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This Week in the War on Women: With a Poll! [1]

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Date: 2023-05-06

In Other News

Crime

TheConvo Black mothers trapped in unsafe neighborhoods signal the stressful health toll of gun violence in the U.S.

..In the U.S., Black people are likelier than white people to reside in impoverished, racially segregated communities with high levels of gun violence. Research has suggested that living in violent and unsafe environments can result in continuous traumatic stress, a constant form of PTSD. Researchers have also linked experiences of violence and poverty to an increased risk of chronic disease such as cancer and cardiovascular, respiratory and neurodegenerative diseases.

We are Black women and public policy and sociology professors who study health inequities and sustainable policy solutions. Our research has found that Black mothers who feel trapped in neighborhoods they perceived as unsafe because of high levels of community violence are more likely to report elevated PTSD and depression symptoms, as well as elevated stress hormone levels.... ...Our research team sought to understand how stress from structural violence affects the body, specifically the immune system....

It seems reasonable to extrapolate that comparable phenomena are also true of other impoverished and segregated ethnic populations in this country.

Seems like releasing this guy from prison was a really, really bad idea... In Oklahoma, Sex offender fatally shot 6, then killed self:

"An Oklahoma sex offender who was released from prison early shot his wife, her three children and their two friends in the head and then killed himself, authorities confirmed Wednesday as concerns grew about why he was free as his trial on new sex charges loomed."

UK Crime

Boy, 13, avoids custody after four sexual assaults in Telford

Teenager who attacked woman and three girls on walk home from school to be sent to therapeutic unit for at least 18 months

https://www.theguardian.com/…

Reuters via medscape The World Health Organization briefly announced on Wednesday that last year it dismissed for sexual misconduct a senior scientist known for headng the 2021 international mission to China to probe the origins of COVID-19. In 2018, the WHO was made aware of sexual misconduct cases occurring in 2015 and 2017, substantiated by investigations, and corresponding disciplinary process, The dismissed scientist told Reuters that a 2017 harassment complaint was settled immediately in a friendly manner, no others have ever been brought to his attention, and that he contests the accusationst and challenges the sanction. He can appeal the dismissal through the U.N. internal justice system. He is the most senior WHO official known to have been dismissed since the U.N. agency launched a series of reforms to improve its response to sexual misconduct, after a 2021 inquiry found that dozens of aid workers, including some from WHO, had been involved in sexual abuse and exploitation during an Ebola crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Srsly, guys? Forced sex? During an Ebola outbreak??

Abortion

From The Guardian: Japan approves abortion pill for the first time, https://www.theguardian.com/...:

Abortion is legal in Japan up to 22 weeks, but consent is usually required from a spouse or partner, and until now a surgical procedure had been the only option. -snip- The approval of the pill to end pregnancies up to nine weeks follows a ministry panel endorsement, which was postponed for a month as thousands of public submissions were made. -snip- Emergency contraception cannot be bought in Japan without a doctor’s approval. It is also the only medicine that must be taken in front of a pharmacist to stop it being sold on the black market.

Texas is now fabricating data on abortion "complications."

There's a long list of conditions (from infection to difficulties with later pregnancies) that Texas doctors are required to report if a woman previously had an abortion - even if the abortion was YEARS earlier. And every doctor who treats these conditions must report every time, with no unique identifier to screen out duplicate reports, so the same woman's "complications" would be reported as if they were different cases. Abortion early in a pregnancy is safer than giving birth, so they're trying to gin up a pseudo-scientific case to pretend otherwise.

more On Healthcare

From National Council on Aging (NCOA) this past December: Issues for Advocates: Get the facts on women and aging:

from NCOA this past December

A quarter of women over age 40 are caregivers [ 32% of Hispanic women are caregivers, 26% of Black women are caregivers, 24% of white women are caregivers, and 21% of Asian women are caregivers. Hispanic and African American caregivers have a higher financial strain than white or Asian American caregivers. Hispanic and Asian American women have a higher financial strain than males. Female caregivers are less likely to seek medical care, refill prescriptions, or exercise. They also have an increased risk of coronary heart disease, elevated blood pressure, hypertension, and reduced immune function.]



