http://www.newsweek.com//frameset.aspx/?url=http://www.slate.com/id/2246905/

“The question of whether the government funds a given medical procedure is not like the question of whether human life begins at conception. It’s empirical, not ideological. And Stupak happens to be wrong [abut the Senate bill].”

“Stupak is right that anyone who enrolls through the exchange in a health plan that covers abortions must pay a nominal sum (defined on Page 125 of the bill as not less than “$1 per enrollee, per month”) into the specially segregated abortion fund. But Stupak is wrong to say this applies to “every enrollee.” If an enrollee objects morally to spending one un-government-subsidized dollar to cover abortion, then he or she can simply choose a different health plan offered through the exchange, one that doesn’t cover abortions.”

“What really rankles Stupak (and the bishops) isn’t that the Senate bill commits taxpayer dollars to funding abortion [which it doesn't]. Rather, it’s that the Senate bill commits taxpayer dollars to people who buy private insurance policies that happen to cover abortion at nominal cost to the purchaser (even the poorest of the poor can spare $1 a month) and no cost at all to the insurer. Stupak and the bishops don’t have a beef with government spending. They have a beef with market economics.”

Actually, as someone who has experience in fundraising as well, I completely disagree with you. I’m hardly a fair weather fan. If you look at the announcement on UT’s Facebook page, there are hundreds of comments with upset alumni. Most stories posted get 5-10 comments. When I looked last night, there were more than 150. This goes beyond upsetting a few people.

Donors have the right to use their charitable giving as a means of accountability for their organizations. That’s how capitalism and philanthropy work. It’s how fundraising operates and has always operated. No gift is without strings. If a majority of donors do not like the way that something is operated, they maintain the right to force a change through financial giving.

This decision reflects badly on the entire university, so it is only fair that individual programs should suffer the bad decisions of the administration. When individual colleges experience the pain, they have the power to reach through the insulation of the administration and demand changes.

Personally, I feel this smacks of a fair weather supporter. Much like those alumni that don’t agree with a popular or unpopular coach, dean, professor, etc. and state that they will no longer support their alma mater. I am sure every university does something to alienate their alumni at some point, whether that actually be the fault of the university or not. I met an alum that pulled her support for the university simply because her son was not admitted to the main campus. Yet in the same meeting, she asked about the quality of the programs and if they were maintaining their high rankings. Programs that wanted the best and the brightest students. Interesting that she cared about the rankings yet still expected her unqualified son to get into the program.

Still, I mention this not just to point out the irony but to note what seems to me to be a common trend in a lot of conservative eye-rolling over discussions of gender. Oftentimes, someone connects an issue to gender, and the immediate reply by partisans of established gender roles is, “Oh, God, how can we even be discussing gender here? They’re just cupcakes (or whatever else), jeez.”

But the reality is that the cupcakes (or the whatever else) is almost never the issue. It’s the explicitly gendered way in which the thing is presented. Like here — frankly, who cares whether cupcakes are manly or not? But the fact that someone trying to sell cupcakes as manly presents them a certain way, thinks that a certain line of discuouse (camo, alcohol, so on) will clearly scream masculinity to everyone around, is interesting. Even more interesting is the fact that we’ve reached a point where a specific version of masculinity is now a sales gimmick and a commodity — the alleged manliness of the product is as much what’s being sold here as the booze and the bacon.

But, however you want to slice it, that presentation is something explicitly and consciously gendered! If you want to talk about how people think about gender, this is actually one of the most obvious places to look, at least on the surface level. But that won’t stop conservatives from being baffled and astonished by the discussion — even if, as in this case, the discussion doesn’t seem to have happened, yet.