Fewer political games. More VR games.
Earlier this week I had a chance to tell a few hundred brilliant folks in the virtual reality industry about how Planned Parenthood is using technology to expand access to care and break through the stigma surrounding sexual and reproductive health. Here’s what I shared.
Good morning!
For all of us the last few months have been a whirlwind.
Thankfully, Planned Parenthood, the country’s largest sexual and reproductive health and education organization, is still standing!
Available to all — online 24/7, in person at more than 600 health centers across the country and at town halls, marches and rallies near you.
Last week’s failed Trumpcare vote was a major victory for Planned Parenthood — and really for anyone who likes getting health care without going bankrupt.
Unfortunately, while we won this battle, the war is not over because Mike Pence, who pretty much invented the idea of “defunding” Planned Parenthood while he was in congress, is now the vice president.
And these are the people the administration has turned to to dismantle health care in this country.
Nobody thinks Obamacare is perfect but wiping it out like the Starks at the Red Wedding is really not the way to make good policy.
And when these are the only people who who get to sit at the table, it’s no wonder that every single version of Trumpcare was literally deadly to women.
You may already be asking, “Why is this lady talking about politics and health care — does she know this is a VR conference?”
The reason is that a huge part of why women’s reproductive care is an obsession of Washington politicians is it’s rooted in shame and stigma around sex, sexuality and yes, abortion, particularly aimed at women.
And that’s where you come in. You are the wizards of a new world and I’m here to challenge you to make the world you build better — not worse — than the one girls and women and LGBTQ people and people of color have to live in now.
Starting with cooties on the playground to sluts at the party to hearing nonsense from the Coach Carrs of the world — politicians are emboldened to believe they can and should punish women for having a body — and for using it.
I mean, it’s 2017 — we’re all aware that periods are a thing, yet women still feel compelled to hide tampons up their sleeves when they go to the bathroom.
At Planned Parenthood, we’ve been trying for a century to beat back this stigma.
When our founder, Margaret Sanger, and some badass friends first started distributing information about how to prevent pregnancy from a Brooklyn storefront back in 1916, they were arrested and thrown in jail.
Of course, once they got to their cells they just taught all their fellow inmates about birth control. Like I said, badasses.
But really they didn’t go to jail for the idea of birth control.
They went to jail for championing the much bigger idea that a woman’s body is her own, to be shared with a partner or a baby or no one as she decides.
And 100 years later I’m starting to worry that we may have to go to jail for that same — still controversial — idea.
But technology has opened up new fronts and given us new tools to give people the information and care they need — tools that Margaret could never have imagined.
At Planned Parenthood we use technology lots of ways:
First, to leapfrog the barriers too many patients face when they’re trying to get care or information.
Second, to get folks involved in this fight.
And third, to reduce the stigma surrounding sexual and reproductive health that drives our need to do both of those.
On all these fronts, advances in technology are changing the game for Planned Parenthood.
First, on health care and information.
Last year, 68 million people visited plannedparenthood.org to get the kind of information Margaret was thrown in jail for distributing. But now it’s scientifically accurate and available 24/7 — for free.
We have a new period and birth control tracking app called Spot On and it’s been downloaded over a million times in its first year.
And we’ve just started rolling out birth control and STI appointments via secure video chat, right on your phone.
I love that one of our first patients on this platform was a woman in a remote village in Alaska. She was 500 miles from the closest health center. So she got on her phone, had a video appointment with our team in Seattle, and a few days later a float plane arrived with her birth control.
We haven’t figured out the drone IUD yet — but give us a year!
This is all about meeting people where they are — whether the “where” is online, in rural Alaska or soon, I hope, in VR.
That’s why we’re especially excited about partnering with tech companies to tap into their platforms — like we do with Tumblr, Snapchat and Reddit — where the audience that most needs information is ready and waiting.
And we’re always looking for new partners and places to plug in. Where can we fit in the worlds you are imagining?
Next — technology also allows us to get more people involved in the fight to protect access to care.
When I started at Planned Parenthood, we had around 3 million supporters.
Today, we have over 10 million. And they’re more engaged than ever before.
We can mobilize folks to take action seconds after congress introduces a bad bill or the president tweets something off-the-wall (Like that would ever happen).
By using new text technologies, we can get 60 people from all over the country to join a pop-up phone bank to deliver thousands of calls into Nevada or mobilize 6,000 or 60,000 people onto the streets of Minneapolis or Miami.
So where does VR fit in?
Frankly in every bit of it — imagine virtual health centers, honest accurate interesting sex ed, virtual protests and marches, safe social spaces to help young people figure out who they are, and especially leveraging the empathy building power that only VR is proven to deliver.
For that last reason we teamed up with the brilliant Nonny de la Peña of Emblematic, and Brad Lichtenstein, and Jeff Fitzsimmons of Custom Reality Services. Together we created Across the Line — a virtual reality experience that puts people in the shoes of our patients who too often face significant abuse as they seek care.
Our question was — could we use VR to change hearts and minds and get folks to take action?
One of the few immersive VR experiences combining 360 video scenes and CGI, Across the Line uses audio and video recorded at real protests along with scripted scenes built to mirror the actual experience of women at health centers.
