A recent CNN report brought to light that relief isn’t the only thing that some humanitarian aid workers and U.N. peacekeepers are bringing: “children as young as 6 have been forced to have sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in return for food or money”. If that doesn’t make your stomach turn. Read More »
Over the weekend the Financial Times reported that poverty stunts neural development.
Neuroscientists said many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development. That effect is on top of any damage caused by inadequate nutrition and exposure to environmental toxins.
Studies by several US universities have revealed the pervasive harm done to the brain, particularly between the ages of six months and three years, from low socio-economic status.
Add this to the growing list of reasons the U.S. should do more to fight poverty abroad and at home.
In response to those concerned about the "oversexualization of children" and the negative effects of an adult-themed Halloween: think of it as a First Amendment issue. Expressive conduct, subject to the relevant time, place, and manner restrictions, among other things.
Meaning, in application:
Our Halloween (UW-Madison's) for the past -- I don't even know how many -- years, was (and to some extent, still is) celebrated for its propensity to generate riots and widespread acceptance of detox as an inevitable outcome of the night, some of the raunchiest and most inappropriate/outrightly offensive costumes you could ever hope to see, and basically all other forms of violation of general social convention. The city planned for crackdowns and public property damage; the revelers, accordingly, planned for teargas and nightstick clubbings. Basically, it's just ridiculous, in all positive and negative senses of the word.
But the event takes place, typically, on 1-2 nights over the weekend, on State Street (the major downtown conduit), between the hours of 10PM and 2AM; for the past 2 years, the city has gated off the area, charged $5 for admission to the "event", and worked actively with the Madison community to curtail much of the negative economic and human consequences of the event. Offensive and overly sexual costumes still abound -- but it's like Vegas. You know you're sure as hell not supposed to bring your kids.
With that in mind, game on.
I'm not seriously suggesting that Halloween be treated like a 1st Amendment issue, that Halloween partygoers have respectable 1st Amendment rights at hand by virtue of their slutty costumes that constitute meaningful "expression" of some kind, or that we should implement some technical legal analysis here of the issues at hand.
What I am suggesting is that I have seen more offensive Halloweens than probably any of you have in your day, and, with careful and proper regulation, I've seen them done well. And it's good for business, it's good for building a sense of community, and it's good for a good time.
I find it laughable that someone would single out Halloween as some kind of social ill, on the grounds that it overly sexualizes children and/or objectifies women. There are better events or examples of culture to single out, especially when the whole point of Halloween is to get "in costume", aka, construct the entire celebration around fantastical and fictional premises. There are far more serious issues implicating women at hand, notably, sexual assault. In my opinion, Halloween is better used as an opportunity to discuss such issues.
I may not approve of your "office ho" costume, but I will defend to a considerable extent your right to wear it.
And by prude, I mean that I view Halloween as the last straw in the stack of hay that is the infantilization of women and the fetishizing of youth. Go ahead, say I'm over generalizing, it’s probably just my estrogen getting out of hand.
I'm sure each of you can come up with your own list, without my help, of the ways in which beauty norms (SDF - for a definition of "norms" and "culture" see mainstream media, don't keep denying that it exists) require a youth aesthetic.
It’s well known that the United States has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world (about 6 per 1,000 births). Progressive health care wonks have long suspected that sub par Medicaid coverage for pregnant women and cuts to programs like the State Children’s Health Insurance Program are culprits. Last month, the counter-CW folks over at Slate announced that actually, babies die because wealthy American spend a lot of money on fertility drugs, prenatal care, and other newfangled treatments that save otherwise unviable pregnancies and lead to increased rates of prematurity and infant mortality.
Yesterday a must-read article on infant mortality in the South appeared in The New York Times. On this issue, at least, it seems counter-intuition will only take us so far: American infant mortality is very much a byproduct of poverty, with all the usual disturbing implications for race and gender. In Mississippi, the poorest state in the country, the infant mortality rate rose from 9.7 to 11.4 per 1,000 births in 2005. Nationwide, white Americans have an infant mortality rate of 5.7, while African Americans have a much higher rate of 14.0.
Poor black mothers are especially at risk for a variety of reasons, ranging from high rates of obesity (which can make ultrasound monitoring difficult and lead to diabetes, thus under-nourishing the fetus) to increased deaths from SIDS, accidents, and disease. Doctors are few and far between in rural counties, and local doctors report that many poor women have no prenatal care at all. In addition, the governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, has raised barriers for entrance into the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
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