4 - Friday, April 12, 2013 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 4- Friday, April 12, 2013 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com MELANIE KRUVELIS and ADRIENNE ROBERTS MATT SLOVIN EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS MANAGING EDITOR OTA E QUOTABLE Then the next thing that will occur is your kids will come home (from school) and say, 'I think this is a good thing and I think I want to be one' (homosexual).' - Michigan-based Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema defends his Facebook posts on the radio program, Washington Watch. ointless polling ANDREW WEINER EDITOR IN CHIEF 6 Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. FROM THE DAIL Consistency with contraception States should be more committed to reproductive rights 013 marks the forty-year anniversary of Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of legalizing abortions in the United States. Flash forward 40 years from that historic date, and the U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman recently ruled that age restrictions on the emergency contraception "Plan B One-Step," as well as its generic versions, were "arbitrary, capricious and unrea- sonable" - further advancing the movement for the full reproductive rights of women. Before this decision, teens younger than 17 couldn't purchase Plan B without a prescription, and it was only sold through family-planning clinics or pharmacies. Now, Plan B will be sold on the shelves of stores and pharmacies nationwide for persons of any age. While it's great to see the federal government discussing women's issues and making steps to granting women full reproductive rights, many states are unfortunately not on the same page. What's up with the recent polling for the 2016 Presidential election? It seems that there's a poll coming out nearly every day about the 2016 race. From potential candidates to projections, polling orga- PAUL nizations and SHERMAN media outlets have decided to devote some time to this story. Representatives of Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) have even announced that they are going to decide by this June about his presidential bid. In all honesty, it makes me sick to my stomach. Ever since the end of the 2012 election cycle, media outlets such as MSNBC and CNN have been talking about who will run in 2016. To me, it's ridiculous that we're beginning to have these discus- sions now. The election is more than 1,306 days away! This type of polling isn't constructive, as there are more important problems that we should be addressing. While there have been some cases in which the polls accurately picked the candidates, most of them have not done so. According to a Gallup poll from July 2009, "72 percent of Republicans and Republican-lean- ing independents have a favorable opinion of Palin, compared with 56 percent for Romney and 59 percent for Huckabee." Obviously, neither Palin nor Huckabee ended up mak- ing it past the primaries. For the 2004 election, polls projected the top three Democratic candidates to be Hillary Clinton, former Vice Presi- dent Al Gore and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), yet John Kerry won the Democratic nomination. These polls may tell us how voters feel about the two political parties now. However, a lot can happen in four years to make voters change their minds. Part of the problem is statistical bias. Polls won't be accurate if they don't find a representative sample of the population. This is difficult since it would be expensive to find a large enough sample that can be representative of the entire Ameri- can population. However, if this condition isn't met, the amount of bias increases and the accuracy decreases. Polls can also suffer from what's called response bias. This occurs when pollsters attempt to predict what would have been the response from participants who don't respond to the questions. As an article in The Economist describes, when pollsters have to call people who don't have land- lines or don't pick up their phones, for example, "they are left guessing about how to weight their views," which can create bias and "lead to lots of mistaken predictions." However, there's a place for these early polls. For lesser-known candi- dates, such as Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, it helps them gauge their support and fig- ure out the actions they need to take to become more prominent in the national dialogue. Not only that, it can help us to understand American opinions of the two political parties, Congress, the presidency and so on. In an article on Slate, John Dicker- son said that talking about presi- dential races can "excite ambition, which causes politicians to take risks, which can start conversations about important ideas. Our day-to- day political life is small, but in the presidential conversation, it's still possible to imagine bigger things." In the grand scheme of things, polls are simply a distraction. There are also other problems in polling, such as the "likely voter model" and the push poll. As Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of Gal- lup, explained in an article by Ezra Klein in the Washington Post, the likely voter model "takes into account changes in the response to questions about how closelythey're following and how enthusiastic they are," he said. "It's not just cap- turing underlying movement - it's representing changes in enthusi- asm." In addition, the push poll has been used, which is when a small sample of about 300 to 1000 people are used for solely measuring how information can change public opinion, according to Stu Rothen- berg of Roll Call. Because of these problems, it's hard to tell whether or not polls accurately reflect the views of the American public. So, in the next year or so, stop talking about 2016. America is facing more pertinent issues right now. It's difficult for Congress to even pass fiscal proposals that will keep the government open for business. In the grand scheme of things, polls for the 2016 election are just another dis- traction that America doesn't need. - Paul Sherman can be reached at pausherm@umich.edu. eS According to a study