"The (task force) recommends against routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years." U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, Nov. 17, 2009
"My message to women is simple. Mammograms have always been an important life-saving tool in the fight against breast cancer and they still are today. Keep doing what you have been doing for years - talk to your doctor about your individual history, ask questions, and make the decision that is right for you." Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services Secretary, Nov. 18.
Talk about a short news cycle. A Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) appointed "best practices" task force dismissed the value of "routine" mammograms as a cancer prevention technique for women 40 to 49 years on Tuesday, November 17.
A day later, Wednesday, Nov. 18, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a statement dismissing the committee recommendations.
Researchers in Britain discovered that women who took the birth control pill for 15 years cut their chances of getting ovarian cancer in half, according to The New York Times.
I’ve been working on this post all day, trying to make my opinions on abortion rights sound cool or heartfelt or something. The point is: I’m pro-choice because some of my closest friends have had abortions. It’s an extremely difficult decision to make, and abortion is an ugly, ugly thing that they’ve spent a lot of time and heartache dealing with. Anyone who suggests that women take it lightly, or that women don’t comprehend the decision they’re making, needs to spend less time humanizing fetuses and more time talking to real women.
I’m all for political activism and the power of impassioned arguments—I blog about sexual politics all the time, I was the president of the Women’s Issues Organization in college, and I bring up sex ed approximately once every 5 minutes—but talking to a close friend about her abortion is an irreplaceable, undeniably jarring experience. And difficult though the decision is, none of my friends regret their abortions. Their circumstances are wildly different, but they all agree that they were not responsible enough, or ready enough, or prepared enough to raise a child.
Looking at other women I care deeply about—like my younger sister, who wants to go to law school in a couple years—I hope and pray that they never have to make the choice to have an abortion. But if they are, they deserve to have a safe, legal, unobstructed choice.
Yesterday, I introduced you to CitizenSugar. Today, meet CitizenJane. CitizenJanePolitics is a new blog, trying to be "The Modern Girls' Guide to Picking the Leaders of the Free World".
Editor Patricia Murphy worked on Capitol Hill for 9 years, and is now aiming to cover politics through the eyes of women and help them make informed decisions in 2008.
Patricia is already making informed decisions on the blog. Today's top post features a picture of a pink glazed donut. I don't know what it has to do with politics, but it made me hungry for more.
According to a recent study of undergraduates, men are more willing than women to put romantic relationships before career advancement:
While 51 percent of the women prioritized romantic relationships over achievement goals, more than 61 percent of men did the same.
The CNN piece marvels over anecdotes that back up the study's findings: one girl graduates before her boyfriend...and doesn't wait around Ohio for him to do the same! One guy blows off a quiz and test prep when his girlfriend comes to town...then gets a bad grade!
Anecdotes aside, it seems fairly obvious to me that when men prioritize romance it's not at the expense of advancement—married men and fathers make more money than their single and childless male colleagues. On the other hand, single and childless women outearn and advance quicker than their married, child-rearing counterparts because women take on disproportionate amounts of household and parenting duties. This study, then, is a good sign that young women recognize this disparity and are making efforts to establish careers early— and ideally, this strategy will lead to more equitable relationships down the road.
Young men generally drink more than young women, with one notable exception, according to a study coming out this month. Young women drink more heavily than men at theme parties—especially at costume parties and parties with sexual themes.
What’s especially interesting about the study is that unlike most studies of college drinking habits, this study doesn’t rely on students’ self-reporting. Instead, researchers attended 66 parties over three semesters, observing party environments, measuring blood alcohol levels and interviewing students.
While other findings of the study are unsurprising (drinking games = high blood alcohol levels, duh), I’m not sure what to make of women drinking more at theme parties. Are they trying to be comfortable with their slut-o-ween costumes? Do they prefer to binge drink on occasions more festive than frat parties? Thoughts?
The Iraqi government ordered the country’s policewomen to turn in their guns so they can be distributed to male officers—a move that undermines U.S. efforts to increase women’s participation in civil service in Iraq.
In addition to, you know, depriving gainfully employed women of meaningful jobs and being generally discriminatory, the elimination of female officers poses serious security and procedural problems.