Women typically have put aside half the retirement savings as men [because caregiving responsibilities] can drain health and retirement security, and lower participation [in paid employment and] in employer-sponsored retirement plans. Women often [can only work part-time], take time away from work to care for children and aging parents, work in fields with fewer employer-sponsored retirement benefits, have more chronic diseases [partly in living longer], and feel less comfortable discussing finances [partly because of trust issues].

Nearly one in five women have no health care provider.

Women’s health: end the disparity in funding:

This year marks the 30th anniversary of a landmark US law. In 1993, it became compulsory to include women and under-represented groups in research and clinical trials funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Before the NIH Revitalization Act was passed, it was both normal and acceptable for drugs and vaccines to be tested only on men — or to exclude women who could become pregnant.

Thankfully, that has now changed. NIH data show that roughly half of participants in NIH-funded trials are women. The NIH has an office dedicated to research into women’s health and the agency mandates that researchers use both male and female animals in their studies, as appropriate. Health-research funders in Canada and Europe have adopted similar policies.... Nonetheless, female participation rates in some studies remain low. -snip- Mirin [applied mathematician] later analysed NIH data for other diseases, including those that predominantly affect men such as liver or prostate cancer. In the majority of cases, diseases that predominantly affect women — such as migraines, headaches, anorexia and endometriosis — received funding that was a fraction of what was awarded for diseases that predominantly affected men, when funding amounts are matched to disease burden. This is unacceptable. Mirin rightly urged the NIH to do its own funding-versus-burden analysis, and to analyse correlations between funding and gender.

in this Medscape article on the Long-Term physical and psychological impacts of childhood trauma (e.g., Syrian war refugees, people battered in the home as youngsters, bullying in school and online, etc)

..investigators found that levels of cortisol and inflammation were significantly elevated in [adults] with severe childhood trauma compared to those with no childhood trauma....



.."Almost all people with childhood trauma, especially severe trauma, had LPS-stimulated cytokines upregulated ... So again, there is this dysregulation of immune system functioning in these subjects."...



.. If we know, for example, something is going wrong with a patient's stress systems, we can suggest some therapeutic targets."



Investigators in Amsterdam are examining the efficacy of mifepristone, which blocks progesterone and is used along with misoprostol for medication abortions and to treat high blood sugar. "The drug is believed to reset the stress system functioning [investigators said]…

The next time someone asks what else mifepristone is good for, now you have at least one answer!

Moms

Medscape Commentary: The Newest Form of Mommy Shaming: The 'Narcissistic Mother' The authors describe a confluence of decreased governmental and corporate support for parents since the 1980s, financial and emotional burdens on families almost unimaginable a half-century ago, a view of children as needing intense parental investment (“helicopter” and “tiger” mothering) as the norm across classes, and now ---with the current DSM---formal diagnostic pathologizing of the emotional consequences to mothers who have complied ... or who are deemed to have failed the task of selfless devotion.

Diagnoses can serve a social purpose: They can allow individuals to use the authority of our profession to decide who to be close to and who to let go. They can provide insulation against feelings of obligation or guilt. They create a way to label behavior as dysfunctional that in other eras or cultures would be considered normal, even valued. To that extent, diagnoses don’t occur in a cultural void. They are inextricably tied to larger ideals, be they individualistic – as exists in the United States – or collectivist, as exists in many other parts of the world.



While we [Americans] have decided what parents owe our children, it is unclear what parents might ask in return. To that end, [the wish of mothers for interest, closeness or repair] can be regarded as incompatible with the quest for the adult child’s self-fulfillment and identity...[But w]rongly labeling mothers as narcissists greatly oversimplifies their lives and struggles [and self-fulfillment and identity too]; it devalues their years of love and dedication, however flawed; and it weakens the fabric of [familial] connection that could otherwise [valuably exist]. Rather than provide a path toward compassion or understanding, “narcissistic mother” just becomes the latest form of mommy shaming...

.. to everyone else's profit, at the price of her loss.



