Abortion saved my life There’s this lawmaker out of Kansas, Rep. Peter DeGraaf, who has a lot to say about abortion. He’s currently best known for saying that women should plan ahead in case of rape and not expect their regular insurance to cover an abortion after an assault. I’m a mom, and I love my sons more than anything. I was taking an afternoon nap when the hemorrhaging started while my toddler napped in his room when I woke up to find blood gushing upward from my body. Everyone knew the pregnancy wasn’t viable, that it couldn’t be viable given the amount of blood I was losing, but it still took hours for anyone at the hospital to do anything. A very kind nurse risked her job to call a doctor from the Reproductive Health Clinic who was not on call, and asked her to come in to save my life. Later I found out that the doctor had taken my husband aside as they brought me into surgery.
A Marxist defence of Page 3 girls « LeftCentral January 25, 2012 by LeftCentral Brendan O’Neill Image © Kip Voytek Proving that the Leveson Inquiry has become a magnet for every campaigner who wants to tame or censor the tabloids, yesterday’s line-up before his lordship included a bevy of feminists angrily railing against Page 3 in The Sun. For some women’s rights activists, Page 3, with its scantily clad ladies making philosophical comments in speech bubbles, represents everything that is wrong with tabloid culture. It is sexist and offensive, they say, and it contributes to a climate in which women are looked upon as fleshy objects to be ogled by goggle-eyed blokes. Harriet Harman has joined this shrill chorus calling either for the outright banning of Page 3 or for The Sun at least to be put on the top shelf in newsagents, next to porno mags. The fact is that shutting down Page 3 would be an assault on press freedom. “You cannot enjoy the advantages of a free press without putting up with its inconveniences,” he said. Like this:
feminist blog about womens rights for teenage girls | fbomb How Are Teenage Girls Supposed To Identify As Feminists With These Role Models? "Plus, girls my age are trained so thoroughly to hate themselves that sadly, it's probably harder for them to be their own role models than to find one in the vast, global populace." I don't disagree, but by who? Their frenemies? Other high school kids who bandy the word "slut" around so casually? On the flipside of shit like Teen Vogue, I see alot of magazines that, treacly or stupid as much of the content is, focuses at least some of it's pages on coming out, self-mutilation, eating disorders, and issues related to self esteem and self-acceptance. I will say this—it makes me deeply, deeply sad that "feminist" is still associated with hating men, punishing men, being (by default or on purpose) sexually unappealing to men, being lonely and aggressive. Who am I kidding—what "STILL" associated? How old is the girl who you were talking to, Julie, another 17 year old?
Why women have sex Do you want to know why women have sex with men with tiny little feet? I am stroking a book called Why Women Have Sex. It is by Cindy Meston, a clinical psychologist, and David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist. It is a very thick, bulging book. I've never really wondered Why Women Have Sex. Meston and Buss have interviewed 1,006 women from all over the world about their sexual motivation, and in doing so they have identified 237 different reasons why women have sex. Why, I ask Meston, have people never really talked about this? "People just assumed the answer was obvious," Meston says. "We never ever expected it to be so diverse," she says. The first question asked is: what thrills women? We are, apparently, scrabbling around for what biologists call "genetic benefits" and "resource benefits". "When a woman is sexually attracted to a man because he smells good, she doesn't know why she is sexually attracted to that man," says Buss. And so to the main reason women have sex.
Fantasy Armor and Lady Bits - Mad Art Lab The brilliant tumbler feed Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor has inspired me to add my two cents to the discussion. Why does my opinion matter? I’m an armorer. I make actual armor that people wear when they hit each other with swords. When making armor I have to strike a balance between comfort, protection, range of motion, and appearance. I intend to set the internet straight. 1: The Problem There is a commonly held understanding in the fantasy role-playing community that female armor sucks. What does that mean? We know why these images exist. To predict a counterpoint: There are men that wear next to nothing in fantasy art as well. To give a bit of perspective, this would be the male equivalent. So there is the problem: Pointless armor. What can be done? 2: The Historical Problem My first choice when armoring women is to draw from history. This leaves us with barely any extant examples of women in armor. Common European Armor, 9th to 13th century. 3. Joan of Arc, 1485 Want another example?
