Features > October 27, 2006 > Web Only

Virginity or Death!: A Conversation With Katha Pollitt

By Jessica Clark

In September, Nation columnist Katha Pollitt stopped by the offices of In These Times for a public discussion of her latest book, Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time.

While it’s become commonplace to describe journalism as a “rough draft of history,” this collection of Pollitt’s columns rises to the level of history itself. From the start of Bush’s first term through September 11 and the waxing and waning of the Iraq invasion in early ‘06, Pollitt offers a running chronicle of the issues of the day. She tackles each topic with humor and passion, always returning to the central role that women play in U.S. and international politics.

“The solution is obvious,” she writes in the book’s introduction. “Women must live modern lives organized around principles of self-reliance and self-development, while at the same time they must feel endlessly guilty and uneasy about the ways in which doing so inconveniences those around them. They have to be independent, and they have to blame themselves if they enjoy it.”

We discussed these and other conundrums during her visit.

So tell us about the title essay, “Virginity or Death.” Which is worse?

The title essay is about the wonderful discovery of the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine. If given to preteen girls, it will prevent most cases of HPV, which leads to about 70 percent of cervical cancer.

Cervical cancer is a very serious cancer and this is the first vaccine against any cancer; it’s really historic. So you would think everyone would say, “Oh this is just so wonderful.” But no. The Family Research Council was very upset, saying “This is gonna make young girls promiscuous.”

Just think about that for a minute: There is some young girl, and what’s keeping her from having sex now is thinking, “I could get cancer in thirty years if I have sex with my boyfriend now.”

I was so disturbed by this. It’s this whole values thing: Whenever they have a choice between mitigating or preventing some major damage that comes to people through sex, like using condoms for safe sex, or giving them actual sexual information in their classrooms, or now the HPV vaccine, they say, “No, no—ignorance and non-condoms, and you have to be a virgin.”

The good news is that in the case of the HPV vaccine, parents are really for this. Even very religious, conservative parents understand the medical issues that are involved. And so the Christian Right had to back off a little bit. And so now they say, “The vaccine’s OK, but parents should decide. It shouldn’t be mandatory.”

But this is a matter of public health. “Mandatory” actually means that is required for school, which means that the government will pay for it. This is an expensive vaccine that requires three visits. It’s just not the sort of thing that parents are going to be able to organize on their own. Also, you can already opt out of any vaccine legally, in every state. So this is a fig leaf; this is basically a re-statement of: “We don’t like this. We can’t quite say that you shouldn’t have it, but we’re not gonna help you get it.”

You spend a lot of time in your column tracking the different incursions on reproductive rights and choice. What do you think the biggest danger is right now to Roe v. Wade?

Well, that’s a very interesting question. A lot of people think that they’re never going to overturn Roe v. Wade. Well, if you were a shrewd Republican, you probably wouldn’t want to do that. But of course, sometimes they’re not shrewd, because they’ve got all of these religious nuts that they have to placate, so things can go a little too far.

But let’s say they don’t. They can still do so much by whittling away; hundreds of anti-choice bills come up in state legislatures and at the federal level. A lot of them don’t pass, and some of them do. But every year there’s less access to abortion than the year before. Already, there are two states with only one abortion clinic each.

So there’s that legislative aspect, but there’s also the issue of just how much trouble people who are involved with providing abortions have to be prepared to put up with. They live in communities in many parts of this country that are not friendly to what they do.

So, you could end up with a situation where if you live in New York, Chicago, California, or a few other big places, you can get an abortion. And in the abortion unfriendly places, which include some states you might not think of—like Michigan, one of the states with the most restrictions on abortion—you might find facing a lot of difficulty in getting an abortion. In fact, you already are.

Some feminists have said, “Fine, let them outlaw Roe v. Wade, then we’ll have a feminist movement again and then these young whippersnappers will see what people have fought for.”

This is a very common argument that you find on both sides of the political spectrum—losing is winning. Losing is losing. Losing is not winning; it’s almost never winning.

I remember when the 2000 election was in doubt, some dear friends, really smart people, saying, “Well, it might be better for Gore to lose, because then he can come back…” No, winning is better.

