Funny, isn’t it, how so many people spend energy keeping tabs on womb traffic, but fall down on the job when it comes to reproductive choices and health?

–From the minute abortion became legal, the fight was on to turn back the clock.

–When a vaccine became available for the sexually transmitted HPV virus that can cause cancer, some factions argued that it would encourage promiscuity. (I guess the day Viagra hit the market those sex police were off attending a workshop on clinic-bombing techniques.)

–Big HMOs and many private docs alike do not routinely offer women screening for sexually transmitted diseases. The subject may not come up at all in an annual physical, and not even in a medical visit intended to address some other gynecological issue.

The bill proposed in Washington is not a bad one. There are many reasons to worry about hiring women to bear children, especially the potential for exploitation. NOW and other women’s rights groups say this law will protect surrogates, which of course is a good thing.

But underneath the legal debate, I believe, lurks our society’s ambivalence about giving women full and private control of their reproductive abilities.

After Lara Logan was separated from her news crew, beaten and assaulted by a mob, a number of  bloggers, Tweeters and “columnists” took her to task for being there in the first place. And we’re not talking about anonymous idiots; these are commentators with big, visible platforms. (No, I’m not going to link to them. )

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who quickly went after the hateful Logan-bashing writers, as did Kim Barker, ProPublica journalist, also writing for the NYTimes. Other writers are still responding with articulate anger. One of the common points is that Logan is being punished for her sex and looks (attractive, blonde female); more than one writer points out that no one would berate a man for being mobbed and sodomized.

There are two reasons for this kind of blame-the-victim spewing: The spewer is a publicity-seeking fuckwit willing to use any shocking rhetoric to stand out. Or, s/he needs to believe that evil things happen for reasons, e.g. you get raped  if you’re too pretty. The reality of random hate crimes is too frightening to acknowledge. (There is now actually debate over whether Logan was raped or “just” sexually assaulted.)

Now, Nathanson. This intelligent activist doctor had a lot to do with legalizing abortion and moving it from a back-alley butcher’s job to the safe medical procedure that is the right of every woman. Later, upset by the large numbers of procedures he carried out and supervised, he spoke up as an opponent to the procedure. In both incarnations he wielded great power over public opinion. He founded what became the powerful pro-choice group NARAL and he gave the anti-abortion faction their favorite line when he pointed out a fetus’s “silent scream” while narrating a sonogram of an abortion in progress.

The other similarity between these news stories is that they reveal the only-sometimes-veiled misogyny that still exists in our society. Nathanson was okay with abortion as long as not many women exercised their right to make decisions about their own bodies, lives and health. Commentators (and others who silently agree and don’t challenge them) mouth politically correct sentiments about women being equal to men in the world of journalism, until they get a chance to berate them for being too attractive, too female, and for asking for trouble.

In both cases, I wonder how this sexism would hold up if the tables were turned: The hate-blogger gets left alone with an angry mob or the anti-choicer is told that he cannot elect a medically safe surgery, but must instead sneak off with a fistful of cash to a dangerous, illegal appointment.

Well, yes. But there’s more to it than that. A piece by Peggy Orenstein in The New York Times answers my question: Anything that gets more women to do exams is good…and promoting open conversation about cancer is very good. But the pep rally nature of all of this has also obscured some of the realities. Orenstein had breast cancer. She writes:

“But a funny thing happened on the way to destigmatization. The experience of actual women with cancer…got lost. Rather than truly breaking silences, acceptable narratives of coping emerged, each tied up with a pretty pink bow. There were the pink teddy bears that, as Barbara Ehrenreich observed, infantilized patients in a reassuringly feminine fashion. “Men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not receive gifts of Matchbox cars,” she wrote in her book “Bright-Sided.”

Alternatively, there are what Gayle Sulik, author of “Pink Ribbon Blues,” calls “She-roes” — rhymes with “heroes.” These aggressive warriors in heels kick cancer’s butt (and look fab doing it). Like the bear huggers, they say what people want to hear: that not only have they survived cancer, but the disease has made them better people and better women. She-roes, it goes without saying, do not contract late-stage disease, nor do they die.”

Orestein describes a wave of new attention-getting t-shirts and slogans, meant to attract and educate young women. Some really are funny and clever. (“Save the Ta-Tas” made me laugh, I admit it.) But there’s a real danger that this disease becomes a big pink event, especially for those younger women. Orenstein writes:

“I hate to be a buzz kill, but breast cancer is just not sexy. It’s not ennobling. It’s not a feminine rite of passage. And, though it pains me to say it, it’s also not very much fun. I get that the irreverence is meant to combat crisis fatigue, the complacency brought on by the annual onslaught of pink, yet it similarly risks turning people cynical. By making consumers feel good without actually doing anything meaningful, it discourages understanding, undermining the search for better detection, safer treatments, causes and cures for a disease that still afflicts 250,000 women annually (and speaking of figures, the number who die has remained unchanged — hovering around 40,000 — for more than a decade).”

