This particularly post struck me because of a recent discussion here in MN with another blogger, Joan Peterson of Common Gunsense. Joan's sister was killed by gun violence, leading to her becoming a blogger.
I have been struck in turn by several points. Making something pink doesn't make it feminine, it makes it a stereotype, and it tends to make it appear to be a toy, just as making it orange, or yellow or green. As a woman, the phrase 'Barbie Doll pink' refers to something particularly hideous that suggests an unfortunate mentality for an adult of around age 7, as well a deficiency in good taste.
Further, while I am heartily sick of reading of 'partnerships' that are one-sided, where only one so-called partner knows anything about such a project. Anyone can make a donation. Using such a donation to make sales, without the consent of the organization to which you are donating is NOT a partnership. A gun company marketed a pink firearm promising to donate to the Komen Foundation, claiming a partnership.
Making a donation doesn't make you a partner; that is a relationship to which both sides have to consent and agree. I won't mention the gun company here, by name, because I don't want to give them the attention.
In the case of the Komen Foundation, they deny knowing about this gun company. Shame on the gun company for misrepresenting the partnership if that is true. But I also do not have full faith EITHER any longer in the Komen Foundation and their claims. So far they had not as of this weekend appeared to have contacted the company to have them end that claim which has been going on now for awhile. They claim to want to be out of the middle of the very real culture wars. That doesn't appear to be sincere. They don't LIKE the attention of having taken sides in the culture wars AGAINST women, but then they shouldn't have taken a side. Not only does the Komen Foundation appear to have reverse engineered their excuse to defund Planned Parenthood, which is a claim supported by those who have resigned and by those who are still inside the foundation but afraid of retaliation, they have also tried to quietly defund valuable stem cell research that would save women's lives, and they have a strongly right wing board governing these decisions.
Take a position, be open about it, Komen, I for one will no longer believe the press releases you make, until such time as you get rid of your new anti-Planned Parenthood Vice President, and also restore stem cell research funding. Your protests about grant excellence is bogus. Your insistence that there was anyone other than Planned Parenthood that was defunded for that kind of grant is also bogus. It will take more than what you have done so far to regain the public trust.
As to the pink gun? Komen, if you DON'T get out of the culture wars, you might want to rethink that partnership. Because as Microdot points out below, guns aren't good for women's health, any more than breast cancer is. So if you care, REALLY care, Komen Foundation, as a woman who has had both a mother and other female members of my family and dear friends with breast cancer, I will support other organizations that fund breast cancer research, and be very critical of YOU until you decide what it is that really matters to you - right wing ideology and political conformity, or women's health. Because there is a clear divide between the two. The right has been waging war on women, with everything from trying to deny us affordable contraception, to trying to revoke equal pay regardless of gender, to trying to define rape as only forcible rape, to denying women an abortion to save their lives.
And no, I'm not just hoping that the Komen Foundation will find this small blog and read it. I made a phone call to the Minnesota Chapter of the Komen Foundation, and plan to follow that up with a call to the national headquarters as well.
So, Komen Foundation - pick one side. Because the right is anti-women at the moment, at least the more rabid tea partiers and extreme conservatives are, and that is who you've hired, that is who is setting your agenda. As you've seen so far, a lot of us don't like that. An estimated as many as one in three women have used Planned Parenthood for a variety of services OTHER than abortion.
From Microdot's 'The Brain Police' Blog (because I couldn't have said it better).
October was Breast Cancer Awareness month, and the group Breast Cancer Action seized on the opportunity to promote its Think Before you Pinkcampaign to raise awareness of how companies are increasingly exploiting breast cancer as a marketing device to sell products -- some of which are actually harmful to women's health. Pink ribbon campaigns are offering up some bizarre, albeit benign products like a breast cancer awareness toaster and a breast cancer awareness floating Beer Pong table. But the most bizarre item yet to have a pink ribbon slapped on it must be Smith & Wesson's Pink Breast Cancer Awareness 9 mm Pistol, promoted by a woman named Julie Goloski, Smith and Wesson's Consumer Program Manager and a sharpshooter herself. Goloski is promoting S&W's breast cancer awareness pistol on her Facebook page, saying "October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Breast Cancer Awareness M&P’s are shipping to dealers. I am thrilled to have my name associated with such a worthy cause and one of my favorite firearms." According to a 2008 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, firearms are the second most common cause of violent deaths of women, accounting for 29.2% of all violent deaths among females in the U.S. in 2008. The most important point here is the above board accountability of corporate charities. We all want to be able to donate to charities because we want to take action to contribute to the causes which touch us, but you owe it to yourself to find out how your good wishes are being spend or wasted and squandered. The controversy surrounding the Komen Foundation put this directly into the spotlight for millions of big hearted generous Americans this week. How much of your charitable donations actually make it to what you intended them for? How much are you paying to fund the perks and the salaries of CEOs? Give responsibly if you want to see results!
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