Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
Years of anti-gay bullying, teachers afraid to confront students for calling other students faggots because of a policy against supporting “gay lifestyles,” and a school district too cowardly to confront Evangelical political interests lead to a rash of teen suicides in Minnesota. Whats this got to do with madness and diagnosis? Well, as it turns out, the story includes two very good illustrations of the ways in which certain assumptions about madness serve to privilege certain interpretations of an event.
...read moreWho I am, how I see the world, and a question for the Feministe community
One of the things that has always struck me about how we discuss madness is the terms we use. “Words mean things” has become something of a trope in the feminist world, but its especially important to remember when we’re talking about madness because, in a very real way, all we’ve got in the world of psychology is language.
...read more“I Use Injectables”
Whitney Davis, 18, could have been part of a startling statistic: by the age of 19, nearly 60 percent of all women in Liberia have started childbearing. However, Whitney doesn’t intend to add to this childbearing statistic. “I am on family planning,” she says. “I use injectables.”
...read moreRick Santorum is against pre-natal screening
Which would be totally fine if babies were delivered via stork, but in the real world, pre-natal screening is a pretty important component of the pregnant woman’s health and the future baby’s health. Santorum doesn’t like it, though, because abortion (that, by the way, should be Santorum’s campaign slogan — “Rick Santorum: Because Abortion.”
...read moreShockingly, Catholic Bishops’ hostility to birth control is not about religious liberty.
Last week, the Obama administration instituted a new rule requiring institutions to provide birth control for their employees, with exceptions for primarily religious institutions — they didn’t have to provide birth control if it violated their conscience. Seems like a good compromise, right?
...read moreWhat Komen Reveals About the Ugly Truth of American Politics
A must-read by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker:
...read moreThe people who have urged Komen to stop supporting Planned Parenthood aren’t opposed to breast-cancer screenings; they’re opposed to other services Planned Parenthood provides, which include contraception and abortion. But a campaign to sever the ties between a foundation that’s raising money to find a cure for breast cancer and a health-care provider that advocates for reproductive rights exposes more than a division over contraception and abortion. It exposes a gruesome truth about politics in this country.
Victory!
...read moreThe Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation reversed its decision to cut funds for breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood affiliates and apologized to the American people for what it said was casting doubt on its “commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.”
Facts, myths, and blankety-blank lies about Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen Foundation
As the furor over Komen’s de-funding of Planned Parenthood continues, more and more myths about PP, its mission, and the impact of this cruel and foolish decision are getting thrown around. Frequently, those myths get lost and go uncorrected in the presence of bigger and more ideological arguments.
That’s really not fair.
Alas, this is merely the tip of the bullshit iceberg. As the Komen debacle is nowhere near coming to an end, we can expect new and exciting myths and lies to arise, like the head of a Hydra, as others are debunked. To that end, watch this space, and by all means contribute your own debunkings in comments.
...read moreWomen refuses to give raped daughter EC, brags about it on internet.
Ah, the kindness of pro-lifers: [trigger warning]
...read moreMy Dark-Haired Daughter, who suffers from bipolar disorder and limited cognitive abilities, went missing last Monday. For more than 48 hours, we had no idea where she was. Without all the gruesome details, after she was found, it came to light that she’d been brutally and repeatedly sexually assaulted. She’d been taken to the local women’s shelter, where (at least in our area) they do the exams in such cases.
More on Komen and Planned Parenthood
...read moreThe truth is that anti-Planned-Parenthood sentiments aren’t about abortion; they’re about hostility to women, and particularly to female sexuality. Abortion makes up 3% of its services. Cancer screening and prevention are 17%.
Five Ways to Support Health for All Women
As Caperton covered yesterday, the Komen Foundation recently pulled $600,000 in annual funding for Planned Parenthood, making it even more difficult for low-income women to get necessary cancer screenings. Nona over at GOOD offers a list of five other ways to support women’s health, and offers organizations to support that don’t put so-called “pro-life” values ahead of actual women’s lives. If you’ve got some extra cash, consider putting it toward actual health care.
...read moreThe Komen Foundation decides not to stand with Planned Parenthood after all
As Planned Parenthood faces repeated attacks on federal funding from legislators who seem happy to disregard women’s health as some minor fringe issue, it depends more and more on individuals and organizations that see women’s health as an essential and integral part of people’s health in general–because women are people, see–and are willing to open their hearts and wallets. This used to include Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to fund breast cancer screenings and education through Planned Parenthood. Used to. Komen is in the process of breaking off its partnership with Planned Parenthood, pulling back funds in the neighborhood of $600,000 a year.
...read more
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