reported by health. com, more than 30 percent of sexually active adolescents believed emergency contracep- tives induce abortion. This is simply not true. Rather, Plan B is a pill with a high dosage of hormones that prevents the release of a fertil- izableeggandmustbetakenwithinthreedays of unprotected sexual intercourse. Taking Plan B when pregnant is ineffective, because the fertilized egg has already attached itself to the wall of the uterus. Plan B also makes no difference if an egg has already been fer- tilized. Schools should be educating students to eliminate the misconceptions of Plan B so that it can be utilized as a normal and safe option of backup birth control, especially if primary birth control fails. With effective dissemination of information coupled with this new ruling, unwanted pregnancies could likely be reduced. Under the previous law for Plan B, teens younger than 17 had to find a health care pro- vider to provide a prescription if they were in need of the pill. The alternative was getting and older person to buy it for them, which was illegal. Since every hour counts, the recent rul- ing allows women and teens to control their own sexual health and purchase the medicine if they need it, eliminating humiliating emer- gency trips to the doctor for a prescription. While this ruling is encouraging, it also draws attention to areas of the country where women's sexual health is being compromised. For example, in Missouri on April 4, the state senate passed a law allowing pharmacies to refuse to stock certain prescription drugs - notably emergency contraception and birth control. The pharmacies believe that they should be allowed to stock what they choose and if they so desire not to sell emer- gency contraception for personal beliefs, they no longer have to. While pharmacies are businesses, owners have a responsibility to provide necessary medications and doing otherwise impinges on the rights of women to have access to crucial medical care. With this ruling, the judiciary joins a larger governmental trend of taking a posi- tive stance on women's rights. Other recent accomplishments include free birth control under the Affordable Care Act, which is now applicable to most women with health insur- ance in 2013. While there are some limita- tions to the free birth control, it has positively affected many women who are on the pill. Given these results and recent actions by the federal government, it's time states follow suit and expand on women's rights as well. 0I ZEINAB KHALIL I The 'Femen' critique EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Kaan Avdan, Sharik Bashir, Barry Belmont, Eli Cahan, Eric Ferguson, Jesse Klein, Melanie Kruvelis, Maura Levine, Patrick Maillet, Aarica Marsh, Megan McDonald, Jasmine McNenny, Harsha Nahata, Adrienne Roberts, Paul Sherman, Sarah Skaluba, Michael Spaeth, Daniel Wang, Luchen Wang, Derek Wolfe JESSE KLEIN' Back to reality So, that'll be the only time I'll ever get to see two fraternity brothers peck each other on the lips - soberly at least. The Kansas game was a game every fan dreams of - a come-from-behind victory with a buzzer- beatingshot sendingthe teams into overtime. You watched it, you celebrated it, but did you get to see two heterosexual fraternity broth- ers - both with girlfriends - kiss through tears of joy? And then, just a week later, the tears were no longer those of joy, but of frus- tration and loss over agreat seasonthat ended just shy of a fairytale. The emotion of the NCAA men's basketball tournament is raw and real. The history of the fatal Fab Five timeout, the freshman starters, the most-likely final season for Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway Jr. and the rebooting of the once-great Michigan basketball program all combined to make this loss a hard punch to the gut. My friend, who goes to a small liberal arts college in Vermont where the biggest sport is Quidditch, sent me this text: "Your boys put on a fight, but it was not quite good enough." What she didn't understand was how the campus deflated after that. Melanie Kruvelis wrote a column describing how the scene late Monday night would have been a little differ- ent if we had won or lost. While I agree the actions might have been similar - people get- ting drunk, fights and burning couches - the atmosphere couldn't have been more different. We wanted to win not for ourselves, but for them. So that Spike could have his best game be the game that we won the national cham- pionship. So Trey and Tim could leave behind not only a legacy, buta national championship banner. So Mitch McGary's breakout stardom would be complete. So the Fab Five would finally not be the yardstick that measures Michigan basketball. The Shapiro Undergraduate Library, where I went after the game to study for an organic chemistry test, had a stillness about it. But unlike after the Kansas game or the Final Four, it wasn't because students had said, "Fuck school, this is a once ina lifetime expe- rience." Instead, no one could focus. No one wanted to even try. We wanted to hold on to the last few hours where we could talk about the game because it was the most important thing on campus. And then Tuesday came. While the East Coast and even Ohio expe- rienced a warm front, Tuesday morning gave Ann Arbor an overcast day with on-and-off rain - mimicking the tears of Nik Stauskas as he tried to complete his post-game interview. The game was no longer the only thing on everyone's mind. We had to deal with all the work we had put off. The referees' bad calls didn't consume every conversation. It was back to the real world, one that looked slight- ly gloomier and slightly harsher than the one we had left behind on March 29. It's a world where frat boys don't kiss and grown men don't cry. One where I don't blow off studying the day before an organic chem- istry test and students don't drive 11 hours without a plan or a ticket. This world is a little less spontaneous, and sometimes I think that maybe that other world had its priorities a lit- tle bit straighter. Should I spend hours on end in a cinder block building to study or should I go outside and enjoy the world, do something impulsive and