Now, the Republicans are saying this about the ‘06 elections. But, you know, would they be saying that if they thought they were going to win? Nooo…they’d be saying, “Oh its really great, we’re going to win again because everybody loves us.”

So I think it would be a terrible, terrible thing if Roe v. Wade was overturned because of the way it would go back to every state legislature. We’re never going to get to vote as a country; if we did, of course, pro-choice would win. But it goes state by state, and there are some very anti-choice places in this country. Young women don’t have a lot of political power—they’re not in the state legislatures. So I think it might wake up the feminist movement, but the feminist movement might not be able to win. So then you would have an awakened feminist movement and no reproductive rights. That’s really going back in time.

So do you think there’s anything else that might reawaken the feminist movement?

• subscribe to print magazine

  First Name Last Name Home Address City State Zip Code Email

  2-year, 24-issues, $44.95 1-year, 12-issue, $24.95

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments

  First of all, I want to commend Katha Pollit for her wonderful and very aptly titled book. I for one do have major problems with organized religion. And yes i do think many religious adherents in the US have very low cognitive ability. How can one describe an individual that believes the earth is only 6,000 years old or that the earth was created in just six days? Can such an individual be respected as intelligent? These folks are the underpinnings of a regime and political trend that will undo our democracy and wreak the havoc of war upon much of the world. These US clerico-fascists are spreading their irrational hate and repression throughout US society and it is dangerous.  Their overwhelming obsession with controlling people’s sexuality is central to keeping a conservative mood in the country and from keeping people from making their own decisions. Sexual repression is a model for other types of repression. By placing women and youth under the sexual control of repressive patriarchy they maintain a kind of moral conservatism that bolsters political conservatism. When people think for themselves they challenge authority. They also seek to erode the current hegemony of that authority with a counter hegemony of alternatives the success of which can delegitimate the ruling elite as a source of all solutions. This is greatly feared by those in power.

  Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Oct 28, 2006 at 12:59 AM

  As a Generation X guy I would like to thank the hippies who gave us HPV, AIDS, Herpes,drug resistant clap, rampant abortion , ridiculous divorce rates, and the fact the only safe sex in the new century is over the internet..... Second as the spawn of Leftist/ Socialist/ Secular Humanist parents I am the black sheep who enjoys religion, nationalism, and firearms. I have managed to summon enough cognitive abilities to recognize cabdrivers alternatives as Sociology 101. Conflict theory............

  Posted by texasindependent on Oct 28, 2006 at 11:44 PM

  The hippies didn’t give you any of those things the government did from what I read in the underground press, man. And who cares how many abortions occur. Do you really want all those folks around anyhow?  And what’s wrong with high divorce rates? Does it affect you and your relationships? Human Papaloma Virus could be cured with a vaccine but who is against it? The same crackers who like G-d, guns, and country. Get a clue dude!!

  Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Oct 29, 2006 at 12:56 AM

  texasetc,
  Lol,
  you are pathetic. You definately have a problem, and grown up attitudes to sex is one of them. Stop pretending to be the offspring of people who can think, and just admit to pathetic partisanship. If you are having sex over the net, you need to get out more, and if you don’t want to catch diseases, use a condom.

  Posted by Jane Doe on Oct 29, 2006 at 6:36 PM

  “The hippies didn’t give you any of those things the government did from what I read in the underground press, man”

  This is an awfully paranoid statement coming from a supposedly “intelligent” person.

  “And what’s wrong with high divorce rates?”

  It definitely affects the children involved, and not in a good way.

  Posted by chopper on Oct 30, 2006 at 9:05 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 78 posts.

Member Login

Also by Jessica Clark

• The New Cartographers
  What does it mean to map everything all the time?
• iPower to the People
  The perils and promise of point-and-click politics
• Blogs Up, Hacks Down
  The appearance of seven Democratic presidential contenders at the YearlyKos convention demonstrated that the Kossacks and fellow A-listers--along with what the Liberal Blog Advertising Network calls their 3 million daily readers--are now ensconced as political players
• Chasing the Green Pound in London
  Forget "I am not a plastic bag" campaign, Spitalfield's Market is where to find London's genuine eco-friendly fashion
• Boomsday: Bankrupt Satire
  
• Bisexual Healing