Across the Line takes you through this woman’s entire experience — and in the CGI section your virtual self walks through a wall of protesters as they hurl insults your way.
Just a sample of what they say:
“You’re a little whore.”
“Start closing your legs.”
“God’s going to destroy you in a lake of fire.”
And my personal favorite, which has become the Across The Line tagline — “Wicked Jezebel feminist”
We’ve taken this VR experience to state capitols, college campuses, law enforcement leaders, and conferences and festivals in 34 states. And anyone can experience it on Samsung Gear VRs or Google Cardboard.
We’re really proud of this film — not just because it won some great awards — but because it’s doing what we set out to do.
In one state capitol, we invited folks — including lawmakers who are less-than-friendly to Planned Parenthood to experience across the line. Somewhat incredibly, one of them actually showed up.
He watched Across the Line, and when he took off the headset, he was super angry.
Our volunteer running the VR was a little worried — was he angry at us for treating abortion for what it is — a safe, legal health care service? So she asked him — what did you think?
His response: “those people” — meaning the protesters outside the clinic — “should not be using the lord’s name like that. There is no reason for them to talk like that.”
This is a guy with a long record of voting against Planned Parenthood and women’s health. But he saw these protesters harassing women for the bullies they are. And for many men I think there is just no other way than VR for them to come that close to the experience that women have in our shaming culture.
I’m not fooling myself that one VR experience will change his next vote, but I do believe he understands the world differently and will be less likely to defend harassment in the future. A small victory.
And this wasn’t an isolated incident.
We partnered with researchers to understand just how viewing the film could affect the outlook of people with more negative views of abortion.
Across the board, our preliminary research shows that people who watched Across the Line more strongly disapproved of harassment outside health centers than those who hadn’t seen it.
Even better, after watching the film, more people said they could support a woman seeking an abortion, even if they don’t agree with her decision.
I had originally conceived of the film in something of this liberal vs conservative construct. But the most standout thing to me has been the reaction of men to Across the Line.
Women frequently come out of the experience shaken — it’s too close to their real experience — or at a minimum shaking their heads and saying, “this is awful — but I am not at all surprised.”
Men? They come out of Across the Line ready to punch someone. They’ve literally never felt what it’s like to be yelled at like that.
Most people aren’t bigger than they are. Most people don’t assume it’s safe to comment on men’s choices. And sex and sexuality? Men are praised for it, while women as you heard are basically called prostitutes.
During a demonstration in St. Paul, a longtime clinic escort watched Across the Line.
This is a big, tall, strong 40-something man who spent every saturday walking Planned Parenthood patients past protesters. You would think if anyone was prepared for Across the Line, it would be him.
But he wasn’t. He took off the headset and broke down crying. He said he had become so numb to the abuse patients endure that he forgot they can’t just tune it out.
Moving just two feet to his right — from the shoes of an escort to the shoes of a patient — was a revelation.
Even though he was standing right there, the yelling had not been at him.
If that’s what you can do with this technology — if seven minutes in virtual reality can move people those two feet, to a place where they can see it’s not about politics — it’s about people, then you will change the world.
Here’s where you all come in:
Games and films — especially those in virtual reality — risk taking the privilege men have as they move in the world and putting it on steroids. You are big, fast, strong and mean — we will make you bigger, faster, stronger …and meaner.
Look this is not a dig on games or fun or men — I like them all — but it is a challenge to use your awesome talent and your amazing companies and your fast computers for good. The opportunity is there.
To use vr and gaming to show the powerful and privileged what it means to be in the shoes of the marginalized or stigmatized.
To let girls and boys experience girls as strong and as smart and as courageous as boys. To experience “equal.” Because girls are gamers, too!
One area where I’m obsessed with VR is around sex education.
What if, instead of a coach in front of a class of mortified students, sex education was in virtual reality?
And no, it’s not that kind of sex ed. That’s a totally different talk.
But what if young people could use VR to actually practice what it means to give and receive consent?
What if they could take a tour of their reproductive system? And someone else’s?
What if we could come up with a game where the “level up” is a more effective form of birth control?
What if a young person could experience what it’s like to live in the world as a different gender? Or no gender?
Gaming and VR makes all of this possible in ways we couldn’t imagine even five years ago.
I can see this kind of VR in classrooms, in health center waiting rooms — and embedded into the spaces where young people are already spending their time — with you.
We are in an all-out battle for the future — not just of Planned Parenthood — but the entire future of sexual and reproductive health in this country.
We’ve made incredible progress:
Right now, this country is at a 30-year low for unintended pregnancy. The teen pregnancy rate is at a historic, all-time low. And abortion rates are the lowest they’ve been since Roe v Wade was decided.
So wouldn’t it be great if we stopped playing political games with people’s health, and started playing virtual reality games that actually improve it?
You can help young people live healthy, shame-free lives — in new and amazing spaces where they can have fun, ask questions and get answers without fear of judgement or ridicule.
In 5 years, I hope I can come back here and folks will be talking less about a handmaids-tale future — and more about the generation of wonder women — and super men we’ve raised with the technology you’ve built and the stories you’ve written.
Thank you.