unplanned that might be bad for my GPA? I guess it's true, but I must ask myself, "Why do I need five talented guys to make living my life to the fullest acceptable?" Jesse Klein is an LSA sophomore. Femen, a Ukraine-based self- identified "sextremist" women's movement, labeled April 4 as "Inter- national Topless Jihad Day." Global demonstrations insupportof ayoung Tunisian woman sparked many reac- tions because images of her naked body were marked with politically charged messages. Years ago, when the veil-ban was ahot topic in France, Femen staged protests where they dressed in burgas before collectively stripping. More recently, the group demonstrated in Stockholm in front of the Egyptian embassy with their bare bodies displaying phrases like "Sharia is not a constitution," "Free- dom for women!" and "No Islamism, yes secularism!" Before hearing anything about this event, April 4 was a big day for me, too. After months of rehearsing, it was the night I would perform in the campus production of The Hijabi Monologues. I was excited for this rare platform to share the stories of Muslim women's diverse, complex experiences; honest and humanizing narratives that discuss our celebrations and challenges. To Femen, however, this sort of initiative would be cast as irrel- evant, even pitiful, because as it turns out, I, along with millions of Muslim women around the globe, am suffering from a case of "false- consciousness." To Femen, the very idea behind hijab, and, more generally, religion (read: Islam) is intrinsically, solely and perpetually harmful to women. This is where Femen comes in to save us and help us realize a self-affirmation that we otherwise would never experi- ence. Thanks to the efforts of those who staged topless actions in front of mosques and embassies across Europe with makeshift beards, towels on their heads, painted cres- cents on their breasts and signs that read, "Muslim women, let's get naked!" I should now feel support- ed, affirmed and liberated. Shockingly, I don't. My aversion to Femen has little to do with their sensationalist tac- tics and everythingto do with their exclusivist approach to feminism, imperialist rhetoric of salvation and simplistic assumptions on lib- eration, all of which are far from what the group's message sets out to be: radical and progressive. The group's exclusivist approach reminds me of the first and second waves of feminism in the United States, where the mainstream women's movement marginal- ized women who didn't agree with its approach and instead sought to define its own concerns and struggles as the most pressing and as "universal." As a result, Third World feminists during this era were pressured to choose between adopting the struggle for women's liberation or ethnic liberation. They defied this restricting binary framework and instead called for a more interconnected approach that simultaneously addresses multiple structures of oppression. There are valuable lessons to be learned from this phase of the women's movement, but Femen isn't paying attention. The group insists on a selective approach that highlights oppression, prioritizing gender and leaving all other markers of identity - race, religion, sexuality and class - unnoticed on the backburner. Even more unsettling, Femen's calls for "Muslim women, unveil!" summon images of colonized Alge- ria, where French women regularly staged public "unveiling ceremo- nies" for Algerian women under the cry of "Vive L'Algerie Francaise!" Local norms, especially around women's sartorial choices, were used by colonists to justify subju- gation. In order to progress and "civilize" the indigenous,-Algerian women were made to unveil so that they could become "free" under French occupation. Femen adopts a similar tone where Muslim women can only realize liberation through the imposed aid of their white European counterparts. I'm tired of the trite Eurocentric assumption that one's feminist cre- dentials are reflected and validated through choices of dress. Time and again, mainstream Western feminism has sought to dictate and prescribe the concerns and needs of other women without including them in the conversation. By decid- ing that the biggest challenges to liberation are rooted in "culture," Femen dismisses the multiple ele- phants in the room that stand in the way of liberation. Guess what, Femen? Challeng- ing society's patriarchal norms is on my daily agenda, but I'm just as equally enraged with the rac- ist, corporatist, global imperialist structures that perpetuate patriar- chy and wreck women's lives over and over again - especially women who look like me whom you claim to be liberating. In fact, your efforts don't support my sisters, but dis- tract from the fearless organizing they do every single day, even if you actively choose to overlook it. The feminism that I know isn't one that denies the agency of women or feeds off of explicitly rac- ist tropes that infantilize women. While I find Femen's approach off-putting and regressive, I won't allow this to have me second-guess my commitment to various feminist causes. Feminism, like most other movements and ideologies, has been used overtime to justify mili- tarism, war, neoliberalism and col- onization. Despite this, I'll continue to advocate my own understanding of feminism - one rooted in equali- ty, humility and self-determination. To my well-meaning saviors, please understand that the misogy- nistic, racist ordeals I experience regularly aren't oppressions that I can disentangle from one anoth- er. In this sense, your bigoted, exclusivist movement becomes an additional battle and a burden to Muslim women activists instead of a source of empowerment. Under- stand that you can't save or support women whom you see as lackingthe ability to make critical decisions of their own. So either take a moment to listen to the voices of the Muslim women you drown out and accept that their experiences are legiti- mate, or get out of our way. Zeinab Khalil is an LSA junior. FOLLOW DAILY OPINION ON TWITTER Keep up with columnists, read Daily editorials, view cartoons and join in the debate. Check out @michdailyoped to get updates on Daily opinion content throughout the day.