Halloween is coming. How will you celebrate? Will you wear a sexy costume in celebration of sex positivity? [Link to an overview of the pros and cons.] Will you wear a non-sexy costume in defiance of what seems our too-often “dress for men” ethos? Will you avoid all get-togethers or keep parties small because of the pandemic? Will you give candy to children — those you know or those you don’t? I don’t have an answer, but thought we might discuss in the Comments. Just in time to make those plans!
In Other News
Avoiding Accountability
Johnson & Johnson —market value over $400 billion-- has put cancer-causing asbestos claims against its talc-based products (e.g, Baby Powder) into a newly created subsidiary, LTL Management LLC ... which promptly filed for bankruptcy protection on October 14 in North Carolina, halting the claims of tens of thousands of plaintiffs including women suffering from ovarian cancer. This is a $400 billion market-value company spending near $1 billion defending nearly 40,000 cases [that’s $25,000 per case!], with past settlements and verdicts costing J&J about $3.5 billion more…
[Had I known more at the time, I would have avoided their vaccine! Added convenience then sounds more like weak immunity now; I plan to get a Moderna booster. And I don’t like giving money to companies that do things like this!]
Pew Research asked: Does “cancel culture” exist? Is “cancel culture” accountability or unjust punishment? www.pewresearch.org/…
Workplace
Female docs still earning less than male peers, & even worse as specialists.
Lyft releases its first-ever safety report: 1800 sexual assaults in one year. Not that Uber is any better; in fact, it may be worse, with 6000 assaults in 2017-2018, www.cnn.com/…
Domestic Violence
Domestic violence hotline for men: A new hotline in Bogotá takes calls from men struggling with jealousy, control and fear — and challenges long-held assumptions about masculinity:
"The calls are often urgent and pleading.
I’ve hit my wife. I’ve lost my temper. I’m jealous and don’t know what to do.
Callers are young and old, wealthy and poor. But they all have one thing in common: They’re men.
The new hotline they are calling is aimed at fighting violence against women. But instead of focusing on women, it puts men at the center of the conversation, in an effort to teach them to understand their emotions and control their actions.
The shift is simple, but profound. The idea of the Calm Line, as it is called, is not just to prevent violence, but to address what many experts say is one of its root causes: machismo, the often ingrained belief that men must be dominant….
The Laundrie/Petito case ends badly: Brian Laundrie’s remains have been found, likely committed suicide. www.wfla.com/…
Unrelinquished: When America’s gun laws fail abuse victims: Video at the link.
Medical
Vaginal Laser 'Rejuvenation' for post-menopause symptoms Shows Zero Benefit in Sham-Controlled Trial. This is "fractional carbon dioxide laser" treatment - unapproved in the U.S. but often advertised as safe and effective...
Women who've been given epidural steroid injection (ESI) in the lumbar spine for pain are at increased risk for bone loss.
Broken Heart Syndrome Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is On the Rise Especially in Middle-Age and Older Women -- stress-induced cardiomyopathy (including because of bereavement, overwork, etc), not due to clogged arteries or the other usual causes, but as theorized from the release of stress hormones that temporarily curbs your heart’s ability to pump as well as it should, the left ventricle temporarily weakens, coronary arteries feeding oxygen to your heart muscle then spasm, causing chest pain. It's a momentary "freezing" or "stunning" of the heart that can handicap or kill the same as a heart attack.
This article reports on data from before the pandemic (so GOK how much worse the figures now are) -
...2006-2017, national hospital inpatient data [of] more than 135,000 [patients] diagnosed with the condition during the 12 years of the study [found over] 88% of all cases were women, especially in those age 50 or older. When the researchers looked more closely, they found the diagnosis has been increasing at least 6 to 10 times more rapidly for [middle-aged] women [--] the 50-to-74 age group…
[Great, my age group!]
Abortion
When abortion is illegal, miscarriage/stillbirths become “crimes”: We've seen this many times already - women arrested after miscarriage. It could get worse, maybe, though some states have ignored Roe for years.
https://youtu.be/…
Unfortunately (but not all that surprisingly) The Supreme Court keeps Texas abortion law in place (but agrees to an expedited review of it — coming up November 1).
What part of “My Body, My Choice” do they not understand?: This is every bit as wrong: [Black] D.C. assistant police chief says she was told to 'have an abortion or be fired' — women in DC Police discriminated against for both race and gender.
Witches
How do you spot a witch? This notorious 15th-century book gave instructions – and helped execute tens of thousands of people, nearly all of them women.
What does it mean to be Masculine?
Not this:
[Note that testosterone levels are lower because of increased obesity, less physical activity, environmental toxins, and so on. www.urologytimes.com/… How men are treated by women isn’t even on the list of hypotheses by reputable scientists!]