Making money off our maladies

Meet the women embracing menopause—and those hoping to end it:

Here—among women who have dropped $195 on a day spent exploring the latest research around menopause, while learning how to optimize their bodies through diet, exercise, supplements, prescription drugs, and intentional gratitude—the specific age associated with menopause feels less material than the life stage it represents. These women are parenting teenagers, or have recently become empty nesters. They have careers. They have sex lives. And they have disposable income.

That makes them among the most enticing demographics today. And over the past few years, spurred by a generational shift that has made older women more vocal and more visible, a fast-growing world of products and prescriptions has emerged to ameliorate the trials of menopause and the period preceding it, known as perimenopause... Menopause—as both a medical condition and a life stage—could be as much as a $600-billion opportunity. The menopause market, once invisible to investors, is on its way to hitting $16 billion by 2025.... -snip- The implications are potentially profound: older mothers, longer careers, perhaps an entirely new architecture for our life stages—that is, for women who can afford it. Current disparities in healthcare would almost surely shape this brave new world.

Almost surely?

Strange Bedfellows

An ad for the American Edge Project ran across my ad feed this week. Link to their website, https://americanedgeproject.org/ At the bottom of that page, you'll see their "coalition". It drew my interest because women's groups are a part of it, as well as some minority groups. But also Meta! (Parent company of Facebook.)

I agree with their stated premises, all other things being equal: Tech should be kept at home, minimally if at all outsourced to China; not only for jobs and innovation, but also for national security and supply chains during crises. But of course one's stated purpose can be something different from the actual purpose. And there are always competing values.

According to the Brookings Institution, https://www.brookings.edu/… American Edge is indeed Meta’s public face — to combat anti-trust legislation.

Also, Peter Thiel (link to DKos story by Hunter) — Republican toxin — said almost the exact same words:

Says Reuters: "He believes Republicans are making a mistake in focusing on cultural flashpoints and should be more concerned with spurring U.S. innovation - a major issue for him - and competing with China, the business associate said."

This is apparently what the fight is about: New legislation dramatically increases funding to US antitrust agencies over five years (private legal website, but good explanation of what’s been going on):

In what appears to have been in part a trade for tabling new antitrust legislation, at least for now, the Biden administration dramatically increased funding for the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. It remains unclear whether this additional funding will increase the agencies’ success rates before the judiciary who will see no changes to the antitrust laws themselves.

But then why all the groups sucked into Meta's web? As noted above, in addition to minority groups, the Women Veterans Business Coalition and WIPP are on board.

Statement by the Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) organisation:

WIPP is a national nonpartisan organization advocating on behalf of women entrepreneurs—strengthening their impact on our nation’s public policy, creating economic opportunities, and forging alliances with other business organizations. -snip- WIPP activities specifically state that the organization does not spend any funds for intervention in political campaigns of any kind.

So is lobbying against antitrust legislation a political campaign? Are groups getting sucked in with misleading advertising, or attaching themselves to money and power for their own purposes? Please add your thoughts to the Comments.

Why women don’t get ahead and what you can do

New research reveals the 30 critiques holding women back from leadership that most men will never hear:

Women are criticized so often and on so many things that they are acculturated to receiving such disparagement, taking it seriously, and working to make improvements. And any individual woman may take it personally, believing the criticism directed at her to be warranted.

-snip- Effectively, the surface-level critique functions as a “red herring,” distracting from the inherent gender bias driving the encounter. This type of treatment is so common that we have called it “we want what you aren’t” discrimination. -snip- For individual women, hear us when we say, “It’s not you.” We women are conditioned to accept feedback and internalize it as something to “fix” about ourselves. If you are criticized, consider whether it is objective, constructive, and warranted. Disregard identity-based criticisms that are part of a larger pattern of bias against women.

There's a great table at the link. Examples they include are that you are either a problem because you have children, plan to have children, or plan to remain childless. And you are always either too young or too old.

Guys, Be Allies Or Else — Humour or No?

