Over the last week or so I have found myself getting intensely angry over the contraception debate, and it actually confused me. Not my position – like any good secular humanist I’m all about the family planning. But it felt personal, which was really strange since fear of unplanned pregnancy accounts for exactly 0 percent of my overall anxiety level. I can’t even say it was just my awesome sensitive-guy empathy, it was something much more visceral. And then the Sandra Fluke controversy sort of crystallized things.

I was feeling, not just general righteous indignation, but a very familiar anger and frustration. It’s the frustration you get when you try to talk about the practical realities of your life, and people act as though you’re gratuitously bringing up sex.  When you bring up a concrete problem with real consequences for your family or your health and people dismiss you with vague abstractions that they don’t even apply consistently. When your actual well-being is considered less important than someone else’s discomfort at having to think about the icky particulars of your life. Being a woman trying to talk about contraception turns out to be very much like being gay.

(Re-posted from http://www.tumblr.com/blog/kevpdx)