By the time you read this, everyone will be talking about the Super Bowl. There will probably be complaints that the camera spent too much time focused on Taylor *, there may be a truly funny or provocative ad spot (the Scientologists will likely make another $7 million bid for your Thetan soul)**, or perhaps Usher will have had a wardrobe malfunction that has the world all a twitter (though he’s male so a nip slip will probably not be enough to cause outrage)***.
But I’m writing early this week because of other deadlines. The Super Bowl is still hours away, and people in my world are still focused on last week’s Grammys and the amazing performance of “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs. Pundits have called the duet by a queer folk singer of color who hasn’t sang live in years and a straight white male country singer at the height of his career the unifying event that the country needed right now. Writing for the New York Times, Lindsay Zoladz says, “But the culture wars that divide us so deeply elsewhere seemed, perhaps fleetingly, far away Sunday night?”
Unity is not a concept I talk about often. I’m usually too mad and too cynical for that. I see a lot of hypocrisy and a complete lack of empathy in “the other side” that wants to let women die rather than allow them control over their uteri and blames every mass shooting on mental illness while not doing anything to fix the mental health crisis in this country. It also became even more clear this week—as both House and Senate Republicans failed to do, well, anything—that the GOP has no interest in governing. They want either a) power for power’s sake or b) to burn it all down with no plan to replace it.
As readers of this newsletter know, I tend to call out this hypocrisy with a healthy dose of snark that borders on condescension rather than reach across the figurative aisle to understand it more deeply. “That’s not how it f**king works” is not the catchphrase of someone who wants a peaceful compromise. It’s the catchphrase of someone who is angry and tired and sick of the lack of logic and compassion. It has its place (and it’s not going anywhere), but perhaps there are other ways.
Two articles that I read this week provide evidence that kinder, gentler approaches may make a difference specifically in the abortion debate. The first was a look at past and present efforts to build consensus and the second a study that suggested education can actually change opinions.
In 1995, after a deadly shooting at an abortion clinic in Brookline, MA, six local women activists (three “pro-choice” and three “pro-life”) came together for a series of conversations designed to de-escalate the violence in the Boston Area. According to Kate W. Isaacs of MIT who wrote a recent article about the talks, the women never came to agreement because their worldviews were too different, but they did start to respect each other and even enjoy each other’s company. Isaacs writes:
“Rehumanizing the fight led to their hoped-for public outcome – the participants toned down their name calling, spoke up loudly for nonviolent means of change, and instructed their organizations to treat the people on the other side with respect.”
The article goes on to look at a similar project that started right after the Dobbs decision in June 2022. A group of 22 people in Jessamine County Kentucky with conflicting views on abortion came together for a consensus-building activity. The conversation was centered on reducing unintended pregnancies as a way to reduce abortions. The group ultimately came to a unanimous agreement on policy recommendations: age-appropriate sex education in schools and free long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs) for Kentucky residents, including teenagers. That’s pretty impressive, though the group still has to sell it to the elected officials in a state that has kept Mitch McConnell in office since 1984.
Isaacs argues that the key to the agreement was the pre-meeting readings that set out clear facts on the issues. The readings were written by authors on both sides but agreed on the strong link between abortion and poverty. Participants also learned about Colorado’s contraception program which reduced abortion rates among teenagers by 60% and birth rates in this group by 59% by providing free LARCs.
The idea that facts are important brings us to the other study on my unity tour. This one was presented at a recent political science conference. (The researchers plan to incorporate their findings into an upcoming book on post-Dobbs politics.) The researchers surveyed 1,356 U.S. adults; 43% were Democrats or leaned Democratic; 38% were Republican or leaned Republican; and the rest said they were independent. The survey was designed to gage support for 6- and/or 12-week abortion bans and determine whether knowledge changed opinions.
The study found that the new Republican strategy of calling a 12-week ban middle ground is failing; voters don’t make a distinction between a 6-week or a 12-week ban and are less likely to choose a candidate who supports either. The authors concluded, “Put more simply, advocating for an abortion ban of any length is not a winning position electorally.” The researchers also found that education about abortion works to change opinions.
