Feminism...the Radical Notion that Women are People

(title attribution to Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler)

OK, I know it's not an oft-discussed topic here at BAD, but I have to take advantage of the Count's generosity in sharing this soapbox to simply say it very directly, during this silliest of silly seasons in US politics. What about 51% of the population (for you businesspeople, that's a controlling interest) is not understood? From which backward and unholy cesspool has this War On Women bubbled up to the surface of the GOP dialogue?

Mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds - what we used to call non-consensual, forcible penetration; or, more colloquially, "rape" - positively embraced in principle, and backed away from only minutely and at the last minute, in Virginia. The marginalizing of women's health issues in the form of a fresh assault on birth control, coupled with the utter travesty of a panel of men testifying largely to other men on the issue (and the GOP-controlled House is refusing, with blatant hypocrisy and in unprecedented style, to broadcast footage of a Democratic hearing finally giving Sandra Fluke her day at the microphone - I suppose it will be a wonder if they don't cut the electrical power entirely). It's a laughable picture tantamount to a bunch of non-driving pedestrians holding forth on matters of automobile maintenance. Continuing efforts to abrogate women's ability to control their own reproductive destinies in multiple states. The looming danger that contraception apparently represents by its mere existence, in the form that sexual intercourse might - gasp! - be engaged in just because, you know, it's enjoyable. All capped by the bizarre spectacle of an Indiana legislator refusing to commemorate the Girl Scouts' 100th anniversary, for crap's sake, on the grounds that he thinks those adorable cookie-wielding Daisies and Brownies are closeted radicals intent on emasculating American manhood and unleashing the gay agenda. Because he read it on teh Innertubes, and everyone knows how completely authoritative and accurate whatever you encounter on the Internet is. (Consider the sad case of that Nigerian Prince, for instance...)

Are these candidates - Santorum in particular, who seemingly would like to return us to the 17th century and witch hunts for anybody who, you know, might think that preserving the Earth for future generations is a good idea - really going there? To points of view that marginalize the privileges of basic citizenship and human rights for more than half the population? Or, more to the point of their own self-interest, to alienate as much as half of their potential voting base?

Not only does this seem to me to be a stupid strategy overall, but creeping every day so much further and further to the most remote right-wing fringes as to be completely untenable for anybody with half a brain cell to spare.

Go re-read Margaret Atwood's depressingly prescient novel The Handmaid's Tale, everyone. And then tell me it can't happen in the US. The signage is on the roads already being trod.

In the meantime, I thank my lucky stars my daughter and I are here in Canada, where she has the right to protect her health as she sees fit; love and marry whom she wants, if she wants; and where her freedom of conscience guarantees that she need never submit to anyone else's set of beliefs and strictures. Because the way the dialogue is going down there in the lower 48, I wouldn't want her there for an instant.

Pilling The Boehner

OK, this piece over at The Smirking Chimp - a site almost as good for rant-a-thons as BAD - all but completely encapsulates my feelings about the GOP latching with leech-like desperation onto the ready availability of contraception as the issue that will topple Colossus Obama, presumably installing President Mormon, Moonbase or possibly even Man-on-Dog instead.

You've probably been following the issue already - the ginned-up outrage on the farthest fringes of the right that legislation establishing ready access to health care (something they already don't much like) would include, horror of all horrors, a requirement that a common, widely-used and publicly-approved-of medication be a mandatory part of any employer's health care package. Specifically, The Pill. And House Cryer-in-Chief Boehner's threat, this week, that Congress will legislatively overturn any such mandate in the name of "religious freedom."

News flash, John of Orange. Here are a few salient points.

First, this isn't a free speech issue. Yes, we know that your camp has done everything in its power to cast it as such, when it came to Bush-era policies allowing, say, pharmacists to refuse to dispense the morning-after pill on grounds that doing so would violate their personal religious convictions. (Here's where I could elaborate on the theme of, "You think pork is unclean, don't work at Der Wienerschnitzel," but that would be a distraction...and I think everyone here gets the point, anyway.) And, yes, we expect you to predictably trot out the "corporations are people" mantra, in this case, to insist that it is a blow to the very foundations of the Union to insist that contraceptive coverage be part of any organization's health plan, because all those incorporate "people" should be allowed the freedom to choose for all their myriads of employees.

But it's not really a speech issue at all, free or not. Nobody but Congress, lobbyists and pundits comb through the minutiae of anybody's health care plan to argue free speech protections. The Average American (Remember us? We employ you.) is much more grateful for having a job with benefits, hoping for a reasonable per-paycheck contribution, and having the ability to look askance at that scary co-pay number...because I can promise you it is better than the cost of sourcing coverage for even a small family on your own. Been there.