I don’t think Orenstein wants the breast-cancer walks to stop, and I don’t think she’s claiming that all women share her view. Many feel empowered and supported by this movement. But she does a great service when she asks that we remember that this is a disease, not an ad campaign.

A note came back promptly from Member Relations, addressed to him, which said:

“Thank you for the letter submitted by your wife in which she expressed your satisfaction…”

It’s not often that a big health care operation seizes the opportunity to thank a guy for his wife’s actions.

Most new fiction is deeply flawed. A five-line letter from Ronald Reagan to his old actress friend Kitty Carlisle Hart is worth $6,100. Whales and dolphins are as smart as we are, and probably nicer. Congo is still the rape capital on earth. Congress still has absolutely no balls when it comes to regulating Wall Street. Our cellphones are built with materials that are obtained at human cost. Author Danielle Steele and legal pot growers in Colorado work harder than the rest of us. Camile Paglia says “female Viagra” pharmaceuticals will not cure the sexual malaise blanketing America.

It seems so clear:

Send sexually disappointed whiners to witness real problems in Congo.  Sell collections of witless Presidential missives as e-books in order to fund the increased cost of cruelty-free cellphone manufacturing. Deploy the hyper-prolific Ms. Steele to the pot-growing operations for one week. Swear in Ms. Paglia, stand her up in front of Congress, and let her spell it out for them: No balls, no glory.

If that last thing doesn’t work, vote for a whale or a dolphin next time.

Most of the customers are women, and they feel so at home that personal conversation flows easily. There’s a bit of that airplane-travel phenomenon, in which seatmates trade stories about intimate stuff  precisely because they are strangers. Not surprisingly, a lot of the chatting centers on the trials of aging.

As it turns out, this is a sort of competitive sport for middle-aged women.

I can just about guarantee that if four women are within hearing distance of each other, and one mentions her hot flashes, at least one of the remaining three will describe waking up more often, with soggier nightwear and a less sympathetic husband.

If you need reading glasses, someone else can’t even find hers, she’s so blind.

Bras suddenly too tight? She can hardly breathe.

Feet wider? Her shoes look like flippers.

Don’t even get started on haircuts.

Men this age take the opposite approach. I bet if you eavesdrop on a group of 50ish men in a locker room and if one of them happens to blurt out some age-related failing, the others will maintain a respectful silence. Or change the subject.

Much is written about the ways men and women communicate with each other, but I’m still waiting for the book titled  “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. And, Girlfriend, My Flight to Venus was Bumpier than Yours.”

Yes, I know. You’d read it if you could find your damn glasses.

This finding comes out of a 10-year-long Australian study involving 6,000 women. I know scientists need statistical heft in order to confirm any finding, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t need to take so long or so many to drive this point home.

Women know it’s true because we’ve all experienced that combat-ready mindset that marks our mate-hunting years. We also know that I-can-live-on-coffee-and-air euphoria that comes with courtship. Nature wires us to snap out of such behavior the same way it programs bears to wake up in the Spring. Too much calorie-free bliss or too-long asleep in the hollow log will spell disaster.

The academics and other experts quoted by Nicholas Bakalar in the New York Times article are walking on eggshells as they offer theories for the weight gain of paired-off females. Because I’m not worried about tenure or angry readers, I can say what they’re afraid to:

We gain weight because we’re not on the market anymore.

There, I said it. When seeking a mate (or even a date for that upcoming family wedding) it makes sense that we work hard to achieve whatever constitutes attractiveness in our sphere. Usually, in this time and place in history, that means thinner vs. fatter. It can also mean adopting certain styles of dress or behaviors. (See index for “bra, push-up” and “friends, pretending to like”.)

Men, of course, have their own versions of adaptive mating-season behavior. I’m sure if any professional ballet company kept personal stats on attendees, the number of men in the audience who were on early dates would out-number the husbands by, oh, about twenty to one. (I’m stereotyping hetero guys here, but the principle expands to include any genre.)

I’m guessing that if this study monitored the diets of these same 6,000 women it would turn up some more revealing trends. We may have weighed less back in the day, but we did it fueled by Tab and Cheez-Its instead of the whole-grains and spinach we inhale now.

So, what’s better–a thin and unattached woman riddled with chemicals or a sturdier partnered female powered by fiber and sporting iron levels high enough to build a bridge? Evolution, gotta love it.