[I know you all know this guy is full of horse crap, but thought you might be interested in the tiny seed of fact in his fact-free and damaging diatribe.]
This: Being a man in 2021 [Psychology Today]:
- While longstanding structures and stereotypes are being reconsidered, masculinity and manhood are in crisis.
- The cultivation of modern masculinity is essential for the mental and physical health of men both in business and at home.
MRAS/Incels
The slippery slope from misogyny to fascism:
Anti-feminism and misogyny can act as slip roads towards antisemitism and other forms of racism. In recent years, the far right in particular has become increasingly adept at steering the former prejudices towards the latter.
War on Children
We talk about how men get a slap on the wrist after attacking women. Here's a woman convicted of abusing 26 children, and she gets 6 years, less than 3 months per child, not to mention whatever the other charges were. I call that a slap on the wrist. https://www.msn.com/… IMO, there should be no wrist slaps for abuse, whoever the perpetrators and victims. Decriminalise victimless crimes and save our prisons for people like these.
Pediatric Orgs Declare National Emergency in Mental Health because the situation has gotten so much worse due to the pandemic.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) and Children's Hospital Association have declared a national emergency in children's mental health. [The organizations represent more than 77,000 physician members and more than 200 children's hospitals.]
COVID-19 has taken a serious toll, the organizations say, on top of already mounting challenges. Policy changes are urgently needed, they say.
"Today's declaration is an urgent call to policymakers at all levels of government – we must treat this mental health crisis like the emergency it is," AAP President Lee Savio Beers, MD, said in a statement.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between March and October 2020, emergency department visits for mental health emergencies rose by 24% for children ages 5-11 years and 31% for children ages 12-17 years. ED visits for suspected suicide attempts increased nearly 51% among girls ages 12-17 years of age in early 2021 compared to the same period in 2019….
See recommended government actions at the link.
The article goes on to reiterate that emergency department, hospital and outpatient facilities were inadequate for pediatric care long before the pandemic began.
International
The first Intifada was created by women, but its early success attracted a male take-over, and misogynist provisions the male ‘leadership’ inserted into Oslo Accords have handicapped Palestinian women ever since. Rajaa Natour writes The Only Hope for the Palestinian Struggle Is to Rid It of Its Macho Narrative:
“It's up to Palestinian women to fight their society's overblown emphasis on the values and symbols of male heroism, which are dooming the battle against Israeli occupation to a tragic dead end..."
[Actually, I think it’s also up to the men.]
Reports highlights violence against women in the Eastern DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo], www.africanews.com/...:
Violence and sexual aggressions suffered by women in Goma, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, were back at the top of the agenda on Tuesday as the results of an independent inquiry were announced.
The report focussed on the violence perpetrated against women by staff from the World Health Organisation (WHO), during the Ebola outbreak between 2018 and 2020.
-snip-
The investigators identified 83 alleged offenders, 21 of those were employed by the WHO and the rest by local health authorities and other organisations.
[Clearly, we need better vetting of those we send overseas!!]
Inspirational
Trailblazing women who broke into engineering in the 1970s reflect on what’s changed – and what hasn’t.
Eun Sun Kim is Making History in San Francisco as first woman to direct a major American opera company. And aims to broaden the art form’s appeal in the digital age.
Barbra Streisand is establishing an institute at UCLA to conduct research into social issues, ranging from climate change to environmental health to gender relations and how to combat disinformation at a national level. The institute will comprise 4 centers in UCLA’s division of social sciences…. Streisand also helped fund some of the earliest climate change research at the Environmental Defense Fund beginning in 1989, and has advocated for & supported civil rights, gender equality, democracy, and advances in women's health.
A Photoessay with individual stories on some of California's women firefighters. (Signup required for reading if you haven't exceeded free limit; after that there appears to be a paywall.)
Recently, Enz was coming off a fire line when she encountered a six-year-old girl, giddy with excitement over seeing a female firefighter.
“This is so cool,” the girl said as she looked up at Enz. “I never see girls."
Enz choked up as she realized she had grown [up to become the woman from long ago who had] altered the course of her own life.
Action ItemS
Yesterday (October 21st) was Latina Equal Pay Day, and here are a couple of petitions relating to that- here, and here.
VOTE: Early November of this year has many local elections! Voting info provided by League of Women Voters Education Fund here. Remember that many of these people either greatly impact your lives right now, such as we have seen with school board members; or act as training grounds for higher office. So every election is important. Find out if there are 2021 elections in your area. Then vote early, vote often! [Kidding about the often part.]
As always, this is a group effort. Many thanks this week to Tara (tAsSW), mettle fatigue, SandraLLAP, and ramara.