It's an insurance policy. Not a manifesto.

And I think the Average American also instinctively understands where the boundary between a corporation's "personhood" rights and his or her own individual rights lies. It's pretty clear that, if only for reasons of the doctor/patient confidentiality tradition, the pharmacy counter does not and should not get vetted by the boardroom first. One's medical condition should only become an employer's issue when it affects one's personal job performance; not in advance, and certainly not in a broad, company-wide sense.

Second, it's not a religious freedom issue because this is NOT - repeat, NOT - a policy that dictates any given religion's articles of faith, or mandates a state religion. Again, it's an insurance policy. Not a scripture. No employer short of holy orders is, I hope, going to say that by agreeing to employment with us you agree to the following rules of behavior, ascribe to the following beliefs, etc. That is, I think, still pretty much illegal.

Furthermore, nothing in this legislation compels any individual employee to hop right on out there and get on the Pill, now, this instant, should doing so violate that employee's individual beliefs. You are offering an option: one which is, as I noted above, widely available for generations, popular with the public, and effective, and safe. It preserves, rather than overturns, the conscience objection. And if you're that scared that your faithful are going to stray from your position (as, I might point out, plenty of Catholic women already do), then your issues are more in your own communications department and less in your employee benefits division.

It's an insurance policy. Not a sermon from the pulpit. Offering is not requiring or even endorsing, any more than having a vegetarian dish or two on the menu forces or urges everyone working OR eating in the restaurant to become vegan.

I could make the counter-argument, in fact, that efforts to oppose contraceptive coverage being a universal element of the health care legislation constitute a denial of equal protection under the law to women, whose health condition is the one most greatly affected by pregnancies, be they planned, accidental and/or unwanted. Yes, we know that Justice "Bite Me" Scalia apparently has no problem with discrimination against women.(Appalling, in and of itself.) And that nobody has reintroduced the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment, for those of you too young to remember how haltingly it limped its way to shameful failure), or legislation like it, in the past couple of decades is a perplexing tragedy.

But one thing you need to remember before you tread down this path, Boehner. Your constituency and those of all your GOP cronies isn't composed of Catholic bishops, Fox News pundits and right-wing ideologues alone. They also include a great many women. At least some of those women have been listening, especially in light of the recent (and ongoing) SGK/PP travesty. And when they step into the voting booth, in the primaries or the general election later this year, let's just consider. Will they march happily in lockstep with you and the other white men of privilege who are trying so hard to dictate to them what they are and are not "entitled" to when it comes to their health, simultaneously talking out of the other side of your mouths about how government needs to "stay out of" individuals' decision-making about their lives? Or will they turn to another candidate who seems to exhibit something like care or empathy for the issues that really matter to them, and genuine individual empowerment?

Stay tuned. Every day it looks more and more to me like the right-wingers have chosen the wrong horse to bet on in this race, by fixating on this issue. It's the modern-day burka of the Western world, and I believe waving it in the wind as Boehner is doing will prove to be the act of sheer foolishness that finally brings down their house of cards decisively.

One of my other favorite blogs, Library Grape, goes on to demonstrate how Boehner is making it both dumb and dumber.

Public Relations: SGK, Ur Doin It Wrong

A great deal has been said about the Susan G. Komen Foundation's massive PR debacle in de-funding and then nominally re-funding their support of breast exams performed through Planned Parenthood outlets. I won't try to replace a good Google search for the latest developments, but I'll say a few things from the perspective of someone who has worked in marketing her whole adult life, including intersections of various sorts, paid and not, with several non-profit organizations.

Observation #1: Whether you are a commercial or a non-profit concern, the moment you conclude as management thereof that you and/or your board of directors are involved with the organization for the same reasons that your customers or donors support you, you are deeply in denial and on the road to disaster.

If you're a nonprofit, your management probably has a certain level of passion for the mission, whatever it is, but also wants to make a living and perpetuate some personal job security. Your board - more often than not - wants something spiffy to add to their resumes while doing as little tangible work as possible. With the rarest of exceptions, non-profit boards are there to see-and-be-seen.

That's not why your members and supporters donate their money or time or involvement. They do it because it makes them feel good about themselves.

Same thing for commercial companies. If you successfully sell a widget or a windmill, that sale will have happened because the customer feels better about buying from you than buying from someone else. They won't have a passionate conviction that your product and yours alone fulfills their needs because of your fabulous technology, legendary customer support or attention to detail. They just somehow like you better.