Some participants were asked “Do you support or oppose the right to legal abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy?” Others were given information before the question that read, “Medical experts estimate that only about 6 percent of all abortions take place after 15 weeks, and most of these abortions are to protect the health or life of the mother or due to a serious birth defect.” This disclaimer increased opposition to 15-week bans by nearly half a point on a 5-point scale.
Similarly, some participants read the following before being asked if they think abortion should be always, mostly, or never be legal: “Despite concerns about women using abortion as contraception, evidence indicates that for most abortions, women report it being their first and only abortion.” The results found that giving this information significantly increased support for legal abortion.
Researchers also found that people who could correctly define a trimester and understood how early pregnancy is dated were more likely to have pro-choice attitudes, even when controlling for partisanship, demographics, religiosity, and other key variables.
This heartens me. Sure, I’m angry and cynical. Sure, I yell that’s not how it f**king works with some frequency. You’ll have noticed, however, that I almost always follow it up with a lengthy explanation of how it does, in fact, work. I have, for a relevant example, explained many times that a pregnancy is dated from the first day of a person’s last period which is usually at least three weeks from the date of ovulation and even longer from the date of fertilization and implantation (sperm and eggs move slowly). This is why many women would not even know they were pregnant before any 6-week ban prevented them from getting an abortion.
I’m an educator at heart, and I love the idea that we can fight abortion bans and win elections by educating people. I fear, however, that we now operate in a two-fact system and that people who rely on Fox News, Newsmax, or “X” algorithms to access information will never have the opportunity to learn. These people also don’t seem primed for a big consensus-building sit-down (in fairness neither do most MSNBC viewers).
As much as we as a society may crave unity, we’re not very good at. Even the Luke Combs/Tracy Chapman moment had its detractors (some with legitimate issues, others not so much). Kavita Das—who writes about the intersection of culture, race, and gender—points out that when “white people talk about ‘harmony’ and ‘unity,’ it’s usually on their terms and timeline.” She goes on to say:
To be clear, I’m all for the love and new audiences finding their way to Tracy Chapman’s music in this moment. But it’s not lost on me that this is coming more than three decades later, only after this phenomenal song by a once-in-a-generation Black, queer female singer songwriter, who sang of revolution and the devastation of poverty, is covered by a white male country singer in a moment where white voters are leaning towards voting for a vengeful, racist, capitalist fraud like Trump, again—this time with their eyes wide open. Underneath the nostalgia and good feelings of this moment, we must acknowledge there’s nothing harmonious about listening to “Fast Car,” but doing nothing to change things.
Breitbart also had a few choice words about the duet. Despite its seemingly optimistic headline, Watch: Tracy Chapman, Luke Combs Unite the Nation with Stunning ‘Fast Car’ Duet at the Grammys, the author calls the performance: “… a gorgeous moment of torch-passing and symbolic defeat of the vocal minority of woke cultural commentators who had originally sought to politicize the crossover.”
I don’t imagine that 2024 is going to go down as a year of unity. We’re not just in an election year, we’re reliving the last divisive election under different, even more conflict-ridden conditions. Education will likely never be enough: some people may have no access to it, and others are just too entrenched in their positions. Often, I’m one of them, but maybe it’s time for me to add a few new, less contentious tactics to my repertoire. How about, “I’m so sorry, kind sir, and I would like to be supportive of you views however asinine they may be, but after careful consideration and a peer-review of your central thesis I feel obligated to respectfully point out that is not, in fact, how it f**king works.”
* PS: In my opinion, CBS was conservative in the number of the times it flashed on her star-studded box. ** PPS: Scientology didn’t disappoint but it was upstaged by Jesus washing feet and Marky Mark inviting us to do Lent with him. ***PPPS: I think I willed Usher to show us his nipples by suggesting it would be no big deal. You’re welcome.
Come Test Your Condom Knowledge with Me & ASHA
Next week the American Sexual Health Association is organizing a trivia night in honor of National Condom Month, and I get to be the host.
My childhood dreams leaned more toward Judy Blume than Bob Barker, but I did watch a lot of game shows in my youth (“no whammies, no whammies”), could spot an overbid on the Showcase Showdown, would have totally aced Pyramid, and always wanted to say “we’ll be back 2 and 2.”
Join us on Thursday February 22nd when I grab my skinny mic, channel my inner Richard Dawson, and test how much you really know about the condom. There are prizes! Register here.