Laws restricting reproductive freedom come out of a culture that doesn’t see women’s sexuality as equal to men’s. Cartoon by Khalil Bendib — OtherWords.

The disparity behind anti-abortion laws

by Jill Richardson — OtherWords

In the past few weeks, my Facebook feed has exploded with posts about abortion. If you use Facebook, probably yours has too.

There’s a lot to say about abortion, especially now that Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, and Ohio have passed extremely restrictive laws banning abortions in cases where they previously would be legal. But I think there’s a bigger picture to look at too.

The bigger picture is women’s sexuality. Straight men’s sexuality is treated as more legit than women’s. The differences start at a young age.

How many families teach boys the correct names for their genitals, but do not do the same for little girls? Some families simply do not talk about female genitalia, or they call it something euphemistic (I’ve heard “privates,” “bottom,” and even “front butt”).

Consider the movie Pitch Perfect 2, in which a fictional a cappella group gets in trouble after Rebel Wilson accidentally flashes President Obama. In the film, the incident is reported on the news, but the very name of the body part is portrayed as so taboo that the news bleeps it out.

Little boys talk about their penises openly, and later they discuss masturbation and even porn with one another. While parents might not want their preteen or teen boys consuming porn, they often shrug off boys’ expressions of sexuality because “boys will be boys.”

In sex ed at home and at school, girls learn about avoiding sexual harassment and assault, pregnancy, and diseases. It’s taken for granted that men want and enjoy sex and that they will be the sexual aggressors. Often not discussed? Women’s desire for sex and sexual pleasure.

Science on female sexual pleasure is lacking because funders of science saw it as a frivolous topic to study. Many women experience pain during sex and are often written off by doctors.

How are women supposed to enter safely and healthily into sexual relationships when they are taught from the start that their sex organs are so shameful they are unspeakable? And that their role in sexual relationships is saying “no” until someday, at an appropriate time (once they are married?), they will say yes and then everything will magically fall into place?

Author Linda Kay Klein wrote about how impossible it is for women to simply shut down their sexuality for years and then, once married, instantly turn it back on again.

Men regulating women’s bodies through restrictive abortion laws is the tip of an iceberg in which women’s sexuality is stigmatized, de-legitimized, silenced, controlled, and misunderstood, even by women themselves.

Women and girls try to walk the impossible line between being seen as a prude or a slut, while hookup culture makes young straight women feel they need to give men access to their bodies in hopes that eventually the man may want to start a relationship. Sociologists study the “pleasure gap” in which men are more likely to climax than women in heterosexual sexual encounters.

Banning abortion denies women autonomy over their own bodies and treats women as if they lack the agency to know what is best for themselves. So does this larger picture of how society treats women’s sexuality.

Raising girls who understand and do not feel shame for normal, healthy sexuality — and boys who see women as sexual agents in their own right, not objects for male pleasure — is a first step toward reducing sexual assault and unwanted pregnancy.

And towards raising a generation of young people who will be capable of creating smarter policies around reproductive rights and health.

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Top of the title page of the most infamous work of Panamanian racism.
In 1941 Panamanians of Chinese descent were among those stripped of citizenship.

Donald Trump sees urgent business to do in Panama, above and beyond retrieving the management contract for the hotel and condo complex in Punta Pacifica that he lost in bankruptcy proceedings in the US federal court for the Southern District of New York. His big priorities are to overthrow the governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua, and to draft the whole world into his economic war with China. So he sent this hardcore right-wing Cuban-American fanatic, Mauricio Claver-Carone, to be his special envoy with messages for outgoing President Varela, President-Elect Cortizo, the Panamanian public via the Debate Abierto television show, Panama Canal administrator Jorge Quijano and various reputed economic and political power brokers here.

The conversations with Varela and Cortizo were separate. The reported plea with Varela was for Panamanian participation in the overthrow of the governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua. With Cortizo the discussions were reportedly more general. In all discussions an attack on the Chinese was salient. Claver-Carone demanded that Panama prevent tankers carrying Venezuelan oil to China from passing through the canal, notwithstanding the treaty on canal neutrality. He warned about sinister military purposes in Huawei cell phones and communications networks. Without making any competing US offers, he warned against doing business with the Chinese in general.

And he told Panamanians to be “very cautious about Chinese tourists.”

Claver-Carone not only heads the ultra-rightist US-Cuba Democracy PAC that Trump is counting on for help in carrying Florida in 2020. He is not only an international radio show host. He is not only a former US Treasury Department lawyer. He is also teaches at George Washington University and once taught classes at Catholic University of America. He well knows the long history of anti-Chinese racism in Panama. He knows that this racism was once embedded in our constitution.

Claver-Carone, and Donald Trump, know the race card they are playing. They are appealing to Panamanians to look with suspicion not only against Chinese tourists, but against every Panamanian who looks Chinese.

Panama has laws against foreigners coming here and preaching racism. These should be invoked. Claver-Carone ought to be declared persona non grata. Let him preach racism in Miami, but not in Panama.

Correction: In an earlier version, based on this source, Claver-Carone was identified as a law professor at Catholic University of America. The school says that although he once taught classes there, he was never a tenured professor and does not teach there now.

Protesters at the Minnesota state capitol. Photo by Lorie Shaull.