That's the core mistake the Komen Foundation made to begin with: they assumed that just because the makeup of their board and management structure had changed to include a different political attitude, those changes could be successfully reflected in their external mission, without any fallout. They failed utterly to understand their audience/support base or to take that base's concerns into account.

Observation #2: Don't just make shit up in a vain attempt to have your cake and also eat it when you change - or change again - a policy or a product or the story you're trying to convey about either. It never, ever works. You have to be straightforward and provide factual information and a plausible reason, not smoke and mirrors. No, we're not supporting this position any more because x-y-z. Yes, we're phasing out this product's support for format a-b-c because we believe j-k-l is the path of the future. Will you lose friends, supporters, customers? Undoubtedly. That's why you need to understand your base (Item #1) and choose carefully which segments of it are most important to your success.

Komen blew it here because they wanted both to hang onto the broad, bipartisan, largely apolitical base they had cultivated for a decade, and at the same time to appease the anti-choice fringe crowd whose whispers seem to be having an impact on the organization's current CEO and new Senior VP. As a result of their waffling walk-back of the PP de-funding decision (with, as others have ably noted, completely toothless language that does nothing to confirm that any actual funds will be forthcoming), Komen has now lost substantial chunks of both groups. A double blunder from which I see no way back that doesn't involve executive-level resignations, a massive restructuring effort, and, above all, time.

Observation #3: It's a brave new world out there. You'd better understand the Internet sandbox well before you go there to play with your pail and shovel.

Not that there isn't still a place for traditional media. It's nice to be able to send the CEO a clip file of warm, fuzzy ads; cover stories; glossy feature article reprints. But, let's admit it - most of the real work of forging public opinion, especially for an organization as prominent as Komen (or, for that matter, Planned Parenthood), is going to happen online. That's not a place where you can bury a story on Page 12 of Section C and have it reliably fade out with the weekly recycling. Just the reverse: it's a place where your offhand comment or major misstep can be in front of hundreds of thousands of people within a matter of seconds. Very often, in places where you can do nothing to mitigate it. Scrub your Tweet or a blog post? Doesn't matter. Astute netizens will have already grabbed, archived and shared copies. Huge, amorphous networks of connection spread the word and translate into action very, very quickly. Just ask Planned Parenthood, who received roughly 1 million dollars in donations within the first 24 hours of this circus act. Ask anyone who has ever gleefully joined in one of Stephen Colbert's pranks.

You need to be regularly present, you need to be engaged, and you need to draw a sharp, clear distinction between an individual's private expression and one made on behalf of the organization. Komen did the first two, but in the same kind of unconvincing, inauthentic language I mentioned above. Their online voice doesn't read as genuine, and it must. And, clearly, the third thing did not happen.

What I would have done, had I been the marketer presented with the task of conveying something like this to the public? (Well, had I not resigned in disgust. Always a possibility - it wouldn't be the first time...) I would have moved heaven and earth to persuade the brass that more research was needed, both of our affiliate organizations and our supporters. What did they see as being most effective? Where did they feel our most important support was being delivered? In this case, the results of that kind of investigation might well have turned up data so persuasive as to trump ideology and avoid the whole debacle.

Yes, that's a long shot. But at the bare minimum, much more should have been done to anticipate the likely fallout. Newbie-level mistakes were made here.

Observation #4: When apologies are called for, they need to be real ones. Hardly any company ever gets this one right. Just say you're sorry. Not sorry if, not sorry that, not sorry for any (your epithet of condolence here). Just sorry.

This, again, is part of the genuine voice remarked on in Item #3. Just as you can always tell when somebody is issuing an insincere, non-apology apology, so can your base. That's true whether or not you're apologizing directly to them or to a third party. Words matter. Use few, choose them judiciously, and be factually and emotionally honest. If you don't, and the insincerity bleeds through - as it is doing, with Komen's reversal - whatever goodwill you hoped to regain will just become more elusive.

So, there you have them: my four basic rules. Know your audience, tell the truth, understand/respect the power of the Net, and be sincere. Doesn't sound that hard, does it?

I have absolutely no idea whether Komen will survive this PR fiasco they built for themselves...or, indeed, whether or not the organization should. But I do know one thing for sure. If they're hoping that Super Bowl hoopla will bury the story, they're really fooling themselves. The Count noted that the group has some male supporters on Facebook. They'll likely be watching the big game on Sunday. But the millions of women who have invested donations, volunteer time and their own personal stories/lives, and those of their friends or families, in what Komen has historically been about? Not too many of them will be gathering with the guys for beer and buffalo wings. They're the core constituency Komen needs to be concerned about here. And, come Monday, they'll remember.