Clara Jane Hendrickson | Time for tits

Leftovers | Making breast cancer awareness month about women's health care

By Clara Jane Hendrickson 09/24/15 1:12am

Breast cancer awareness month begins a week from today, initiating thousands of fundraising campaigns to support breast cancer research. Both on and off Penn’s campus, these campaigns capitalize on the sexual appeal of saving breasts. A bar I passed posted a flyer for a “drink to save boobs” event, two years ago a Penn fraternity sold watermelons with the fundraising slogan “melons for melons” and a fraternity at Keene State College wore bras on the outside of their shirts, which they asked donors to stuff money into.

For all other forms of cancer — such as colon, lung and pancreatic — no images or appeals focus on the physical location of the cancer in fundraising or campaign marketing. These philanthropic endeavors seek to support sick women by emphasizing the sexual value of women’s breasts. While this may work to raise money on behalf of an important health care issue that primarily affects women, it harms women by subjecting them to successful fundraising efforts that only serve to further sexualize and objectify women’s bodies.

Philanthropy is the socially acceptable practice of people in positions of power leveraging their resources to support social causes. This definition of philanthropy rationalizes the choice made by fraternities to fund breast cancer research, making it one that is politically safe. It allows men to help a community in crisis. However, what is needed much more is an effort of self-examination. There is political comfort to be found in pouring money into breast cancer research without also prioritizing support for women’s reproductive health care and choice. We fail women when we pick and choose which health issues matter the most to them.

In fact, there is a long history of the separation of breast cancer from other health care issues confronting women. In 2012, the Susan G. Komen Foundation made the decision to cut off its funding to Planned Parenthood. The decision was later reversed, and the foundation lost $77 million in contributions, 22 percent of its income. The attack on women’s health care has only grown. Texas, a state with a population of nearly 27 million people, has only 10 abortion clinics. These are clinics that also offer reproductive health services such as breast cancer screenings, free birth control pills and pap smears for cervical cancer. This past week, Republican legislators threatened government shutdown in protest of federal funding of Planned Parenthood.

Katha Pollitt argued in a recent New York Times editorial that the pro-choice movement has become dependent on defending abortions for rape and incest victims. Unfortunately, the voices of women who had consensual sex, got pregnant and decided not to be mothers are shamed into silence. “Women aren’t the only ones who need to speak up,” she urged. “Where are the men grateful not to be forced into fatherhood?”

It’s a problem when we see reproductive health and choice as women’s issues alone. Men need to start taking an active role in ensuring the protection of women’s reproductive health care. By focusing on women needing emergency abortions or women with breast cancer who are life-threateningly ill, we miss out on an opportunity to examine the everyday challenges facing women in a country that continues to severely endanger their reproductive rights.

Fraternity men raising money on behalf of breast cancer research are often men who have sex with women. As men with female partners, they should consider their roles and responsibilities in their sexual relationships to support women’s ability to access affordable birth control methods, pap smears, STD tests and abortions. What would be additionally meaningful, besides fraternity brothers pouring thousands of dollars into breast cancer research, would be for them to examine how they can take a stand and counter the attacks on women’s health care providers. This vacuum in fraternity philanthropy shows a greater willingness to run campaigns that jokingly center on women’s sexual appeal but not their reproductive rights.

While raising money for a good cause like breast cancer research and making the issue sexy may be “fun,” it’s not what is most needed. Instead, a deeper form of empathy and the active position of men on the front lines of women’s healthcare are essential. It’s not essential because women can’t win without men. It’s not essential because men can offer social capital or political persuasion. It’s essential because the message that women are incapable of autonomously making sound health care decisions for themselves is destructive to all.

CLARA JANE HENDRICKSON is a College senior from San Francisco studying political science. Her email address is clara@sas.upenn.edu. “Leftovers” appears every other Thursday.

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