“The more conservatives push to reach their wrinkly hands up the skirts of American women, the more they’re getting slapped away”:

IF the current laws and trends continue, with no birth control, no abortion rights, no doctors willing to risk themselves to help pregnant women in crisis:

There will be an epidemic of lonely old men. Future old men will have had less sex than men in generations before, if they’re having sex at all. Fewer of them will be married. They will have fewer children. Because women will decide, finally, that heterosexual sex just doesn’t add enough to their quality of life to be worth the risk it introduces. -snip- It sounds hyperbolic, but it’s already happening. Young women across the country are already deciding in droves that having sex with men their age is not worth the trouble. This isn’t to be taken lightly—a healthy sex life can be an important component to overall mental and emotional health. But when it benefits one party at the expense of the other, can you blame the other party for opting out?

The author goes on to explain that the result will not be a bunch of “sad old cat ladies”; statistically, women are happiest who never married nor had children (and I know purrsonally, there’s nothing wrong with being a cat lady). Men with similar (lack of) experiences are the least happy.

Happiness all around. Warm and soft. Just sayin.

Click on the link above for all the reasons Dobbs may be conservative old white men’s worst “blunder” — for men.

OK apparently not this man

Reuters via medscape A Dutch court on Friday ordered a man who had fathered 500 to 600 children around the world to stop donating sperm and to tellclinics abroad to destroy any of his semen they have in stock, except doses reserved for parents who already had children by him. Banned from donating to Dutch fertility clinics in 2017 after fathering over 100 children, he continued donating abroad, sometimes under other names. The lawsuit was brought by Dutch parents of children he fathered, arguing that continued donations violate the children's right to a private life because possible accidental incest and inbreeding impair their ability to form romantic relationships and have families of their own. He could now be fined 100,000 euros ($110,000 US) per infraction.

Affordable housing but not Desirable

Women-only housing for Britain’s new class of handmaids – how is that progress?

The co-living model works relatively well for the student population, but transposing it on to women reveals how problematic it is to hive off groups as “vulnerable” when their vulnerability is that they can’t afford market rents. The cascade into infantilisation appears to be irresistible, to us as much as the Victorians and Edwardians – how much private space does a single woman need, after all? Surely she’d be happier eating on the roof with her neighbours, where she could chat?

This perception of single women as a vulnerable group – part child, part victim – echoes through not just the developments themselves but the objections to them. -snip- If there are Edwardian overtones to this all-female housing block, it’s not because of the size of the flats, or the infantilisation of the residents, or the discomfiting qualitative judgments some people feel driven to make about single women and the way they should or want to live. It’s the economy, stupid. The gap between the rich and the poor is wider than it’s been for 100 years and, as if by wild coincidence, we’re asking the same question we were asking 100 years ago: Where Shall She Live?

Strength and Survival

Stop praising women’s strength. We need a world where we don’t have to fight to be valued: Romanticising survival distracts from the need for radical change. Strength alone can’t overcome pay gaps, gendered harassment or protect victims of violence:

History is a litany of hardworking, strong, audacious women whose impact was limited because their strength could only get them so far. Women aren’t working hard, being strong or audacious in a vacuum. Women continue to be strong in a world where they consistently have fewer resources, less power and less influence than men.

-snip- To change these harmful systems, we must continue radically shifting norms, despite continuing resistance. Second, creating accountable and equitable governance structures is not just women’s work; it is everyone’s task, with those in possession of political and other decision-making power, resources and influence needing to do much more heavy lifting.

I would say do both, actually. Credit where credit is due. But then move forward to change the system.

ModelMugging



Walking Safety ... Options When Feeling Apprehensive While Walking: Part 2 of 6 X 10 Walking Safety Tips

Once your intuition triggers an alarm, start assessing your options and immediately move toward a safer location.... Don’t wait and see what happens next, trust your intuition ... In most cases, the places we go to and from are habitual, so, as you go about your daily activities assess locations as options for safety. If you are in a new area, the unfamiliarity can be distracting when preparing for a potential threat. Apprehension and anxiety elevates when not knowing where safer locations are. Acknowledge the distraction, take a breath as you assess for options....

And from email:

Please Note: I was unavoidably delayed! Caregiving duties called. Thank you for joining us late.

As always, this is a group effort! Thank you mettle fatigue, officebss, Tara, SandraLLAP, and Angmar for items and discussion behind the scenes!!

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