re also focusing on certain kinds of birth control like emergency contraception, which has been endlessly (and erroneously) attacked by rightwing lawmakers and institutions as a form of abortion, despite the FDA’s explicit clarification in 2022. “Some people are making a conscious decision not to listen to science,” Chernoby said.

CONGRESS TRYING (AND FAILING) TO PROTECT THE RIGHT TO CONTRACEPTION IN 2022. VIA GETTY IMAGES

So what can you do? Since this erosion is mostly on the local and state level for now, Chernoby suggests reaching out to state legislators urging them to codify protections to birth control, which a handful of states have done in the wake of Roe’s fall (and Thomas’ warning). Be sure to call your representatives if you live in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin—all states that have blocked attempts to pass a Right to Contraception Act in the past. And if lawmakers don’t listen, make your outrage known. Chernoby said that when these issues get widespread coverage, restrictions often get reversed. For instance, in 2023, Iowa’s attorney general paused payments to hundreds of sexual assault victims for the emergency contraceptive Plan B. But she backed down after an outcry from Democrats and reproductive rights advocates, who pointed out that paying for pregnancy prevention should be the last thing survivors have to worry about.

“When these attacks start happening more in the open,” Chernoby said (and she thinks they eventually will), “I predict there will be a lot of resistance.” Let’s make sure she’s right.

AND:

Fans of academic freedom (hi!) breathed a sigh of relief when Harvard announced yesterday that it wouldn’t comply with a mind-boggling list of requests from the Trump administration. That list—which, among other things, called for “viewpoint diversity” in admissions and hiring—went far beyond more limited (but still batshit) demands aimed at places like Columbia. Harvard’s defiance wasn’t exactly a given, judging by its previous concessions, including forcing out its first Black woman president, Claudine Gay. But its stand feels like a big, potentially tide-turning beacon for other institutions, and was applauded by alums across the globe, including Barack Obama. “Harvard reminded the world that learning, innovation and transformative growth will not yield to bullying and authoritarian whims,” said Anurima Bhargava, a Harvard alumna, civil rights lawyer, and advocate for sexual assault victims.
Harvey Weinstein is back in court in New York today for a new trial. In case you’ve forgotten, last year the state’s Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 conviction, determining that it had been a mistake to allow testimony from women whose accusations were not part of the charges he faced. This time around, though, he faces new charges from an unnamed woman, along with charges from accusers Miriam "Mimi" Haleyi and Jessica Mann, who were both part of the first trial. So far, jury selection has been bumpy; “I don’t like the guy, he is a really bad guy,” one potential juror volunteered after being dismissed from consideration. Again, we say: Who says #MeToo is dead?
British author and investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who brought the Cambridge Analytica scandal to light six years ago, weighed in on the threat of the “broligarchy” in a new TED talk. “We are now in techno-authoritarianism,” she warned. “Some people are calling this ‘oligarchy,’ but it’s actually bigger than that.” Her advice? To “digitally disobey”—to refuse the cookies, to not give your real name, to use Signal. You can watch the full talk here.

Forty-three women in Argentina are suing Opus Dei, accusing the Catholic organization of forcing them into isolation and grueling, unpaid domestic labor as children and teens. Argentinian federal prosecutors allege that Opus Dei routinely recruited girls from poor rural families, then exploited them. “They treated me like a slave, without any capacity to think or act or do,” one of the accusers told the Guardian. A judge will now decide whether to proceed to trial.
After the all-women crew returned safely from space, Gayle King gushed that she now “can take on anything.” But ngl, her face tells a different, far wearier story…

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