Without policewomen, [Brig. Gen. David] Phillips said, there will be no officers to search female suspects, even though women have joined the ranks of suicide bombers in Iraq. Last week, a female bomber killed at least 16 people north of Baghdad, at least the fifth such attack in Iraq this year.
Another U.S. adviser said that forcing out female officers will hamper investigation of crimes such as rape, which stigmatizes women in Iraq, because few victims feel comfortable reporting it to men.
When questioned about the plan, an Iraqi ministry official responded, “Females are taken care of by men in this country. They are not out there being police officers.” Not anymore, anyway.
Clothing specifically marketed as “modest” is popular enough that Macy’s is starting to stock Shade, a modesty-driven clothing line created by two Mormon women in Utah. The clothes are fine, but the assumption that it’s a woman’s responsibility to dress modestly denigrates both genders.
Feministing.com editor Jessica Valenti points out that this "modesty vogue" is about more than dressing respectfully:
The notion of dressing modestly comes at least partly from the idea that men can't control themselves...By telling women that they have to dress a certain way to quell men's desires, modesty advocates are sending a clear message that the onus is on us to control men's sexual--and possibly violent--actions.
Standards like that reflect a larger "men are stupid/helpless" dialogue that's been popularized in contemporary culture. One of the modesty fans interviewed in the piece, a freshman at Brigham Young University, suggests that men aren’t capable of focusing on anything but boobs: "It's easier for boys to concentrate on your face and your personality when you are not revealing anything to them that is distracting to them.”
So men can run companies and countries, but they can’t concentrate on what a woman says if her ankles and shoulders are showing? I’m not buying it. Let’s give everyone a little more credit and stop pressuring women to use their wardrobes to control men.
Turns out men and women don't have the massive, genetic communication barriers that popular self-help books and Cosmo would have you believe. Who would have thought?
According to a new study conducted by researcher Janet S. Hyde, many persistent stereotypes about male/female communication--e.g. that women are more talkative than men, that men interrupt more in conversation--don't hold up in the body of scientific research on the subject. After analyzing hundreds of studies on gendered communication, Hyde found that
in studies of verbal abilities and behaviour, the differences [between men and women] were slight. This is not a new observation. In 1988 Hyde and her colleague Marcia Linn carried out a meta-analysis of research dealing specifically with gender differences in verbal ability. The conclusion they came to was that the difference between men and women amounted to "about one-tenth of one standard deviation" - statistician-speak for "negligible".
Via Jezebel--proof that reading borderline trashy blogs during lunch is good for you.
Re: Justin's post on reviews and reactions to Katha Pollitt's new book, Kay alerted me to a great piece up on Salon today that discusses our expectations and impressions of public figures' personal writing.
Rebecca Traister asks:
Is there ever a point at which it is a good idea for women, especially intellectual, politically engaged women, to strip off their clothes and caper naked as jaybirds in front of a line of would-be assassins?
It's a well-written, thoughtful look at what irks people when strong women write personal memoirs. Definitely worth reading, though the initial conversation is only loosely related.
This week’s events over the racist and sexist remarks made by Don Imus about the Rutgers female basketball team were very unfortunate and made clear that we still have a very long way to go before we eliminate discrimination in all its forms. In many ways the Imus incident also highlighted the progress made on racial and women’s issues in America. It speaks to our culture that MSNBC and CBS were so overwhelmed by the response from the American people that they chose to cancel the Imus program. It was a big win for civil rights and women’s rights, but the Imus remark uncovered the deep-rooted stereotypes about African Americans and women that continue in our society. Read More »
Don’t be surprised if, when going to your student health center this year, you find yourself digging deeper and deeper into your pockets to refill your oral contraceptive prescription. As the Associated Press reports, a change in a Medicaid rebate law (amended in a defecit reduction bill) has ended the incentive for drug companies to offer discounted pills to colleges. What does this mean for the average student? A prespcription that is twice, if not thrice as expensive. The cost increase even affects generic brands.
The AP article mentions students and health workers at schools like Indiana University and Kansas State, which a number of working class students who are often supporting themselves, or even their children, while studying. According to Hugh Jessup, executive director of the health center at IU, “It’s a tremendous problem for our students because not every student has a platinum card…Some of our students have two jobs, have children. To increase this by 100 percent or more overnight, which is what happened, is a huge shock to them and to their system.”
