Womb Privilege: The Last Frontier in Equal Rights

Aint Studying You received this letter in response to the proposal that we reconsider the use of the term White Privilege in 2013.

Dear Aint Studying You:

I am a single gay male in my mid-thirties. I want a child--well, a child that I don't have to be financially responsible for. So, I want a friend's child to be named after me.

One of my longtime friends, a lesbian, is having one--any day now. Said lesbian friend rejected me long ago as a sperm donor, despite the fact that I fit her IQ and demographic markers for the position. She said she just thought it would be too weird and "incestuous" because we're such good friends and also because she was afraid I might not renounce all paternal rights. Such a  litigious mind! (Quiet as it's kept, I think she didn't want the baby to have a gay father. Oh, but two mommies are ok?! The irony!) I swallowed the rejection and soldiered on.

As a consolation prize, I requested, in honor of our decades-long friendship, that she name the child after me--male or female. After all, I will certainly bear no children and I will likely not sire any, either. But in a display of what can only be understood as middle-class, cis-gender, lesbian feminist privilege run entirely amok, she has refused the naming request categorically. As I was thinking about being frozen out of this ceremony, I realized we are going to need a name for a phenomenon far more powerful than white privilege or male privilege, which are so clearly on the wane in the age of Obama. WOMB PRIVILEGE: the power that all women exercise over all men--but especially the socially vulnerable, nonreproductive population of gay men with college educations and jobs but no children. WOMB PRIVILEGE: it's mothers acting as monopoly capitalists, using their uteruses to enclose the commons of the child (whom the village, after all, is raising), to turn a human being into her private property, and then assert naming rights.

It's neoliberalism, homophobia, and reverse sexism unleashed and on the rampage. Therefore, I say, let womb privilege be the new target of our collective radical ire.

Because Matthewsula is a wonderful name.

P.S. She's light-skinneded, too.

I'll believe the Republicans want to return to a Christian nation...

when candidates tackle what I consider to be one of the most egregious lapses in faith, morals, and religious observance in contemporary America. If they are serious about re-establishing Christian parameters for conduct in this nation, they should insist that there be no professional sports -- or any other business, for that matter -- conducted on Sundays. It is the Sabbath, after all. The whole network of athletes and coaches, announcers and camera crew, stadium employees, bar owners, bookies, and more are, in fact, working on the day when we are not to toil but to give thanks to God.

When I was a child in the 1980s, many businesses were still closed on Sundays -- and not just Mom and Pop stores, either. As a Catholic schoolboy, I took the third commandment quite seriously: even when I did not attend Church, I knew that I was supposed to and felt appropriately guilty about it. The situation in 2011 could not be more different -- not just for me but across the nation. The NFL is its own Sunday ritual, one that requires almost no physical or moral effort but that does include continual solicitations. Call commercials the television version of passing the collection plate. The NFL-goer's duty, then, is not tithing to enable the work of the Church. Instead the imagined male viewer now has a moral duty to buy basic cable and the NFL channel--not to mention team paraphernalia and sponsors' products. What's most disturbing is that the collection plate is no mere analogy: Christianity has actually been hired to add its moral force to market culture.

Burying the Lead: Governor Christie's Plan to Use Diversity Against the Diverse

Today's New York Times gushes:

Gov. Chris Christie made a broad stroke for diversity on New Jersey’s Supreme Court on Monday, nominating one man who would be the first openly gay justice, and another who would be the first Asian and first immigrant to serve.

For the moment, I am going to skip over the fact that I'm pretty sure they meant a "bold strike for diversity." Perhaps the preposterousness of a statement linking Christie with progressivism (which will become clear soon enough) scrambled the language centers in their brains over at the NYT. Instead, I would like to focus on the odd structure of this article--an elaborated version of the story circulating at a variety of newspapers, blogs, and online magazines.

The official story (pre-packaged, it seems, by the identical language of the news outlets) is that Governor Christie is heroically leading the charge to diversify the New Jersey Supreme Court. The fact that he was, in fact, responsible for the whitening of the Court is buried and camouflaged in the currently unchallenged story of triumph. So, too, is the fact that his actions are a clever, subversive response to Democrats in the State Senate who implored (be careful what you ask for) that Christie "appoint a racially diverse court that looks like the state of New Jersey." The fact that this "diversity" will actually have terrible consequences for the diverse is drowned out by the imperative to celebrate.


While it is certainly possible Christie's "firsts" may pull their version of "Clarence Thomas's First Day" as envisioned by In Living Color, I don't intend to hold my breath.

Because the language of diversity and inclusion has taken over the language of justice, equality, and reparation in a weakened Democratic party, "liberals" have no response to Christie's move. It's diverse. It's inclusive. It's just that the gay/immigrant/multiracial symbolism covers a multitude of sins....