Bear in mind…

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Heads we win, tails you lose! ICMA photo.

Reforms that are less than meet the eye

by Miguel Antonio Bernal

Constitutional Law teaches us that “reforming” the Constitution means altering something in its articles without changing its essence or substance. The militarist constitution in force since 1972 has been reformed four times, but its reforms have not been able to strip it of its authoritarian barracks origins, nor of its essential oppostion to citizen participation.

This time the so-called “Concertación” concurs to claim, again, based on a text proposed by a good number of those who participated in the imposition of ‘72 and several who have been present, by action or omission, in the previous reforms behind the citizens’ back, to reform so as not to change.

The main feature of what has been presented so far? They’ll dress up the monkey in silk. There are no real proposals, no constitutional innovations, no updates, nothing corrected, nothing explained.

This is extremely worrying given that they confirm for us that in Panama what they call democracy has degenerated into an oligocracy dominated by kleptomaniacs. These people haven’t the least disposition to give up the control they have over political power. It matters even less to them whether we have a democratic constitutional government in which it is understood and perceived that power is based in the people, that there is what they say.

The methodology used for these deceptive reforms sets aside human dignity, whose respect and protection is supposed to be a fundamental obligation of the state. That’s enshrined in the basic principles of treaties to which Panama is a party but ignored by the scriveners of this new deception.

One of the main teachings of the glorious French Revolution of 1789, which the deceivers would have us forget, establishes that “The constituent power can do everything and is not subject to any prior constitution.” That is why they resort to all the tricks, sophisms, fallacies and deceptions in their uncompromising desire to prevent the empowerment of citizens to fully exercise their rights, to deny citizens the protection of all the guarantees.

That is why we must bear in mind how urgent it is to demand a participatory constituent process, so that we can have the true rebirth that the country requires.

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Juan Carlos Varela and Nito Cortizo. Photo from Cortizo’s Twitter feed.

Where’s Nito going? Seguro Social, the Panama Canal and Venezuela

by Marco A. Ganásegui, hijo

When Laurentino Cortizo was proclaimed president-elect, he reiterated in his speech his intention to stick to a neo-liberal government program, similar to all governments following the US military invasion in 1989. It means more privatizations, greater flexibility in worker-employer relations, and deregulation of public functions public-private initiatives’).

In the field of foreign policy at one moment in the campaign he mentioned his intention to review the free trade treaty with the United States, especially in reference to the section on agriculture. Moreover, he indicated the possibility of respecting the right of self-determination for people who are in a confrontation with the USA.

There are indications from te Cortizo and PRD camps that these two proposals will be difficult to carry out. He appointed his vice-president-elect, Juan Gabriel Carrizo, a young businessman who was his private assistant, to head the transition team with the outgoing president. The composition of that team, and the upcoming appointments to the future cabinet, will define more clearly the direction that the new president will take starting July 1, 2019.

The political parties that ran against Cortizo in the recent elections have not commented on the president-elect’s plans. All of them appear to be deeply involved in internal reconstruction tasks on their respective houses. Outgoing ruling party, the Panameñistas, will convene a special convention to restructure the organization’s leadership. Cambio Democratico (CD), is concerned about the unfolding trial of former President Ricardo Martinelli. The Broad Front for Democracy (FAD) is analyzing its unfavorable election results.

In a meeting held by the Panamanian unions the problem of the Social Security Fund (CSS) was raised, which for years has been poorly managed and, according to its directors, is in a financial situation close to bankruptcy. A union spokesman pointed out that the CSS has to return to the solidarity system that governed until the 2005 pension system changes.

President-elect Cortizo mentioned social security as one of his government priorities. However, his approach does not seem to match that of the workers. Cortizo met with the outgoing president, Juan Carlos Varela, to begin the transfer of power. Before leaving Varela wants the Assembly to approve the appointments of a magistrate in the Supreme Court of Justice and a director in the Panama Canal Authority (ACP). It will be very difficult for that to happen given the correlation of party forces in the legislature.

The Panama Canal was one of the issues that was not discussed during the election campaign. Since 1994 when the economic powers that be agreed to introduce a constitutional amendment on the canal, the issue has been out of bounds. Only the protests of the workers and the corruption scandals on the board of directors are considered newsworthy. However, recent statements by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the melting of the Arctic and the opening of new routes connecting East Asia with the markets of the North Atlantic should attract the attention of the new ruler. The announcement highlights the need to create a scientific commission to thoroughly study global warming and its impact on the Panama Canal’s commercial future.

It must be clear that the interoceanic route can’t be discussed with the United States. On many occasions — and its current administration has been forceful — Washington has said that its national interests are not to be negotiated. In the 1970s, however, Panama managed to put the waterway’s transfer on the US agenda, along with the evacuation of its military bases and the end of the Canal Zone. We must demand that Pompeo first consult with Panama before making statements about the future of maritime trade between the Pacific and the Atlantic.

Cortizo referred to Venezuela and mentioned the creation of something similar to the Contadora Group, which was created by General Torrijos to deal with the conflict in Nicaragua in the 1970s. The initiative would not be for a ‘regime change’ that Trump wants, but to find a solution to the conflict. The proposal would replace the United States (via the OAS and the Lima group) as a central actor in a war against Venezuela and would put Latin America in a central role in the solution to the conflict.

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