Obviously, this does not bode well for reducing unplanned pregnancies at college campuses. Also, as oral contraceptives can be used at times as emergency contraception, the ramifications for victims of sexual assault are also serious. But, I guess it’s what I’ve come to expect from the government’s continued attacks and erosion of Medicaid…
The Hindu fundamentalists are at it again—this time, the Times Onlinereports that Sikh and Hindu girls are being forced to convert on college campuses in the U.K. through “groomed conversations” and friendships with Muslim boys.
"The men aggressively target vulnerable university students by using the fear of being dishonoured to force them to convert, community leaders have told The Times. Many befriend their victims, then threaten to tell their families that they are in a sexual relationship with a Muslim. Some teenagers are said to have been drugged and photographed in compromising positions.
Many comply because they are so afraid of shaming their parents or being rejected by their communities."
Wait a second…Sikh and Hindu girls are converting to Islam, abandoning the faith in which they were raised, in order to avoid being rejected by their community?? This makes absolutely no fucking sense.
In India, men outnumber women by 8%. In most western countries, women outnumber men by 3%.
What could cause this discrepancy? A number of factors, but according to most experts in India, one of the causes of the 882 females for every 1,000 males in India is anti-female selective reproductive procedures. This can include anything from termination of a female foetus due to an ultrasound, to female infanticide. The Guardian recently published an excellent article on the subject, delving into issues of patriarchy, the culture of marriage, and resulting trafficking due to the shortage of women in many parts of India. I could write an entire post on the article itself, but that’s not what this is about.
The article compelled me to once again mentally hash out my pro-choice views. I’m fiercely pro-choice and feminist, I wholeheartedly support Gloria Steinem’s famous words, “In my heart, I think a woman has two choices. Either she’s a feminist or a masochist.” But mass termination of female foetuses is decidely anti-feminist—and more than that, reeks of eugenics. Yet, I am fiercely pro-choice.
I am PRO-CHOICE, and ANTI-SELECTION. This means that although I will fight to guarantee a woman the right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason, I do not fundamentally believe that as a soceity, abortion should be an excuse for eugenic-related selection--for example, an aversion to having a female child, or because the child will be born with certain mental or physical disabilities.
I remember being somewhere between amused and horrified when during my mom’s wedding (her second, which is why I was there of course), her now-husband said in his reception speech that after many months of corresponding through e-mail and phone, they finally “hooked up.”
Of course, as most folks who are 40+ mean when they use the phrase, he meant “met.” (This is particularly scandalous/hilarious when one considers the strict sexual morality of my culture that strongly, STRONGLY frowns on pre-marital sex.)
But it’s difficult as a 22-year-old recent college graduate to think of that word in any other sense than une liaison d’amour, something less innocent than making out, but just short of sex. (Is this correct? Who knows. Who cares.) And her husband’s misstep, which is sure to elicit snickers from the 18-30 crowd, is caught on video forever.
Slate’s Meghan O’Rourke recently reviewed Laura Sessions Stepp’s screed, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both, which obviously denounces “the hook up.” I have not read Stepp’s book, nor do I plan to, but O’Rourke takes Stepp to task for the wild assumptions and misguided conclusions Stepp reaches in her tome. Stepp’s thesis, according to O’Rourke, is that young women (of high school and college age) who engage in recreational “hook ups” will become jaded, emotionally bankrupt, and cynical of love—all which would lead to (heavens!) a hard time finding a husband:
“Just below [Unhooked’s] surface lurk the usual naked (and prurient) fears about girls and sex: Girls who put out are going to get hurt. Instead, Stepp argues, they should admit ‘the bar scene is a guy thing’ and stay home to ‘bake cookies, brownies, muffins’—after all, guys, she confides, will do ‘anything’ for homemade treats. (Who wants chlamydia when he can have cake?)”
I’m not convinced that sexual promiscuity automatically equals liberation, for any gender—and particularly when there’s alcohol involved. But some people enjoy it, and others don’t. And neither should be judged.
But, as a public service, please tell all of your parents to refrain from using “hook up” as a substitute for “to meet." Do you really want to hear your mom say "Dad and I are hooking up at the soccer game later on in the afternoon"??? Yeah, I didn't think so.
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