Can 11-year-olds use Plan B safely? Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images The women’s health world has been in an uproar since Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rejected a recommendation by the FDA on Wednesday to make emergency contraceptives like Plan B available without prescription to teens under the age of 17. According to the New York Times, her reasoning had to do with the extent of the data: J. Follow “After careful consideration of the F.D.A. summary review, I have concluded that the data submitted by Teva do not conclusively establish that Plan B One-Step should be made available over the counter for all girls of reproductive age.” Many have called Sebelius’ decision a political maneuver, a feeling that was strengthened for some when President Obama—who’s no doubt considering the election fallout of controversial issues like this as we approach 2012—endorsed the move. But what of Sebelius’ purported concern that 11-year-old girls would incorrectly use the method?
Lauren Collins: Beyond Plan B Over at Daily Comment, my colleague Michael Specter criticizes the Obama Administration for its decision not to make Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill, available over the counter to girls under the age of seventeen. Specter makes a dispassionate argument: the Food and Drug Administration has found that Plan B is safe and effective for adolescent girls, so adolescent girls should be able to use Plan B without obstruction. Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, overruled the F.D.A. on the flimsy premise that the Plan B’s manufacturers had neglected to investigate the drug’s effects on eleven-year-olds. But perhaps emotion should complement science in our treatment of fourteen- and fifteen- and sixteen-year-old girls—I can see why many parents would want an adult (whether they or a doctor) to vet any decision about the medical welfare of their underage child. In Mexico, daily contraceptives are available over the counter.
Sex and the Single Girl: Why American culture is still so scared by single people Helen Gurley Brown author of the classic here in 2006 Peter Kramer/Getty Images. The averagely nonjudgmental person may wonder why, in 2012, being single should be a radical act, an interesting topic of discussion, a viable subject for a spate of new books and magazine covers. It has now been 50 long and eventful years since the publication of Helen Gurley Brown’s feminist classic, , in which she made the groundbreaking observation: “I think a single woman’s biggest problem is coping with the people who are trying to marry her off.” And it’s disconcerting that living alone, especially for a woman, is still something of a taboo; that vast swaths of the population still foster only barely submerged fantasies of spinsters and cat ladies; that children still sit cross-legged on the floor playing games of “old maid.” Helen Gurley Brown was, of course, writing to career girls of the pre-feminist '60s (post-Simone de Beauvoir, but pre-Betty Friedan).
Democratic Women Boycott House Contraception Hearing After Republicans Prevent Women From Testifying This morning, Democrats tore into House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) for preventing women and minorities from testifying before a hearing examining the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. Republicans oppose the administration’s rule and have sponsored legislation that would allow employers to limit the availability of birth control to women. Ranking committee member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) had asked Issa to include a female witness at the hearing, but the Chairman refused, arguing that “As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness.” Watch a compilation of the heated exchange: A picture of the witness table:
Birth Control Isn’t Really About “Women’s Health.” It’s About… | Marriage 3.0 This is a polemic: Access to birth control isn’t really about my “health.” It’s not principally about the management of ovarian cysts or the regulation of periods. Birth control isn’t about my health unless by health you mean, my capacity to get it on, to have a happy, joyous sex life that involves an actual male partner. The point of birth control is to have sex that’s recreational and non-procreative. It’s to permit women to exercise their desires without the sword of Damocles of unwanted pregnancy hanging gloomily over their heads. This proposition is radical only by default, because mainstream liberal voices in Congress, especially, have euphemized women’s desires out of the current birth control and abortion disputes. I understand why they’ve done this, in terms of narrow political expediency. The problem with choice is that it pairs the philosophically monumental with the rhetorically puny. It should go without saying that these women matter in the abortion debate.