All those 5K runs and long walks and pink ribbons and all the rest... if this week is the moment that some women realize there's a problem in breast cancer fundraising, all I can say is, you're really late. The industry of fundraising around breast cancer "awareness", treatment, research and "finding a cure" has long been excessive and in need of a good bit of questioning. And if it takes a stunningly strange decision by executives at the Susan G Komen foundation to do it, well, there's another thing one ought to ask more clearly: why is everyone giving money to the Susan G Komen fund anyway?
The Susan G Komen Race For The Cure was, at its inception, a clever idea: Komen was an active woman who apparently enjoyed those 5K races (before she was diagnosed and died of breast cancer), it tapped into a group of active young women who are probably the third (or fourth wave) of feminism looking for ways to be active (especially a group of young, mid-level corporate women), and it served as a good reminder that women have the economic leverage, now, to make a difference on causes they care about most.
Trouble is, "Susan G Komen" also became a kind of corporate shorthand for easy giving to a cause. You can buy lipstick and detergent and cereal and God knows what else these days, and "a portion of the proceeds" will go to Komen. Bank of America will give you a Susan Komen Visa, for God's sake. For fashion and advertising and health and beauty - or more to the point, anything in the industry of selling things to women - the easy way to look good and caring is to wrap something in pink and slap the Susan G Komen name on it.
Pink. Seriously, all this stuff, and they've colored it pink and say its for breast cancer awareness and the fact that it's also gendered and sexist determinism, suddenly flies out the window because it's for "Breast Cancer" and that makes it practically illegal to point out that most of this stuff is exploitative and kind of offensive... because say that, and somehow you're an uncaring lout who doesn't care about the millions of women with breast cancer.
And what does the Susan G Komen Foundation do, anyway? Well... mostly, they raise money, or spend money to raise yet more money, planning events and running races and all the rest. Do they actually do breast cancer research? Do they do breast cancer screenings? Do they treat patients? No, none of these, and not much else. What they do is take the money they raise - and I'm sure it's a reasonable percentage as these things go, not some scandal about them keeping more of it than they give away... but that's not my point. My point is, they take the money they raise... and they give it to the people who actually do those things.
At some point, one can reasonably say... why are you giving money to a third party when you could just as easily give the money you want to see used for breast cancer screenings and treatment and research and all the rest... and give it to the people who actually do that?
The thing that this "scandal" about Komen dropping Planned Parenthood reveals is not (just) that it exposes some woman at Komen as a pro-life tool, or that it puts both organizatiosn squarely in the middle of white hot women's politics (abortion is so the issue that's all over this election season that most men like to pretend isn't)... the thing about this scandal that cuts to th heart of charitable giving is that it makes something really lazy and embarrassing really obvious about all these people giving to Komen as if they're doing something. In other words... if you want to give money to see more women screened for breast cancer... give it to Planned Parenthood. Like you should have been doing, anyway.
I'm not trying to make people feel guilty or bad about giving to Komen; but from the start, sending money to "The Susan G Komen Fund For The Cure" has been, as charity often is, a class issue masquerading as kindness. It's third party, hands clean, do a little something, but just a little, for a difficult issue. Do you have some money, a little time, do you like parties or running or really long walkathons? Do you like to wear pink? Then we have the charity for you! Because that's what "charity" is, that's how charity works... it's comfortable, well off people who can watch other people's difficulties from a comfortable distance giving money to make sure other people take care of whatever it is that's wrong.
There's nothing wrong, really with giving money that goes to the Komen fund; even if they don't give it to Planned Parenthood, I'm sure they give it to a lot of worthy enterprises that are doing things to treat and research breast cancer. There's also nothing wrong with giving money, or having the kind of wealth that allows you to give generously. But the problem is, and has been, that giving money in this kind of corporate, three hands from the source kind of way is just what the past couple of days reminds us - you are at the mercy of a lot of well meaning people whose actions you don't control and have very little say over. And the reason people give to Komen, rather than to the actual sources, is because it would be harder, and take more work, to figure out what that is, how to give that way, and also still not think about the fact that you could do a lot more, really, than just give money. Or race for the cure. And people with the money to give don't like to spend a lot of time, often, thinking about all of that.
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